"Meng Xuanye, you madman! That's a life you're talking about!" Cai Qingluan's voice ripped through the back courtyard of the Fulong Pawnshop, her trembling finger aimed squarely at the bizarre Miasma Mother Diagram he held.
"Madman? Hah!" A strange light glinted in Meng Xuanye's right eye, starkly contrasting his left—a dead, lifeless chunk of purple stone. "Three hundred years. Three hundred years! Did you really think I wouldn't know your Cai family's secrets?"
"What is it you really want?" Cai Qingluan's hand instinctively fell to the reverse-edged Miao Dao at her waist. The copper tag on its hilt gleamed coldly in the dim light.
"What do I want?" Meng Xuanye let out a cold laugh, gesturing towards the window where a fog, thick and dark as purple ink, pressed against the glass. "Look outside. Tingjiang Town has been suffocating under this purple miasma for seven whole days. Old Man Yang the boatman? His eyes are completely calcified. Zhang Feidie's Spirit Vexongrass? Every last stalk has mutated. And you, Cai Qingluan... that scent of sulfur clinging to you is getting stronger, isn't it?"
Cai Qingluan's face instantly drained of color. She took a subconscious, sharp breath, only to find the faint, unmistakable tang of sulfur lingering within it—the hereditary curse of her saltpeter-refining clan.
"It's all because of this!" Meng Xuanye violently unfurled the Miasma Mother Diagram. In the flickering lamplight, the painted woman seemed to stir, her purple eyes fixing directly on Cai Qingluan, a chillingly unnatural smile playing on her lips.
"Impossible..." The words were barely forced through Cai Qingluan's clenched teeth. "How could the seal from three hundred years ago possibly weaken?"
"Seal?" Meng Xuanye let out a grating shriek of laughter. "You really think that was a seal? It was a cage! Chains! The very source of the curse that has plagued our three families for generations!"
Just as the tension reached its breaking point, a series of sharp, urgent knocks echoed from the door.
"Come in." Meng Xuanye's voice instantly smoothed, the earlier agitation vanishing as if it had never been.
The door pushed open, and a tall man entered silently. He looked around thirty, with a gaunt face but exceptionally sharp eyes. A thick scarf was wrapped around his neck, incongruous in the mild weather, never removed.
"Hong Jiu." Cai Qingluan gave a slight nod, the wariness in her eyes undiminished.
Hong Jiu offered no verbal reply—he never spoke, a mute. Instead, his fingers danced, weaving a rapid series of hand signs.
"What?" Meng Xuanye's right eye flew wide. "There's activity at the River Heart Island refinery?"
Hong Jiu signed again, a flicker of fear now visible in his eyes.
"A purple pillar of light? Shooting into the sky?" Cai Qingluan's voice trembled with disbelief. "Impossible! That place has been abandoned for three hundred years!"
"It seems the time has come." Meng Xuanye's voice turned unnervingly calm. He carefully rolled up the Miasma Mother Diagram and placed it into an exquisite Zitan wood box. "A three-hundred-year cycle. The Miasma Mother is about to awaken."
"What do you know?" Cai Qingluan stepped closer, her hand tightening on her blade's hilt. "Talk!"
Meng Xuanye didn't answer directly, turning instead to the window. The purple miasma churned under the moonlight, a grotesque, roiling sea. In the distance, towards River Heart Island, a faint pillar of violet light pierced the night sky, stabbing towards the heavens.
"Three hundred years ago, a miasma plague swept through Tingjiang, killing countless," Meng Xuanye's voice was low and rough, like an old legend being retold. "To suppress it, the ancestors of our three families—Meng, Cai, and Zhang—joined forces and used a special method to refine a kind of antidote."
"I know that story," Cai Qingluan cut in sharply. "But it's just a legend."
"Legend?" Meng Xuanye spun around, the purple stone in his left eye flashing with an eerie light. "Then what about this? Is this legend too?"
He pointed to his own left eye. Under the lamplight, the purple stone twitched, pulsing slightly as if hideously alive.
"Gods..." Cai Qingluan recoiled, sucking in a sharp breath. "Your eye..."
"Calcifying. Just like Old Man Yang," Meng Xuanye stated flatly, "But worse. Much worse. My left eye is completely stone now. And," he lifted his collar, revealing the skin on his left neck, an unnatural purple hue, faint stony veins creeping downwards, "it's spreading."
"This is the power of the Miasma Poison," Meng Xuanye's voice held a thread of madness. "It turns all living things to stone, just like three hundred years ago."
Hong Jiu suddenly gestured wildly again, his signs frantic, almost too fast to follow.
"What is it?" Meng Xuanye and Cai Qingluan snapped towards him simultaneously.
"He says," a soft female voice drifted from the doorway, "that someone is digging in the refinery's cellar."
All three turned. A young woman stood there, clad in simple white, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six. Her face was lovely but unnaturally pale. Faintly visible on her left shoulder was a birthmark shaped like a butterfly.
"Zhang Feidie." Meng Xuanye nodded slightly. "You've come just in time."
"My Spirit Vexongrass... it's all mutated." Zhang Feidie's voice trembled slightly. "The veins... they've formed into faces. And... and the faces are screaming."
She produced a leaf, holding it under the light. Indeed, the intricate network of veins had warped, twisting into a miniature, agonized human face, seemingly locked in a silent shriek.
"This isn't ordinary mutation," Zhang Feidie's voice dropped, low and serious. "This is the sign of a Living Gu."
"Living Gu?" Cai Qingluan paled further. "Isn't that the most wicked Gu poison of legend?"
"More than just poison," Meng Xuanye's voice turned ice-cold. "It is the Miasma Mother's eyes. Her window into this world. And now... she has seen us."
Just then, the purple miasma outside thickened dramatically, surging against the pawnshop like a living tide. The lamps flickered violently, threatening to extinguish at any moment.
"She's here." A strange, eerie anticipation filled Meng Xuanye's voice. "Three hundred years of waiting... it finally ends now."
Cai Qingluan reacted instantly, drawing her Miao Dao with a flash of steel, the point aimed at Meng Xuanye's throat. "Tell me the truth, or I kill you right now!"
Meng Xuanye showed no fear, a bizarre smile touching his lips instead. "Kill me? Do you think that will stop the Miasma Mother's return? Naive! Our three families' fates were sealed three hundred years ago!"
The purple miasma hammered against the windows, emitting strange, whispering sounds, like the moans of countless lost souls. The pillar of light from River Heart Island flared brighter, illuminating half the sky.
A curse spanning three centuries was converging on Tingjiang Town. And these four individuals, willingly or not, were now caught in its deadly vortex.