The nightwatchman's clapper sounded muffled in the thick fog as Ethan Chen studied the Taiji mark on his hand, fingers brushing the cyan jade tablet atop his medicine cabinet. Last night's tremors had awakened the entire village. Now, dull reverberations from the ancestral hall direction made the bronze cauldron hum like some beast grinding teeth in the abyss.
"Make way! All of you!" Derek Zhang's roar pierced the dawn mist with metallic clanging. Ethan thrust open the window to see eight men hauling the bronze cauldron toward the village entrance. Its legs gouged trenches in the earth, withered vegetation spreading in their wake. Chief Harold stumbled after them, clutching the clan registry: "We mustn't move it! This cauldron was bestowed by the Zhou Son of Heaven..."
The carriers collapsed convulsing before he finished. Bronze patterns swelled beneath their skin as hair-thin black vines sprouted from eye sockets. When Ethan grabbed his herb basket, the jade tablet warmed against his chest. The Taiji mark flashed gold, revealing the "vines" as squirming seal scripts identical to the Big Dipper patterns on Master Yun's robe.
"Plague glyphs!" The village scholar tore his robe open, revealing a bleeding Yugong Nine Provinces map on his chest. "When Yu the Great cast cauldrons to subdue evils..." Black blood sprayed the cauldron mid-sentence, its taotie patterns sucking the bloody mist hungrily.
Slipping behind the ancestral hall, Ethan pressed the jade tablet to his forehead. The world drained of color, revealing nine bronze chains extending from cauldron handles into the earth—three already cracked. Following the chains, his blood ran cold: every infected villager's soul was entangled in chains leading to a nine-headed serpent shadow deep in the ley lines.
"Now you see, young friend?" Master Yun's spectral form materialized from the tablet. "Xiangliu's venom corrodes the Nine Cauldrons' chains. These glyphs are remnants of the Lianshan Divination." The apparition's touch unveiled visions: star-carved patterns inside the cauldron surrounding a millet-sized purple flame.
"This Primordial Qi was left by Yu the Great. Activate it with Scripture of Serenity mantras." The fading specter warned, "But remember, when the flame reignites..."
Crash!
The courtyard gate burst open. Amelia Xing stumbled in, her plague-repelling sachet smoldering: "Ethan, flee! The magistrate says outsiders can't touch the sacred cauldron!"
Thirty-six funeral bells tolled from the ancestral hall—the mountain sacrifice ritual had begun. Clutching the jade tablet, Ethan's Taiji mark burned as bloody light coalesced into a nine-headed serpent above the cauldron.
"Amelia, guard the doors." Ethan spilled seven years' worth of cinnabar and realgar across the floor. As the tablet touched his mark, Seven Bamboo Slips scriptures flooded his mind. His fingers autonomously drew Zhouyou ritual sigils with realgar.
Torchlight stained the windows blood-red as angry voices approached. Completing the inverted Hetu-Luoshu diagram, the tablet glowed cyan at the array's core. Medicinal herbs flew into the formation, refining under alchemical fire into nine glassy Purification Pills.
"Break!"
Biting his tongue, Ethan sprayed vital blood onto the tablet. Golden light swept through the village, plague glyphs hissing off villagers like dying snakes. The cauldron shrieked, spewing black miasma from cracked handles that dissolved in the golden radiance.
When the last wisp of darkness retreated underground, Ethan slumped against his cabinets. In his palm glowed the purple Primordial Qi pellet extracted from the cauldron. Outside, the now fist-sized bronze relic lay at his threshold, its belly bearing a Taiji-shaped scorch mark.
At midnight's clapper, jade light revealed terrifying visions: his sigils perfectly matched the demon-sealing array in Celestia Abbey three hundred li away. More chillingly, the abbey's millennia-old Laozi statue bore Master Yun's exact features.