Beneath the Weeping Veins
1165 Words
I. The Bone Harp
The dead sang through stone.
Zhaoming pressed her crystallized palm against the cavern wall, the quartz filaments in her skin resonating with vibrations from deep below. Five days since the collapse, and the mining compound buzzed with feverish activity. Overseers herded prisoners to reinforce tunnel struts with jade-reinforced steel, their hammers pounding like irregular heartbeats.
Old Wen limped past, dragging a cart of contaminated ore. His milky eyes lingered on Zhaoming's bandaged left arm. "The lamp's hunger grows," he murmured, voice swallowed by the clangor. "Feed it properly, or be devoured."
She pretended not to hear. The bronze lamp's flame now burned perpetually in her chest cavity—an icy heat nestled between her third and fourth ribs. Each breath frosted the air.
"Mu girl!"
An overseer's barbed tail lashed her thigh. Zhaoming turned to face Third Claw Meng, his reptilian snout twitching as he sniffed the metallic tang of her corruption.
"The Grand Alchemist requires twenty /sheng/ of weeping ore from Sector Nine." His forked tongue tasted the air between them. "You. Now."
Her pulse quickened. Sector Nine had been sealed since the collapse.
The journey downward revealed the mine's true anatomy. Bioluminescent fungi painted gangrenous greens across rib-like rock formations. Stalactites dripped viscous fluid that sizzled where it struck iron tracks. As they descended past Sector Seven's ruins, Zhaoming glimpsed shadows moving where no prisoners worked—skeletal figures with too many joints, their movements synchronized to the stones' humming.
Third Claw Meng stopped before a hematite door engraved with coiling serpents. "Extract the ore. You have until third bell."
The door sealed behind her with a wet, organic sound.
Sector Nine wasn't a mine.
II. Fetal Fire
Veins of crimson ore pulsed through the chamber walls. Each throb released wisps of sanguine mist that coalesced into embryonic shapes—tiny humanoids with translucent skin revealing branching meridians. They floated toward a central altar where a massive jade crucible glowed, its contents casting dancing shadows of grasping hands across the ceiling.
Zhaoming's lamp-flame surged. The corruption in her left arm writhed like excited serpents.
/'This is how they refine the venom,'/ she realized with dawning horror. /'Using living qi matrices.'/
The closest embryo turned sightless eyes toward her. Its mouth opened in a silent scream, revealing rows of needle teeth.
A cold laugh echoed through the chamber. "Do you like my nursery, Mu Zhaoming?"
The Grand Alchemist emerged from crimson mists, his true form hidden beneath layers of rotting bandages. Jade pipes protruded from his torso, pumping viscous black fluid into an alembic clutched in bone fingers.
"You recognize these, don't you?" He gestured to the embryos. "Failed cultivators make excellent alchemical bases. Their shattered dao hearts yearn for purpose."
Zhaoming's crystalline fingers dug into her palms. "My clan's techniques..."
"...were particularly adaptable." The alchemist's bandages slithered like living things. "Your father's golden core powered three hundred soul-forges before it crumbled."
Rage turned her vision red. The lamp-flame roared, frost spreading across the floor.
"Ah, the famous Mu temper." The alchemist tapped his alembic. A drop of black liquid fell, extinguishing a patch of frost. "Extract the ore, girl. Or shall I feed you to my children?"
III. Blood Chorale
The weeping ore bled.
Each strike of Zhaoming's pickaxe released gouts of crimson liquid that burned through leather gloves. The embryos' wailing crescendoed, their qi resonating with the lamp-flame in her chest. She focused on the alchemist's murmured incantations—fragments of f*******n texts she'd studied as a child, warped beyond recognition.
/'Reverse the flow,'/ whispered the spectral ancestor's voice in her mind. /'Let the hunger feed.'/
Zhaoming hesitated. Then plunged her corrupted hand into an ore vein.
Agony became ecstasy.
The embryos' screams harmonized as their stolen qi flooded her meridians. The lamp-flame gorged itself, its green hue deepening to malachite. Her crystalline arm glowed like captured moonlight, revealing intricate circuitry beneath the quartz—a map of the Mu Clan's lost cultivation techniques.
The alchemist's laughter boomed. "Magnificent! The Dao-Born Physique exceeds even the legends!"
Zhaoming wrenched her hand free, trailing viscous blood. "You knew."
"Of course." Bandages unwound to reveal a face that mirrored her own—distorted, rotting, but unmistakably Mu. "Why do you think we spared you?"
IV. Fractured Lullaby
They came for her at the violet hour.
Zhaoming lay chained in the purification chamber, her left arm encased in soul-suppressing jade. The Grand Alchemist's revelation echoed in her skull—/spared you, spared you, spared you/—as acolytes prepared gleaming scalpels.
"Harvest the corruption first," the alchemist instructed. "The Dao-Born marrow must remain pristine."
A blade bit into her crystallized forearm.
No pain came. Only the lamp-flame's wrath.
Green fire erupted from her chest, devouring the jade restraints. Zhaoming's scream joined the embryos' chorus as her consciousness fractured—
—/standing in a moonlit courtyard, her child-self laughing as father demonstrated the Phoenix Ascension stance/—
—/mother's hands braiding starflowers into her hair, whispering of duty and sacrifice/—
—/the alchemist's bandages falling away to reveal Uncle Chengrui's face, the kind uncle who taught her butterfly sword forms now smiling with needle teeth/—
"Lies!" Zhaoming roared.
The lamp-flame answered.
When clarity returned, she stood ankle-deep in gore. The purification chamber's walls dripped with half-digested flesh. Of the alchemist and his acolytes, only jade pipes remained, hissing steam into the blood-fogged air.
Old Wen awaited her outside, holding a bone-white flute. "They'll come for you now," he said, eyes clear for the first time. "The song has changed key."
In the distance, the singing stones shrieked a new anthem—/Mu Zhaoming, Mu Zhaoming, blood of the phoenix, come home./
V. The First Rebellion
They found the message carved across Sector Three's ceiling:
/THEY FARM OUR SOULS/
Zhaoming didn't remember writing it. Her left arm ached with fresh corruption, the crystalline growths now reaching her collarbone. Prisoners avoided her gaze, yet left offerings at her alcove—stolen medicinal herbs, sharpened rock shards, locks of hair tied with red string.
Old Wen blew across his flute, the bone instrument producing no sound human ears could detect. "The buried ones stir. Tonight, we dig where the stones scream loudest."
"Who are you really?" Zhaoming demanded.
The former elder smiled. "The man who failed your father." He tossed her a rusted key stamped with the Mu phoenix. "And the keeper of your family's greatest shame."
Midnight found them before a hematite door older than the mine. The key fit perfectly.
Beyond lay a vertical shaft descending into absolute darkness. Carved into the walls were countless names—Mu Clan ancestors dating back millennia, their final messages etched with fingernails:
/'Forgive us'/
/'The Dao is hungry'/
/'Break the cycle'/
As Zhaoming descended, the lamp-flame illuminated grotesque murals depicting her clan's true history—generations of Dao-Born heirs being ritualistically consumed by a celestial maw.
At the bottom, a massive jade seal pulsed with familiar qi.
Her father's golden core, impossibly preserved, imprisoned within.
- Writer
