Chapter 15: The Teardrop Calamity

Scene 1: The Phoenix Trapped

Bronze chains crisscrossed the palace pillars, suspending Shen Qinghuan mid-air. Blood dripped from her shattered wrists, pooling into an eerie Bagua diagram on the floor. The red-clad woman reclined on an obsidian throne, gilded nails tapping the armrest, her stilettos pressing into Su Que and Lin Yuan's spines. Fluorescent venom flowed through bronze tubes embedded in the maids' corrupted tattoos, funneling into the spacetime vortex swirling in the woman's pregnant belly.

"Your serpent sigil grows more vivid, Shimei." The woman stroked her swollen abdomen, where dragon veins pulsed around a vortex showing six-year-old Shen curled in a wardrobe. "Pity your pride will shatter beneath my heels."

Wang Zhen and Chen Guodong knelt like puppets below the dais. Their scalps flayed open revealed skulls carved with Guizang hexagrams, bronze tubes in their eye sockets dripping cerebrospinal fluid. Shen raised her head despite vertigo, catching the metallic glint of the woman's vermilion teardrop mole under palace lanterns.

Lin Yuan's DNA earrings shattered, shards cutting Shen's cheek. The blood's tang triggered a memory—Lady Cui, the Tang Dynasty official, had painted an identical teardrop in blood before her death.

Scene 2: Eyes Closed, Gaze Beyond

"Mistress... leave us..." Su Que's plea choked as stilettos crushed her larynx, mercury vapor seeping from her rotting tattoos. Shen closed her eyes, letting chains bite into her shoulders—a desperate gambit: using pain to anchor her consciousness through time without magic.

The woman's mockery pierced her ears: "Surrendering already? How disappoint—"

Shen's mind surged like stormy seas. She forced herself to relive Lady Cui's final moments: cracks in the Astrological Bureau's floor tiles, cinnabar moles on bronze automatons' foreheads, verdigris on mechanical prosthetics... When memory fixed on Lady Cui's teardrop mole, an icy spike stabbed her temple!

"Cough..." Shen's head slumped, breath ceasing. The woman rose, gilded nails scraping Wang's mechanical spine: "Check her. Keep her alive for torment."

Scene 3: Twin Souls, Shared Fate

Wang's metallic fingers neared Shen's neck—and recoiled from a golden flash. Her consciousness had shattered spacetime, plunging into rain-lashed Chang'an.

703 CE: Eve of the Shenlong Coup

Shen awoke on the Astrological Bureau's eaves, rainwater soaking her boots. Below, Lady Cui adjusted bronze automatons with a mechanical arm, their forehead cinnabar moles glowing like the red-clad woman's.

"Confirmed..." Shen ripped her sleeve, carving a blood sigil—the Hàn Lóng Jīng's "Soul-Severing Array," channeling her modern body's energy through pain. As she finished, seven fire meteors streaked the sky, overlapping with Lujiazui's neon glow.

Lady Cui looked up, black blood oozing from her teardrop mole: "Who dares spy on providence?!"

Scene 4: Heart-Piercing Chain

Shen leapt down masked, snatching a peachwood hairpin from the altar. As Lady Cui's prosthetic arm blocked the strike, Shen exposed her wrist's counterfeit serpent sigil—inked with magnetic powder.

"Who dares rebel in the palace?" Lady Cui's synthetic voice dripped scorn. The automatons pivoted, but Shen tore open her collar—exposing a barcode: "Celestial Bureau No. 703."

Shen drove the hairpin into floor cracks, igniting pre-planted sulfur charges. "Even your barcodes are flawed—no wonder you suck brains in the future!"

Lady Cui's pupils contracted—in the modern palace, the red-clad woman vomited black blood as her vortex devoured her organs.

Scene 5: Spacetime Resonance

"Mistress—the array backlashes!" Lin bit through bronze tubes, spraying mercury into the red-clad woman's face. Su Que lunged at Wang, dragging them both into a collapsing vortex.

In Tang-era Chang'an, Shen hauled Lady Cui onto roof beams. Explosions rocked the Astrological Bureau as EMP pulses from automatons synced with thunder, quantum-folding the structure.

"You think killing me matters?" Lady Cui's mechanical heart split, revealing an antimatter core. "My clones span all timelines—"

Shen's Tang-era maids, Zhuque and Qingluan, burst in to shield her. Recognizing Shen, Lady Cui snarled: "Audacious wretch!" She thrust a sword at Shen's throat.

In the modern palace, the red-clad woman ordered Wang and Chen to attack—but Su Que and Lin formed a protective barrier, repelling them.

Flaming pillars erupted around Lady Cui, battering Shen's trio. Zhuque and Qingluan seized Lady Cui's legs. "Mistress—fulfill your destiny!" They dragged her into the inferno. A blinding light consumed them.

Finale: Blood Teardrop Key

The light hurled Shen's consciousness back to her modern body. Bronze chains snapped as she collapsed, watching the red-clad woman scream—Lady Cui's death in Tang triggered clone teardrops to explode globally.

"How... dare you..." The woman's prosthetics sparked. Wang and Chen's neural interfaces melted.

Shen seized a stiletto, plunging its heel three inches below the woman's navel: "Did you forget, Shijie? Hàn Lóng Jīng's final volume was written in blood."

As the palace crumbled, Su Que and Lin clung to the woman's legs: "Go! Now!" Shen leapt into a closing spacetime rift, hurling her hairpin into the vortex's heart—where a six-year-old girl's phantom materialized, her teardrop mole blazing crimson.

Embers

Dawn pierced Ciyun Temple's ruins. Shen awoke in rubble, grieving four lost maids. Across the Bund, a woman in Dior haute couture led a girl across the street. The child turned—her pupils flashed with gilded data streams, teardrop mole resonating with Shen's new wrist sigil.

Shen clutched half a bronze key salvaged from the woman's dissolving belly. Oracle Bone script bled between its teeth:

"Those who defy fate must bear twin calamities."