The master of the Cyan-Abyss, Ren Shi, choked on the syllables, sweat cutting furrows through the dust caked across his cheeks. The blood-soaked battlefield, moments ago a cacophony of shrieks and steel, fell into a suffocating silence. Every eye, whether belonging to a Bastion defender or a Grotto invader, was fixed on the unassuming figure standing amidst the ruined clotheslines, his gaze still fixed on the tip of a bamboo pole. Lu Qingshan traced an invisible flaw on the pole with his thumb. “Lu Qingshan?” he murmured, his voice softer than the rustle of dry silk. “That’s what you call me now? After three centuries, you still can’t remember the correct solvent for a Spirit-Fiend Bile stain, but you recall my name?” He sighed, a sound that seemed to pull the very light from the sky. “And you call that thing ‘clean’?” He gestured with the pole towards the smoldering remains of a particularly fine, ivory spirit-robe, now a sticky, half-melted abomination adhering to the scorched earth. Ren Shi swallowed, a dry, rasping sound. He couldn't speak. His scarlet silks, stiff with dried humors, hung like lead against his ribs. The name belonged to antique records buried under seal, an extinction event given human shape. And Ren Shi had just splattered bile across his clean linen. “Fine,” Lu Qingshan stated, his frown deepening. He seemed to come to a decision. “It’s clearly beyond saving. And your… *acid-blood*… is getting everywhere. I suppose I’ll have to tidy up.” He glanced at the dozen Grotto lieutenants who had fanned out across the flagstones, curved hooks raised to flank the surviving defenders. Without a single change in expression, Lu Qingshan raised the bamboo pole. He didn’t swing it, didn’t thrust it. He simply moved his hands, a fluid, practiced motion that resembled the precise rotation of twisting a damp sheet. But this time, his hands weren’t grasping mere cotton. They seemed to be grasping the very fabric of space itself. The air around the Cyan-Abyss elders shimmered, not with heat, but with an impossible distortion. It began at their feet, a subtle ripple, then swiftly ascended. The lieutenants, men whose marrow had survived decades of marrow-tempering trials, suddenly spun. Their ornate ceremonial robes, their sinews, their very bones, began to rotate, corkscrewing in on themselves. One elder, a burly man with an axe-scarred face, shrieked as his left arm rotated backward, his shoulder dislocating with a wet crunch. His right leg, meanwhile, spun in the opposite direction, his knee shattering with the sound of snapping timber. It wasn't a violent explosion of power, but a methodical, almost gentle wringing. Their Qi, the lifeblood of their cultivation, was literally being squeezed from their meridians, forced out of every pore in a fine, mist-like spray that dissipated into nothingness. Their faces, contorted in agony, folded in on themselves as their features became indistinct, compressed into a grotesque parody of human form. Within breaths, the dozen Grotto martialists were reduced to braided coils of shattered bone and deflated sinew, their spirit-veins emptied dry before collapsing into the churned mud. Ding Bo stared, his mouth agape. The ‘Centrifugal Wring-Out Stance’. He remembered the agony, the burning ache in his arms as Lu Qingshan had forced him to twist bedsheets until his muscles screamed. He remembered the precise hand movements, the specific rotational force needed to extract every last drop of water. He had thought it was a punishment, a chore designed to break his spirit. But now… now he saw a dozen powerful cultivators reduced to mangled pretzels. His eyes flickered between the crumpled elders and his own hands, calloused from countless hours of twisting heavy linens. The sequence aligned with absolute clarity. Every blister from the washboard, every split callus from the hemp tubs had not been drudgery; it was an unbroken lineage of supreme martial arts. Yao Qinglan froze mid-slash, her Moon-Kissed Sabre dripping dark fluid onto the flags. She did not look at the master; her stare drilled directly into Ding Bo, watching his hands replicate that very grip with unconscious perfection. The boy who had purged her clogged channels with lye soap stood tall amidst the butcher's yard, his humble stance suddenly radiant with supreme Dao comprehension. Heat rushed to her ears, her chest tightening around a sharp, breathless ache. Elder Kuang Shi, lying prone in a puddle of his own blood and viscera, watched the spectacle. His eyes, already dilated with shock from recognizing the Asura’s killing intent, now bulged further. He had been terrified when Lu Qingshan had deflected his Nascent Soul pressure. He had been horrified when the Patriarch had named the Asura. But to witness the mundane act of wringing, applied to living, screaming bodies, twisted by a force that bent reality itself… it was too much. A hot, shameful warmth spread through his inner robes as his bladder gave way, the stench of his own terror mixing with the gore of the battlefield. Ren Shi stared at the braided bundles that had been his vanguard, his jaw trembling against his throat. The washerman moved with an indifference that rendered two centuries of seclusion and pill-refining utterly meaningless. His blood-red eyes darted around the field, assessing his rapidly dwindling forces. Panic gave way to a cold, desperate resolve. He had come here for conquest, for vengeance. He would not be unmade without a final, earth-shaking gambit. “My brothers! My loyal legions!” Ren Shi roared, his voice cracking with a desperate energy. “For the Grotto! For the bloodline! We shall sacrifice all!” He raised his hands, and an oily vermilion glare seeped from his pores. His remaining warriors, numbering in the hundreds, hesitated for only a moment, then, with fanatic zeal, began to chant, their eyes glowing with a dark, sacrificial light. One by one, they plunged their own blades into their hearts, their life essence, their very souls, flowing like rivers of blood directly into Ren Shi. The ground trembled. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of freshly spilled blood and unspeakable malice. The vermilion radiance thickened, churning above him into an eddy of marrow and volatile spirit force. From the heart of the vortex, a shape began to emerge. It was massive, towering, blotting out the already darkening sky. A grotesque caricature of a human, formed entirely of congealed blood and writhing shadows. Its eyes, emerald lamps sunken into the boiling ichor, fixed on Lu Qingshan. The Blood-Demon Avatar, a forbidden summoning, was complete, its immense shadow falling over the small, unassuming washerman and the perfectly starched, freshly cleaned clothes still hanging precariously on the one remaining, untouched drying line.

Ironing Out the Heavens