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The muddy banks of the Yellow River were mixed with the stench of blood.
As Yun Jinxiu lifted the tent flap, three feathered arrows struck the ground at her feet. The disheveled old soldiers brandished sharpened wooden sticks, and the one-eyed man at the front suddenly trembled and knelt down, "S-Sir... Young Marshal?"
Xiao Jingyan's bronze mask glimmered coldly in the rain.
"You're still alive..." He lifted the tattered collar of the man with his sword tip, revealing a flame tattoo of the Red Flame Army on his collarbone. "Uncle Zhang, was it you who set fire to the granary back then?"
"It was the Emperor who forced us!" The old soldier suddenly tore open his clothing, revealing a brand of inverted silver leaves on his chest. "They used the poison of the Bai Clan Traitor to control us..."
His words were abruptly cut off.
Yun Jinxiu's golden thread was a moment too late; blood poured from the old soldier's seven orifices as he collapsed into the mud. As she bent down, her birthmark suddenly burned with pain—embedded in the dead man's fingernails was a bloodstained fragment of Bai's Medical Classic!
Inside the makeshift medical tent, as Yun Jinxiu's silver needle pierced a disaster victim's acupoint, Xiao Jingyan suddenly groaned and fell to his knees.
The tiger talisman brand on his chest began to ooze black blood, and an eerie blue light flickered simultaneously with her birthmark. Suddenly, dozens of disaster victims in the tent convulsed collectively, revealing similar poisonous patterns beneath their skin!
"The intoxication of thousands has drawn out their 'July Soul Departure'..." Yun Jinxiu's hand holding the needle began to tremble. "These are all test subjects for poison!"
Xiao Jingyan yanked her wrist, their pulses synchronizing bizarrely as the poison took effect. He drew a figure of inverted silver leaves in blood on the table: "The Bai Clan Traitor used my Red Flame Army for testing drugs, while the Emperor controlled them—what a clever scheme to use others' blades!"
Suddenly, a children's rhyme echoed from outside the tent, its lyrics chilling: "...The silver leaves grow backward, turning Red Flame lads into ghostly servants..."
Following the rhyme, they found a blind old woman among the refugees.
"The young lady has finally arrived," she grinned, revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth as she pulled out an oilcloth bundle from her bosom. "Your mother entrusted me with this before she died."
Unfolding the oilcloth revealed half a copy of Bai's Medical Classic, its cover painted in blood with the emblem of the Red Flame Army!
Xiao Jingyan pressed his sword tip against the old woman's throat. "Who are you?"
"I'm just an herbalist," she replied, her bony hand suddenly grasping Yun Jinxiu's life lock on her wrist. With a snap, she opened a mechanism hidden within it, revealing a bronze key!
"The Bai Clan's medicine, the Xiao Clan's soldiers." The old woman cackled as she poured it into the rain. "And with Yun Clan's money—three families' blood feud must be settled."
In an instant, corpses were trampled by refugees; from her sleeve rolled out a shriveled aconite bulb—the very kind supplied exclusively to the palace.
In the dilapidated temple late at night, Yun Jinxiu pieced together the torn page onto her medical text.
"The July Soul Departure requires three midnight summons from Yama..." She suddenly froze. "Combining these two poisons actually means—"
Xiao Jingyan sliced open his palm with his sword tip; droplets of blood fell onto the paper and gradually revealed a map of secret passages leading to the royal tomb: "The elixir of immortality."
It turned out that ten years ago that massacre was for obtaining the secret formula for longevity passed down by the Bai Clan. And both the Red Flame Army and Yun Clan were merely pawns used by the Emperor for drug testing!
Outside the temple, thunder roared, reflecting the blood-red glint in his eyes. "Madam, it's time to end this game."
As the bronze door of the imperial tomb slammed shut behind them, Yun Jinxiu caught a whiff of the foul stench mingled with the scent of cedar—an incense favored by the Emperor's personal guards. "Three hundred and seven coffins." Xiao Jingyan's sword tip traced the ice-cracked surface of the nearest bronze coffin. "Exactly the number of casualties from the Crimson Flame Army."
The moment the coffin lid was lifted by golden threads, Yun Jinxiu's silver needle slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground. Inside lay a youth whose face was eerily lifelike, a silver needle from the Bai Clan embedded in his chest beneath his Crimson Flame uniform, its tail adorned with nine-turn silver leaves. The coffin was inscribed with incantations, revealing the missing final page of the Bai's Medical Classic.
"So this is what they call immortality..." Her fingertips trembled. "It's about turning the living into corpse puppets!"
Suddenly, the tomb shook, and the sound of mechanisms turning echoed from the shadows. Xiao Jingyan lunged forward, pushing her down just as three crossbow bolts whizzed past her hairpin and struck the coffin—blue-tipped arrows laced with "July Soul Separation."
"Get down!"
Xiao Jingyan's bronze mask shattered under the arrows, revealing half of his bloodied face. Yun Jinxiu instinctively pressed her hand against the painful birthmark on her lower back, where the nine-turn silver leaves glimmered ominously in the darkness.
The murals on the tomb walls illuminated, depicting an alchemical scene: a woman resembling Yun Jinxiu stood before a cauldron, blood dripping from her wrist—wherever that drop fell was precisely where her birthmark was located!
"No wonder the Emperor insists on having a Yun Clan woman..." Xiao Jingyan wiped away blood from his lips. "You are truly the essential medicinal ingredient."
From the shadows came applause as Chief Eunuch Liu Xi appeared with a lantern in hand. "Young Master is clever. What a pity..." He suddenly tore open his sleeve to reveal a pattern of inverted silver leaves identical to those on disaster victims. "I have waited ten years for this main ingredient!"
As Yun Jinxiu's golden thread wrapped around Liu Xi's throat, the old eunuch abruptly crushed his lantern.
In that instant when flames erupted, all three hundred coffins in the tomb sprang open simultaneously! The corpse puppets inside opened their murky eyes, moving in unison like marionettes.
"Using the bodies of the Crimson Flame Army to concoct an elixir for immortality..." Xiao Jingyan suddenly burst into laughter. "What a clever scheme by His Majesty!"
Before his laughter faded, he thrust his sword into his own heart. The tiger talisman mark shattered, and black blood sprayed onto the cauldron, igniting eerie blue flames!
"Xiao Jingyan!" Yun Jinxiu unleashed a storm of silver needles, but they were repelled upon touching his heart.
"Do you remember our life-lock?" His bloodied hand grasped her birthmark on her lower back. "Now it belongs to you."
As the mark transferred, all the corpse puppets suddenly froze in place. Liu Xi screamed as he lunged toward the cauldron but was strangled mid-air by golden threads.
As the tomb collapsed, Yun Jinxiu crawled out through a secret tunnel with an unconscious Xiao Jingyan on her back.
The tiger talisman mark on his chest had vanished, replaced by her nine-turn silver leaves on her lower back. And where her birthmark had been was now deeply embedded with three silver needles—just like those in the heart of the corpse puppet inside the coffin.
"You think this will kill you?" She drove the last needle into his forehead. "Xiao Jingyan, our debts are far from settled."
The torrential rain poured down, washing over the intertwined wrists of the two. The fate lock that bound them had unknowingly transformed into the shape of a key, fitting perfectly into the bronze lock hole unearthed from the imperial tomb.
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