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墨書 Inktalez
As the long nails of the female corpse pierced through the lining of the suit, Shen Mo Bai heard a brittle sound from his chest, like shattered porcelain. The corpse's mottled skin crept up her neck like vines, and the dark red lotus-shaped birthmark on her chest began to ooze black blood.
Fu Bo's hand, which had torn open Shen Mo Bai's shirt, suddenly froze—embroidered on the faded bellyband was a Lotus Blossom design, identical to the pattern on the female corpse's Silver Bracelet.
"Your mother... swapped the Heavenly Marriage Contract back then!" Fu Bo exclaimed as he used a peach wood nail to sever the red thread binding them. The Longevity Lock at the knot clanged to the ground. A lock core rolled out, revealing a baby tooth—exactly like the one Shen Mo Bai had lost beneath the Coffin Shop's Sophora Tree when he was seven.
Suddenly, the left coffin exploded open. Shen Zuyin's corpse sat upright, her Agate Ring glinting with a bloody sheen under the moonlight.
The decayed vocal cords rasped out a howl: "The Shen Family bloodline... must not be severed..." In an instant, as if reaching for Shen Mo Bai, the corpse's nails had already pierced into his eye sockets.
"My son..." Miss Liu's half-decayed face leaned close to Shen Mo Bai, maggots falling from her toothy gaps. "They cut you from my womb... bound you with your umbilical cord..." She lifted the shroud, revealing an empty abdominal cavity, with dried fetal membranes stuck at the broken ribs.
Shen Mo Bai felt a splitting headache. Memories flooded back like dark water from a coffin—on that night when he was seven, Fu Bo had held him in a rock cave, peering through stone crevices at flames rising beneath the Sophora Tree.
A Taoist waved a blood-soaked copper coin sword and pulled a fetus from Miss Liu’s opened womb, and that infant bore a blood-colored lotus pattern on its chest.
"Back then, your father used your heart's blood to draw the soul-restraining talisman," Fu Bo suddenly cut his wrist and smeared blood on fragments of a Bagua Mirror. "The mirror recognizes its master; quickly take aim at her crown!"
As the mirror's light swept across the corpse's forehead, an explosive sound echoed from the ceiling of the secret chamber as branches of locust trees began to sprout. Countless roots penetrated through bricks and stones, each branch entwined with an infant skeleton.
The largest skull bit onto Shen Mo Bai's pant leg; on its wristbone was engraved "Long Life"—the very gift Miss Liu had given him for his first month.
"Mo Bai, catch!" Fu Bo tossed him half of a Peach Wood Sword, its hilt inscribed with remnants of the Lu Ban Jing: "Entwined branches and dual calamities require kin to slay blood relatives."
The female corpse suddenly let out a piercing scream; talismans fell from all four walls of the chamber, revealing rows of Liuli Jars behind them—each jar contained a fetal corpse suspended in liquid, their umbilical cords forming a massive crimson web.
Shen Mo Bai trembled as he raised the Peach Wood Sword. The decaying pupils of the corpse suddenly reflected an old illusion: Miss Liu in her moon-white dress was chained beneath the Sophora Tree while a Taoist pressed a copper lamp into her swollen abdomen. "Protect the child..." she clawed at the tree bark in agony amidst pools of blood during that stormy night, smiling at him. "Mo Bai... you must live..."
At the moment when the Peach Wood Sword pierced through the corpse’s heart, all Liuli Jars shattered simultaneously. Hundreds of fetal skeletons crawled towards Shen Mo Bai, piling up at his feet into a lotus throne. The rotting lips of the corpse pressed against his earlobe: "Chan Zhi Sha has become... The Shen Family bloodline... forever as coffins..."
The secret chamber suddenly shook violently. As Shen Mo Bai pulled Fu Bo and leaped out through a hidden door, he caught sight of Shen Zuyin’s body melting into locust roots; her Agate Ring stuck in a tree hollow around a pale hand bone—exactly like Miss Liu’s whom he had choked to death thirty years ago.
The ancestral hall collapsed with a thunderous roar. Shen Mo Bai slumped in the rainwater, staring at the fragments of his Bagua Mirror in his palm. Those once reflecting his Western hairstyle now revealed Miss Liu’s smiling face as she tied Paper Man dolls.
A Gramophone continued spinning deep within the ruins, playing a nursery rhyme on loop: "...the red sedan chair passes over Wangxiang Terrace; dear child still becomes entwined with bones."
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