The rain in Qingzhou City did not wash things clean; it merely turned the rot into grease.
It was a heavy, suffocating downpour that smelled endlessly of cold iron and scorched earth. The water dripped from the broken, soot-blackened eaves of the alley, striking the jagged blue cobblestones with a series of dull, rhythmic thuds that sounded like a dying heart. In this part of the city, known as Sophora Alley, most houses had long gone dark. The mortals here could not afford the oil for lamps, nor could they afford the spiritual energy required to ward off the damp chill that seeped through the thin mud walls.
Only at the very end of the dead-end street did a faint, ember-red glow flicker behind the grease-stained windows of a dilapidated shop.
Over the door hung a wooden sign, its grain cracked by decades of frost and heat. Carved into its surface with a rough, unpolished hand was a single character: Gu.
Inside the smithy, the air was a furnace of sulfur and sweat.
Gu Yao stood before the forge, stripped to the waist. His back was as broad as an anvil, built like a mountain of dark, calloused muscle, yet it was twisted into a permanent, agonizing slouch. It was the stance of a man who had been carrying the weight of a fallen sky for fifty years.
Across his spine, running in a terrifying vertical line from his neck down to his lower back, were seven deep, purple-black mounds of scar tissue. They looked like giant, dormant leeches buried beneath his skin. In the dark, when the firelight caught them at a certain angle, these scars seemed to emit a faint, ghostly violet sheen—the mark of the Immortal-Locking Nails.
Gu Yao raised his heavy hammer.
It was an ugly piece of iron, six hundred pounds of dead weight, its head missing half of its left corner from some long-forgotten impact. He brought it down onto the glowing iron billet resting on the anvil.
Clang.
The sound was not just a metallic ring; it was a physical shockwave that rattled the loose tiles on the roof. But inside Gu Yao’s body, a far more violent collision was taking place.
As the hammer struck the anvil, the recoil traveled up his thick arms, surging straight into his spinal column. Deep within his bone marrow, the seven rusted steel spikes vibrated in protest. They scraped against his nerves, releasing a torrent of white-hot, saw-like agony that made every muscle in his torso twitch. It was a sensation like ten thousand red-hot ants gnawing through his vertebrae, chewing through the marrow, trying to grind his consciousness into dust.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
He did not scream. He did not even grunt. His face, covered in a layer of black forge-dust and cold sweat, remained as unmoving as a granite statue. Every strike of the hammer was a miniature war. For fifty years, he had used the physical rhythm of blacksmithing to fight the nails, using the brutal, honest labor of the mortal world to suppress the malevolent divinity trapped within his bones.
"A-Yao, take a break. Have some tea."
The heavy wooden door creaked open, letting in a gust of wet, iron-scented wind.
Shen Yi stepped into the warmth of the shop. She was a woman of average height, wearing a simple, faded grey tunic that had been浆洗 (laundered and pressed) so many times the fabric was threadbare at the elbows. Her hair was pulled back into a loose knot, secured with a plain wooden pin. Her hands were thick with the rough, yellow callouses of a life spent scrubbing floors, washing clothes, and grinding coarse grains.
To the people of Qingzhou, she was just the quiet, somewhat dull wife of the crippled blacksmith—a woman who rarely spoke and never smiled at strangers.
But to Gu Yao, as he turned his bloodshot eyes toward her, she was the only wisp of warmth in half a century that didn't taste of blood or greed.
Gu Yao set the heavy hammer down on the dirt floor with a soft thud. He took the chipped porcelain bowl she offered him.
Inside wasbarley tea. It was cheap, bitter, and slightly burnt—the kind of drink made from the scorched dregs left behind after the wealthy merchants had taken the prime grains. But as the warm, earthy liquid passed over his tongue, it washed away the copper, metallic tang of internal bleeding that had lingered in his mouth since dawn.
"Did the 'Blood Tribute' register today?" Gu Yao asked. His voice was raw and gravelly, sounding like two rusted iron plates grinding against each other.
Shen Yi took the empty bowl back, her clear, dark eyes dimming as she looked down at the dark liquid remaining in the clay pot.
"It did," she whispered. Her fingers tightened around the worn rim of the bowl. "The men from the Hall of Rejuvenation came through the market with the iron ledgers. They said... because the Sects above are expanding two new floating islands this year, the 'Mortal Rhyme' tax is increasing by thirty percent. Everyone in the city between the ages of fifteen and forty must report to the central plaza tomorrow to have their 'Marrow Quality' tested."
Gu Yao’s fingers, thick as iron bars, tightened around the handle of his tongs until the metal creaked.
"Expansion," he rasped, a dark, dangerous ember flickering deep within his grey pupils.
He knew what "expansion" meant. It meant his former junior brothers, the pristine disciples sitting in their high towers above the cloud-line, wanted larger gardens for their rare herbs, grander palaces for their concubines, and more luxurious灵舟 (spirit-vessels) to sail through the void. And the cost of their vanity was always paid in the same currency: another needle driven into the spine of a mortal.
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This was the world he had seen through fifty years ago. The Immortal Sects were not protectors. They were not divine guardians. They were the apex parasites of the Great Desolation, feasting on the very marrow of the earth until the soil turned to ash and the people turned to dregs.
Gu Yao looked at Shen Yi’s forehead. Beneath her thin, wet bangs, there was a dark, purple bruise near her hairline.
"They... gave you trouble?" he asked. His tone remained flat, but the temperature inside the small smithy seemed to drop a degree.
Shen Yi forced a small, reassuring smile, quickly reaching up with her sleeve to brush her hair over the mark. "It's nothing, A-Yao. It was just crowded at the register. Someone pushed, and I bumped against the corner of the wooden table. It doesn't hurt."
BANG!
Before Gu Yao could reply, the rotted wooden door of the smithy was kicked inward with violent force. The weak wooden latch snapped like a twig, sending splinters flying across the dirt floor.
Two men stepped over the threshold, their long, cyan-colored silk robes fanning out behind them. Embroidered on their left chests was a silver flowing-cloud pattern—the mark of the "Hall of Rejuvenation," the administrative arm of the Cloud-Soothed Sect in the mortal realms.
In the eyes of the terrified mortals of Qingzhou, these men were not mere administrators. They were "Little Immortal Masters"—men who held the absolute power of life, death, and taxation.
The leader, a young man named Liu Zong, had a pale, sickly face with dark circles under his eyes—the signature look of a low-tier cultivator who consumed too many low-grade, impure spirit-pills to force his progress. He held a scented silk handkerchief to his nose, fanning away the soot and sulfur with an expression of intense revulsion.
"Smith Gu," Liu Zong sneered, his eyes lingering shamelessly on the bare, scar-littered back of the giant man before him. "Quite the cozy little hole you have here. Smells like a pigsty, but I suppose dregs belong in dirt."
Gu Yao did not move. He stood beside his furnace, his slouched shadow stretching long and dark across the wall.
Liu Zong pulled a thick, yellowed roll of parchment from his sleeve and flicked it open. "The Lords above have reviewed the local ledgers. They say an 'old-timer' like you, a tough old blacksmith who's survived fifty years in this mire, must have bones like iron. Your marrow density must be exceptionally rich. Therefore, for tomorrow's Great Election, your name has been moved to the top."
He looked up from the parchment, a cruel, mocking smirk twisting his lips.
"You’ve been selected as a 'Main Pillar'."
Inside the shop, the silence became absolute.
A "Main Pillar" was not just a donor. It was the first sacrifice placed at the core of the Blood-Refining Array—the one burned alive at the highest temperature to prime the formation and generate the initial heat needed to extract the Rhyme from the others.
Shen Yi’s face went deathly white. The porcelain bowl in her hands trembled so violently it clattered against her fingernails. Without a second thought, she threw her arms wide, stepping directly between Liu Zong and Gu Yao, shielding her giant, slouched husband with her frail body.
"My Lord! Please!" Her voice was no longer quiet; it was a desperate, cracking shriek. "A-Yao is a cripple! Look at his back—his spine is full of dead, black meat! He has no Rhyme left in him! If you put him in the furnace, he will only ruin the pills! I... I will pay double the Spirit-Stone tax! I’ll work extra shifts at the textile mill, I’ll go to the coal mines—"
"Spirit Stones?" Liu Zong cut her off with a sharp, derisive laugh. "You think our Sect needs your copper coins and dirty stones, you stupid cow?"
With a flick of his wrist, Liu Zong unleashed a weak, cyan arc of spiritual energy—a simple Qi-Flick that any Qi-Refining cultivator could perform.
To an Immortal, it was a casual gesture of annoyance. But to a mortal woman made of flesh and bone, it was like being struck by a flying log.
BANG.
Shen Yi had no time to dodge. The energy slammed straight into her chest, lifting her off her feet. She flew backward, her head striking the sharp, iron edge of the heavy anvil with a sickening thud before she collapsed into the mud.
" Shen Yi!"
CRACK—!
The chipped porcelain bowl Gu Yao had been holding a moment before slipped from his numb fingers and hit the ground, shattering into a dozen sharp fragments.
The warm, bitter barley tea spilled into the dirty water, turning foul in an instant. That tea had cost Shen Yi half a month of savings at the market—a tiny, precious luxury she had traded her own food for, just to give him one moment of relief from the pain in his bones. It was their only warmth for the day.
Now, it was just mud and broken clay.
Gu Yao remained motionless. He did not rush to her side. He did not scream. He simply stood there, his head bowed, his long, unkempt black hair veiling his face in shadow. His eyes were fixed on the tiny pool of fresh, bright red blood that was slowly leaking from Shen Yi’s temple, mingling with the spilled barley tea.
Vrummm—
Deep within the dark room, a sound began to rise. It was not from the wind outside, nor was it from the furnace.
It was a low, mechanical vibration that seemed to originate from the very center of Gu Yao’s cervical spine. The first Immortal-Locking Nail—the one driven into his neck fifty years ago—suddenly gave a faint, terrifying shudder.
An aura that had been buried under fifty years of rust, mud, and degradation—an aura belonging to a top-tier apex predator—slowly, inexorably began to stir in the mire.
"Little Immortal Master," Gu Yao spoke.
His voice was extremely low, like the sound of tectonic plates shifting miles beneath the earth.
"You... just struck my woman?"
Liu Zong froze. For a brief microsecond, a cold, unexplainable shiver ran down his spine, making the hair on his arms stand up. But he quickly shook it off, feeling insulted by his own momentary fear. He was an Immortal Disciple; this was a crippled, slouched trash-smith.
"So what if I did?" Liu Zong sneered, stepping forward and raising his foot to step on Shen Yi’s outspread, bleeding hand. "A piece of mortal slag... if she's crushed, she's crushed—"
His words died in his throat.
Gu Yao slowly raised his head.
In that single instant, within those once-dull, dead grey eyes, there appeared a vision of falling constellations, of burning celestial realms, and the terrifying, blood-soaked wailing of ten thousand gods and demons.
Liu Zong’s breath caught. He felt as if the room had suddenly been vacuumed of all air. The furnace fire behind Gu Yao didn't flare—it shrank, turning a strange, tragic violet under the crushing weight of an invisible pressure.
"Fifty years ago," Gu Yao said, taking a step forward.
He didn't use a single thread of spiritual qi. He had none to use. But as his bare, calloused foot struck the packed earth of the smithy, the ground beneath him fractured, sending a spiderweb of deep cracks racing across the floor toward Liu Zong’s boots.
"When your Sect Leader saw me... he had to kneel before he was permitted to speak."
Gu Yao reached out his massive, scarred right hand—a hand that had swung a hammer a million times, a hand that could no longer fully close due to the thick layers of scar tissue.
"The bowl is broken," Gu Yao’s voice was so calm it made the skin crawl. "She is bleeding."
He looked into the wide, terrified eyes of the two disciples.
"So, your path to heaven... ends today."