The charred lumbar vertebra lay on the cold flagstones, a jagged shard of midnight mineral skewered through its core like a grotesque insect’s pin. The Obsidian Cicada's foundational anchor had been marrow, pierced and split with deliberate malice. Her wrist throbbed beneath her sleeve, the dark curse mark creeping a fraction of an inch higher along her tendon. This was no gradual erosion; it was an execution scene spanning centuries. “Aiya! Horrifying! A ghastly, putrid skeleton piece! My delicate internal mechanisms are traumatized!” Jiao shrieked, tripods hopping across the floor. Its inner flame guttered down to an ember, the bronze flanks rapidly cooling as the minerals she had fed it burned away into grey slag. Suyin wrapped the charred remains and dark fragment in oiled silk, tucking the bundle into her sash. Her pulse fluttered against her ribs, but her fingers remained steady as she hauled up the pouch of uncut jade crystals Yan Zun had hurled at her earlier. Exactly three hundred sunrises remained before her soul dissolved, and every facet of quartz mattered. The peak's outer perimeter was a ruin of fractured glyphs and corroded gate-posts. Using Yan Zun's involuntary tribute, she slotted several glowing gems into the dormant matrices of the Sky-Net Weave guarding the summit threshold. A pale azure lattice snapped awake across the risers, buzzing like agitated hornets. Meanwhile, below, Yan Zun seethed. His silk robes, usually pristine, were speckled with dust from his frantic climb up the winding, overgrown path to the Obsidian Cicada’s summit. He’d expected tears, pleas, perhaps even a dramatic fainting spell. Instead, Gong Suyin, the weeping flower of the cultivation world, had looked at him as if he were a particularly uninteresting rock. A *rock*! And then she’d demanded money! His treasury was overflowing with rare artifacts, but to be treated like a common merchant, a mere transaction! The indignation burned hotter than any cultivation flame. He would demand an apology. He would watch her grovel. He would— His boot struck the bottom step, and an arc of azure lightning discharged into his calf. Yan Zun hopped back onto the dirt with a ragged curse, clutching his smoking hem. “What in the—?!” Suyin stood beneath the portico, an ironwood donation coffer tucked under her arm and a fresh wooden placard raised in her right hand. Her knuckles were white and shaking, but she kept her chin elevated and pointed at the brushed ink: ‘Trespassing: 200 Refined Gems (Per Foot).’ Yan Zun stared, disbelief warring with rage. “Gong Suyin! What is the meaning of this charade?! You dare to set up… *toll booths* on your own sect’s peak?!” He gestured wildly at the shimmering, sparking steps. “Remove this ridiculous array at once! I demand an apology for your insolence yesterday!” Suyin offered no reply, only rapping two knuckles against the coffer's slit. Her gaze brushed his collarbones, avoiding his face entirely, calculating the value of his embroidered cuffs. To her, his arrival was merely a ledger entry. Before Yan Zun could shout, a damp draft blew up the cliffside. Grey vapor surged over the parapets, smelling of stagnant swamp water and rusted iron. Behind Suyin, the bronze tripod let out a brassy wail: “Aiya! The blight! It rises! It stinks! My poor, fragile rim is tarnishing!” A needle of agony stabbed through Suyin's wrist, the curse reacting to the corruption crawling up the masonry. The fog fed on unrefined vitality, and Yan Zun's flared temper burned like pitch in the night. She kicked the satchel of raw jade she had rested against the doorframe, sending it skittering across the flagstones to Jiao's lower grate. “Fuel!” she ordered, voice thin and taut. “Burn it!” The furnace clanged its lid, inhaling the crystalline haul. An emerald blast roared through its vents, driving back the encroaching vapor in hissing coils. Jiao's screech dropped to a shuddering rattle: “Warmth! Acceptable warmth! Feed me more shiny gravel!” Yan Zun watched, utterly dumbfounded, as his hard-won treasure was consumed to power a shrieking cauldron and a defensive array aimed squarely at his own shins. He opened his mouth to rage, but a new voice, low and resonant, cut him off. From the deepening shadows cast by a shattered stone archway, a figure emerged. Tall and cloaked in slate-grey hemp, a stranger drifted out from the broken masonry without a rustle of cloth. His gaze swept the stairs, noted Suyin's trembling grip on the coffer, and shifted to the bronze tripod. He drew a velvet purse from his sleeve and tipped five immaculate, glowing minerals through the box's slot with a dull clatter. “Five minutes of quiet,” the stranger said, voice flat as slate. “And unhindered passage to observe your courtyard repairs.” Yan Zun flared crimson. “*Quiet*?! Who authorized this insolent vagrant?!” His aura flared, billowing outward like heated oil and agitating the fog. He stomped forward, paying no heed to the humming ground. The stone cracked open beneath his weight. Rotten vapors poured from the split flagstones, drawn by the reckless surge of Yan Zun's aura. The swirling fog condensed into a towering maw of shadow and rot, fixing twin points of sickly green light directly upon his throat.

Fools and Furnaces