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墨書 Inktalez
As the cocoon of his finger brushed against the third button, I caught a whiff of fresh blood. The scent mingled with the jasmine oil from the Second Mistress, mixed with his labored breaths—blood from that part of him trickled down his wrist to the hollow of my collarbone.
"Don't move." His voice, deep and resonant, startled the crows outside. The emerald satin collar of my Qipao split open with his movements, revealing the unhealed burn on my chest. The lotus-shaped scar suddenly reacted to the Bronze Lock Piece embedded in his severed limb.
The Second Mistress's Silver Scissors clattered to the blue brick floor. As she bent to pick them up, a portion of inked skin slipped out from the back of my Qipao—a tattoo of Shen Yan's Sheng Chen character, dark ink seeping into the fabric. "This is the same cloth used for your mother's maternity garment when she was pregnant with Yan'er," she said, her lacquered nails tracing my waistline, the dark-patterned peony glimmering under the candlelight like blood.
I suddenly recalled the remnants of swaddling cloth soaked in the Dye Vat. Shen Yan tightened his grip on the buttons, pulling me off balance. When his severed limb pressed against my lower back, I distinctly felt the character "Qin" engraved at the metal joint.
The master pressed against my cleavage in the west chamber. He bit at the burn on my neck and sneered, "Is that little beast smashing medicine jars again?"
Moonlight filtered through the window, illuminating a patch of dried brown blood. When he tore open my freshly changed Qipao, I heard the sound of metal wheels rolling over roof tiles—Shen Yan was watching everything from above.
"His mother loved wearing green too," the master suddenly thrust Silver Whistle inside me. "Too bad after giving birth she loosened up; still, a virgin is tighter..."
In agony, I clawed at the Guanyin statue at the head of the bed. Gold dust fell from its cracks, revealing a green-faced figure with sharp fangs inside. The master's excited gasps turned into screams as Guanyin's silver needle pierced his palm.
"You wretched woman," he snarled as he gripped my neck and slammed me against the bedpost. "Is this mechanism Yan'er..."
Suddenly, there was a crash from above as tiles shattered. Shen Yan's wheelchair fell from his hands onto the swaddling cloth below, perfectly aligning with the dark-patterned peony on my Qipao.
The sound of a clapper mixed with a Watchman's cough as I slipped into the Dye House. Shen Yan was wiping a dagger; indigo dye mixed with his blood bled into the fabric, creating a double-layer material soaked in ninety-nine infants' blood. "He suddenly cut open the lining of my Qipao, revealing countless symbols—the containers they would become."
I shook my Qingtong key; the gold dust on it matched that which had fallen from the broken Guanyin statue. As he used his dagger to pry open my belly band, the cold blade pressed against my heart's Vermilion Birthmark: "My mother wore this dress when she was nailed in her coffin during childbirth; it caused ripples that surfaced half a swollen face." The Bronze Lock Piece on Shen Yan's severed limb began to heat up, resonating with the burning pain in my chest. As he tore off my undergarments, the Second Mistress's child pressed against his back.
"Yan'er," she said sweetly yet venomously, "good things need to be opened and consumed."
Shen Yan suddenly pushed me into the Dye Vat. In the suffocating depths of Indigo, I saw countless charms crawling out, and in the shadows—my face was slowly merging with that of the Birth Mother.
When Shen Yan's teeth pierced my nipple, the charms in the Dye Vat suddenly came to life. Those incantations, like leeches, burrowed into my skin, gathering in my lower abdomen to form the totem of the Twin Lotus. The Second Mistress's Silver Scissors got stuck on the edge of the vat, the blade tracing the final stroke of the character "yan."
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