"Seize the calamity star!" Celestia Abbey cultivators' shouts startled night owls as Ethan Chen dragged Sylvie Su into a limestone cave. Glowing stalactites bathed the walls in eerie cyan light, illuminating the constellations pulsing on Sylvie's wrist.
"What sorcery have you cast on our sect?" Sylvie shoved Ethan away, her scorched-tail zither raised defensively. "Their Big Dipper markings... they're under the Wolf Devours Heart Curse..."
Hound barks echoed outside. Ethan clamped a hand over her mouth. Moonlight through crevices revealed their pursuer—a white-robed youth with a cinnabar dot between his brows, fluttering a fan crafted from finger bones.
"Lucien Lu!" Sylvie's voice trembled. "He went berserk cultivating the Seven Killings Art three years ago... he should still be in seclusion..."
A blood-red beam shot from Lucien's fan. Ethan tackled Sylvie, the attack grazing her hair to corrode stone into honeycomb patterns. His bronze cauldron fragment glowed, its missing handle absorbing a second strike.
"So it is here!" Lucien's laugh rasped like scales on stone. "Master always favored you, giving the Demon-Suppressing Cauldron fragment to this brat..." He bared his taotie tattooed arm. "Hand over the star chart, dear junior sister, and I'll let you be my cauldron slave."
Sylvie coughed violently, blood droplets crystallizing into micro-constellations. Ethan's Taiji Mark burned as the jade tablet returned, imprinting the blood chart. Chains rattled as nine bronze phantoms erupted from cave walls, forcing Lucien back.
"Run!" Sylvie drew an Earth Evasion Sigil on Ethan's palm with bloody fingers. "East village earth shrine..." She collapsed, constellations crawling up her neck to reveal sealing glyphs.
Carrying Sylvie through moonlight, Ethan froze—three plum-blossom scars marked her nape, matching those of the girl he'd saved from drowning at six. That child had given him half a jade pendant before being taken by a dark-robed Daoist... now Sylvie's slipping pendant completed it.
In the earth shrine ruins, Ethan dressed Sylvie's wounds. Bloodied fabric torn from her shoulder revealed a cauldron-shaped birthmark mirroring the Demon-Suppressing Cauldron. "Brother Yan... dandelions by the river..." she murmured deliriously.
Memory struck like lightning. Twelve years prior, ten-year-old Ethan met a pink-gowned girl named "Susu" while herb-gathering. She'd identified poison plants, whispering her original surname Jiang—sole survivor of Peach Blossom Village's slaughtered cauldron-smith clan.
"Found you." Lucien materialized on broken walls, fan dripping foul liquid. "My dear junior sister's heartblood will awaken Xiangliu..." He flicked zither strings toward Sylvie's throat.
Ethan smashed the shrine's censer. The earth god statue crumbled, revealing a bronze cauldron leg. As it fused with his fragment, Sylvie awoke with galaxy-swirling eyes: "Cauldrons suppress realms, Qi binds the underworld!"
Cyan light erupted. Sylvie's obsidian hair morphed into bronze chains tipped with twelve jade bells. Their chimes reversed Lucien's taotie tattoo's corruption. At dawn's first light, only severed zither strings and Lucien's fading snarl remained.
"You knew I'm Jiang's descendant?" Sylvie weakly fingered the pendant. "The屠村黑袍人 had a missing left ear..."
"Lucien." Ethan gripped her cold hand, recalling the scar. "But he was fifteen then..."
Sylvie convulsed, black blood oozing from constellations: "Go! My seal..." She bit Ethan's shoulder, fangs piercing flesh as Taiji Mark and star chart wailed. Darkness claimed him as Sylvie's pupils slithered into serpentine verticals, the Big Dipper's seventh star bleeding crimson above.