Chapter 9 Word Spirits in the Rainy Alley
921 Words
As London’s rain soaked the bluestone lanes, the mechanical bones beneath Lin Xia’s cheongsam ached faintly. Three months had passed since the Eternal Vault’s restart. The lotus crystal over her heart lay as still as amber, yet every time the brass bell of the antique shop Corner of Time chimed, her nerve bundles would snake like golden serpents toward the third cabinet shelf—where half a worm-eaten scroll of Ink Grapes rested. On this tattered fragment of Xu Wei’s authentic work, ink stains oozed blood like rust.
“A customer left this?” Edwin lifted the scroll with tweezers, vine-like nerve bundles protruding from his fingers to scan it. “Ming Dynasty paper fibers are embedded with bronze shavings—same origin as our watches.”
No sooner had he spoken than the ink grapes wriggled on the silk! Scorched fruits split into worm-like mouths; their gnawing rustling morphed into soft Wu dialect: “…you buy old times or not…”
The shopwindow shattered. A one-armed scholar in a long gown crashed in, his purple clay teapot dripping asphalt-like liquid. Where his right shoulder should have been, there was no flesh—only interlocking gears of a bronze arm socket. Its design matched Lin Xia’s dismantled mechanical right arm exactly!
“Fix… fix it…” The scholar vomited gear shards. The teapot lid flew off, revealing not tea leaves inside, but half a pocket watch movement covered in oracle bone inscriptions.
The moment Lin Xia’s nerve bundles touched the movement, the entire shop’s floor tiles flipped!
Gunfire echoed in the lanes of 1943 Shanghai International Settlement, a rainy night. They landed in a pool of blood beside a slain woman in cheongsam, who clutched the tattered Ink Grapes scroll. A bronze arm component protruded from her chest—the very arm the scholar lacked!
“Time-space memory corridor…” Edwin wiped warm blood from his face. “Someone’s using antiques as mediums to stitch timelines into a trap!”
A mechanical geisha in kimono emerged from the rain fog, plucking electromagnetic pulses from her shamisen: “Shi Gu (Time Worms), remnants of the Committee, greet the Twins.” Half a lotus pocket watch was embedded in her neck, resonating painfully with the crystal over Lin Xia’s heart!
“My watch fragment?!” Lin Xia’s nerve bundles spiked uncontrollably.
The geisha suddenly tore open her kimono, revealing movable type printing plates embedded in her ribcage. Scalding lead characters shot out like a downpour:
The character 【Love】 burned through Edwin’s left shoulder.
The character 【Hate】 branded into Lin Xia’s mechanical joints.
The character 【Prison】 transformed into a bronze cage and crashed down!
Edwin ripped off a vine-nerve bundle, plunging it into the ground. The concession’s asphalt road melted into bronze liquid, solidifying into a giant hand that crushed the lead cage. Yet shards of 【Love】 burrowed into his wound, and poetry lines appeared in his veins—
“My heart is like a lotus throne
I burn myself to feed the tiger, never to regret—”
Lin Xia’s mechanical eye suddenly wept: “This is Mother’s handwriting…”
Word Spirit Illusion:
Amid a torrent of lead characters floated Lin Mingyue’s bound figure, writing in midair with blood. With each stroke, the mechanical geisha’s watch glowed brighter:
“They’re siphoning Mother’s Word Spirit to power themselves!” Lin Xia chopped off a nerve bundle, plunging it into the illusion. Vine and lotus nerve bundles intertwined into a brush, rewriting the blood-character ending—
“The tiger’s bones become a blade
Split the timeline to see the clear sky!”
The blood poem exploded into golden powder. The geisha’s watch overloaded and exploded; she screamed as she dissolved into scattered lead characters. Tattered pages of the Treaty of Nanking burned in the rain.
The real killing intent had only just arrived.
The one-armed scholar emerged from the flames, reattaching his bronze arm. The teapot’s spout aimed at Ink Grapes, and ink grape seeds shot like bullets toward the crystal over Lin Xia’s heart!
“Look out!” Edwin used his back to block the shot. As seeds embedded in his spine, a revolving lantern of images flashed before him:
Xu Wei in a Wanli-era prison, biting his finger to touch up the painting with blood;
Lin Mingyue pawning Ink Grapes for a gun at a concession pawnshop;
interspersed with visions of the bronze arm being cast on a machine tool…
“So it was you…” Edwin coughed up ink. “Trapping Mother’s Word Spirit in the lead plates…”
The scholar ripped off his human skin, revealing a mechanical body made of movable type: “Shi Gu wants more than Word Spirits. We want everything time has buried—”
Lin Xia’s nerve bundle suddenly pierced Edwin’s wound, coiling around and pulling out the ink-stained grape seed, then pressing it into her chest’s lotus crystal!
Amid the crisp c***k of the crystal splitting, ink-colored lotus petals bloomed. The seed sprouted in the flower’s heart; its roots burrowed into Edwin’s veins along the nerve bundles, unfolding new lines of poetry:
“Bronze forges intertwined
Even as word seams gnaw bones, our hearts are one”
The concession illusion collapsed. When morning light pierced the antique shop, the one-armed scholar had turned into a bronze statue, palms cradling the complete Ink Grapes scroll.
A new branch of ink grapes had grown on the painting, and hanging from its tip were two fruits shaped like pocket watches.
- Writer
