Chapter 23: Blood Reflects the Celestial Pivot

As the shadow of the sun sliced across the Hanyuan Hall plaza from the nine-ridged hip-and-gable roof, Shen Qinghuan's Black Armored Army had already arranged itself into the mutable formation of the twenty-eight constellations. She stood at the eye of the Horned Wood Dragon position, gazing a hundred paces away at the bronze xiezhi—mythical beasts meant to guard prisons—flanking Wu Meiniang's dragon throne, their mouths clutching the blood-drenched heads of Caiyun and Zun.

"Your Majesty's skill at changing fortunes surpasses even the Director of the Astronomy Bureau," Shen Qinghuan said, her gilded hairpiece unmoving in the northern wind, though her five fingers crushed the tortoise shell in her sleeve. Three days ago, during the prisoner exchange, the golden hairpin in Wu Meiniang's hair now pierced Caiyun's severed neck.

Wu Meiniang caressed the xiezhi's single horn, her vermilion-painted nail dotting its brow with cinnabar. "I heard Master Shen once laid out a Seven Star Life-Extending Lamp in the Taiji Palace to save a laundry maid?" With a sudden sweep of her sleeve, Caiyun's head rolled down the vermilion steps, a bronze divination nail embedded starkly in her forehead. "Pity this girl was still crying out 'Choose Young Master Zun' as she died."

Shen Qinghuan's spirit snake seal darted from her wrist to her neck, and Chang'an's earth veins trembled. The captured Deputy Director of the Astronomy Bureau let out an inhuman howl—countless bronze divination markers burrowed out from beneath his skin, assembling midair into the "Marsh Fire Revolution" hexagram Wu Meiniang had divined last night.

"This hexagram says, 'Those who alter fate shall be crowned in blood.'" As Wu Meiniang rose, the jade beads on her twelve-layered crown revealed themselves as miniature human skulls. "Why not use Master Shen's head to consecrate the new calendar of my Great Zhou…"

Before she could finish, the white tiger position's floor tiles beneath Shen Qinghuan exploded. Long-dormant Tianji Pavilion deathsworn burst from the earth, their poisoned Luoshu Nine-Star Discs aimed at her throat. The Black Armored Army's twenty-eight constellation formation instantly shifted into a Nine Palace Killing Array, only to find Wu Meiniang had already engraved the Ziwei Enclosure star chart into the plaza's tiles—black water seeped from every seam, killing on contact.

"Your Majesty, do you know the true meaning of 'Marsh Fire Revolution'?" Shen Qinghuan leapt atop the xiezhi, yanking off Wu Meiniang's hairpin and hurling it skyward. The golden threads entwined with strands of hair ignited into eerie blue flames under the sunlight—hair they had exchanged three years ago during their alliance!

When the flames touched Zun's head in the xiezhi's mouth, his long-dead face suddenly opened its eyes. A meteoric iron talisman slipped from his lips—the very spacetime anchor Shen Qinghuan had held in her mouth when she crossed over. The entire Hanyuan Hall warped, and the sun, moon, and star patterns on Wu Meiniang's ceremonial robes detached from the brocade, materializing as tangible celestial bodies floating in midair.

"You carved the dragon vein into his skull!" Wu Meiniang's expression finally faltered as she swung her jade scepter at Shen Qinghuan's crown. But the scepter passed through a phantom, striking the xiezhi—Shen Qinghuan had already used the meteoric iron's resonance to escape into the earth vein, her voice echoing among the stars:

"Today, I, Shen, offer Chang'an's eight rivers as a sacrifice, using my dearest friends' bloodied remains as a catalyst, transforming this 'Marsh Fire Revolution' into 'Water and Fire in Harmony'!"

The moat surged backward, and the Wei and Jing rivers converged midair into a Taiji diagram. Caiyun and Zun's broken bodies reassembled at the yin-yang fish eyes, forming two bronze battle-axes wreathed in mercury and subterranean fire. As Wu Meiniang summoned the Ziwei Star to crash into the Taiji diagram, Shen Qinghuan erupted from a fissure in the earth vein. The peachwood sword in her hair, now brimming with dragon qi, transformed into a crimson-gold giant blade.

"This strike is for the annotators of the *Female Precepts* you buried alive in the Yeting Palace!"

As the sword light cleaved the star array, blood fountains erupted from every well in Chang'an. Wu Meiniang's twelve-layered crown shattered, revealing a scalp tattooed with dense hexagrams—a heaven-stealing, fate-altering talisman drawn with the blood essence of three thousand boys and girls. Shen Qinghuan's peachwood sword lodged in her skull, its blade shimmering with phantom skyscrapers of Shanghai's Lujiazui.

"Why do you think I changed Tang to Zhou?" Wu Meiniang bled from her seven orifices yet laughed uncontrollably, tearing open her dragon robe to reveal meteoric iron shards at her heart. "The extraterrestrial stone you brought long ago fused the fates of two dynasties…"

Shen Qinghuan abruptly released her grip and stepped back. The bronze battle-axes on the Taiji diagram flew toward the Hanyuan Hall's ridge beast, and the entire palace began collapsing into a black hole. As the spacetime rift swallowed Wu Meiniang, Shen Qinghuan glimpsed the Bund's clock tower from 1988 flickering in its depths—her father cradling six-year-old her, burying a bronze sundial in the Huangpu River embankment.

"So it was you…" She spat a mouthful of scalding star sand, catching Caiyun's hair ribbon as it fell from the void. Wrapped inside was half a fish-shaped token, its back inscribed in Wu Zetian's own hand: "Sun and moon in the sky—mere lice-picking in a mirror."

Wu Meiniang laughed maniacally. Though blood poured from her pierced seven orifices, it seemed insufficient to truly harm her. Shen Qinghuan stood bewildered as the Wu Meiniang before her shattered like a mirror—the real Wu Meiniang had already escaped. Another mirror illusion! But this time, Shen Qinghuan was the one ensnared. Caiyun, Qingfeng, Zun, and countless soldiers' lives—Shen Qinghuan's rage reached its peak. She resolved to do something unprecedented in history, something no one had ever dared to attempt or even conceive!