Chapter 12: Celestial Needles and Chrysalis Secrets
Xu Ling dismissed the conspiratorial clan from his considerations, their performative contrition as genuine as lacquered fool's gold. Let Xu Dajiao's bloodline stew in self-imposed ostracism—his orchards demanded unsullied custodians.
The courtyard's meridian sunlight gilded Li Ruoya's alabaster complexion as she reclined against the moss-stippled well, peach-blossom gossamer draping her swan-like form. "Brother Xu...might you spare analgesics?" Her murmur carried nubile fragility, jadeite digits clasping her lower abdomen.
Xu Ling's Hippocratic imperative superseded decorum. His fingertips discerned her radial pulse, deciphering somatic cyphers. "Lunar cycle's second dawn," he pronounced, noting the azure shadows beneath nacreous skin. "Frigid stagnation in the lower cinnabar field—vital essence imprisoned like vernal brooks beneath glacial carapace."
Wang Huifen's visage materialized through the kitchen's vaporous portal. "Preserve our nymph from anguish!" she entreated, fluttering like a guardian sparrow. "To your sanctum, A-Ling! Employ your therapeutic sorcery!"
Before demurral could crystallize, Xu Ling gathered her into his arms—an electric confluence of warmth and night-blooming jasmine. Li Ruoya's inhalation fluttered against his clavicular hollow as she instinctively moulded against his torso, consciousness narrowing to the shadowed stubble gracing his mandible.
"Chronic menorrhagia imperils future fecundity," he intoned solemnly, settling her upon his ascetic pallet. "A glacial womb begets polar offspring—daughters heir to this torment, sons predisposed to..."
Her fingers pleated the brocaded coverlet. "Would such imperfections render one... unfit for matrilineal grace?" The query shimmered with ancestral phantoms—aeons of village matrons appraised by uterine yield.
Xu Ling's auricles burned with rubescent fire as he unfurled argent filiform needles. "The panacea necessitates..." His larynx constricted. "...unimpeded access to the Sea of Qi and Pass of Origin meridians."
Li Ruoya's reciprocal flush rivalled pomegranate arils. With tremulous deliberation, she gathered the peony-embroidered hem. The susurrus of sliding silk sanctified the chamber as Wang Huifen's culinary percussion became their inadvertent duenna.
Beyond rice-paper panes, Xu Dong's baritone reverberated through the quadrangle—"Two mu of solar-facing loam, thirty saplings maximum!" —as sworn agrarians pledged troth to their nascent sylvan compact.
Yet within this gilded sanctum, a more primal covenant hovered at existence's precipice—needles quivering above lunar-pallid epidermis, the healer's respiration synchronising with the patient's fluttering pulse, archaic medicine and contemporary yearning entwined like ancient roots through consecrated humus.
Looming Chrysalis and Meridian Revelations
Li Ruoya's peach-blossom silk cascaded about her hips like discarded petals, unveiling alabaster topography where sapphire rivulets charted clandestine courses. The chamber thickened with sandalwood tension as Xu Ling's clinical objectivity disintegrated—his carotid rhythm now mirroring her tremulous exhalations.
"Might we… invoke textile intermediaries?" Xu Ling's proposal emerged constricted, ocular focus averted yet scorched by peripheral visions of twin alabaster summits sheathed in auroral lace. The therapeutic requisites of *the qihai* and *guanyuan* meridians now manifested as cosmic jest.
Her compliance unravelled in exquisite torpor—the susurrus of slipping chiffon punctuated by mother-of-pearl fastenings' cadence. Xu Ling's mandible ossified as nasal capillaries capitulated to primordial forces, crimson tributaries staining his collar like sanguine orchids.
"The Yellow Emperor's treatises neglected such… physiological paradoxes," he murmured, stanching epistaxis with ascetic precision. The therapeutic vista before him—gazelle-neck curvature melting into fecund abdominal steppes—threatened to eclipse a millennium of Taoist rigour.
Wang Huifen's intercession through mulberry-paper screens ("Tarry not—the feast awaits!") briefly restored equipoise. Galvanized by the Hippocratic imperative, Xu Ling's argent filaments located celestial loci:
- **Qihai** (Sea of Vitality): Umbilical nadir where glacial inertia shackled yang essence.
- **Guanyuan** (Origin's Threshold): Triple *cun* inferior, portal to uterine dynamism
- **Zhongwan** (Celestial Crucible): Epigastric confluence governing terrestrial humors
Li Ruoya's avowal surfaced amidst quivering needles—"I've perused the *Nanjing* classics"—her inhalation spasming as solar energies surged through needled channels. The disclosure hovered betwixt them like an unconsecrated vow, their shared hermeticism transcending healer-neophyte decorum.
Beyond latticed apertures, cicadas orchestrated solstitial paeans. Within, dual acolytes of ancient medicine navigated unmapped realms—where radial pulsations and auroral flushes constituted dual diagnostic matrices, and the *ren mai* meridian's trajectory diverged inexplicably toward palpitating cardiac chambers.
Ethereal Remedies and Kinship Threads
Li Ruoya's avowal lingered like aged myrrh, dissolving residual disquiet. "A co-disciple of the ancient pharmacopoeia!" Xu Ling marvelled, his Hippocratic composure reaffirmed. The epiphany illuminated erstwhile enigmas—how Li Ruoxue had withstood grave trauma beneath her sister's clandestine interventions.
Their discourse meandered through shared scholarly battlefields, mutual revulsion for Li Guangfei forging unforeseen camaraderie. "The reprobate presumed to desire dual blossoms?" Xu Ling's acupressure needles quivered with righteous wrath. "His transgressions against our lineages mandate cosmic redress."
As argent filaments retracted, Xu Ling averted his gaze from resurrected modesty. "Tarry as my acolyte," he proffered, carotid rhythm stabilizing. "The estate's augmentation shall harbour your erudition."
Li Ruoya's rapturous ascent set peach-blossom sleeves aflutter. Beyond the sanctum, Li Ruoxue's wheelchair emitted territorial creaks—her onyx glare anatomizing Xu Ling's micro-expressions.
"Elder sister, he simply—"
"Quietus!" Li Ruoxue's sibilant decree bore ancestral mandate, mollified solely by Wang Huifen's osseous consommé statecraft. "Imbibe. Reconstitute what your temerity fractured."
The courtyard vignette unfolded with pastoral concord:
- Wang Huifen radiated over her "parturition-hipped" guest's voracious libations.
- Li Ruoya arbitrating betwixt glacial stares and simmering cauldrons.
- Xu Ling's cellular device pulsating with Nina's summons—a development propelling Wang Huifen into nuptial fantasias.
"Bid Mistress Nina to our Mid-Autumn revels!" The matriarch exhorted, progeny-visions coalescing with therapeutic vapours.
Li Ruoxue's ladle clashed against celadon. "Your suitor catalogue proliferates swifter than your arboretum," she barbed, though her censure lacked toxicity—a grudging recognition of their delicate symbiosis.
As twilight gilded the apothecary garden, Xu Ling contemplated this improbable microcosm, where archaic medicaments and modern complexities germinated amidst fragrant brews and tacit covenants. The horizon glimmered with filiform potentialities, each meridian passageway potentially conduiting unexplored affective realms.
Orchard Aspirations and Clandestine Collisions
Xu Ling exhaled wearily. "Mother, Sister Nina presides over a fruit empire—leisure visits elude her schedule. Cease your matrimonial machinations."
Wang Huifen's posture deflated, her dreams of bouncing progeny momentarily eclipsed. Competence in a daughter-in-law, it appeared, inversely correlated with domestic devotion.
Retreating to solitude, Xu Ling engaged the cellular device. Nina's timbre cascaded through the receiver like honeyed persimmon pulp. "The metropolitan flagship nears fruition. How are your arboreal endeavours?"
Xu Ling massaged his temples—Qiu Zhenzhen's dramatic interludes had obscured commercial imperatives. "Prepare your commune for tomorrow's harvest acquisition. Mobilise the growers."
Their transactional dialogue concluded, Nina lingered amidst electronic silence. What frost permeated their rapport? The inquiry perished unvoiced as architectural schematics demanded fealty.
At the repast table, Xu Ling addressed inquisitive gazes. "Fresh cultivars necessitate procurement." Ceramic chimed against bamboo utensils, muffling Li Ruoxue's contemptuous exhale.
As the witching hour draped its obsidian mantle, Xu Ling concluded meditative rituals. The clinic's angular silhouette beckoned—its alabaster corridors thrumming with latent energies.
Li Ruoya lay ensnared in insomnia's web, synapses aflame with therapeutic recollections—the sacrosanct vulnerability of bared acupuncture points. A timber's plaintive groan shattered her reverie.
Seizing the prophylactic spade, she dissolved into tenebrous margins. Lunar radiance fragmented as the portal protested—
*Whoosh!
Steel caressed the void space above Xu Ling's cranium. "Regicidal tendencies surface?" His mirth resonated with adrenal undertones.
Li Ruoya's cambric nightdress whispered against his sternum as physics conspired against their equilibrium. Tuberose and perspiration—a confluence of chaste fabric and arrhythmic heartbeats.
"Ill-suited to sentry duty," Xu Ling murmured, extricating himself with cenobitic restraint. "Future intruders warrant vocal alarms, not martial displays."
The apothecary's glass vessels chimed as Xu Ling procured ginseng tinctures. In his wake, Li Ruoya's fingertips traced ephemeral palm-maps imprinted upon her epidermis—dermic cartography illuminated by selenic glow.
Beyond the infirmary's confines, juvenile saplings extended filigree rootlets through humus-rich strata. Commercial dynasties and capricious ventricles alike required meticulous husbandry.
Twilight Elixirs and Forbidden Groves
Li Ruoya observed Xu Ling's departure with glimmering eyes, her pearlescent teeth denting the carmine crescent of her lower lip. Beauty that once commanded universal homage now faltered before this agrarian sphinx.
The prematrinal infirmary thrummed with hermetic alchemy—porcelain pestles grinding occult powders, alembics distilling ambrosial unguents. Li Ruoxue succumbed to fitful slumber amidst this nocturnal symphony, her analytical intellect capitulating to somnolent tides.
Xu Ling emerged at dawn's first blush bearing an amphora of numinous philter. The desecrated orchard greeted him with languid foliage murmuring sylvan dirges. Each sapling received a chalice of iridescent draught, radicular tendrils imbibing voraciously as ashen leaves transmuted to viridian splendour.
"Aquifer channels require deepening," he mused, divining subterranean waterways through spiritual cartography. The emptied vessel's homeward passage collided with Liu Shuxiang's ambuscade.
"Phantoms plague my nights!" The widow clutched her décolletage in theatrical distress. "Cardiac tremors! Gelid exudations!" Her tuberose essence cloyed as sinuous topography compressed against his arm.
Xu Ling's cervical vertebrae prickled with bifurcated awareness—village matriarchs exchanging scandals at the communal well, Shuxiang's febrile respiration caressing his clavicular hollow. "Elder sister, I shall compound a sedative infusion—"
"Compound *this*!" Her digits interlaced with his, compelling traversal toward interdicted geographies. The widow's boudoir exuded musk and ache—apricot kernel intaglios adorning the casement, dishevelled bedclothes murmuring of insomniac vigils.
"My meridians languish for your... ministrations." Shuxiang's chemise slipped a calibrated digit, unveiling astral configurations of dermal blemishes—testaments to solitary orchard vigils.
Xu Ling's Hippocratic carapace fissured. Mnemonic spectres resurrected their autumnal entwinement beneath the harvest moon—her cachinnations harmonizing with cicada choirs, perspiration-burnished epidermis against agrarian ricks...
"The commune awakens," he rasped, carotid cadence mimicking war drums. "This impropriety—"
"Demands expedience," she interjected, incisors grazing his auricular helix. "Do ascetic healers lack protocols for... urgent resuscitations?"
Beyond rice-paper partitions, revitalized saplings stretched toward heliacal ascent. Within, alternative husbandries beckoned—radicles of provocation penetrating meticulously curated emotional topsoil.
Horticultural Longings and Concealed Passions
"Dearest Ling, does your Shuxiang-jie appear comely this morn?"
Liu Shuxiang reclined against Xu Ling's form, her serpentine digits charting clandestine topographies beneath his cotton weave. Aurora's nascent rays filtered through her diaphanous gossamer gown, unveiling silhouettes that vaporized Xu Ling's vestigial self-restraint.
"Elder sister…this impropriety—"
Xu Ling's remonstrance dissolved as atavistic impulses subjugated reason. He hoisted her with ursine urgency, conveying the tittering widow toward her boudoir. Notes of olea fragrans unguent and smouldering deprivation clung to her nape as she grazed his auricle with denticulated playfulness.
A vulcanized shriek of vehicular deceleration ruptured the libidinous interlude. Xu Ling petrified mid-gait, Shuxiang's incarnadined décolletage transmuting from enticement to jeopardy.
"Sister Nina arrives imminently for pomological acquisitions," he croaked, extricating himself with anchoritic celerity. "Oversight demands my presence—"
Shuxiang's mirth congealed into Absinthian bitterness as Xu Ling absconded, his dishevelled collar and jugular pulsations broadcasting culpability. Beyond the fretworked casement, Nina's vermilion sedan glinted like a heraldic rebuke.
The widow appraised her mirrored visage—tousled tresses, peony-petal cheeks, the cruel poetry of autumnal feminine desperation. "Has my final efflorescence succumbed to blight?" she whispered, securing fasteners over dermal constellations of noctivagant insect depredations.
Nina's staccato rapping mandated theatrical composure. "Sister Shuxiang, might you grace our ledger with your oversight? Xu Ling proclaims, None but kin warrant such fiduciary trust."
The widow's posture achieved ramrod rectitude at this encrypted encomium. "Certes!" Her riposte trilled with renascent verve, pelvic undulations mimicking salix fronds in zephyrs as she procured codices.
Nina's acquisitive scrutiny dissected Xu Ling's disarray. "Your countenance flushes crimson, Little Ling. Solar overexposure in the groves?"
"Merely…prophylactic measures against heliosis," he faltered, the widow's lingering chamomile sillage ensnaring him like olfactive manacles.
As the triad approached the Libran apparatus, Shuxiang's cachinnations caromed through arborous corridors—a calculated sonata masking private stratagems. When eventide's curtain fell, she would consult certain pharmacopoeias regarding epimedium sagittatum's effects on virile stamina.
The procurement unfolded with mercantile exactitude. Agrarian jocularity merged with tibicinal cicadas as Xu Ling's ocular focus strayed toward Nina's chauffeur—a trapezius-endowed ephebe from the prefecture whose deltoids strained against knit confines.
"Sister Nina", Xu Ling interposed during the trucks' exodus, "might I solicit conveyance to the nursery? Particular cultivars demand…discerning curation."
Nina's smile acquired honed edges. "Naturally. We shall deliberate rootstock symbiosis during transit."
The sedan's upholstery retained meridian thermality, its confines fertile for alternative cultivations. As combustion chambers murmured to animation, Xu Ling pondered the sagacity of grafting tender scions onto seasoned boles—in both pomological and amatory spheres.
Arboreal Enmities and Germinating Grudges
Liu Shuxiang observed the crimson BMW's departure through narrowed eyes, her palate suffused with bitter citrus notes. A widow's societal perch versus this ascendant agrarian magnate—their furtive orchard liaisons could never burgeon into a sanctioned union. Her palm gravitated to the gentle convexity of her abdomen, maternal aspirations sprouting amidst reality's tart vinification.
The serpentine mountain thoroughfare thrummed with unarticulated friction. Nina's vermilion-lacquered talons blanched against the steering wheel's hide as Xu Ling simulated slumber, his ocular tremors betrayed in the passenger window's reflection.
"Have I transgressed?" Nina's query fractured the silence like a desiccated pomegranate impacting terrazzo.
"Navigate", Xu Ling grumbled, the imperative caroming off Nappa leather upholstery.
Nina's combustion chambers roared in retributive fury, marooning him at the emporium's portal amidst particulate effluvia and mercantile bedlam.
The nursery thoroughfare buzzed with recognition. Susurrations pursued Xu Ling like tenacious aphids—"There walks the daemon who emasculated the Huang brethren!" Hortulan merchants averted their scrutiny, save one tremulous crone proffering "enhanced" propagules.
"Assured premium cultivars!" Her timbre ascended two octaves upon recognition.
Through mere palpebral oscillation, Xu Ling's augmented perception dissected each sapling's vitality. "Substandard rhizosphere architecture," he proclaimed, pivoting toward a familiar timbre.
The youthful propagator's stall now teemed with patrons. "Elder Brother Xu!" The ephebe gestured, his erstwhile meagre inventory supplanted by vigorous specimens radiating numinous vigour.
"Treble our prior requisition," Xu Ling ordained, digital extremities caressing foliage thrumming with dormant puissance. "These bear telluric benedictions from hallowed ground?"
The youth inclined his cranium conspiratorially. "Exhumed from the desecrated shrine's sanctified copse. Their fruition shall rival—"
A mercantile cart's overturning disrupted the colloquy. Xu Ling pirouetted to discern Liu Shuxiang's cousin skulking behind wicker hampers, smartphone lens documenting the transaction.
"Your rivals cultivate thornier stratagems," the nurseryman cautioned during monetary transference.
"Let their surveillance flourish," Xu Ling smirked, hefting a sapling whose radicular tendrils coiled like slumbering lungs. "These specimens shall outlive their vitriol."
As crepuscular gilding illuminated the agora, Nina's sedan materialized in a vulcanized shriek. Her stiletto impacted bitumen proximate to his saplings. "Embark. We commence horticultural due diligence."
The return odyssey seethed with botanical inquisition and latent voltaic charge. Xu Ling's digits itched to auscultate the arrhythmia visible in Nina's cervical pulse—and perhaps investigate why her Chanel Quintessence clashed so erotically with the saplings' humic effluvium.
In the retrovisor's glass, the nurseryman immolated juniper fronds above residual stock, intoning apotropaic mantras against anthropomorphic and preternatural marauders alike.
Phytogenic Pacts and Elixiric Endeavors
Xu Ling appraised the verdant stock with connoisseurial precision, the nurseryman's stall resonating with commerce's vibrant dissonance. The youth's gaze burned with unalloyed veneration.
"Elder Brother Xu, specify your arboreal requisites! My patriarch shall mobilize our arboretum forthwith."
"Twelve hundred saplings for now—three hundred jujubes, three hundred persimmons, three hundred citrus, three hundred figs." Xu Ling's cadence carried patrician nonchalance, his spiritual awareness having already mapped each rootlet's fractal vitality, their subterranean networks glowing like dendriform constellations.
The nurseryman's sun-cured visage fissured into a rictus of gratitude. "Five argent units' reprieve per specimen—exclusive boon for my benefactor!"
Adjacent hagglers erupted in corvine cacophony. "Why preferential dispensation?"
"This paragon", the youth proclaimed, striking his sternum, "sundered the Huang syndicate's chokehold last lunar cycle. Our lineage's breath continues through his valour!" The throng dissipated, bearing their arboreal trophies like sacred relics.
In the transaction's wake, the youth clasped Xu Ling's forearm with calloused fervour. "Since you exorcised those fiscal vampires, our coffers tripled daily. The agora now venerates quality over coercion!" His thumb caressed the fresh indigo ink on a vellum card—*Zhao Wei, Dendrological Artisan*—proffered as a sacerdotal offering.
Xu Ling consigned the card to his breast pocket with regal inclination. Dawn's entanglement with Shuxiang still hummed in his meridians, yet this phytogenic commerce anchored him. "Convey them ere tomorrow's matinal blush. My orchards crave vital infusion."
The carillon above Yongchun Emporium's portal sang as Xu Ling breached its threshold. Apothecary stewards petrified mid-herbal bundling, their alabaster pestles suspended mid-arc—the emporium's atrium now resembled a mercantile colossus, its floor dominated by hessian monoliths brimming with herbal plenitude.
"Five hundred kilograms of astragali! Eight hundred of codonopsis!" Xu Ling's decree sliced through the hall's myrrh-laden atmosphere. Behind the ligneous counter, abacus beads clattered like panic-stricken scarabs as stewards tallied his esoteric order for humoral augmentation tincture components.
Patrons gaped at the fibrous ziggurats. A septuagenarian matron clutched her ginseng rhizome like a threatened talisman, as though Xu Ling might annex it mid-decoction. Beyond the vitrine, Zhao Wei's arboreal caravan groaned toward Qingxi Village, its chassis bowing beneath unborn arboreal legacies.
In the emporium's penumbral sanctum, Master Xie observed the pandemonium through vellum veils. His arthritic digits traced archaic glyphs for "telluric aridity" and "lunar fecundity", while Xu Ling's psyche involuntarily replayed Shuxiang's sibilant entreaty: *"Sainthood ill-suits cultivation, Little Ling. Even celestial groves require… cross-pollination."
The abacus's dance ceased. "Elder Brother Xu," a steward ventured, parchment trembling, "these stores could sustain a prefecture's infirmary. Do you… Concoct panaceas?"
Xu Ling's mirth resonated with cryptic profundity. "Merely ensuring the earth recalls its dormant aspirations." Beyond the mullioned panes, the westering sun transmuted the arboreal caravan's retreat into twin auriferous serpents slithering along terrene arteries toward domestic horizons.
The Obsidian Titan and the Gathering Storm
**Scene 1: The Apothecary's Bargain**
"Mr Xu, these medicinal provisions amount to twelve thousand six hundred yuan after a forty percent concession," the attendant declared, her voice crisp. Xu Ling, momentarily taken aback by the modest sum, effortlessly processed the payment.
He had scarcely opened his lips to request delivery arrangements when a voice as polished as winter frost sliced through the air: "Since when did Yongchun Hall resemble a wholesale depot?"
"Lingzi? You're here?" Xie Yuxuan's cadence betrayed a flicker of unguarded delight before she regained composure.
"Miss Xie," Xu Ling inclined his head with measured courtesy, his eyes trailing hers toward the labyrinth of burlap-bound parcels crowding the floor.
**Scene 2: The Mechanical Behemoth**
The attendant gestured helplessly. "Mr Xu's acquisition exceeds standard clinical requirements—I was arranging transport." Xie Yuxuan's obsidian eyes narrowed. The quantities suggested are not mere village doctoring but something bordering on alchemical enterprise.
"Unnecessary." Her laconic interjection sent warehousemen scrambling to heave the cargo into her armoured pickup's maw.
Xu Ling's breath caught. The vehicle stood as a paradox of brute-force engineering and predatory elegance—its gleaming obsidian chassis, cathedral-like wheel arches, and cargo hold vast enough to swallow a peasant's hut. "A titan forged in automotive Valhalla," he murmured.
"Naturally." Her fingertips grazed the mirror-finish hood. "Three years of negotiations condensed into three million yuan."
"Justified expenditure," he concurred, settling into the supple leather cockpit. The premium vehicle floated over road imperfections like a phantom, rendering his ramshackle trike a distant memory.
"I shall procure its twin upon licensure," he mused. "Superior to tricycles in both utility and grandeur."
Xie Yuxuan's manicured grip tightened on the steering wheel. To nonchalantly designate a luxury colossus as a mere *hauling beast*—what manner of rural practitioner hid behind those inscrutable eyes?
**Scene 3: Shadows Beneath Canopy**
Dappled twilight filtered through ancient oaks as they navigated the serpentine backroad. "This mechanical unicorn might tempt less civilised elements," Xie Yuxuan quipped, manoeuvring clear of encroaching brambles.
"Probability favours conflict," Xu Ling stated, his gaze piercing the gathering gloom.
Her laughter rang hollow. "County patrols monitor these—"
He silenced her with a raised palm, voice dropping to arctic timbre: "Observe. The forest breathes ill intent."
Thorns of the Azure Serpent
**Scene 1: Clash of Steel and Sovereignty**
Xie Yuxuan's eyes narrowed at the rust-eaten van materializing through the arboreal tunnel. Both vehicles froze in the claustrophobic passage—her pickup's volcanic glass paintwork whispering distance from clawing brambles.
"Remain ensconced," Xu Ling ordered, tendons in his hands snapping like whipcords. Scepticism curdled into primal alarm as six hulking silhouettes disembarked, sunlight fracturing across cleavers and hatchets.
"Lingzi!" Her knuckles bled against the steering wheel. "Retreat with me—now!"
He became a silhouette against the fractured light instead, the pickup's door slamming like a tomb seal.
**Scene 2: Gilded Threats**
"Xu Ling?" boomed the colossus leading the pack, sweat-sheen brutality incarnate.
A micronod. Xu Ling's thoughts spiralled—what new adversary had marshalled these battle-hardened marauders?
"Return to safety!" Xie Yuxuan emerged, pallid yet regal. "They brandish death!"
His exhale frosted the air. "Rabid curs waving butcher's toys."
The horde convulsed. "Curses?!" A meaty palm slapped steel. "We are Azure Dragon's chosen blades!"
Xie Yuxuan interposed herself like living armour. "State your ransom."
Jeers erupted. "Coin?" The leader's calloused finger hooked toward her throat. "Your silken flesh would better appease—"
**Scene 3: Dynasty's Edge**
"My blood flows from Xie Baosheng's veins!" Her voice cleaved the mockery. "Harm me, and Yongchun Hall's wrath will leave your gang's name etched only on unmarked graves."
The forest held its breath.
"Fanciful lies!" A scarred underling spat. "Xie's jewelled heir parading as some backroad temptress?"
Xu Ling's musculature coiled—viper ready to strike—but Xie Yuxuan's arm became an unbreachable barricade. "Your code keeps even brigands' hands from women," she proclaimed, thumb trembling over her phone's glowing screen. "Let reality chastise your blindness."
The leader's piggish eyes darted between her jade pendant—a replica of the patriarch's—and the aristocratic fury contorting her features. His bluster faltered. "Clever theatrics, wh*r*. But old men don't—"
Cicadas screamed. Shadows congealed. The dial tone began its shrill ululation.
Anvil of Reunion
**Scene 1: Shattered Pretense**
The gang leader's fingers closed around Xie Yuxuan's phone like a vulture's talons, its screen exploding against the tarmac in crystalline agony. "Heiress or harlot", he snarled, spittle flying, "your pet dies screaming!" Six blades glinted as the circle tightened—steel petals closing around doomed prey.
Xu Ling rolled his shoulders, the crackling joints composing a butcher's symphony. Bundled herbs in the truck bed released pungent whispers of camphor and aconite.
**Scene 2: Hurricane Intervention**
A cannonade of splintering branches heralded the stranger's arrival. The crop-haired titan's backpack impacted the earth with tectonic finality. "Vermin preying on daylight lovers?" His bark carried parade-ground thunder. "Disgrace incarnate!"
Xu Ling froze—the parabola of that jawline, the pantherine prowl...
Chaos became ballet. A scything leg strike unhinged two attackers mid-lunge. Xu Ling observed through narrowed eyes as four more adversaries folded beneath knee strikes and pressure-point jabs. When only the trembling ringleader remained, Xu Ling's foot arced upward, mandible fracturing under his boot's kiss.
**Scene 3: Blood-Memory**
"Pathetic specimen." The soldier's boot pressed the carotid arteries. "Sponsor's name."
"Yang Feng!" The gang leader gargled through broken teeth. "Claims you defiled his sister!"
The confession hung suspended like shrapnel smoke. Xu Ling barely heard—his attention riveted to the soldier's scar-crossed knuckles. Ghosts materialized: a stick-thin urchin trailing through lychee groves, shrill voice proclaiming, "Big Bro'll protect me!"
"Lingzi?" The soldier's calloused palm hovered mid-air. "Little Dragon—persimmon thief from West Village!"
Xu Ling's breath caught. The skeletal conscript who'd departed at eighteen now loomed before him—a battle-tempered colossus radiating contained violence. "You...blossomed."
**Scene 4: Oath Renewed**
Xu Long's grin acquired glacial edges. "These carrion dared threaten my blood-sworn brother?" His hammerfist sent the gang leader cartwheeling through dirt.
Surviving thugs petrified beneath dual gazes—one the scalpel's clinical detachment, the other the artillery shell's primal roar.
"Yang Feng's lungs will learn regret," Xu Ling stated, cleansing his hands on a thug's shirtfront.
"After libations." Xu Long produced a canteen embossed with PLA insignia, liquor sloshing like liquid vengeance. "Four winters demand proper accounting."
Behind them, Xie Yuxuan inventoried the aftermath—fractured bones, scattered blades—her physician's mind already drafting herbal compendium addenda for trauma treatment.
Mercy Forged in Iron
**Scene 1: Whimper of Wolves**
"P-please! We're hired blades!" The gang chief's neck tendons bulged like frayed ropes, eyes darting between Xu Long's combat boots and the forest's thorny embrace. His remaining lackeys cowered like starved jackals, their earlier swagger dissolved into twitchy terror beneath the veteran's pitiless gaze.
Xu Long's cropped hair cast knife-edge shadows as he loomed. "Azure Dragon's den. Yang Feng's lair. Elucidate." His tone carried the metallic tang of a safety pin pulled from a grenade.
Secrets gushed forth—squalid hideouts, protection rackets, the gang leader's mistress's perfume preference—until Xu Long raised a calloused palm. "Adequate." Twin open-hand strikes rang out like gongs, flooring two thugs. "Relay this edict to your master: Flay Yang Feng alive within seventy-two hours, or I'll repurpose your gang's bones as pavement gravel."
**Scene 2: Serpent's Smile**
Xu Ling reclined against the pickup's volcanic glass flank, observing the grovelling pack. Moonlight etched his silhouette into something between scholar and spectre.
"*Lingzi-ge*." Xu Long's grin revealed wolfish incisors. "Shall we grant clemency?"
Memories surged—midnight persimmon heists, stolen kisses with the miller's daughter. Xu Ling's returning smile held venomous warmth. "Let's… *educate."
The thugs exhaled collective relief. This willow-slender physician's discipline surely meant bandages, not broken bones.
They miscalculated catastrophically.
**Scene 3: Anatomy of Penance**
Xu Ling's fist became a piston. The gang leader's sternum cratered with the wet *snap* of green bamboo fracturing. Blood misted the air as the brute collapsed, his crew gaping at the fist-shaped hollow in their leader's torso.
"Dark Buddha's mercy!" A nearby thug prostrated himself, forehead imprinting moss. "My mother wastes time in bed! Coerced into this filth!"
Xu Ling's fingers found the man's jaw, probing the ashen "parental terrace"—that facial quadrant where filial devotion etches its mark. Truth resonated in the thug's qi. Twin slaps cracked through the clearing. "Pauper's plea?" Xu Ling's whisper carried Arctic finality. "Seek sweat's redemption, not blood's taint."
The remaining brutes—their faces mapped with the "triumvirate of villainy" creases—received no quarter. Xu Ling's strikes, clinical as autopsy incisions, shattered kneecaps and dislocated shoulders. Their screams wove a dissonant choir with nightingales' evensong.
**Scene 4: Phoenix Ascent**
Xu Long's whistle sliced through the carnage. "*Lingzi-ge*… You've been hoarding thunder!" His guffaw echoed, resurrecting ghosts of the beanpole youth who'd once fainted at the sight of slaughtered pigs.
Xu Ling examined his unmarked knuckles—the *jin gang zhi li* technique, leaving no trace beyond ruined lives. "Time's crucible reshapes all," he murmured, eyeing the PLA insignia on Xu Long's flask.
"To Yang Feng's imminent enlightenment?" Xu Long toasted, liquor catching moonlight like liquid mercury.
"To pruning rotten branches," Xu Ling countered, nudging a moaning thug with his toe. "This garden needs weeding."
Behind them, Xie Yuxuan catalogued injuries with an herbalist's dispassion, already mentally compounding bone-knit poultices. The brothers' merged shadow stretched toward the eastern treeline—one a scalpel's cold kiss, the other war's unblinking eye.
The Unbelievable Strength
"By the heavens, Brother Ling! Such preternatural force defies mortal limits!"
Xu Long experimentally tightened his fist, thrusting it toward the gang leader's visage. The mere motion sent the thug crumpling to the ground in a dead faint.
"Scatter, vermin! Clear the path!" Xu Long roared at the cowering underlings, though his covetous gaze lingered on the polished pickup truck.
"Brother Ling, this mechanical steed must command a princely sum! And who is this celestial beauty gracing our humble company?" His eyes widened as they travelled up Xie Yuxuan's statuesque form, leaning against the vehicle. "Your paramour?"
Xie Yuxuan's posture froze mid-motion, her gaze flickering toward Xu Ling with unspoken tension.
"Mind your tongue!" Xu Ling cuffed Xu Long's shoulder. "This distinguished lady is Miss Xie Yuxuan, scion of Yongchun Hall's medicinal dynasty. She honours us by delivering rare herbs." He indicated the burlap-wrapped treasures in the truck's bed.
After exchanging courtesies, Xu Long clambered aboard the vehicle. The trio traversed winding lanes toward the village, trailed by a chorus of awed murmurs.
"Behold! Ling returns with yet another lotus-eyed enchantress!"
"A chariot of polished steel, no less! Our fledgling phoenix soars beyond the coop!"
While matrons clucked like excited hens, the village elders observed Xu Ling's descent through narrowed eyes thick with covetous resentment. What alchemy transformed this bookish youth into a magnet for wealth and beauty?
Xu Long heaved herb sacks into the clinic courtyard. "Never imagined you'd inherit this hallowed ground, Brother Ling. Time stands still within these walls." His calloused hand shoved the creaking clinic door ajar.
"Aiyee!"
Twin shrieks erupted—one piercing as a jay's alarm, the other a velvet gasp that quickened pulses.
Xu Ling pressed his palm to his forehead in exasperation, hauling his thunderstruck companion backward by the collar.
"By the Jade Emperor's beard! Since when do nymphs dwell in your apothecary?" Xu Long gaped at the Li sisters, his expression mirroring a pilgrim witnessing a divine epiphany.
Li Ruoxue's cheeks burned scarlet as she launched an embroidered pillow. "You incorrigible rogue! Must you parade ruffians through our sanctum?"
Xu Ling intercepted the projectile mid-arc. "Peace, little firebrand," he murmured, noting Li Ruoya's protective clasp over her nightclothes, her porcelain features dyed rose-petal pink. "Xu Long shares my mother's milk—all bluster, no malice."
"Such excuses!" Ruoxue stamped her foot. "Sister Yuxuan, bear us hence to civilisation! Another night in this draughty hovel would wither my soul!"
Xu Long scratched his stubbled jaw contritely. "Ten thousand pardons, fair muses! This clod never dreamed such blossoms flourished in our hinterland." His gaze danced between the triad of feminine splendour—the regal pharmacopoeia heiress, the tempestuous pillow-hurling virago, and her doe-eyed sibling, ethereal as moonlit mist—like a street urchin dazzled by imperial concubines.
Beyond the courtyard wall, the elders' envy smouldered hotter than midsummer kilns, their wrinkled lips pursed against the bitter tang of youth's triumph.
Storms of Pride and Petals of Regret
Xu Ling's sculpted jawline hardened like river ice beneath spring sunlight at Li Ruoxue's venomous declaration. The sanctuary he'd bestowed now reeked of betrayal's bitter herbs.
"Your accounts shall be settled," he intoned, glacial precision frosting each syllable. "Sixteen hundred yuan covers treatment and lodging. Digital transfer or paper tribute?"
Li Ruoxue's alabaster complexion drained to funeral ash. Fantasies of shared moonlit confidences shattered against this ledger's cruel arithmetic. Her emerald eyes swept the clinic's time-grooved apothecary shelves where dried chrysanthemum blossoms trembled in the breeze, their golden faces turned away in silent reproach.
"Peddle your peasant arithmetic elsewhere!" She flourished her smartphone like a duelling pistol, carmine lacquered nails catching fire in the afternoon glare. "Let ten thousand silver dragons silence your mercenary tongue!"
The payment notification's crystalline chime hung suspended like a guillotine's fall. "You... you clockwork golem!" she spat, though unshed monsoons pooled beneath lowered lashes.
"Ruoya! We depart!"
The younger sister nestled behind Xu Ling's rampart-like shoulders, a quivering magnolia bud sheltering from frost. "This unworthy one... wishes to remain."
"You'd root yourself in this midden?" Ruoxue's outstretched fingers clawed empty air as Xu Ling shifted, an armoured mountain shielding delicate flora.
"The road awaits your solitary carriage, Lady Li." His voice carried the finality of temple gongs. "Leave innocence unpolluted by your theatrics."
The ceremonial address – "Lady Li" against tender "Ruoya" – pierced deeper than ancestral swords. Xie Yuxuan materialized like an orchid-scented zephyr, guiding the storm incarnate into the courtyard where peach blossoms swirled like discarded love poems.
"That... that stone-hearted..." Ruoxue's jade hairpin quivered with suppressed lightning. "To dismiss us like... like..."
"Like one who fears confessing her heart's true compass?" Xie's murmur carried the weight of unsmelted silver. "The Ruoxue of legend would've vanished ere the first syllable faded."
A blush like poisoned roses bloomed beneath pearl powder. Memories assailed unbidden – dawn mist curling through the Ling family kitchen as Mother Xu pressed bamboo-steamed buns into reluctant hands, Father Xu's calloused fingers oiling her wheelchair's joints with ceremonial care. These commoners' rituals had become more precious than jade.
Within the clinic's cinnamon-scented penumbra, Xu Ling observed Ruoya's trembling lashes. "The phoenix always returns to its nest," Xie prophesied, slipping a moon-pale card etched with cloud patterns into his palm. "Yunjing Pavilion's private salon awaits your leisure."
Xu Ling's chuckle resonated like wind chimes above a battlefield. "Wayward breezes cannot shake rooted pines, Lady Xie."
The eavesdropping storm goddess at the threshold nearly cracked a molar. As Xie's obsidian limousine dissolved into the horizon's embrace, Xu Ling strode past without a sidelong glance, Xu Long lumbering behind like a loyal yet mystified warhound.
Alone amidst the clinic's suddenly oppressive silence, Ruoxue traced willow-branch patterns on her wheelchair's armrest. Somewhere beyond the paper screens, a nightingale's liquid aria threaded through the twilight – nature's indifferent symphony underscoring human folly.
Banquets of Memory and Liquid Amber
"Brother Ling", Xu Long's thumb danced across his phone's glowing obsidian surface, "the constellations align – our alma mater's gathering coincides with my homecoming. Will you deign to walk memory's labyrinth?"
Pixelated nostalgia cascaded across the screen – banquet hall debates interlaced with veiled boasts about promotions and Porsche purchases. Xu Ling's eyes reflected the digital parade like still ponds mirroring fireworks.
"Your absence from this electronic agora?" Xu Long's query dissolved into understanding silence. The phantom years materialized - Xu Ling's retreat from academia, his self-erasure from virtual realms where former desk-mates transformed into LinkedIn titans.
"The muse of your adolescent sonnets graces the occasion." Xu Long's combat-scarred grin softened. "Li Yuqing – she who haunted chemistry lab daydreams."
The syllables hung like incense in the courtyard's golden light. Xu Long's military service had severed their boyhood alliance, his later digital overtures meeting the void of Xu Ling's deleted existence.
"We'll forge brighter constellations," the soldier vowed, his palm, accustomed to disarming death, resting feather-light on Xu Ling's shoulder. "My battalions stand ready at your whisper."
Xu Ling marvelled at this alchemy – the street urchin turned warrior preserving loyalty more radiant than forbidden palace treasures, while others tarnished in life's marketplace.
"Auntie's melody!"
Wang Huifen's cry spun sugar through the kitchen's steam. "Our Little Dragon ascends in jade armour!"
Xu Long's parade-ground posture softened as he proffered a lacquered box. "For the saint who smuggled sweet potatoes during famine winters."
The necklace's golden serpents writhed against faded linoleum – their gilded embrace shaming village bridal dowries. Wang Huifen's earth-cracked fingers traced the cold splendour.
"Mad child! This ransom could purchase three village brides!" Her scolding fractured into liquid pearls tracing time-carved gullies.
"The goldsmith's oath spans dynasties." Xu Long's demolition expert fingers fastened the clasp with bomb-defusal care. "Each autumn's moon brings new designs."
Xu Ling's breath caught – here stood the brother of his soul's marrow, the boy who'd shared stolen persimmons, now gifting solar radiance.
"Decipher this alchemist's trick!"
Xu Wenhai's bark shook persimmons from courtyard trees as he glared at the twin liquor guardians. "Demobilized fools don't harvest liquid gold! These fire phoenix tears cost fifty bushels!"
The soldier's grin mirrored monsoon clouds concealing lightning. "Uncle's wisdom taught me – aged truth burns brightest. Shall we test if orchard life softened your steel?"
As twilight gilded the courtyard, three men raised crystalline chalices – farmer's callouses, soldier's scars, and healer's precision merging in amber refraction. Their distorted reflections swam like carp in ancestral ponds, hinting at futures yet unwritten.
To be continuous…