Chapter 15: Alchemical Transformations and Taboo Currents
"Mother, the clinic calls!" Xu Ling announced with sacrificial solemnity, though his stride betrayed the trepidation of a scholar approaching a siren's cove.
Liu Shuxiang's historical benevolence forged chains of obligation, yet the transformed courtyard arrested his progress—once-cracked earth now paved with celadon tiles, healing herbs arranged in esoteric patterns. The ancestral cistern remained, its verdigris patina preserved like a Bronze Age artefact amidst modernity's encroachment.
Within, alabaster walls radiate sanctum purity where shadows once held court. Gleaming apothecary cabinets displayed Li Ruoxue's meticulous calligraphy—frost queen's unexpected benevolence transmuting chaos into sacred geometry.
"Physician Xu, does your mercy extend to withering blooms?" Liu's dulcet tones permeated the stillness. Xu Ling's bronze diagnostic tools clattered as the enchantress materialized, her silhouette undulating like opium smoke.
"You've abandoned your most devoted petitioner," she lamented, batting pheromone-laden lashes. "This parched orchid yearns for your... therapeutic ministrations."
The brass door bolt slid home with sepulchral finality. Liu performed a silk-shedding pirouette toward the examination couch. "Lunar tides overflow their banks," she confessed, bare shoulders emerging like Venus from a clamshell. "What if steel replaces flesh?"
Xu Ling's meridians pulsed as diagnostic palms hovered above her sacral nexus. "Self-flagellation through hunger and insomnia poisons your roots," he admonished, channelling solar qi into her lumbar valley.
Liu's shuddering sigh echoed through incense-hazed air. "Let your therapeutic hands become my eternal sacrament," she implored, arching like a bowstring drawn by Eros himself.
His murmured acquiescence detonated a seismic response—she flipped with pantherine grace, décolletage cresting like moonlit breakers. "Seal this covenant!" Her tear-stained visage gleamed with porcelain fragility. "A widow's chambers grow desolate as an abandoned aviary..."
"Winter's chill shall never breach your gates," he vowed, engulfed in a jasmine-tinted nimbus.
Then, serpentine fingers breached linen ramparts, tracing forbidden glyphs along his dorsal script. Synaptic storms erupted as Liu's lips brushed his helix: "Let the healer's chastity become tonight's sacrificial offering."
Nectarous Allure and Destiny's Dichotomy
"Ling... why not pluck this ripened fruit tonight?" Liu Shuxiang's voice cascaded like opium-infused honey, her cheek nestled against the sinewed landscape of his chest.
"Shuxiang-jie..." Xu Ling's discipline crumbled beneath her silken siege, palms gravitating toward forbidden meridians.
*Jangle-jangle-jangle!
The mobile's strident alarm erupted from discarded trousers, shattering their amorous cocoon. Xu Ling banished the device with a snarl, only for its metallic cries to resurge with renewed fervour.
"Beloved physician," Liu feigned concern through carnation-tinted cheeks, "does duty summon its champion?" Her fingernail continued tracing clandestine constellations along his sternum.
Xu Ling emerged from her jasmine-scented snare with Herculean resolve. "The crimson tide still swells within me," Liu confessed, lips grazing his carotid artery. "Return when lunar cycles wane... and I shall unveil paradise entire."
Xu Ling petrified mid-withdrawal, thumb and forefinger capturing her pomegranate lips. "Temptress", he admonished, voice gravelled with restraint, "provoke this flame again, and you'll learn pyromancy's peril."
"Oh, but conflagrations delight me," Liu crooned, undulating like a Nubian queen upon the divan. Silk strained against topography worthy of cartographic worship, crossed limbs composing sonnets of enticement.
*Succubus incarnate,* Xu Ling cursed inwardly, grasping the shrieking communicator.
"At last!" Yu Mengna's vibrancy electrified the airwaves. "Our emporium stands ready—what celestial alignment favours its inauguration?"
Xu Ling's gaze swept the farmer's almanack suspended above Liu's ancestral altar. "Two dawns hence glimmers with golden portents."
"Divined perfection!" Her laughter sparkled like frost on persimmons. "I approach to gather nature's bounty. Shall my most valued collaborator grant an audience?"
Xu Ling's trapezius muscles tightened at her diction. "Imminent arrival?"
"Awaiting admittance at your threshold," came the velvet riposte.
Liu's mocking cadence pursued his retreat. "Scamper along, healer-sage. My lunar calendar marks your next... *diagnostic engagement."
The village thoroughfare blurred beneath Xu Ling's hastened tread. There, ensconced in diesel haze and gilded crepuscular rays, Yu Mengna materialized—onyx tresses cascading over a knitted carapace that charted every contour, stiletto heels declaring war on provincial sensibilities.
"Na-jie?" Xu Ling's larynx desiccated before this metropolitan Aphrodite. The truck's diesel growl harmonized with her smirk.
"Unrecognizable?" She pivoted, fabric swirling around anatomical masterworks. "Civilisation demands... sartorial alchemy." Her vermilion talon tapped his sternum. "As does nurturing *symbiotic ventures*."
In the interstice between clinic and crossroads, Xu Ling perceived truth—he balanced upon fate's fulcrum, where entrepreneurial zeal and Dionysian yearnings spiralled toward inexorable confluence.
Maternal Edicts and Hidden Threads
Yu Mengna's cascading curls framed her face with a serene elegance that pierced Xu Ling's core. Her transformation from sharp-suited entrepreneur to this soft-radiant vision left him momentarily breathless.
"Well, brat?" She twirled, synthetic lashes fluttering like raven wings. "Does this metropolitan makeover meet provincial standards?"
"Exquisite," Xu Ling breathed, throat dry. "A porcelain doll stepped from some collector's shelf."
Wang Huifen emerged squinting into the courtyard, her initial irritation at Yu's recent absences evaporating at the sight. "Mengna! You've outshone that screen siren Zhenzhen!" Her declaration made Xu Ling groan internally.
The matriarch steered Yu toward the house with alarming enthusiasm, pausing only to shoot her son a warning glare. When the women disappeared inside discussing fruit cultivars, Wang dragged Xu Ling into his bedroom with stormcloud determination.
"Explain this!" She thrust open his wardrobe, producing the pastel Hello Kitty lingerie like damning evidence. "Neither Ruoxue nor Ruoya claim this… this *indecent* garment!"
Xu Ling maintained calm. "Your point being?"
"Don't play dumb!" Wang jabbed the stretched lace panels. "Only that shameless actress Qiu Zhenzhen has such… proportions! Even Mengna lacks this vulgar abundance!"
Xu Ling choked back laughter at his mother's pseudo-anthropological analysis. The mental comparison between Qiu's and Liu Shuxiang's assets nearly undid him.
"Entertainers are morally bankrupt!" Wang's finger trembled with outrage. "Bring that actress near our threshold, and I'll disown you myself!"
"What if she's different?"
The challenge froze Wang mid-tirade. Xu Ling pressed gently, "Trust me to uphold our family's honour."
"Honour?" Wang's scoff carried generations of peasant wisdom. "That world breeds corruption like mould on winter grain. My answer remains—never."
Their stalemate shattered as Xu Wenhai cracked the door. "Woman! Our guest starves while you lecture!"
Wang concealed the lingerie with fumbling haste. Exiting, she delivered a parting volley: "Ruoxue, Ruoya, even Mengna—but that silver-screen harlot? Over my corpse."
The slammed door echoed finality. Xu Ling stared at the floral-patterned drapes, their cheerful peonies mocking his predicament. Somewhere between a starlet's scandalous curves and his mother's ironclad morality, his path forward grew murkier than monsoon skies.
Nectar of Immortals, Mortal Revelations
Xu Ling lingered in bewilderment, his mother's vehement animosity toward Qiu Zhenzhen remaining an enigma wrapped in ancestral propriety. Dispelling the conundrum, he emerged to witness an unlikely sisterhood beneath the ancient scholar tree—three women deconstructing crustacean anatomy with the precision of jade carvers unravelling silk threads.
Two lunar cycles later, Xu Ling's meditative trance dissolved to his phone's persistent vibrato. "The celestial unveiling awaits its architect," Yu Mengna's voice carried dawn's first chill through the receiver.
The "Ambrosia Grove" signage blushed coral under morning's gilded fingers as Xu Ling arrived. Workers orchestrated a ballet of nourishment—emerald persimmons nestled alongside grapes resembling frozen moonlight, each arrangement echoing nature's sacred geometry.
"Does this temple honour your earthly wonders?" Yu materialized, her gaze mirroring the polished onyx counters. "Sleepless nights transmuted into alabaster altars."
Xu Ling joined the sacred choreography, fingertips blessing each fruit's placement. "They demand an appellation worthy of their essence," Yu declared, cradling a grape that refracted rainbows.
"Xian Guo", Xu Ling intoned—*Ambrosia*. The syllables resonated with buried mountain springs.
You produced a cinnabar brush. "Let the progenitor etch their legacy."
As Xu Ling's strokes danced across parchment tags, faint qi auroras shimmered—each character containing centuries of sunshine and monsoon rains. These inscriptions would endure like oracle bones, their pigments defying temporal erosion.
At the double hour of Chen, the spectacle commenced: vermilion runners unfurled beneath peony-shaped balloons, floral tributes standing sentinel like terracotta warriors. Despite tri-day fanfares, the congregation skewed silver-crowned, sceptical matriarchs clutching sticky-fingered scions.
"Inaugural blessings! Twenty percent celestial beneficence!" croaked a youth drowning in ursine polyester.
Wizened lips pursed. "Marketplace mundanity gilded as novelty," sniffed a grandmother adjusting her jade bangle. "What fool parts with silver for pompous nomenclature?"
Then, a diminutive bear emerged bearing chalices of grapes that glowed like captive starlight. Children's delighted shrieks crystallized the air, juice droplets baptizing linen smocks. Nostrils flared as elders leaned into the aroma—an olfactory sonnet of alpine glaciers and honeycomb secrets.
The inaugural taste triggered silent epiphanies. Age-bleached eyes widened to full moons. Dentures clacked in astonishment. Pensioners transformed into jade-seeking dragons, elbowing toward jadeite registers with sudden avarice.
Xu Ling observed from shadowed eaves, his smile unfurling like midnight orchids. The Ambrosia Epoch had commenced its silent revolution.
Nectar's Seduction and Mortal Strife
"Cherubim of the earthly realm", cooed the ursine maiden in mellifluous cadence, "will you partake of celestial dew?" Children converged like sparrows to scattered grain, their eager digits claiming orbs resembling crystallized moonlight.
Yu Mengna observed the choreographed bedlam through gilded lashes—a huntress surveying prey ensnared in honeyed webs. The mercantile axiom thrummed in her veins: captivate juvenile palates, and ancestral coffers spill forth unbidden.
The inaugural lament erupted—a dissonant prelude to pandemonium. "MORE!" wailed a cherub-faced urchin, violet rivulets staining his Peter Pan collar. A cacophony of stomping soles and tearful entreaties beckoned bystanders like moths to a lantern's glow.
"Such fervour for mere berries?" A septuagenarian in Harris tweed arched an eyebrow, his ivory-knobbed cane tapping a staccato rebuke.
"Venerable sir," the bear-maiden demurred, proffering a grape on celadon porcelain, "sample eternity's tender."
"Bah!" The old academic scoffed with Confucian dignity. "These lips haven't touched grapes since the Hundred Flowers withered!" Yet his scholar's fingers betrayed him, plucking the proffered fruit with calligrapher's precision.
The mastication unleashed ambrosial revelation—sun-drenched saccharinity entwined with the glacial stream's crisp kiss. His dentures clacked in epiphanic astonishment. Memory resurrected: wartime Chongqing's feral vineyards, hunger-sharpened berries bursting with acidic defiance. This... this was memory transmuted to perfection.
"Again!" he commanded, but the maiden withdrew her salver. "Equity decrees all taste divinity's caress," she parried, igniting his march toward gilded registers.
By the third purchase, his antiquated rotary phone trilled an urgent summons. "Meiling! Mobilize the twilight pavilion dancers—this fruited ambrosia eclipses our jade tile revelries!"
Soon, the emporium brimmed with silk-swathed matrons and sandalwood-perfumed patriarchs, their jade bangles clinking against artisanal wicker caskets.
Yu's triumph curdled as a banshee wail pierced the perfumed air. "Brigandage!" A harridan brandished her receipt like a Boxer Rebellion manifesto, and the squalling infant transformed into an accidental standard. "Twenty-coin trash sold for two hundred? Thieves wear finer silks!"
"Madam," Yu riposted, indicating wall-mounted certifications gleaming like ancestral tablets, "these orbs harbour thrice the resveratrol of Bordeaux's finest. Our chromatographic—"
"Gilded falsehoods!" The protester collapsed in dramatic martyrdom, the child becoming an unwitting protest banner. "Preying on elders' affection—infamy!"
Xu Ling observed from the shadowed gallery, fingertips grazing a grape's diaphanous membrane. Its qi resonated—nature's pristine alchemy now ensnared in Mammon's gilded snare.
Ambrosia's Curse and Karmic Scales
Yu Mengna's eyes narrowed to jade slits as she deciphered the woman's furtive glances—a thief's avarice poorly veiled beneath performative outrage.
"Our pricing mirrors celestial alchemy," Yu intoned, the shop's qi-rich air thickening around her like armour. "Each berry ripens under immortal auspices."
The crowd's murmurs crescendoed as the grifter escalated her theatrics, unleashing her squalling progeny to crawl through displays of jewel-toned fruits. Yu's vermilion nails bit crescent moons into her palms—this vulgar display threatened the emporium's carefully cultivated mystique.
"Does Madam intend to stage a Greek tragedy?" Yu's voice dropped to subzero clarity.
The con artist hesitated—a spider sensing vibrations in its web—before recommitting to her role. "Five hours I've languished here! Indemnity is demanded!"
Xu Ling materialized like a vengeful deity, his whisper carrying the weight of mountain winds: "Yield her half a catty. I'll ensure each morsel becomes Icarus' waxen wings."
Yu's verdict fell like a guillotine blade: "Receive three hundred grams as a parting gift—in exchange for eternal exile. Sign this blood-red contract, and never again profane our sanctum."
The audience inhaled as one, such draconian measures against a patron? Yet the shop's jade wind chimes tinkled approval.
As the woman scrawled her name with a triumphant flourish, Xu Ling's fingers danced esoteric patterns. Celestial qi seeped into the grapes' translucent flesh—a subtle hex magnifying their addictive essence while hastening putrefaction.
"Savour this final communion," Yu purred, watching the charlatan depart clutching her gilded damnation.
That midnight, the woman's cravings would awaken—neuronal fires outmatching opium's grip. Each consumed orb would deepen the addiction while rotting her hoard to fungal sludge. By dawn's first light, she'd scratch at smartphone screens only to find her biometric essence eternally barred from digital orders, boutique doors rejecting her with sentient frost.
Patrons exchanged nods steeped in ancestral wisdom. In the Ambrosia Grove's ecosystem, cosmic justice flowed sweeter than muscatel, crueller than vinegar's bite.
Serpent's Venom in Celestial Orchards
The fracas dissolved like a pebble vanishing into the Yangtze's depths. Xu Ling observed the lingering storm clouds in Yu Mengna's gaze, his murmur cutting through the emporium's post-battle stillness: "That viper shall soon grovel, proffering golden ingots to taste redemption's crumbs."
Yu's sceptical exhale carried the frost of jade-carved nobility. Divine nectar notwithstanding, she deemed such brazenness immune to transformation.
Their conspiratorial whispers drowned in renewed tempests—a silver-maned legion stormed the registers. "Five-thousand-yuan jade tokens!" a breathless attendant announced. "They demand eternal boons!"
The prepaid alchemy birthed unforeseen riches. By dusk's gilded sigh, six-figure sums glowed in ledgers, staff moving with caffeinated precision. Midnight found the boutique's shelves skeletal yet thrumming with exhausted triumph.
"Five-hundred-yuan crimson envelopes!" Xu Ling proclaimed, witnessing his acolytes' mandibles unhinge—this bounty dwarfing provincial monthly tributes.
As dawn's first blush painted Yunshan's peaks, catastrophe resurrected. A labourer in pigment-stained rags deposited an ashen crone before crystal doors, her breath rasping like termites devouring ancestral scrolls.
"Good sir," Yu countered, her lacquered nails etching fresh hieroglyphs in flesh, "this sanctum dispenses ambrosia, not mortal remedies."
"Deceiver!" The man's howl carried aeons of grievances. "Your tainted fruits wrought this blight! Prepare silver reparations or face celestial wrath!"
Xu Ling's fingertips performed covert divination—the crone's meridians pulsed with synthetic poisons, her state bearing the stench of chemical warfare rather than immortal cultivation. This was no mishap but meticulously crafted treachery.
As the labourer's theatrics summoned gawking hordes, Xu Ling's phone vibrated—surveillance scrolls revealed midnight phantoms defiling sacred produce. The snare had been baited with scholar's cunning.
Yu's gaze met his, their silent dialogue transcending mortal speech. The emporium's true trial loomed—not against provincial charlatans, but shadowed cabals wielding venom and perception as twin blades.
Beyond the gathering maelstrom, a featureless consortium smiled, their weiqi stones advancing across the cosmic board. The Divine Fruits dynasty's meteoric ascent had summoned predators from capitalism's primordial jungles.
Serpent's Venom and the Silenced Oracle
Xu Ling's gaze dissected the ashen dowager's mortal coil, his third eye revealing the adamantine grape wedged like a jade stiletto in her trachea. Yu Mengna's lacquered talons constricted about her jade communicator—this reeked of choreographed tragedy by rivals trembling at their ascendance.
"Retreat, venom-dispensing assassins!" The labourer's bellow carried aeons of rehearsed lamentations, his quarry-hardened palms thrusting Xu Ling aside. Behind him, the shrew-faced consort hissed serpentine directives—their progeny's incarceration ransom dangling like a Ming vase above this farce.
Xu Ling's baritone vibrated with Mandarin-duke authority: "Three breaths remain ere the Jade Emperor's healers forsake her waning spirit." His fingertips grazed the man's acupressure nexus, spiritual essence permeating his psyche like inkblots on xuan paper. The peasant's defiance dissolved into marionette complaisance.
"Yin sorcery!" The harpy screeched, interposing her skeletal frame between Xu Ling and the ancestral matriarch's fading vessel. "You seek to expunge your mortal transgressions!"
The indictment kindled wildfire through the throng—"Their clusters sear like quicksilver fire!" "My scion spewed crimson tides!" "Alchemical perversions!" —each fabricated calumny blossoming into pandemonium's orchid.
Xu Ling's meridians blazed with bridled celestial fire. Before him, the crone's life thread unravelled like typhoon-tattered brocade. Surrounding him, hired crones in grandmotherly guises fanned hysteria's flames, their ululations for silver reparations lacerating dawn's fragile peace.
Yu Mengna's vermilion lips parted in mute apocalypse. Surveillance scrolls unveiled Wu dusk infiltrators corrupting sacred yields—nightshade essence in golden persimmons, glycaemic hexes woven into date flesh. This was mercantile warfare waged through peasant catspaws, their ambrosial empire's zenith threatening established syndicates of decay.
As the consort's vulture talons swept toward Xu Ling's ocular spheres, chronos itself fissured. Beyond the maelstrom, formless weiqi grandmasters smiled, anticipating the celestial empire's crumble.
Gilded Puppeteers and the Fourth Estate's Siege
"Xu Ling—the ambulance lingers five eternities away!" Yu Mengna's whisper trembled as the matriarch's lips deepened into twilight's indigo.
"Two minutes' reprieve," Xu Ling intoned, gilded irises igniting as astral filaments ensnared the labourer's psyche. Manipulating human consciousness differed radically from bending beasts—the man's mind bucked against ethereal shackles, neural pathways threatening rupture beneath celestial coercion.
An aeon condensed into sixty heartbeats. The labourer exhaled in harmonic resonance with Xu Ling, ocular windows regaining sentience as synaptic rebellions ceased.
"Betrayer! Release your venomous grip!" The consort's screech rent the air as her spouse wrestled her to the cobblestones. Xu Ling knelt beside the gasping matriarch, jade fingers charting her pulse—a moth's wingbeat against monsoon gales.
"Why tremble at salvation's hand, crone?" A voice like shattered ice cut through bedlam. Xie Yuxuan materialized as Athena reborn, her presence scattering carrion-feeding journalists like startled sparrows.
Yu Mengna's jade pendant quivered against her collarbone. "Lady Xie!"
"Channel your energies to the physician-prince," Xie commanded, her glare petrifying advancing lens-wielders mid-stride.
Camera shutters detonated in a staccato fusillade. "Madam Yu! Shall blood money cleanse your ledger?" "Does this charlatan possess healing credentials?" "Are these laboratory seals counterfeit artistry?"
Liang Xiaoyong oozed through the media scrum, his smirk dripping serpent's venom. "How many taels of silver will resurrect this corpse, Fruit Queen?"
Yu's vermilion lips curved with glacial majesty. "The Ambrosia Grove's honour remains inviolate."
Xu Ling's fingertips waltzed along the crone's throat—spiritual alchemy transmuting the obstructive grape into crystallized resin. A precise percussion shattered the amber prison into gilded vapour.
The matriarch's ribcage convulsed like a storm-tossed schooner before stabilizing. Xu Ling collapsed against blood-warm stones as journalists bayed—their microphones morphing into inquisitorial blades.
"Sorcery or subterfuge?" Liang crowed, savouring Yu's microscopic flinch.
Xie Yuxuan's laughter cascaded like temple wind chimes. "Behold death's jest—a corpse reborn!"
Bedlam crystallized into awed silence as the revived crone blinked rheumy eyes at her audience. Xu Ling's auric gaze locked with Liang's ashen countenance—this skirmish favoured the healers, yet war's spectre loomed ever nearer in capitalism's coliseum.
Cadence of Redemption and the Mob's Forge
"These gilded merchants measure lives in copper coins!" A betel-stained hag screeched, her indictment spreading through the disenfranchised throng like wildfire through drought-stricken plains.
Yu Mengna's porcelain mask cracked—her boardroom poise crumbling before this deluge of class hatred. Xie Yuxuan's breath brushed her earlobe like a zephyr through willow leaves: "The celestial healer commands trust!"
All ocular orbs swivelled toward Xu Ling, now supporting the matriarch in seated repose. His fist descended like Hephaestus' forge-hammer upon her weathered scapulae—once, twice. The crowd's collective gasp harmonized with camera shutters' staccato percussion.
"Lunatic!" "Desecrating mortality's threshold!" The mob's censure crescendoed, yet Xie's jade grip steadied Yu's quivering limb. Liang Xiaoyong's vulpine grin broadened—his digital narrative coalescing like venom crystallizing in morning dew.
Upon the third seismic impact, the crone's frame convulsed like a tempest-battered junk ship. A crystalline orb rocketed onto flagstones, gleaming with nacreous salvation.
Chromatophores awakened in the matriarch's parchment cheeks as celestial breath reignited her dormant lungs. Her claw-like digits clasped Xu Ling's meridians in silent absolution, her larynx producing only cicada-wing rasps.
Xu Ling slumped against sun-warmed granite, spiritual reservoirs drained to dregs. The resurrected seer gestured vehemently toward her daughter-in-law, now scuttling through the throng like silverfish escaping lantern light.
Liang's cinematographer magnified the mucus-enshrouded grape. "Artifice!" he thundered. "Theatrical trickery!"
Yet the matriarch's accusatory digits spoke hieroglyphic truths—she clutched her son's patched trousers, arthritic finger condemning his cowering consort. The labourer's visage twisted as Xu Ling's psychic bonds dissolved, enlightenment striking like a headsman's axe.
"Betrayers of filial piety!" he bellowed, charging his retreating spouse. The multitude cleaved like the Yangtze before a mythical blade, loyalties shifting with chameleonic alacrity.
Xu Ling's auric gaze intersected Yu's across the maelstrom. This skirmish concluded in their favour, yet the iron scent of vulnerability now perfumed Yunshan's breeze—carrion-eaters would soon darken the skies.
Redemption's Harvest and the Bitter Seeds of Deceit
The conspirators fled like roaches exposed to sunlight—the daughter-in-law dragged her suddenly rebellious husband away in panicked retreat, abandoning the matriarch to her ash-grey solitude. Xu Ling watched the crone's spine curl beneath betrayal's weight, her silhouette shrinking into antiquity's shadow.
"Child", the matriarch rasped, Xu Ling's lingering qi soothing her ravaged throat, "it was my gluttony with the grapes that caused this trouble. Have I inconvenienced you?"
Liang Xiaoyong's jaw unhinged as his meticulously staged drama crumbled. The crowd's fury transmuted into murmurs of awe as Yu Mengna knelt gracefully beside the resurrected elder.
"Grandmother," Yu enquired with a courtier's poise, "what inspired such passionate consumption?"
The crone's parchment cheeks flushed. "My son presented them as rare delicacies—how could I resist?" Her confession, sweetened by innocence, dissolved residual suspicions into vapour.
You ascended like a phoenix from the ashes. "Let Ambrosia Grove's bounty speak for itself!" Her declaration summoned staff bearing celestial offerings—persimmons glistening like amber tears, grapes refracting prismatic light, and dates swollen with honeyed secrets.
The mob's transformation proved instantaneous. A construction worker's guffaw cut through the tension: "If this is poison, let me die blissful!"
Reporters found themselves disarmed by nymph-like attendants offering gem-cut samples. Cameras clicked involuntarily, capturing beauty that transcended journalistic cynicism. "Eightfold discounts for truth-seekers," a dimpled clerk cooed, her apron embroidered with vine motifs.
Liang slunk into the shadows as the boutique's cash registers sang symphonies of redemption. Xu Ling observed the metamorphosis—venomous scrutiny replaced by ravenous consumerism, doubters transformed into evangelical patrons.
Yet his gaze lingered on the abandoned matriarch, now cradling a persimmon sample like a sacred relic. In her trembling hands, he saw capitalism's eternal paradox—miracles and manipulation growing from the same fertile soil.
Serpent's Bounty and the Scale of Reckoning
The maelstrom besieging Ambrosia Grove dissipated as sirens wove through the urban tapestry. Xu Ling, attuned to qi's serpentine whispers, entrusted the matriarch to Yu Mengna's guardianship. "Seek the Hippocratic temples," he intoned, dissolving into the throng like incense smoke.
Yu's stilettos percussed a martial rhythm as she ushered lawmen to the surveillance sanctum. Digital chronicles unfurled nocturnal machinations—shadowed saboteurs and diurnal theatrics laid bare. The officers departed laden with crystalline drives and fruit-laden tribute, their juridical rigour mellowed by amber-hued persimmons dripping with solar essence.
Xu Ling materialized at the boutique's maw, the conspiratorial pair in thrall. Zhou Lian's vulturine gaze flitted between black-and-white steeds and her spouse's ashen visage. "The elder pilgrimages to aseptic altars," Yu proclaimed, observing the woman's façade crack like ill-fired celadon.
"Honoured guardians," the husband croaked, work-gnarled digits worrying frayed hems, "we thought these orbs bore Death's kiss."
At Liang's moribund establishment, a cosmetics-slathered cashier peered through false-lashed slits. "The master disdains blundering marionettes," she drawled, vermilion talons executing dismissive semaphore.
Zhou's entreaties dissolved into refrigeration's electric hymn. The rival emporium stood desolate, its fluorescent lights humming like a chorus of disgruntled cicadas above shrivelled pomes. Across the boulevard, Ambrosia Grove's cash registers carolled redemption's liturgy.
Xu Ling observed from shadowed alcoves as Zhou steered her consort into tenebrous alleys—their silhouettes merging with chiaroscuro, becoming mere smudges on Mammon's fresco. Elsewhere, Liang Xiaoyong's encrypted device pulsed with envenomed missives from unseen patrons.
Above Yunshan, the moon hung like a silver censer, its argent radiance blessing both verdant vines and festering roots. In the sterile cathedral of medicine, the matriarch dreamt of ophidian tendrils coiled about ambrosial clusters—their venom sacs swollen with addictive grace, their scales glinting with false benediction.
Zhou's trembling digits hovered above her burner phone's keypad. Across the city, Liang Xiaoyong—connoisseur of cutthroat commerce—adjusted his Rolex, unaware the serpents he'd unleashed now sought warmer bosoms to nest in.
The Poisoned Grapes
"Brother Yong, do share your troubles! Perhaps this unworthy one might offer counsel."
The cashier's honeyed tones quenched Liang Xiaoyong's smouldering wrath like lotus-dew extinguishing embers.
He recounted purchasing saccharine-laden grapes for the diabetic matriarch—how Zhou Lian now stormed Ailing Fruit Shop, blaming their hospitality for the choking incident.
The cashier's gaze acquired vulpine sharpness as she concealed a smirk behind lacquered nails. "This trivial matter? Behold, a stratagem unfolds."
Recognizing her serpentine cunning, Liang Xiaoyong yielded. "Proceed. I return anon."
Disconnecting, the cashier pirouetted toward Zhou Lian with newfound obsequiousness. "Had we known Sister Lian shares ventures with our proprietor! Pray, be seated—allow me to present autumn's finest bounty."
She arranged decaying persimmons and mould-speckled tangerines upon chipped porcelain before settling opposite Zhou Lian. "Since fortune binds us... might the lady desire richer compensation?"
Zhou Lian's pupils contracted like a stalking panther's, scrutinizing this sudden sycophant.
"The Ailing Fruit magnate overflows with golden springs. Your dowager undergoes examination, yes? Attend closely..." The cashier's glance flickered toward Zhou Lian's twitching spouse before breathing venomous counsel into her ear.
"Madness! You'd have me smother the ancestral crone—"
"Silence!" The cashier's jade-braceleted hand stifled Zhou Lian's lips. "Even walls grow ears for such whispered tempests!"
Zhou Lian's pallor mirrored bleached mulberry paper as she rose, the cashier's Machiavellian smirk burning against her retreating.
Upon Liang Xiaoyong's return, the cashier arched like a preening songbird. "Should our garden bear fruit, Brother Yong mustn't forget his promise of Parisian leather blossoms."
Her vermilion-tipped finger inscribed cryptic sigils upon his lapel as he dragged her into the cedar-panelled office, leaving grizzled employees exchanging knowing grimaces.
Meanwhile, Zhou Lian—whose thrift could shame Confucius—summoned a rickshaw toward the hospital. Her oafish consort stood rooted in the dust, watching the carriage dissolve into Peking's smog. An atavistic chill pierced his marrow; he surged forward in futile pursuit, patting threadbare pockets that echoed his destitution.
Zhou Lian alighted as constables departed the marble-columned infirmary. Clutching her poisoned chalice of canned sweetness, she swept through antiseptic corridors like an avenging fury.
The matriarch perched on a mahogany bench, trading jests with Ailing Fruit's attendant. The vision of this hale crone, no death-rattle in her throat, twisted Zhou Lian's visage into a Zhong Kui mask.
Her knuckles blanched around the tin as she conjured a funerary-parlour smile. "Dearest Mother! What celestial mercy preserves you! Dawei and I languished in terror's crucible!"
The Preserved Malice and Cephalopod's Ruse
The matriarch lifted glaucous eyes, her evanescent mirth dissolving like mist beneath the zenith sun.
"Dearest Matriarch, Dawei and I apprehended cataclysm—'twas we who beseeched the serpentine chariot's aid!"
Zhou Lian's tenuous pretence inexplicably beguiled creases of beatitude across the dowager's parched countenance.
"Ah! This withered vessel ever trusted filial devotion blossomed within your marrow!"
The shopgirl observed this capricious metamorphosis with a furrowed brow, sagacity eluding her grasp.
"Tend to your menial rounds, juvenile. Our indebtedness for your trifling service." Zhou Lian's dismissal dripped venomous saccharinity.
Yet the shopgirl stood immutable as the Vermilion Gates. "Until Hippocratic verdicts proclaim her vigour, this lowly sentinel remains anchored."
Having borne witness to Zhou Lian's ophidian essence, credence could not be purchased with meretricious grins.
Thwarted, Zhou Lian pivoted her asp-like attention. "What probings lie yonder, Venerable One? This unworthy scion shall be your Stygian escort."
The crone's wattled neck oscillated, jowls aquiver. "They murmur of manifold inquisitions. That fell hoarse through my oesophagus—more harrowing than the Year of Black Frost!"
As geriatric prattle flowed, Zhou Lian's façade fissured—a scintilla of rancour escaping like incense from a censured thurible.
"Such tribulations! Let this gilded autumnal conserve save your trials." She proffered the tinned hemlock with ill-veiled asperity.
The shopgirl observed, torn, as the matriarch accepted the libation with naïveté's rapture.
"Pray deliberate each morsel, Honoured Ancestress. Let not voracity reprise its asphyxiant clasp!"
"Muzzle your ill-starred beak, jinx-feathered harpy!" Zhou Lian spat. "Dare you blight our bloodline with your necromantic tongue?"
Gnarled digits breached the tin's seal—a metallic exhalation reverberating through aseptic halls. The matriarch consumed aureate drupe segments and viscous nectar alike, her spoon's cadence echoing temple carillons.
"In vernal youth, such ambrosia shimmered beyond grasp. Even when Dawei's coffers overflowed like the Yangtze in spate, parsimony bridled these jowls..."
Desiccated lips smacked in elegiac reverie—her life's scroll near-flawless, save the echidna nestled at her flank.
"Liu Shufen—the labyrinth of scrutiny awaits!"
Zhou Lian steered her charge inward, abandoning the shopgirl to pace like a manacled tigress beneath fluorescent Hades.
Meanwhile, nascent maelstroms fermented at Ailing Fruit Atrium.
A sexagenarian literatus emerged cradling persimmons in sigil-stamped mulberry paper, perambulating toward the bazaar whilst gorging on aureate orbs. Triune fruits had vanished ere he'd traversed two hundred double-paces.
Abruptly, his entrails churned like the Huai River mid-torrent. Clutching a cast-iron lamppost, he erupted in violent emesis—bile-laced egesta, exposing half-liquefied crustacean carrion amidst pectic strands.
The firmament whorled into ashen vertigo. His arthritic clutch faltered, his corpus succumbing to gravity's inexorable pull upon the flagstones.
Morbidly inquisitive throngs coalesced—a murder of carrion crows descending upon battlefield leavings.
"Witness! The Ailing Grove's blighted harvest!"
A gawker's palsied digit indicated the crest-emblazoned vellum aquiver in sepulchral zephyrs.
Argent Luminaries and the Scion's Wrath
Scarlet perdition cascaded from the rent satchel—persimmons glistening like carnelian venom upon the flagstones.
"By celestial indictment! Does Ailing Orchard traffic in pestilence beneath gilded artifice?"
"My maiden consumed their hellish harvest—I must reclaim those blighted globes ere fate's pendulum swings!"
Murmurs proliferated into cacophony. The sigil-stamped pouch, now an accursed testament, ensconced Ailing Fruit beneath suspicion's barbed coronet.
"An enterprise in swaddling clothes already choking on infamy—its matriarch dances on the gibbet's precipice."
Amidst the bedlam, a sausage-fingered scribe laden with pomaceous bounty wheeled ponderously, dew-laps trembling as he waddled back toward the doomed athenaeum of fruits.
As Xu Ling and Yu Mengna materialized, the ophidian medical chariot already coiled at the periphery, its siren a mourning dirge.
"Yonder scholar's soul shall evaporate before reaching Hippocrates' altar," Xu Ling prophesied, cleaving through the gawker-throng toward the supine savant.
"Desist!" His edict sundered the clamour as white-robed acolytes moved to enshroud the afflicted.
A nurse curled lip at his threadbare cuffs and solar-bleached raiment. "Alleyway mountebank! You dare catechize the initiated?"
"His life-tide recedes swifter than the Luo River's estuary. Grant me communion with mortality's edge." Xu Ling's entreaty hovered, unheeded, in the miasma of scepticism.
The starch-coated hierarch surveyed Xu Ling's fissured plimsolls with patrician revulsion. "Yunshan's Healing Citadel claims sovereignty. Do mongrel paws dare block August passage?"
Zhou Dawei, progeny of nosocomial royalty, inflated with dynastic hubris. "Since when do clod-stained serfs dictate the Galenic rites?"
Xu Ling rented the academic's vestments. Argent serpents undulated under astral governance—decachord pins breaching vital gateways with hierophantic exactitude.
"Profane lunatic! You violate Asclepius' sanctum!" Zhou Dawei's visage empurpled, fists popping like frost-laden reeds. "Persist in this mummery, and I'll sculpt you into a mewling homunculus!"
Xu Ling's gaze mirrored the void between constellations. Digital grazings along filament hafts summoned harmonics more profound than Ming dynasty temple bells.
"Feculent clod! Your oculars stink of yokel effrontery!" Fury overmastered paternal admonishments as Zhou Dawei's fist—an onyx-sashed typhoon—carved its parabola toward Xu Ling's third eye.
Seven dawns' quarantine within clinical purgatory had gestated this maelstrom, now unleashed upon the imperturbable enigma who dared duel both physic and phylum.
To be continuous…