Chapter Six: Longevity Sacrifice – The City Ablaze (End of Volume One)

The floor of the Governor’s Mansion groaned.
The "prison fire" inside Shen Zhui and the "resentment qi" surging from below clashed violently in the air, sparking visible black arcs of lightning. With every step he took, the bluestone slabs beneath him instantly crumbled to dust. He looked like a demon crawling out of a burning hell, molten‑gold light seeping through the lava‑like cracks in his skin.
"Stop him! He must not reach the altar!"
Ajiao shrieked, her once‑delicate face twisted with fear. Her hands clawed the ground, and with a violent slam—
The study floor collapsed.
A massive, bottomless circular pit yawned open before them. This was the heart of the capital's sewers: the Living‑Stake Pit.
Shen Zhui stood at the edge and looked down. His stomach cramped. There was no soil at the bottom—only layer upon layer of mummified corpses, frozen in their final dying struggles. All their heads pointed toward the center, where a giant pillar made of countless human vertebrae rose like a Heaven‑Piercing Column.
"Zhui’er, this is the price of immortality." Lu Zhenying stood atop the column, his figure distorted and swollen in the dark‑golden glow of the pill. The sarcoma on his neck had swollen to its limit; beneath the transparent membrane, the Longevity Pill was frantically sucking up the resentment rising from the pit. "These thousand living stakes were meant to prop up the backbone of the Great Jing Dynasty. Now—come in."
Lu Zhenying swept his sleeve. The nine hundred ninety‑nine oil lamps around the altar blazed blood‑red.
A tremendous suction force, like a black hole, tried to drag Shen Zhui into the abyss. Outside the window, the possessed commoners knelt in perfect unison, chanting a low, monotonous dirge—a "farewell chant" for the sacrifice.
"You speak of the dynasty’s backbone while using the people as stakes? You don’t deserve to utter the name of Jing!"
Shen Zhui laughed wildly, his voice shaking in the firelight. Instead of resisting the pull, he leaped, turning himself into a blazing meteor plunging straight into the pit.
"He’s mad! He’s walking right into the trap!" Ajiao froze.
The instant Shen Zhui landed among the corpses, the mummified bodies seemed to come alive. Countless withered hands clawed at his ankles, his thighs, trying to drag him into eternal darkness.
"Old Sixth, if you’re still here—watch this!"
Shen Zhui plunged his left hand into his own chest. He grabbed the still‑fresh wound, tearing open the scab, and pulled out a clump of burning heart’s blood essence. He pressed the blood onto the shattered remains of the Soul‑Calming Bell, then stabbed the shard into the base of the Heaven‑Piercing Column.
"Bi’an’s Wrath – Prison Fire Incinerate!!"
The cold Living‑Stake Pit instantly became an erupting volcano.
The "No Sunlight" prison fire, born to suppress extreme resentment, finally met its tinder. Golden‑red flames swallowed the entire pit. The wailing living‑stake souls, touched by that fire, gradually shed their purple‑black hue and revealed peaceful, serene faces.
They were not being burned—they were being delivered by the purest, most yang‑charged hellfire.
"No!! My pill! My immortality!"
Lu Zhenying roared like a wounded beast. As the resentment burned away, the sarcoma on his neck shriveled and blackened. The dark‑golden Longevity Pill, deprived of nourishment, began to drain Lu Zhenying’s own life force.
"Ajiao! Save me! Save me!" he screamed, clawing at his neck. The pill’s tendrils burst out through his eyes, his ears, his nostrils, desperately searching for a new host.
Ajiao stared at the pit now turned into a sea of fire. A cruel glint flashed in her eyes. She did not save Lu Zhenying. Instead, she slid a pitch‑black dagger from her sleeve and stabbed it into his heart.
"Governor, since the pill is not yet finished, let your own heart’s flesh serve as the final dregs!"
She twisted the blade and ripped out the pill together with the withered sarcoma. Lu Zhenying’s eyes bulged. His lips moved, but no sound came out. His body rapidly shriveled into a dry corpse and tumbled into the flames.
Shen Zhui walked across the burning bones, step by step, toward the altar. His uniform was completely burned away. On his bare chest, the tattoo of Bi’an roared with deafening fury.
"Ajiao, you’re not going anywhere."
"Shen Zhui, you’re already a spent force. That fire is burning your own soul—it’s already cracked!"
"Cracked, so what?" Shen Zhui’s eyes blazed. "A warden guards the gate and kills ghosts. If I can send you to hell, this life of mine is well spent."
He lunged forward. His long blade, Baipi, tempered by the prison fire, had become translucent as crystal.
"Cut!!"
No fancy moves. Only the accumulated fury of more than twenty years—anger at the injustice of this world.
The blade‑light tore through the darkness, slicing apart the altar behind Ajiao and the false sacred screen. Ajiao screamed and raised her purple talons to block, but the instant they touched the blade‑light, her arms turned to ash.
The blade passed through her body.
Ajiao looked down at the gaping hole in her chest, then at the pill in her hand—now dim and crumbling into dust. She gave a bitter smile. Her body began to disintegrate from the edges, dissolving into a stream of foul black smoke.
"Shen Zhui… you think killing us ends the dream of immortality? In this capital… there are plenty who want to live ten thousand years…"
With Ajiao’s disappearance, the entire Governor’s Mansion erupted in a thunderous collapse.
The Living‑Stake Pit caved in completely. Prison fire shot into the sky, burning through the heavy clouds that had shrouded the capital for days.
On the horizon, a pale hint of dawn appeared.
Shen Zhui knelt in the heart of the inferno. His long blade was planted in the ground, holding up his trembling body. His eyes had regained their clarity, but the killing aura that had sustained him was rapidly fading.
Through the flames, he saw Old Sixth standing not far away, wearing a clean Dali Temple uniform, waving at him.
"Old Sixth…" Shen Zhui murmured, a relieved smile crossing his lips.
"Officer! Officer, hold on!"
Hurried footsteps came from a distance. Not assassins—real Dali Temple soldiers, and ordinary citizens waking from the cult’s control.
Just before Shen Zhui closed his eyes, he felt someone hold him. The hands were warm, nothing like the cold of the inn or the dryness of the dungeon.
"Lu Zhenying is dead… the list… is… on… me…"
Before he could finish, Shen Zhui’s head lolled, and he sank into darkness.
---
Morning.
The rain had stopped. The sky was clear. The Governor’s Mansion lay in ruins, but the foul stench that had haunted the capital’s underground was finally gone.
The new Dali Temple Minister stood beside the rubble, watching as Shen Zhui was carried out. He was alive. But his hair had turned completely white, and a scar shaped like Bi’an had formed over his heart—a wound that would never heal.
Where Shen Zhui had lain, a half‑burned skin‑paper list fluttered in the breeze.
Most of the names were burned away. Only the one at the bottom, circled in cinnabar red, stood stark in the morning light.
"Shen Zhui."
Beside the name, a line of tiny, ant‑like characters had appeared:
“The catalyst is destroyed. The furnace will rekindle. Meet again when the Waking of Insects comes.”
The Longevity Sacrifice was far from over.