Sylvie Su thrashed against hemp ropes for the thirty-sixth time as Ethan Chen pricked serpent scales on her ankle with silver needles. Moonlight through the ruined shrine's lattice illuminated writhing azure patterns beneath her skin—constellations warped into nine-headed serpent shadows coiling around her heart.
"Endure this." Ethan smeared crushed realgar on the lesions, his mortar stained with century-old grave dew. "Divine Farmer's Materia Medica states Xiangliu's venom fears—"
"—fears virgin boy's urine, doesn't it?" Sylvie laughed hoarsely, chains clanking. Her hair sprouted tiny forked tongues as she tilted her head, yet her accent mirrored Jiang Village's dialect. "Still pedantic, Brother Yan. That time you treated bee stings with foxtail grass… my face swelled for days."
Ethan's needle slipped. These past weeks, Sylvie vacillated between lucidity and corruption—only childhood memories briefly anchored her humanity. He clutched their half-pendant: "Remember this? You promised to be my…"
"Herbal-brewing bride!" Sylvie shrieked, pupils thinning to golden slits. Chains snapped as her serpent tail smashed the medicine cauldron, scalding broth searing Ethan's back. Steam coalesced into visions: twelve-year-old Sylvie chained inside an alchemical furnace, a dark-robed figure outside wielding Lucien Lu's bone fan.
"Susu!" Ethan lunged through burns, trapping the frenzied girl under the bronze cauldron. Contact with her tail activated Yellow Emperor's Meridian Charts across the relic. Sylvie stilled, tracing taotie patterns: "Father said… cast birth dates into cauldrons…"
The shrine door blasted open. Eight crimson-robed children carried a vermilion coffin, funeral horns screeching Rainbow Skirt Melody. The lid slid open—Ethan froze. Twin Sylvies lay inside: one scaled, the other stabbed through the heart with a bronze dagger.
"Star-crossed lovers." Lucien's voice oozed from the coffin's underside, his pallid fingers breaching wood, veins pulsing with Sylvie's matching patterns. "Did you know, dear junior brother, your beloved was meant to resurrect Xiangliu fifteen years ago?"
Ethan hurled his mortar. Realgar exploded in flames. Through smoke, twin shadows wrestled on walls—one serpentine with nine heads, the other a girl clutching a cauldron.
"Strike her Danzhong acupoint!" The dagger-Sylvie's voice overlapped childhood memories. "Jiang blood awakens the cauldron's true…" Serpent-Sylvie lunged, fangs aimed at Ethan's throat.
The half-pendant fused with the cauldron. Cyan light materialized Master Yun's phantom. His finger-flick merged the Sylvie-doppelgängers, detonating Lucien's coffin into paper-burning ashes.
"Foolish child." The elder's sigh shook dust from rafters. "The Jiangs forged not a demon-suppressing cauldron, but…" A bronze arrowhead pierced his apparition. Its apricot talisman bore Celestial Academy's seal.
Sylvie vomited black blood swimming with luminous tadpole scripts. Ethan fled with her into dawnlight, Lucien's taunts chasing them: "Junior sister's maiden blood stains the cauldron… next full moon shall be your wedding…"
By a mountain stream, Ethan found a carved jade love-bell at Sylvie's waist. Inside glowed their childhood peachwood plaque's birthdates. Sunrise ignited the bell's whisper: "Find… dandelion stele… Mount Langya…"