The violent jolt of the oak axles shattered the torpor of the Front Cabin. The Mobile Palace halted abruptly on the summit elevation, the repulsion matrices hissing beneath the sudden brake. Inside the armored interior, the impact threw Yù Méi's shoulder against the Shadow Steel wall. The adolescent opened her almond eyes in the darkness. The lethargy of sleep evaporated in the same instant, banished by a thick, hot gust that invaded the cabin through the small crack of the ventilation window.
The two sisters had left the crack open to suck in the damp coolness and the smell of dawn dew. The oxygen that now tore Yù Méi's throat, however, exhaled a repulsive causticity. It smelled of calcined wood, melted mortar, and a greasy, sweet, nauseating odor of pork roasted to excess.
On the main upholstery, navy-blue silk rustled. Yù Qíng raised her torso. The eldest's black irises swept the cabin darkness, and her velvety voice floated, sharp and tense: "A-Yuǎn? Why did the axle lock?" The silence from outside was the only answer.
The stubborn crease drove into Yù Qíng's forehead. The young woman pushed the heavy Ironwood door. The dull thud flung the exit open, and the eldest descended the steel steps, immaculate shoes touching the beaten earth of the precipice. Yù Méi followed right behind. The youngest rubbed her own arm bruised by the jolt and crossed the threshold, feet stepping onto the cold summit stones.
The icy dawn wind struck the fourteen-year-old adolescent's face. The breeze carried no mist; it carried debris. Heavy particles of ochre and gray soot collided against Yù Méi's eyelids. The extreme acidity of the suspended ashes tore the girl's corneas, forcing thick, involuntary tears to stream down her cheeks before the ardor of grief even reached her chest.
Yù Méi blinked furiously against the burn, clearing her vision with the back of her hand, and walked toward the edge of the slope. She halted beside her sister's body. Yù Qíng was completely paralyzed. The woman in navy-blue silk kept her eyes wide, breath suspended, face turned toward the horizon below. On the carriage driver's seat, Zhì Yuǎn's massive figure remained motionless like a monolith, abyssal irises beneath the black hat brim reflecting the orange glow rising from the valley.
Yù Méi took the final step to the summit edge. The adolescent's knees gave way in the same millisecond. The dry impact of her kneecap against the gravel registered no pain. The fourteen-year-old girl's mind collapsed. The village of Qīngshān, the mortal refuge that had sheltered her childhood, had been summarily obliterated from the continent's geography.
The curtain of smoke and ashes laid bare the slaughterhouse. The rice fields burned in waves of black fire. The coal mine had collapsed into gigantic craters. Where houses once stood, only a cemetery of shattered beams and pulverized masonry remained. A thick pillar of black smoke rose like an asphyxiating snake, permeating the air with the stench of carbonized flesh and genocide.
Yù Méi's trembling fingers dug into the cold gravel. Bile rose and burned the base of the girl's throat, shock fragmenting her understanding of safety. Zhì Yuǎn's large, calloused hand descended from the driver's seat. The carpenter grabbed the thick fabric of the golden dress on the youngest's back, lifting Yù Méi's slight, inert body from the ground with the ease of one collecting a sack of hay. He deposited her beside him, on the hard coachman's bench. "Stay seated," Zhì Yuǎn's order vibrated, low, rustic, and devoid of any trace of panic, acting as the sole structural axis in that world collapse.
Yù Qíng climbed up immediately after, squeezing against her husband's left flank. The eldest's two pale hands gripped the man's broad arm, thin fingers sinking into pearl-gray fabric. The woman's black gaze swept the smoking craters and the angle of the destroyed beams. The girl's architectural mind dissected the marks of the massacre, evaluating the signature of destruction left on the beaten earth to measure the exact brute force of whoever had obliterated the valley.
Zhì Yuǎn snapped the thick leather reins. The copper-scaled beasts snorted scalding vapor and dragged the Mobile Palace down the slope. The descent into the village transpired in an agonizing, funereal rhythm. The creaking of the oak axles accompanied the macabre parade of exhibition.
The cramped streets of Qīngshān were paved with the anatomy of slaughter. Carbonized bodies, curled into fetal positions by extreme thermal shock, lined the gutters. The massacre had spared no one. On the thresholds of collapsed houses, elders Yù Méi had seen buying tea days earlier lay with skulls caved in, flesh lacerated by spiritual blades that sliced dozens of people in a single strike. Swollen bodies of pregnant women lay disemboweled in the middle of dust mixed with ashes, beside tiny arms and legs of children crushed beneath the weight of fallen granite.
Zhì Yuǎn's dense lethargy guided the beasts, swerving around larger piles of corpses, the carriage advancing blindly toward the back of the village, pressed against the great eastern bamboo grove. On the driver's seat, Yù Méi's chest rose and fell in violent, hissing hyperventilation. The girl in the golden dress could not tear her almond irises from the carpet of cooked blood and dead flesh swallowing the carriage gears. Oxygen fled her lungs with every recognizable face that passed, obliterated by the wheel.
Something inside her broke once and for all, irreparably. Empathy, attachment to the village, and human despair melted beneath the haze of carnage. Emotional fragility was useless in that slaughterhouse. Impatience and raw energy, the youngest's greatest virtues, began fermenting at the bottom of her marrow, transmuting acute pain into a carnivorous, thick, uncontrollable hatred. Yù Méi's nails scratched the wood of the driver's seat until blood welled beneath her own fingers, gums throbbing in a silent, broken smile of pure sadistic despair.
The carriage turned the last street, wheels halting for good. The core of the massacre rose before the Yù family. The great main house, where the two sisters had been born and raised, still stood partially. Orange flames and black fire licked the master oak beams of the courtyard, devouring the roof and raising a wall of predatory heat against the newcomers.
---
The carriage axle halted. The heat radiated by the colossal bonfire engulfed the driver's seat, desiccating the moisture in all three pairs of eyes in a single gust.
Zhì Yuǎn descended onto the calcined earth. Gravel crackled beneath heavy leather boots, and the young man raised his arms, lifting Yù Qíng and Yù Méi from the vehicle.
The great courtyard of the main house, once the logistical heart of Qīngshān, had been transmuted into a plain of craters, shattered oak beams, and live embers. The mahogany doors of the residence had been reduced to splinters. The air exhaled the ochre stench of molten iron, exposed marrow, and charred flesh.
Ten steps from the destroyed staircase, the geography of the massacre displayed the village leadership.
Yù Chéng's broad body lay brutally sliced in half. The matrix of a descending Qi sword strike had torn the mine chief's chest from left clavicle to right pelvis, cauterizing the organs instantly with extreme spiritual heat. Right behind him, crushed beneath the master beam of the roof that had collapsed in flames, Sū Huì lay carbonized, arms curled in a final, useless attempt at protection. In the right corner of the obliterated veranda, old Yù Lǎo Tàitai rested. The matriarch's fragile body had been pierced by a single thick oak splinter, pinning her against her own wooden bench. The grandmother's clouded eyes stared at the smoke sky, the silent vigil finally extinguished.
The silence of the courtyard burned.
Yù Qíng halted three steps from the carnage. The woman in navy-blue silk bored her abyssal irises into the smoking remains of her biological parents and the old grandmother. The eldest's spine locked, neck muscles tensing until tendons jumped beneath pale skin. The girl's architectural mind processed the extermination strictly as the eradication of her mortal blood. Without shedding a single tear and with lips locked in a white line of strength, Yù Qíng turned her body mechanically. The woman sank her face directly against Zhì Yuǎn's pearl-gray tunic chest. Her icy hands grabbed the thick linen, rolling the fabric between her fingers with titanic force, burying her own breath and mute grief against the sole unshakeable wall left standing in the universe.
Yù Méi passed her sister.
Cloth shoes crushed embers. Ten meters away, she saw her father's bloodied rags and her mother's carbonized arm.
Denial exploded in her throat.
"Father?! Mother!" the cry tore the smoke curtain, sharp and loaded with childish hysteria.
She ran blind, stumbling over rubble, until her knees struck violently against hot stone. Oxygen fled. Smoke burned her lungs. The world toppled. Tears poured hot over Yù Chéng's ashes.
Pain pulled at the veins in her chest. The fourteen-year-old girl grabbed her own hair with violence, mind refusing to accept the mutilated biology of those who had fed her an entire lifetime.
"Why?!" the guttural roar exploded, tearing vocal cords in a convulsion of absolute pain.
The slight body doubled forward, forehead striking hot earth. The cry of the Raw Blade echoed against the bamboo grove, drowning dawn in the purest human despair.
---
Minutes dragged beneath the soot, measured purely by the biological wear of the youngest.
The weeping tore Yù Méi's throat until vocal cords yielded to friction. Shrill screams withered, swallowed by extreme exhaustion, transforming into choked spasms against calcined earth. Her slight body remained curled in fetal position, ash-dirty fingers gripping her own hair, almond irises fanatically driven into calcined earth to escape the silhouettes of the bodies.
Zhì Yuǎn's leather boot crushed the courtyard embers, stopping exactly beside the girl.
The young man's immense, warm hand descended, spreading over the trembling shoulder of his sister-in-law. The dense heat and lethargy of that touch penetrated the fabric of the golden dress, anchoring the adolescent's gravitational axis.
"Come, Méi," Zhì Yuǎn's grave, rustic voice vibrated, offering the valley's sole firm ground. "We have to give them a dignified farewell."
Zhì Yuǎn withdrew his arm and walked toward the main veranda rubble. The mountain of muscle beneath the pearl-gray tunic tensed. He thrust calloused hands directly beneath the master oak beam still burning in flames over Sū Huì's body. The glowing wood hissed against the young man's hyperdense skin, absolute heat rubbing uselessly against the thermal resistance of his foundation. With a short jerk of his wrists, he lifted the hundreds-of-kilos log and hurled it aside, the thud raising a thick cloud of ochre dust.
A few steps away, Yù Qíng operated in the most absolute and icy silence.
The eldest had invaded the peripheral wreckage of the house, joining thick linen sheets to freshly cut bamboo poles to improvise three rustic, sturdy stretchers. Husband and wife worked in mechanical unison. They placed the mortal remains of Yù Chéng, Sū Huì, and the old matriarch onto the fabrics and dragged the funeral cortege away from the dead earth, reaching the cold humidity and ancestral silence of the great eastern bamboo grove.
Zhì Yuǎn released the stretchers and turned his face toward the rocky slopes delineating the valley base.
The thumb and forefinger of the man's right hand joined. Will pulled the forge beneath his sternum, ejecting a concentrated thread of Primordial Gold to his fingertips. Lethal energy condensed into an invisible, hyperdense thermal blade. Zhì Yuǎn lowered his arm. The caustic density sliced massive granite like a hot knife through animal fat, extracting three heavy rectangular blocks from the mountain foundation.
The continuous friction of the young man's finger against raw stone sculpted the rock surfaces. He carved deep ideograms, marking names, the Qīngshān lineage, and final words of filial respect and farewell, sealing the family memory in clean cuts blackened by friction heat.
He carried the three heavy tombstones back to the bamboo grove edge, driving the stone bases deeply into moist earth. The dark ground had already been excavated by him into three wide, deep graves, aligned millimetrically side by side beneath the shadow of tall trees.
Zhì Yuǎn and Yù Qíng lowered the bodies to the bottom of the graves, settling linen over cold earth.
The broad man raised his face, abyssal irises crossing the devastated courtyard to find the small golden figure huddled in the ashes.
"The bed is ready," Zhì Yuǎn's voice echoed, cutting the static of destruction and summoning the younger sister. "Come here, Méi. Say your goodbyes."
The fourteen-year-old adolescent kept arms wrapped around her own knees. The man's call struck the girl's ears, demanding she rise and face the dark bottom of the earth.
The girl raised her face.
Dust-stained knees cracked as Yù Méi forced her own structure to stand. Every step toward the edge of the graves required the dragged pull of legs that felt like lead. She halted before the three open graves. Down below, grandmother, father, and mother rested on dark earth, calcined remains hidden beneath rustic shrouds of thick linen.
Zhì Yuǎn crouched. The young man's immense, calloused hand grabbed a handful of moist earth. He did not pour the soil with brutality. Large fingers loosened slowly, allowing grains to fall gently, settling over white linen with a mild whisper, almost like snow touching the roof.
The predatory shadow hardening Zhì Yuǎn's face retreated. The man's abyssal irises softened, overflowing with the thick, deep warmth of old winter hearths. The boy without memories, who had been spat from the forest years earlier, looked at the only mortals who had ever extended him a plate of food.
"The master gave me my first tool, Yù Chéng, and taught me to read the weight of sacks before trusting iron," Zhì Yuǎn's rustic voice floated through the bamboo grove, grave, gentle, and loaded with the purest filial respect. The young man's gaze moved to the second grave. "And the lady opened the kitchen door, Sū Huì. The sweet steam of your rice and clean clothes gave me the first home my mind can reach. And you, grandmother… your silence on the veranda was the safest vigil in Qīngshān. The warmth of your roof forged my spine. The debt of my blood to this family is incalculable."
He bowed his broad back in a deep, silent reverence before the open earth.
When Zhì Yuǎn raised his torso, his large, warm hand extended to the side. Calloused fingers wrapped around Yù Qíng's waist, pulling his wife's rigid body into the shelter of his flank, in a mute, safe invitation for her to release her own pain.
Yù Qíng bent her knees at the edge of the soft earth. The wall of ice and hostility the eldest displayed against the world collapsed organically. The porcelain mask yielded. A single, thick, heavy tear overflowed from the girl's black iris, running down her pale cheek and boiling against cold skin until dripping into the darkness of her mother's grave.
"You never judged me, mother," Yù Qíng's velvety voice trembled, strangled weeping cracking the woman's arrogance. Her two pale hands grabbed her own navy-blue dress. "When the washerwomen whispered and the entire valley thought it absurd I pursued the quiet boy father brought from the forest… you locked your face to the world. You blessed my choice before I even had age to understand its size. My sky exists because you prepared the earth."
Yù Méi collapsed at the grave edge. The youngest sank fingers into mud, clinging to the earth itself as if she could tear her family back. The adolescent's weeping exploded loose, noisy, and desperate, washing soot stains from her face.
"I'll finish the calligraphy, father…" Yù Méi sobbed, voice shrill echoing through the bamboo forest, slight body shaken by spasms of childish, pained crying. "I'll learn the coal calculations… come home…"
Zhì Yuǎn's massive hand descended, covering the top of the youngest's blonde head, the carpenter's warm fingers stroking the girl's hair in dense, unshakeable comfort. Yù Méi grabbed the hem of his gray tunic, hiding her tear-streaked face against her brother-in-law's firm leg. Yù Qíng rose from the ground, wrapping trembling arms around her husband's broad chest, sinking her own sorrow against the heartbeat of the sole foundation left to her.
Supporting the two sisters against his structure like pillars in a storm, Zhì Yuǎn raised his face. The man's dark gaze bored into the bottom of the three graves. The promise erupted from his lungs, heavy as lead, cementing the bamboo grove's oxygen with the oath of a tutelary divinity.
"Sleep in soft earth," Zhì Yuǎn's voice sealed the valley, imposing, eternal, and bathed in the purest protective devotion. "The daughters of this house breathe beneath my shadow from today onward. I carry the blood and fury of Qīngshān. And I promise to your sleep… neither time, nor emperors, nor the limit of eternity will lay hands upon them."
The cold mountain wind blew between the bamboos, dragging the village ashes away, while wooden shovels, moved by the man's firm hands, covered the bodies for good. The past rested in the earth, protected by an unbreakable, warm foundation forged in the most absolute loyalty.