Chapter 12: Lethal Mirrors

Scene 1: A Traitor's Knees

Inside a flooded anti-aircraft bunker beneath the Huangpu River, the red-clad woman leaned against a bronze taotie statue, her gilded nails tracing the barcode behind Wang Zhen's ear. When a scanner's red beam struck it, the code fractured into the Tianshou era emblem from Wu Zetian's reign.

"The evidence chain is airtight, Mistress." Wang's tongue slithered over the altered Nine Palaces tattoo on her instep, saliva mingling with pus in the corrupted Pojun star position. "Forensics is ours. Tomorrow's headline: 'Feng Shui Serial Killer Case Solved.'"

The woman stomped on his throat, her pregnant belly's spacetime dragon veins glowing crimson. "We won't wait for tomorrow." She shoved an EMP wuzhu coin into his mouth. "I want Shen Qinghuan's obituary on the news by midnight."

Wang's pupils flashed robotic blue—the barcode was a neural interface, now uploading assassination protocols into his synapses.

Scene 2: Mystic Healing

Deep within Ciyun Temple's crypt, Shen Qinghuan submerged Lin Yuan in a medicinal bath of magnetic powder and cinnabar. Seven hundred bronze mirrors refracted moonlight into surgical blades of cold light in her palms.

"Three stitches at Kan to mend, Li to purge mercury." She pierced Su Que's Tengshe hexagram tattoo with silver needles. Nanobots coursed through veins, expelling blood-vine parasites. Lin's festering collarbone tattoo suddenly levitated, projecting a hologram of the red-clad woman's Mingtang death array.

"Mistress! Wang Zhen is closing in!" Su Que's earring chip blared. Shen sneered, driving her last lightning-struck jujube spikes into fissures. The crypt inverted—her apothecary now a mirrored kill room.

Scene 3: Illusionary Ambush

When SWAT floodlights pierced the crypt's darkness, Wang Zhen saw only illusions: Shen retching blood, her maids chained beneath bronze taotie claws, their tattoos rotting to bone.

"Shen Qinghuan, you're charged with seven murders..." Wang pressed his gun to her temple, oblivious to his smirking mirror reflection.

"Smell the corpse agarwood on you, Captain?" Shen looked up, her irises swirling with the Primordial Bagua. "Your mistress's amulet control mark."

Gunfire erupted. Seven hundred mirrors shattered. The real Shen emerged behind Wang, driving a peachwood spike into his neural interface. The "mortally wounded" maids sprang up—Su Que's DNA earring fired EMP pulses while Lin's corrupted tattoo spewed anesthetic gas.

Scene 4: Cornered Beasts

The self-destruct sequence activated. Laser grids shot from the taotie statue's lone eye. SWAT officers crashed into mirrored walls hallucinating horrors—some saw themselves as Mingtang sacrifices, others watched families devoured by blood-vines.

"Think you hacked my interface?" Wang tore open his uniform, his chest's dragon veins resonating with the red-clad woman's belly tattoo. "See this!"

He swallowed the EMP wuzhu coin. Its pulse warped spacetime—Tang Dynasty arrows rained through rifts. Shen dodged, but a gilded arrow pierced Su Que's shoulder. Its fletching read: "Shenlong Year 1."

Scene 5: Cicada's Escape

"Mistress! The Dui Gate collapses!" Lin coughed blood, activating backup arrays. Shen bit her tongue, spraying blood onto the bronze mirrors. Seven hundred beams converged on Wang.

His skin carbonized, dragon veins peeling away in screams. "No... she promised me... modern military governor..."

"Your mistress sacrifices even her own flesh." Shen crushed Wang's police terminal. A hologram revealed the red-clad woman in labor—the spacetime vortex in her belly consuming medical staff as the Huangpu and Yellow Rivers reversed course.

Escaping through sewage tunnels, Shen salvaged Wang's remaining ear. Blood seeped from its Guizang hexagram tattoo—a nanomagnetic death rattle: "Beware the Hour of Hai."