Jin Zhaofeng had reached the roots. To hasten Ao Shen’s demise for his own cracked foundation was an offense no landlord could overlook.
“Linxi!” Qisheng called, looking up from the scroll burning in his sea of consciousness. Mu Linxi, who had been inspecting the rescued iron-feathered birds, set down her brush at his tone.
“Trouble at the core,” Qisheng said. “Jin Zhaofeng breached the sub-levels to hasten the siphon.”
Linxi’s expression tightened. “The Patriarch’s inner sanctum? But how…?”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Qisheng interrupted, already moving towards the base of a particularly gnarled, ancient Cypress that marked the entrance to a hidden passage. “Ao Shen warned that the drills had breached his outer shell. Jin must have found a weakened point. We need to move.”
The Enforcer Cranes, now free and loyal, sensed the shift in their new master’s demeanor. Their massive forms stirred, necks arching, their usually keen eyes now filled with a protective intelligence. One of them, a magnificent elder named Yulian with feathers like polished jade, lowered its head, nudging Qisheng’s hand with its beak. It let out a soft, trilling cry, then turned, walking purposefully towards the base of the Cypress.
“They know the route,” Linxi observed. “They patrolled these hollows before the academy clamped bronze collars on their throats.”
Qisheng pressed a palm against the gnarled trunk. Wood groaned as a gap parted between two root-knees, exposing a descending shaft draped in damp loam. Cold air surged up, smelling of wet slate and turned soil, while emerald lichen flecked the tunnel walls.
“We’ll need light,” Linxi said, already producing a palm-sized glowing orb from her spatial pouch. Her movements were swift, efficient. “And protection. This isn’t a place for casual strolls.”
Qisheng reached into the ambient flow now under his lease. Leaf-green luminescence rolled from his sleeves, outshining Linxi’s talisman and binding the loose gravel of the ceiling into firm flagstone.
[Merit Gained: 5. Effect: Enhanced Leyline Resonance.]
Ao Shen’s voice, a low rumble, echoed in Qisheng’s mind. *Hurry, young sprout. That insolent pup gnaws at my vitals.*
The flock navigated the twisting descent, tucked wings clearing the granite walls by inches. Behind them scampered the menagerie from the terrace—a sleek black vixen, two bipedal pond-carp, and an armored badger.
The air turned stifling, reeking of scorched ore and copper sludge where the Patriarch’s bore-drills had chewed into the limestone. Linxi touched the seals at her sash, her mouth drawn tight.
The shaft emptied into an immense vault. In the center, a brass array scorched the bedrock amber, feeding five ribbed crystal flues that plunged down into the bedrock like leech-mouths.
Crouched beside the thickest pipe knelt Jin Zhaofeng. His torn hem dragged in limestone grit as he pressed bleeding palms to the quartz, a crude chalk circle scrawled beneath his boots to siphon the raw flow.
“Just a little more,” Jin muttered, his voice hoarse, strained. “Just enough to mend the damage… to restore my roots…”
Sparks jumped from the flue, snapping along his forearms and scorching his sleeves to blackened fringe.
Qisheng stepped onto the cracked floor, the birds fanning into a crescent behind his boots.
Jin whipped around, slipping on grease and loose stone. “Fan Qisheng! How did you bypass the wards? I am restoring my meridians!”
Qisheng lifted two fingers. The bamboo slats unrolled in the air, pale green characters aligning across the slats.
“Jin Zhaofeng,” Qisheng said into the hollow vault. “You have defaulted on your dues, tapped leylines without an agreement, and assaulted the sovereign. The arrears are due.”
Jin spat onto the stone. “Cut off the breeze again, weed-puller? I drink from the bedrock now!”
“No,” Qisheng said, glancing at the ledger’s fresh vermilion clause. “The soil itself rejects you.”
[Karmic Ledger System: Executing Total Foreclosure on Jin Zhaofeng’s Spiritual Roots. All stolen mountain Qi, once integrated, is hereby reclaimed. Permanent severance from the mountain’s spiritual matrix initiated. All cultivation gains derived from stolen Qi are hereby nullified.]
The stream within the quartz pipe reversed. Instead of filling his chest, the stolen breath tore back through his knuckles, snapping his meridian gates like brittle dry pine. Jin bowed double, knees smacking granite as his foundation collapsed inward.
His skin sagged into folds; brown spots blossomed across his forearms, and silver streaks invaded his topknot within three ragged breaths. The straight spine rounded into the stoop of a common seventy-year-old serf.
“My marrow…” Jin clawed at his spotted hands. “You broke my core... I am a commoner!”
The badger trot past him toward the cistern edge, and the jade-plumed leader did not even turn its head.
The brass array flared blinding yellow. The five crystal flues shrieked as they dragged marrow straight from the deepest strata, rattling the cavern floor and raining slate shards from above. In Qisheng's head, an agonizing bellow broke into a wet cough; leagues below, Ao Shen spat a pool of golden ichor across the black mantle. The Patriarch had opened the primary ascension drain.