The golden ring felt heavy in Jin Lian's hand. It wasn't the weight of metal, but the burden of the symbol she had stolen from the heart of the master's lair. Liang Jiuyong's last cold touch, his rumbling laughter, and his words, dripping with ominous fate, clung to her on the return journey to the Wailing Caves like a poisonous shadow. She had won—but victory tasted like sweet poison: pleasant on the tongue, deadly in the gut.
At the entrance of the main cave, Mo Tianyin awaited her. There was no joy of triumph on his face—only a cold look of appraisal, like a craftsman examining a new tool. He took the ring from her hand and inspected the engraving (the golden flower within the red circle) under the faint lamplight.
"Good," he said simply, as though praising a well-done task. "The message was delivered. The Lord of the Sky now knows that the shadows of the earth have touched his sky." Then he turned the ring in his fingers, the dim golden light tracing lines across the cave's damp walls. "But the message… will be stronger if everyone knows we hold it."
• • •
At dawn the next day, those in Lower Yulong City who dared venture outside found a message hanging on the main city gate—one usually guarded fiercely. It wasn't written on paper, but carved into a piece of dried pigskin, stained with blood that was still fresh. Next to it, nailed in place with a rusty spike, hung Liang Jiuyong's golden ring.
The message was short—sharp as a dagger's thrust:
"From the injustice of the earth to the throne of the sky...
Our muddied blood reaches everywhere.
The Lord's ring is a gift...
And the coming fire burns hotter still.
— The Muddy Blood Cell"
It was the lightning bolt that shook the city from bottom to top. "Muddy Blood" was no longer just a ghost or a doll. It was now an organized force challenging the master in his very palace. The whispers turned into a low, rumbling roar. The looks of slaves in slaughterhouses and labor camps were no longer just fearful—they now glimmered with a forbidden spark called hope. Even some poor Mixed-Bloods began to wonder: What if the next fire burns everything?
• • •
In Liang Jiuyong's temporary palace, the air was like a frozen tomb. Liang sat at his desk, the ring's absence glaring from the empty wooden slot. In front of him, Yun Zihan trembled like a leaf in a storm, while Master Chen stood like a marble statue—yet his eyes burned with a sharp, rare fury.
"My lord… I swear we searched—" Yun Zihan began, his voice cracking.
"Silence." One word from Liang cut the air like a sword. His voice was calm, but it carried mythic weight, enough to make Yun Zihan step back pale as death. "You searched? Yes. You searched for phantoms… while they stole the symbol of my authority… and hung it like a severed head on the city gate." His gaze turned slowly, dripping with contempt, toward Master Chen. "And you… my loyal hound. Where was your sharp instinct?"
Master Chen did not bow. He met the gaze. "They were faster. Bolder than we expected. But every action… leaves a trace." From his robe he pulled out a small black cloth scrap—part of the infiltration outfit Jin Lian had worn, torn and dirtied with soil from the inner courtyard. "This… is from their next hiding place."
Liang Jiuyong smiled at last. The smile of a serpent scenting blood. "Finally… something solid." He nodded toward the cloth scrap. "Burn it. Let the hounds smell it. Then… follow the scent to the burrow."
• • •
The fragile truce in the Wailing Caves was cracking. The success of the ring theft and the bloody pigskin message had cast an aura of heroism around Jin Lian—but it also drew many eyes. Kai and Mei Ling's grandsons now looked at her with something near reverence. Even old Mei Ling was weaving her a small shawl from plant fibers as a token of protection. But beneath the surface, tension was growing.
Mo Tianyin was transforming the cell into a Shadow Army. Harsh training in hand-to-hand combat, infiltration, and secret signals took place in side tunnels. He taught them to become "voices without faces, strikes without arms." But his methods were merciless. A small mistake in silent movement earned a day without food. Hesitation during a training blow meant a real cut from Mo Tianyin's cold blade.
"We kill weakness here!" he shouted once, grabbing the arm of a boy who flinched during a mock attack. "The enemy shows no mercy! Do you want to die like cattle in a hunting pit?!"
Jin Lian watched, heart tightening. She saw Liu, a girl barely fifteen, collapse from exhaustion and hunger after a brutal training day. Jin Lian tried to offer her a piece of her own bread.
"No!" Mo Tianyin's voice thundered. He appeared between them like a wall. "If she falls, she pays. If she eats your food, she pays. Mercy... is a dream forged by the weak." He repeated his sacred line, his gray eyes like killing frost. "Here, we forge a new reality. A reality of strength... or death."
Liu's trembling eyes—filled with tears and fear—pierced Jin Lian like a poisoned arrow. She remembered the child in the lower city alley she left behind, shaking and alone. The same logic. The same coldness. A terrifying question began to take root in her:
"Have we become another kind of oppressor?"
• • •
Disaster came on the scent of hounds.
On a rainy night, warning cries echoed from the cave's outer guards. "Hunting dogs! Burnt scent! They're close!"
Master Chen wasted no time. He led an elite team of Pure-Blood trackers, reinforced with vicious dogs that had sniffed the burnt cloth scrap. They moved like a knife through butter, slicing through the maze of damp side-tunnels.
Chaos erupted. Screams, barking, the clash of steel. The cell's new fighters, brave as they were, were sparrows facing trained hawks. Mei Ling's three grandsons stood like a wall, fighting savagely to cover the retreat. Jin Lian heard the youngest—Fang—scream as an arrow pierced his throat.
"To the back tunnel! Now!" yelled Mo Tianyin, shoving Jin Lian, Kai, and a small group toward a narrow crack in the cave's deepest point. One last glance—old Mei Ling knelt beside dying Fang, wiping his blood with trembling hands, her tears mixing with cave rain.
"Go! I'll delay them!" shouted Kai, pushing Jin Lian into the tight tunnel before turning to face a massive shadow entering the cave—Master Chen himself, sword dripping rain and blood.
The tunnel was damp, narrow, dark. Jin Lian, Mo Tianyin, and six other survivors crawled like worms through the earth's belly. The sounds of battle, the dogs' howls, the screams—all faded, replaced by dreadful silence, pierced only by rapid breath and dripping water.
Hours later, they emerged into a hidden cavern, its entrance veiled by a small waterfall. Pale dawn light filtered through the curtain of water. They were safe… for now.
Jin Lian sat on the cold floor, shivering. Not from the chill—but from the images: Liu collapsing, Fang dying, Mei Ling in the death-cave, Mo Tianyin's cold gaze as he pushed her to flee. Her question returned, stronger now, poisoned by the blood she'd seen:
"What kind of reality are we building here?"
She raised her head. Mo Tianyin stood near the cave entrance, staring through the water curtain, his back to them. His posture was taut like a drawn bow, but his silhouette looked… isolated. A rock in a sea of blood.
"Three dead," Jin Lian said hoarsely, her voice shaking with bottled rage. "Fang… and two others I saw fall. And the dogs… may find the rest in the tunnels."
Mo Tianyin didn't turn. "Acceptable losses," he said flatly. "They bought time. For the cell. For the cause."
"Acceptable losses?!" Kai exploded, leaping up, his eyes bloodshot. "Fang was my brother! They were people, not chess pieces!"
Suddenly, Mo Tianyin moved. Like lightning, he was in front of Kai, hand on the boy's throat, slamming him into the damp wall.
"We are all chess pieces!" he hissed like venom. "In a game far bigger than our pitiful lives! You want to cry? Cry! But cry for a system that crushes thousands each day! Not for three who died buying a chance to end it!"
Jin Lian saw Kai's eyes bulge from lack of air and terror. She saw absolute cruelty in Mo Tianyin's eyes. The same cruelty she had seen in Yun Zihan's during the slave hunts. The same blind faith in a "noble goal" that justifies all means.
"Stop!" Jin Lian shouted, drawing her dagger. She didn't raise it—but the stance was defiant. "Stop this. Now."
Mo Tianyin turned his head slowly toward her. A long, cold, assessing look. Then… he released Kai, who collapsed, gasping for breath. Mo Tianyin said nothing. He looked at Jin Lian as if seeing her for the first time. A wounded man in the dark—or a beast discovering its prey held a blade.
The fracture was now clear. At the heart of the rebellion, between a leader who believed the end justifies any means… and those who had begun to fear the cruelty of the means—even if the goal was freedom.
In that hidden cave, behind a waterfall that concealed tears, another fire began to burn. The fire of doubt. The fire of rebellion… within the rebellion itself.
And Jin Lian, the Muddy Blood Doll who lit the first blaze, now found herself holding the spark of the second… in a hand raised—not yet to strike—but to warn.