Chapter 11: The Blood Sigil Enigma

Scene 1: Death's Emblem

Chen Guodong's corpse lay sprawled across the 89th-floor observation deck of the Shanghai World Financial Center, his bloated face battered by torrential rain. When the forensic examiner lifted the white sheet, Shen Qinghuan's pupils constricted—the man's instep bore the Nine Palaces Flying Star tattoo, its nano-magnetic circuits glowing faintly beneath necrotic skin. The Pojun (Ruinous Army) star position was charred black, resembling a meteorite crater.

"Care to explain this, Ms. Shen?" Police Captain Wang Zhen held up tweezers gripping magnetic particles extracted from Chen's fingernails. Under blue forensic light, their spectral patterns matched her custom tattoo ink. "And these titanium burns in his earlobe—identical to your maids' piercings."

Shen stepped over the police tape in her diamond-studded Jimmy Choos, crushing a shard of bulletproof glass. "That nano-magnetic powder hit the black market three years ago." She lifted her hem, revealing a festering tattoo. "As for the piercings—"

Security screens erupted in static, playing altered footage: Chen groveling at someone's feet, crimson silk skirts coiling like vipers around his trembling spine. The feed flipped abruptly as a synthetic voice boomed: "Shen Qinghuan—Empress Candidate. Regicide demands retribution!"

Wang's pistol clicked as he chambered a round. Shen smirked, tossing an earring into an evidence bag. Under UV light, its titanium surface revealed micro-engraved hexagrams—exact matches to the Guizang patterns on Chen's earlobe.

Scene 2: Crimson Phantom

The penthouse reeked of antiseptic. Lin Yuan lay in critical care, her collarbone's big dippertattoo rotting to the bone. Su Que tweezed out a bronze shard stamped with Tianshou Tongbao—currency from Wu Zetian's reign.

"She... breached your Xun position..." Lin choked out mercury-tainted pus. "Used a modified Eight Gates Golden Lock Formation... planted..."

Shen submerged the shard in nitric acid. Rust dissolved to expose a 2023 GPS chip. As she activated a trace program, holographic maps flickered—the signal bounced between Lujiazui Station Exit C, Luoyang's Mingtang ruins, and a 2033 Pudong Airport coordinate.

Su Que screamed, clawing at her neck. Her altered tattoo had absorbed moisture, morphing into blood-vine tendrils. "Mistress... she seeded parasites in every sacrifice..."

Shen slashed the vines. Black blood splattered smart mirrors, coalescing into Mingtang's 3D blueprint. The reflection showed not her face, but the red-clad woman caressing her pregnant belly.

Scene 3: Neon Hexcraft

Midnight Nanjing Road lay deserted. Shen tracked fluorescent magnetic powder to Jing'an Temple's crypt. The red-clad woman leaned against a bronze taotie statue, a gilded luopan floating above her palm. Its needle spun counterclockwise, etching cerulean astral trails.

"Your electromagnetic array is amateurish." The woman lowered her hood, revealing a face mirroring Shen's—save for a vermillion teardrop mole. "Blending 2023 nanotechnology with Tang alchemy? The Death Gate, not the Shock Gate, anchors the formation."

Shen hurled a lightning-struck jujube spike, deflected by the woman's gilded phone. The lock screen froze her—six-year-old Shen curled in Zhabei's slum, a crooked Big Dipper drawn on her foot.

"Did you truly believe the Hàn Lóng Jīng was your father's legacy?" The woman stroked her belly, DNA earrings glinting. "I time-leapt thirty-eight times to plant that imperial primer. Behold—"

She exposed her abdomen's dual dragon veins: the Yellow River's bends entwined with the Huangpu River at her navel, forming a Möbius strip birthmark.

Scene 4: Mirrorborn Peril

The chase crescendoed on Lujiazui Skybridge. The woman scattered seven modified wuzhu coins. EMP bursts fried electronics—drones plunged into the Huangpu like steel carcasses, data-spray crystallizing into Mingtang's ghostly silhouette.

"Witness true Seven Stars Soul Lock!" The woman bit her fingertip, painting an inverted Purple Forbidden Enclosure on the rail. The river reversed course, whirlpools disgorging pallid arms—seven hundred modern corpses from Luoyang's crypts!

Shen's serpent sigil flared as Su Que's corrupted tattoo consumed her eyes. The girl raised a mechanized hand, wrist-bone chips gleaming. "Mistress... save me..."

The red-clad woman crushed a jade token. Temporal rifts yawned—skeletal claws dragged Su Que into the vortex. Her final act: bloody fingernails scraping "Beware the child—" into glass before the abyss claimed her.

Scene 5: Omen's Dawning

Deep within Ciyun Temple's crypt, Shen found Lin Yuan comatose amid bronze mirrors. The girl's big dipper tattoo mutated into a Tengshe (Flying Serpent) hexagram. Her earring chip replayed horrors: the red-clad woman atop Wu Zhou's Mingtang, modern corpses piled below—each instep a festering Nine Palaces sigil.

A hologram flickered. The woman caressed her writhing belly—no fetus, but a spacetime vortex. "You think I steal your throne? I clear obstacles for our heir."

Shen's luopan exploded, needles suspending as DNA helices. She finally saw the woman's serpent sigil's truth—not ink, but hair-thin temporal fissures devouring her flesh.

As stormwater breached the crypt, Wang Zhen reported new findings: Chen's Guizang ear markings matched Shen's future reign era's emblem. In a Shanghai tattoo parlor, an apprentice inked the same hexagram on a client's foot—the mirror reflected Wang's grim face.