Chapter 007: Broken Horn Shatters Stone to Carve a Clear Channel, Blood-Feathered Spirit Dove Plummets with Deadly Omens

Thirty-six verdant, jade-like seedlings of Scarlet Cloud Spirit Rice stood straight and tall within the loose, oil-black soil, their leaves gently unfurling in the morning draft.

The soybean-sized drops of spiritual dew that had gathered upon their leaf tips had already dissolved into the veins of earth with the breeze, transforming into pure botanical moisture to shield their tender roots.

Gu Qingwei squatted along the furrow edge. He scooped up a handful of damp Black Spirit Loam and rubbed it slowly between his calloused fingers, his expression devoid of the slightest complacency.

Though this third of an acre had been moderated by the Poison-Devouring Sacred Microbes into fertile warmth, it remained surrounded by miles of calcified dead earth, baked solid over ten thousand years.

Once the midday sun reached its zenith, the lingering scorching subterranean heat would encroach from all sides. Without a perimeter channel to drain stagnant brine, shield against the heat fiend, and conserve moisture, these tender seedlings would wither within three days.

Gu Qingwei pushed himself upright and tied his coarse hemp sleeves high, revealing lean, corded forearms stained with soil and sweat.

“MOOO—”

A low, resonant lowing broke the silence behind him.

The old yellow ox stepped leisurely from the drafty mud-and-thatch shed. The jagged stump of its broken horn caught the morning sun, gleaming with a deep, obsidian sheen.

Lashing its thick tail, the beast walked directly up to Gu Qingwei. It lowered its massive head, nudging its neck into the thick hemp harness resting in the dirt.

"Old partner, I have to trouble you to pull another round today," Gu Qingwei said softly, patting the ox's broad, sturdy shoulder. "Three feet out from the seedlings, we'll carve an annular channel half a foot deep—drain the turbid brine out, and draw the fresh air in."

The ox’s throat cartilage shifted with a dry scrape, exhaling a faint rumble of human speech:

"Hitch the plow. These old bones can take far more than this."

Gu Qingwei gripped the worn wooden plow handles. Thick, yellowish calluses covered his palms and thumbs as he planted his feet firmly into the dark loam.

"Hah!"

With a low shout, the old ox dug its forehoofs into the earth. Ropes of sinew rippled beneath its hide like tightened bowstrings.

Crunch!

Its slate-colored hooves crushed the baked crust, and the old plow—patched together from iron and scrap timber—groaned in protest. The iron share sliced through the stubborn dirt, carving a path northward toward higher ground.

The upturned black loam exuded a gentle, vegetal warmth. Behind the plow, a neat trench half a foot deep and over a foot wide extended swiftly outward.

Yet just as the plow reached the northern ridge mouth facing the distant rear mountains of the Qingling Sect, a sudden calamity struck!

CLANG—!!

A violent, deafening screech of colliding metal exploded across the dead wasteland, like a bronze warhammer slamming down upon a giant steel anvil!

The wooden plow violently bucked. An immense kinetic recoil surged up the handles, slamming into Gu Qingwei’s forearms.

Gu Qingwei let out a muffled grunt as his feet skidded half a yard through the mud. The already worn wrought-iron share was chipped clean open, curling back with a jagged, thumb-wide gash!

The ox’s massive bulk was yanked to an abrupt halt, hooves sinking into the mire as the coarse hemp ropes dug painfully into its shoulders.

Ignoring the numbness stinging his arms, Gu Qingwei took two quick strides forward to unhitch the harness. He dropped to his knees before the shattered furrow.

Drawing the battered iron cleaver from his hemp belt, he carefully shoveled away the displaced dirt and scorched gravel.

Barely three inches down, a jagged boulder the size of a water buffalo’s skull lay revealed.

Its surface was mottled with jagged black and red veins, radiating an eerie glow like a smoldering coal. A suffocating wave of sulfurous heat rolled off the rock, so intense that the surrounding black soil within three inches had already dried into a pale, chalky crust.

"This is... a subterranean mineral fire fiend-rock."

For thousands of years, the Alchemy Fire Hall of the Qingling Sect had dumped its toxic slag into the rear mountain valleys. Mineral toxins and volatile fiend-qi had settled along subterranean veins for millennia, consolidating into dead stone that was harder than tempered iron and intensely searing to the touch.

This petrified fiend-stone sat dead-center along the canal's projected path, choking the water flow. If it could not be breached, the entire irrigation channel was doomed.

"This boulder is a dead knot. Ordinary steel will only shatter against it," Gu Qingwei muttered, resting his fingers on the stone only to pull back as the heat stung his skin. "I’ll use the cleaver to chip along its fissures grain by grain. It will yield eventually. Go back to the shed and rest."

"Chip away grain by grain until when? Once the sun rises, those seedlings won't wait."

The old ox’s raspy voice grunted by his ear, thick with deep-rooted defiance.

Gu Qingwei turned, startled. The ox was already lifting its heavy skull, snorting twin jets of scalding vapor from wide nostrils. Ancient, slate-blue runes faintly pulsed along the keratin base of its broken right horn.

"Old partner, don't! The horn's break was only just re-knitted!" Gu Qingwei cried, stepping out to halt the beast.

"In my prime, when clearing mountain passes, this old bull shattered million-pound basalt monoliths without blinking! What is a measly lump of alchemy slag to me?!"

A mournful, thunderous roar erupted from the ox's throat.

BOOM!

Its four hooves shattered the hard ground. Lowering its head, the beast charged straight into the pit and slammed its broken horn into the red-veined boulder!

CRASH—!!

Soil erupted. Blinding sparks sprayed into the air like shattered firecrackers!

The iron-hard fiend-stone groaned with a sickening crunch. A cloud of acrid, crimson smoke billowed upward.

The ox’s massive body lurched violently. White foam spilled from the corners of its mouth, and the newly healed seam on its broken horn split open, fresh crimson blood trickling down its broad brow.

Yet the beast stood its ground. Its four hooves locked into the mud like cast iron pillars. Though its flanks trembled from the impact, it held its head high, refusing to yield an inch before the stubborn stone!

Across the boulder's face, seven or eight deep, finger-wide fissures had splintered outward from the point of impact.

A pang shot through Gu Qingwei’s heart. He rushed forward, throwing an arm around the ox’s trembling neck, mud and fresh blood smearing across his rough sleeves:

"Enough! Stand and rest! Leave the rest to me!"

Gu Qingwei spun around and dropped to his knees, pressing his calloused, dirt-caked palms firmly into the scorched fissures!

Against his bare chest, the primordial bronze talisman vibrated with a low hum.

Myriad Transformations Micro-Observation—activate!

Under his microscopic spiritual perception, the internal fiend-qi within the boulder writhed like thousands of tangled crimson vipers, biting into one another to form an unyielding mineral core.

To ordinary men, such poison was a curse to be fled from. But Gu Qingwei understood the Dao of the soil: everything under heaven possesses mutual generation and restraint. Fiend-qi was not inherently evil; strip away its wild fury, and it could nourish ten thousand spirits!

"Myriad dust transformations, channel life and breath—turn violence into gentle grace!"

Gu Qingwei sank his shoulders and exhaled. Pure five-element true essence surged from his dantian through his palms. The bronze talisman flared with clear, emerald vitality, pouring into the cracks opened by the ox like thawed spring water.

Deep within the third of an acre of Black Spirit Loam, the Poison-Devouring Sacred Microbes stirred. Millions of invisible fungal filaments surged through the moisture, boring into the stone's microscopic pores.

Hiss—hiss—

A ceaseless sizzling sound rose from the depths of the rock.

The millennial fire toxins fought back violently, sending waves of scorching heat straight through Gu Qingwei’s meridians. His arms grew numb and throbbing with pain, and cold sweat dripped from his chin into the cracks.

Gritting his teeth, Gu Qingwei held his focus with the stubborn resolve of a peasant coaxing green shoots from frozen mud. He guided the microbes to engulf and neutralize the wild fiend-qi layer by layer, transmuting the volatile mineral venom into rich, tempered earth nutrients.

Deprived of its fiery malice, the dense iron matrix swiftly softened. The hard mineral shell dissolved like sugar in water, transforming within breaths into a porous, slate-gray stone resembling honeycomb clay!

Enduring the dizzying fatigue of drained essence, Gu Qingwei thrust his hands into the loosened rock like blades, scooping and sculpting the porous material along the natural slope.

A deadly boulder that had blocked the earth's veins was reshaped into an irrigation trench a rod long, its inner walls lined with porous, toxin-absorbing chambers!

When the turbid groundwater filtered through the channel, the microscopic microbes nested in the walls devoured the last traces of subterranean poison. The water that trickled out at the far end was cool, pristine, and gentle, flowing in an emerald ring around the thirty-six seedlings.

“The broken horn flinches not as stubborn boulders shatter,
Guiding clear spring water to nourish and fatten the rice.
Say not the barren waste is severed from all living veins;
A weeping bird plummets through blood, bearing warning of dire perils.”

Gu Qingwei pushed himself up and hurried to the ox's side. Cupping clear water from the new canal, he washed the blood from the beast's brow and applied a layer of cool, soothing mud over the wound.

Yet as he watched the slender trickle in the ditch, his mind remained sober: this porous stone canal was a marvel, but it could only capture subterranean seepage. If the sect shut the northern mountain sluice gate upstream, the channel would run dry.

His lifeline was still held in the greedy grip of Manager Zhao.

Plip.

Without warning, the yellow haze high above roiled violently. A single drop of thick, dark blood pierced the mist, splattering against the edge of the newly sculpted stone canal right before his feet.

Gu Qingwei’s brow furrowed. His first reaction was to sweep his wide sleeve out to shield the fresh canal, preventing the vile blood from tainting the clean water.

Immediately afterward, a mournful, choked shriek tore through the air!

A streak of bloodstained white tumbled haphazardly from the sky. Wings mangled, quill bones shattered, it reeked of dark necrotic poison as it slammed straight into the soft mud beside the stone trench!

It was a white-feathered messenger spirit dove, hovering at death’s door.

And tied tightly to its mangled right claw with dark iron wire was a half-inch lacquered dispatch cylinder. The fresh blood sealing its wax cap had not yet dried, stamped with the cinnabar imprint of a bloodthirsty wolf head—the private, sinister seal of the Outer Sect Manager's Office!

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter and can't wait to see what happens next, Chapter 008 through Chapter 012 (5 Advance Chapters) are already live on my Patreon under the [The Dying Ox] tier (or unlock both novels via the [Grand Dao All-Access] tier)!

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