Chapter 21: The Veil Lifted
Xu Ling's fingers were arrested mid-manuscript. The medical chronicles murmured paradoxes—grape extraction meticulously noted, yet ensuing therapies invoked **sodium dimercaptopropanesulfonate (DMPS)**, an elixir for metalloid toxication.
"Rodenticide vestiges were ascertained," the junior constable affirmed, observing Xu Ling's knitted brow. "A meagre dose spared her mortal coil but seared lungs and nephrons. She lingers in Lethe's embrace."
Zhou Lian writhed beneath Xu Ling's penetrative scrutiny, her erstwhile audacity disintegrating. "The infirmary exacts tribute," she ejaculated, evading ocular engagement. "Else they'll cast her forth!"
Officer Zhang kneaded his temples. "Madam Zhou, exploiting martyrdom has its bounds. LoveLing Fruits has already disbursed twenty thousand yuan in clemency."
"I care not!" Zhou Lian's façade fissured, unveiling the desperation beneath. "Their gargantuan fruit nearly slew her! They're indebted!"
Xu Ling's digit alighted upon a chronological discordance. "The gastroscopy betrays no pomaceous remnants—yet subsequent assays allege rodenticide-wrought enteric ravages. Temporalities clash."
Officer Zhang inclined forward, embers of hope igniting. "You've unearthed something?"
"A confected Hippocratic narrative," Xu Ling's timbre steeled. "DMPS administration antedates the alleged fruital obstruction. This was no happenstance suffocation but calculated venefaction."
Zhou Lian's visage blanched. "Falsehoods! You shield your enterprise!"
"Then explicate this." Xu Ling gestured to the haematological ledgers. "Prolonged prothrombin intervals denote anticoagulant rodenticide—a languorous toxin demanding serial administrations. When precisely did you commence lacing her infusion, Dame Zhou?"
The interrogation chamber's fluorescence thrummed. Officer Zhang's stylus hovered above his ledger as Zhou Lian's resolve crumbled into mute trepidation. Beyond the monocular glass, the comatose matriarch's cardiac monitor pulsed its nascent cadence—a corporeal testament to filial perfidy.
"We require a toxicological assay from her domicile," Xu Ling insisted. "Scrutinize her personal teacup for warfarin vestiges."
Officer Zhang's oculars kindled with revitalized resolve. Externally, the cicadas' vespertine drone seemed to intone an archaic verity: the most baneful venoms oft ferment in familial cruets.
The Serpent's Desperation
Zhou Lian's gaze ricocheted between Xu Ling and Officer Zhang, her melodramatic accusations disintegrating beneath scrutiny. "What scheming? Their fruit shop sought to smother the truth!"
Officer Zhang massaged his nasal bridge. "Madam Zhou, your soap-opera fantasies taint reality."
Clutching Xu Ling's sleeve, Zhou Lian's voice ascended shrilly. "Settle the debts now! The hospital torments us daily!" Her audacity reeked of cornered vermin's panic—the fiscal blade now suspended above her own jugular.
Xu Ling disengaged with glacial poise. "The hospital shall grant reprieve." His digits flitted across the phone, summoning arcane allies.
Li Ruoxue's crystalline laughter pierced the receiver. "So the indomitable Xu Ling finally sues for my favour?"
"Your claypot levy shall be honoured," Xu Ling yielded. "Merely ensure the ICU's coffers remain flush."
"Consider it sealed! My recompense? A claypot symposium upon your return."
Officer Zhang observed this parley with reverent astonishment. This unadorned man wielded connections, bending municipal titans to his will—a tiger cloaked in a village tabby's fur.
Zhou Lian's joints liquefied. "You… you traffic with the director?"
"Through intermediaries of intermediaries", Xu Ling deflected, trailing the officer inward.
The precinct's fluorescents droned like accusatory hornets as Zhou Lian fled to Ten-Mile Fragrance Fruit Atelier. Proprietor Liang's den exuded putrid ambition, the middle-aged merchant mauling a cashier half his winters until Zhou Lian's invasion shattered their dalliance.
"The veil tears!" Zhou Lian collapsed before Liang's patent leathers, tremulous claws gripping his slacks. "That Xu Ling—no rural dullard! He unpicks our entire tapestry!"
Liang's concubine exchanged a glance pregnant with venomous arithmetic. "Elucidate. Methodically."
As Zhou Lian gibbered of medical paradoxes and Xu Ling's ominous erudition, Liang's jade-circled digits constricted about his teacup. The porcelain fractured—a fractal portent of their disintegrating machinations. Beyond, monsoon gales wailed through mango groves, bearing vendetta's whispers from the hamlet they'd dared to dupe.
The Tangled Skein
"Compose yourself," the cashier blended honeyed persuasion with veiled menace. "That Xu Ling's a medical dabbler. Maintain composure, and he'll grasp naught."
Zhou Lian bobbed her head frenetically. "I'll remain circumspect! Promise you'll aid me if tempests brew?"
Liang Xiaoyong's forbearance unravelled. "Cease! Your shopfront hauntings court suspicion."
The cashier interposed with silken diplomacy. "Boss Liang frets your visits may arouse curiosity. Here—" She thrust a satchel of clearance fruits into Zhou Lian's embrace. "Sustain yourself through these tribulations."
Zhou Lian's optics glistened at the benevolence. "Gratitude. I'll retreat into shadows, contacting you if exigencies arise."
"Summon *me* instead," the cashier scrawled digits swiftly. "Direct liaison with Boss Liang invites perilous scrutiny."
As Zhou Lian vanished, Liang's fury erupted. "Why mollycoddle that cretin?"
The cashier's timbre descended to an adder's hiss. "We require her pliability till we excise connections. Antagonise her now; she'll entangle us in her downfall."
Liang's ire transmuted to lecherous approval. "Ingenious vixen." His paws strayed as parallel dramas unfolded elsewhere.
At Central Hospital, Xu Ling, flanked by constabulary, approached the physician's sanctum. The portal yawned ajar beneath his rapping knuckles, unveiling a nurse hastily re-draping her décolletage and a tonsured medic fumbling with his girdle.
"C-Consultation hours!" The doctor stammered, perspiration beading on his alopecic crown.
The officers averted their optics, auricles aflame. "We'll… reconvene anon, Dr Jiang."
Xu Ling lingered, dawning recognition—the nurse's retreating silhouette mirrored Zhou Lian's Ten-Mile Fragrance conspirator. The physician's tremulous digits scattered dossiers, one exposing adulterated haematological records.
As the triad withdrew, Xu Ling's cellular device trilled—Li Ruoya's tremulous report of Zhou Lian's furtive emporium visit. The mosaic coalesced: discounted produce, falsified medical charters, a cashier's strategic numerals.
"Gentlemen," Xu Ling murmured, "let us revisit the teacup hypothesis. I conjecture we'll uncover rodenticide traces… and digital impressions matching our benevolent sales salesclerk."
The hospital corridor's mango-laden zephyr abruptly carried the ferrous tang of impending reckoning.
The Veil of Decadence
"Wu Jiajia?"
Xu Ling discerned the nurse's unveiled eyes beneath disordered scrubs. The woman petrified mid-flight, her countenance blanching as ocular trajectories collided.
Discomfiture congealed the atmosphere. Xu Ling averted his gaze—village gossip being tinder for conflagration. The junior constables exchanged omniscient glances, their curiosity a palpable entity.
Wu Jiajia's equanimity disintegrated. Palms shielding her visage, she fled the antiseptic corridor, muted lamentations reverberating.
"Known?" an officer ventured.
"Adjacent hamlet", Xu Ling curtailed, severing discourse.
Director Jiang wrenched his portal ajar, vexation simmering beneath his rubicund mien. "Declare your purpose!"
The officers proffered credentials. "We seek elucidation regarding Liu Shufen's prognosis."
Jiang collapsed into his throne, perspiration jewelling his clavicle. "Rodenticide-triggered nephric collapse. Comatose in intensive care." His digits percussed the desk—a man warring with pharmacological compulsions and vocational dissolution.
Xu Ling's ocular descent was deliberate. "Intemperance erodes vigour, Director. Dependency on *provocatives* cannot resurrect desiccated potency."
Jiang's complexion oscillated between carmine and alabaster. "Defamation!"
The officers traded perplexed regards as Xu Ling persisted, "Shall we parley with the attending physician instead?"
Jiang capitulated, snarling into his intercom. "Dr Wang shall attend to you!"
The triad egressed, intersecting Wu Jiajia's returning silhouette. The portal's locking mechanism engaged—sonic indictment of their postulations.
"Destiny's balance tilts cruelly for such femmes," Xu Ling mused, observing the officers' incarnadined auricles. "Her trajectory narrows to concubinage or repudiated dalliance."
Aflame, the corridor resonated with stifled ululations from Jiang's sanctum—macabre antiphon to the ICU's aseptic hush, where a matriarch's stertorous respiration marked chronometric passage. In the consultation chamber, Dr Wang awaited with adulterated records, oblivious to the viperine snare's imminent unravelling.
The Tainted Ambrosia
Within the clinical sterility of the consultation chamber, a youthful physician bent over cryptic annotations, his pen dancing across parchment. The officer's percussive summons severed his reverie.
"We seek enlightenment regarding Liu Shufen's malady," the constable intoned.
The medic rose, oculars ignited by intellectual fervour. "Her haematological enigma defies reason—pristine initial assays, yet subsequent screens unveiled fulminant rodenticide inundation."
He unfurled diagrams across the diagnostic altar. "Behold—the inaugural gastroscopy revealed voidness, yet twelve horological units thence, we discerned persica pulp remnants amidst sanguineous gastric erosions."
Xu Ling's digit traced chronological vectors. "Suggesting venomous ingress during clinical vigil?"
"Indubitably." The physician's quivering digit emphasised parchment. "Solely familial visitors graced her vigil—a neophyte fruitmongeress, later joined by the daughter-in-law."
The officers' gazes intersected. Xu Ling's telephonic summons conjured Xiao Yan—the apron-adorned acolyte whose nubile countenance blanched beneath institutional luminescence.
"I… I wrought no harm…" The maiden's timbre fluttered like a wounded columba.
Xu Ling modulated his cadence. "We pursue veracity, not condemnation. Unfold the vigil's chronicle."
Xiao Yan's recollection crystallized. "The daughter-in-law proffered preserved nectarines. Granddame consumed them beatifically ere… ere the spasms commenced."
A gelid hush descended. The physician's stylus clattered across linoleum, abandoned.
"Filial parricide?" The junior officer's larynx fractured. "Inconceivable!"
Xu Ling scrutinized the gastroscopic tableaux—persica fragments shimmering in monochrome visceral cartography. "The consummate vector. Saccharine conserve cloaking toxic bitterness."
Xiao Yan's lacrimation flowed unimpeded. "She dubbed it 'ambrosia for centenarian vigor'."
The disclosure hung like miasmic vapour. Beyond, cardiac monitors chirped oblivious counterpoint to this unfolding tragedy. Xu Ling's mandible hardened—the asp's venom transcended generations.
"Quarantine the intensive ward," he decreed. "That residual conserve shall be our damning relic."
As officers dispersed, the physician whispered, "What breed of progeny…"
"Not progeny," Xu Ling rectified somberly. "Reaper. Harvesting legacy through venomed succulence."
The infirmary's aseptic atmosphere curdled with perfidy's reek. Somewhere beyond these hygienic barriers, Zhou Lian's varnished talons doubtlessly clenched about another tainted vessel, oblivious to Nemesis' scales tilting inexorably against her artifice.
The Illuminated Betrayal
The junior constables harboured no scepticism. "Surveillance archives from preceding days should corroborate."
Xu Ling tempered their zeal, addressing Xiao Yan: "Recollect the conserve's composition—what varietals commingled?"
"Golden persica and citrus," she murmured.
The physician's complexion ashened. "Precisely the gastric remnants catalogued."
"To the ocular archives!" the medic proclaimed, shepherding the assembly through sanitized passageways.
Granular footage crystallized under augmentation—Zhou Lian traversed clinic corridors clasping an embossed tin. "Amplify the insignia!"
The officers' visages neared the monitor. "Hóngxīn Preserves" glared in pixelated veracity.
"The damning artefact," one officer intoned, his cadence freighted with disenchantment. Kinship's perfidy left acrid aftertastes surpassing professional cynicism.
"We shall entreat for instantaneous detainment," his counterpart decreed, the utterance ash-laden.
Xu Ling intercepted their egress. "Mere pawns dance on invisible strings. The arch-schemer lurks unperturbed."
The officers exchanged resolute nods—neophytes inflamed by untainted ardour. "We'll disentangle this arachnid's lattice filament by filament."
As they pivoted, the junior officer lingered, oculars ensnared by Xiao Yan's demure lashes. Xu Ling orchestrated clearance: "Require you supplementary deposition?"
The maiden's incarnadine cheeks mirrored the officer's auricles. Numerical cyphers were exchanged beneath juridical pretexts.
"Cupid's mantle becomes you," Xu Ling japed during their egress, though his levity dissolved upon attaining LoveLing Fruits.
Yu Mengna manifested like a chimeric vision—ivory pallor etched with vigilia's toll, yet bearing regally unbent. "Xiao Ling".
Their confluence carried the mass of phoenix ash. "I fancied—" Her vocal fracture transmuted to tempered steel. "I quaked at becoming morality's latest parable."
Xu Ling's contrition perished beneath her digital silencing. "Ambition's chariot rolls on hazard's stones. This path we co-charted."
Her carapace fissured incrementally. "In that stygian vault, I… parleyed with absent deities." Her pollex grazed his mandible's arc, a hieroglyphic confession. "For paternal solace. For… dialogues suspended mid-breath."
The unuttered thrummed—a tautened gossamer betwixt shared respiration. Beyond, crepuscular gilding bathed mango arbours in aureate pathos, cicadas hymning redemption's anthem. Elsewhere in custody, Zhou Lian's ululations harmonized with gloaming's descent—a cacophonous opera of nemesis and repercussion.
The Banquet of Serenity
The kitchen exhaled aromatic vapours—ginger and garlic performing their alchemical dance as Xu Ling conjured his edible opus. Yu Mengna's breath faltered before the cornucopian tableau: sun-gilded tomato mosaics beside lacquered cola-glazed wings, pork trotters braised to gelatinous perfection, and crackling chicken skins whispering promises of decadence.
"Xiao Ling", she chided, laughter laced with incredulity, "this Dionysian spread could nourish a phalanx of warriors!"
His face emerged from steam veils, boyish grin undimmed. "Survivors' rites demand extravagance, Nàjiě."
She descended to procure libations, returning with Tsingtao bottles weeping icy perspiration. Their chopsticks crossed like duelling rapiers over shared platters. "To guardian spirits," she toasted, amber liquid refracting lamplight into liquid topaz.
Xu Ling served her a trembling cube of braised trotter. "This sentinel's vigil shall never lapse again."
The confession lingered—a vow exchanged through soy-infused air.
"Previous captors..." he ventured, Tsingtao's courage loosening propriety's reins, "were their methods similarly...theatrical?"
Her chopsticks froze mid-arc. "Eleven abductions since girlhood. Father's coffers built my curriculum vitae in ransom negotiations." Her chuckle carried the metallic tang of old scars.
Wood shrieked against tile as he gathered her against his sternum. Her pulse fluttered like a wounded sparrow against his collarbone.
"They never—"
"Competent extortionists nurture clientele," she interrupted, fingers twisting his shirtfront into desperate origami. "The blade's edge always halted before true haemorrhage."
Midnight distilled their truths to essential essences. When Yu Mengna's lashes finally succumbed to exhaustion's gravity, Xu Ling bore her to bed—a Jingdezhen vase hairline cracked by life's careless handling.
"Stay..." The sleep-slurred entreaty anchored him to the down-filled shore.
He surrendered to the mattress's pull, their forms interlocking like puzzle pieces forged in cosmic fires. The smartphone's cold luminescence pierced the dark—Pan Heng's digital missive pulsating like a distress flare.
[Master Xu, debts unpaid span lifetimes.]
Xu Ling's thumb hovered above refusal until—
[Noon's banquet at Bóruìměi Palace? My heir draws breath through your grace.
The reply crystallized in darkness: [Honor compels.]
Dawn found him solitary, cotton sheets imprinted with jasmine ghosts. The bedside note fluttered—a paper sparrow bearing inked wisdom: Congee congeals, oh culinary deity. Devour ere it petrifies. Her sketched crescent moon winking like a conspirator against morning's tyranny.
He pressed the parchment over his heartbeat's drum, a secular reliquary. Beyond panes, mango boughs susurrated tales of karmic balances restored. Deep in justice's catacombs, Zhou Lian's pixelated visage flickered across surveillance grids—an Icarus finally scorched by self-spun flames.
The Weaver of Destinies
The congealed congee bore silent testament to his tardiness. Xu Ling glanced at the grandfather clock's ornate hands—10:30 AM. "Hmmm… Morpheus' embrace proves dangerously seductive." Sleep, that rare luxury since nocturnal cultivation consumed his hours.
At Bóruìměi Hotel's gilded portal, Lin Yutong emerged from receptionist ennui. "Wherefore your spectral absence yestereve?" She chided, emerald-manicured digits drumming Carrara marble. "Lady Qu waited till the witching hour!"
Xu Ling's silenced smartphone revealed three unanswered summons from Qu Xiao. "My circadian sentry deserted its post. Lead me to contrition's altar."
"Tread with mortals' caution," Yutong cautioned. "Her celestial majesty nurses Olympian wrath."
The hotel's corridors thrummed with midday lethargy. Beyond the mahogany portal, Qu Xiao massaged her temples like a Titaness besieged.
"Enter." Permafrost laced her command.
Xu Ling navigated the gelid atmosphere, digits alighting upon her pressure points unbidden. Qu Xiao's vertebrae stiffened, then yielded to his therapeutic alchemy.
"Does the wandering physician finally recall his patroness?"
"Chronos' threads unravelled unexpectedly," Xu Ling parried, thumbs etching spirals along her occipital ridge. "Tonight's session shall be threefold reparation."
The intercom's buzz fractured the détente—Pan Heng's retinue had arrived.
Within the private salon, bearish Pan Heng engulfed Xu Ling in ursine gratitude. "The celestial orrery rights itself through your grace!" His daughter—a diminutive replica with twin jasmine braids—peeked from the paternal shadow.
Qu Xiao surveyed the familial tableau, migraine momentarily eclipsed by intrigue. "You posit mortals command their celestial scripts?"
Xu Ling's fingers stilled upon her trapezius. "For those who dare recompose their astral scores? Not even the Jade Emperor presumes foresight."
Seven pairs of oculars—from wizened matriarch to suckling babe—tracked this denim-clad oracle.
Madam Pan pressed sandalwood joss sticks into Xu Ling's palm, tear-stained cheeks glistening. "Design your sanctum, Master. We'll raise its pillars to the heavens."
Qu Xiao's laughter—a rare cascade of silver chimes—pierced the solemnity. "Beware, Xu Ling. They'll enshrine you as the Patron Saint of Lost Progeny."
As abalone consommé perfumed the air, Xu Ling's smartphone vibrated—an encrypted number forecasting tempests. The screen fissured beneath his grip. Beyond the rosewood-panelled walls, Zhou Lian's judgement convened, her karmic ledger now eternally bound to the man who'd unveiled her poisoned sacrament.
The Unseen Verity
Pan Heng's exultation soured into despair. Qu Xiao witnessed the stoic magnate's quivering hands—a seismic rupture in his unyielding demeanour.
"Master Xu", Pan Heng's knees brushed the Persian rug, "you've resurrected my dawn only to unveil gathering tempests." His gaze swept toward Xiong Juan—the returned daughter whose waxen complexion whispered of concealed agonies.
Xu Ling's clinical scrutiny transcended social decorum. "Miss Xiong's pallor stems not from weariness—she harbours an ectopic conception."
The pronouncement exploded like a mortar round. Pan Heng reeled against vermilion-lacquered partitions. "A child? Yet she remains unwed!"
Xiong Juan's parched lips bloomed crimson as she worried them ragged. "Inconceivable… I knew not…"
Madam Pan manifested; her embrace was both sanctuary and confinement. "Let us commune privately, dearest." Their departure left vacuum-sealed stillness.
"Unearth the culprit!" Pan Heng entreated, talons clutching Xu Ling's sleeve. "Reveal the knave who—"
"Science, not sorcery, illuminates this truth," Xu Ling interposed. "Her meridian currents wail of impending catastrophe."
The reunion feast solidified into a vigil. Upon their return, Xiong Juan's tear-distended eyes evaded all inquiry.
"Resolved," Madam Pan proclaimed. "A phantom lover's reckless bequest."
Pan Heng's fist cratered the rosewood board. "Name the varlet! I'll reduce his lineage to—"
"Consort!" Madam Pan's censure petrified his fury. "Our child requires physicians, not vengeance."
Xu Ling's device vibrated presciently—Zhou Lian's sentencing flashed: *life imprisonment.* The synchronicity reeked of cosmic design.
As abalone porridge steamed ironic benediction, Xiong Juan's whisper cleaved familial pretence: "Shall I ever… cradle offspring?"
Xu Ling's response flowed like a pungent herbal decoction: "The fallopian ravages are grave, yet modern alchemies exist."
Pan Heng's crystal flute shattered against Ming dynasty shards. "Wealth commands miracles! Genevan clinics! Californian—"
"Father, cease." Xiong Juan's first utterance since returning bore tempered steel. "Let me wield my own sword."
Qu Xiao surveyed this fragmented tableau, cephalalgia forgotten. In the fractured luminescence, Xu Ling's silhouette resembled some cybernetic oracle—physician and prophet intertwined. The feast concluded sans celebratory pyrotechnics but with hushed consultations for Zürich reproductive savants, while beyond soundproofed walls, Zhou Lian's manacles snapped shut in contrapuntal rhythm to Xiong Juan's forged resolve.
The Meridian Tango
"Come, nestle by my side, child," Pan Heng's voice fractured, paternal remorse and absolution entwined. "This patriarch's failings exiled you to life's hinterlands."
Xiong Juan's tears sanctified their reunion. "Your quest never ceased—this daughter always knew."
The banquet chamber thickened with cathartic humidity. Qu Xiao observed the familial vignette through glacial dispassion, her soul's tundra untouched by sentiment's false spring.
Xu Ling catalogued her emotional sterility with diagnostician's precision. * This affective necrosis demands radical intervention.
Postprandial conviviality melted Pan Heng's boardroom carapace. "Four offspring gild my twilight years with mirth!"
"Twilight?" Xu Ling's mirth carried therapeutic warmth. "With such verve, Brother Xiong shall waltz through four seasons yet!"
As valedictions reverberated through onyx corridors, Qu Xiao's cephalalgia resurged. "Chronotherapeutic recalibration—the zenithal sun favours my humoral tides."
Her clandestine retreat materialized beyond a pivoting bookshelf—thirty square metres where sensory minimalism flirted with boudoir opulence. The central divan, a Nubian cotton expanse, received her sable-lace-adorned silhouette like a reliquary receiving sacred remains.
Xu Ling's larynx constricted. "Therapeutic vestments appear… transmuted."
Qu Xiao realigned her lace-fringed décolletage with horologist's exactitude. "Does this sartorial semaphore please my clinician?"
"Therapeusis demands ocular—"
"Sophist". Her laughter rippled like temple bells across tundra. "Tertiary session, yet your auricular capillaries still flare cardinal."
Xu Ling advanced with pantherine fluidity, argent needles shimmering like stellar cartography. "Tachycardia and pupillary expansion betray mutual perturbation, Xiao-jie."
Qu Xiao's equanimity fissured. "You presume—"
"Barrier breached." His triumph scintillated brighter than moxibustion flames. "Affective occlusion pierced."
Their suspended respirations synchronised with the grandfather clock's pendulum. Beyond damask walls, sommeliers decanted Bordeaux, oblivious that within this velour-lined atelier, twin spirits traced acupuncture meridians of yearning and restoration—a pavane where each filigree needle's descent charted liminal frontiers betwixt Hippocratic duty and forbidden harvest.
The Arrogance of False Claims
Argent needles dissolved into Qu Xiao's meridians. Vital energies cascaded through her corporeal channels, lulling her into chrysalis-like repose. As Xu Ling retrieved the final filament, his cellular device convulsed violently upon the rosewood console.
"Xu Dong—situation report."
Bedlam crackled through the receiver before his cousin's harrowed timbre emerged: "Li Clan Village barricades our lorry! Exorbitant transit levy demanded—thirty thousand!"
Clamorous invectives and ferrous clatterings underscored the communiqué. Xu Ling's phalanges blanched. "Maintain position. Imminent arrival."
Lin Yutong materialized at the lift portal. "Conflagration ignites?" Her ignition keys chimed like a carillon of war.
The zenithal sun scorched as they careened toward pastoral battlegrounds. A tableau of discord unfolded—shattered persimmons wept saccharine ichor across pockmarked bitumen, rustics brandishing staves and mattocks in tribal standoffs.
Xu Da-hai advanced with a limping gait, temporal blood flow staining his cheek. "They allege our conveyances desecrated their byway!"
Li Dawang, the rival patriarch, exhaled nicotine plumes like some self-styled sovereign. "Your mercantile behemoths have crushed our ancestral arteries. Tribute or termination."
Xu Ling's ocular survey dissected the "ravaged" thoroughfare—weather-fissured bitumen predating the millennium. "This concourse falls under provincial jurisdiction," he riposted with glacial precision.
The chieftain expectorated proximate to Xu Ling's brogues. "Jurisdiction? My forebears' ossified remains pave this path! Three myriad or…" He collapsed across the bitumen in histrionic martyrdom. "Let your capitalist juggernaut render me pavement!"
Xu Da-hai brandished a graipen. "They've obstructed the fluvial route! Barefaced brigandage!"
Xu Ling's gaze crystallized into arctic quartz. "Patriarch Li elects vehicular martyrdom over reason?"
The rabble stilled. Cicadas shrilled their desert psalm.
From his bitumen dais, the chieftain sneered. "No bullion? Relinquish your metallic beast!"
Xu Ling's digits performed an abacus dance—Newtonian formulae and hydrological data flickering across his neural matrix. Axle load indices. Bituminous tensile coefficients. Precipitation archives.
"Provincial Edict 7-42-9," he pronounced with judicial finality. "This carriageway's load tolerance exceeds our conveyance's mass by four metric tonnes. Your pecuniary demands contravene—"
The chieftain scrambled upright. "Enough pedantic prattle! Here, my word carves law!"
Xu Ling's device illuminated—a Provincial Transportation Bureau missive materialized, satellite chronographs exposing the road's antique decay.
As Xu Ling projected evidentiary holograms upon a nearby granary wall, the chieftain's nicotine-stained jowls drained of hue. The mob's implements descended like surrendering standards.
"Elect your paradigm," Xu Ling intoned. "Accept this illuminated truth, or justify your fictional claims to anti-corruption tribunals."
The chieftain's cigarette tumbled from palsied lips as the congregation dispersed like mist under solar scrutiny. The lorry's diesel heart roared anew, its treads crushing naught but counterfeit honour beneath radial might.
The Ash-Marked Path
"My captivity would prove transient—their hubris invites eternal darkness!" Xu Ling proclaimed, ascending the truck's pulpit with primal sovereignty.
The diesel heart ignited, the metallic leviathan shuddering beneath neophyte command. Rustics scattered like blown chaff as the juggernaut commenced its erratic voyage.
"By the celestial guardians—his path traces dragon veins!"
Li Dawang's machismo dissolved as the truck carved capricious arcs toward his bitumen perch. The chieftain scuttled crustacean-like into a cesspit brimming with porcine sewage and nocturnal excretions, emerging as a malodorous effigy of impotent rule.
Xu Ling alighted amidst humiliation's miasma. "Provincial thoroughfares salute ten-tonne burdens. Our steed bears but six."
The mob's susurrations stilled as three tattooed behemoths materialized—Black Dragon acolytes with brawn resembling petrified mangrove roots.
"Indemnity or annihilation, fruit monger," their chieftain rumbled, carious dentition glinting.
Xu Ling's smile radiated boreal finality. "These road lesions antedate Ming magistrate seals. Shall we consult stratigraphic records?"
A keratinous paw thrust toward his larynx—metacarpals yielding like mulberry bark beneath Xu Ling's grip, the *crunch* preceding pain's awakening.
"Sorcery!" The brute recoiled, cradling the mangled extremity.
Lin Yutong interposed her frame, hummingbird challenging raptors. "Breach his aura, and Madam Qu's ire shall blight your ancestral tombs!"
A brigand's soiled digit trespassed toward her cheek—impacting composite boot resin.
"Defiling wretches dare profane me!" Her spinning heel strike liquefied nasal ossicles, sanguine arcs staining terra cotta earth.
Xu Ling flowed like harmonized chaos—humeral strikes disassembling mandibles, digital precision arresting patellar function. The Black Dragon cohort collapsed as marionettes with severed filaments, their forms composing grotesque living still lifes.
"Counsel your hierarchs," Xu Ling advised, adjusting his cuffs, "subsequent impertinence warrants career conclusion."
As the syndicate scattered, the truck's combustion hymn resumed—leviathan treads reducing Li Dawang's forsaken sandal to bitumen particulates. The fruit-laden titan departed unchallenged, its legacy inscribed in diesel plumes and recalibrated hierarchies swirling in its turbulent wake.
The Serpent's Exposed Fangs
The brute collided with his confederates like ninepins struck by celestial wrath, their disordered sprawl bearing testament to Lin Yutong's martial virtuosity. The two residual ruffians exchanged trepidatious glances—advance into peril or retreat into ignominy?
"Assault, you poltroons!" the wrist-shattered ringleader bellowed, voice cracking with impotent fury.
Their reluctant onslaught concluded in aeronautical disgrace as Lin Yutong's whirling kicks propelled them into the embrace of hawthorn hedges. "The Black Dragon Society shall exact retribution for this affront!" they vowed, scrambling toward their battle-scarred van like beetles fleeing sunlight.
Xu Ling regarded Lin Yutong with newfound admiration. "Veiled aptitudes, Miss Lin?"
She brushed imaginary dust from her palms. "Did you imagine Madam Qu stocks her retinue with ornamental simpletons?" Her ocular focus shifted to mangosteens bleeding saccharine ichor across the thoroughfare. "Hinterland malefactors. Require bureaucratic intervention?"
Xu Ling demurred with an imperceptible head tilt. "This noxious weed I shall extirpate personally."
Their egress encountered abrupt postponement via Wang Huifen's matriarchal stratagem. "Does this jade accompany my scion?" The clan matron clung to Lin Yutong's digits, oculars gleaming with dynastic scheming.
"Parental unit, she merely—"
"—labours in hospitality," Xu Ling interposed, observing the Li sisters' synchronized ocular revolutions.
The détente fractured as Xu Long's voice thundered across the battleground, his silhouette materializing like an avenging titan. "You dare obstruct Ling's caravan?"
The malodorous chieftain recoiled, stench wafting like a miasmic aura. "Merely…municipal maintenance discourse!"
Xu Long's metacarpals detonated like percussion caps. "Whose invisible strings manipulate your avarice?"
Li Dawang's oculars darted toward the mist-shrouded foothills where silhouettes dissolved into pine groves. "Autonomous enterprise! Solely!"
Xu Ling's device vibrated—a cryptographic transmission from Qu Xiao's network materialized, revealing obsidian SUVs haunting the Li clan mausoleum. His smile acquired glacial sharpness. "Commercial ventures require silent partners, Chieftain. Shall we illuminate your ledger's shadowed columns?"
As vespertine hues gilded the arena in humiliation's patina, twin verities emerged: this pastoral skirmish merely preluded grander machinations, and Lin Yutong's spinning heel strike—executed with balletic precision—had etched more than podiatric impressions upon the communal psyche.
The Orchard's Bitter Harvest
Li Dawang recoiled like a singed mongrel beneath Xu Ling's advancing shadow. "Liang Xiaoyong!" He blurted, sweat mingling with ditchwater stench. "Proprietor of Ten-Li Orchard's Bounty—he proffered silver notes to kindle discord!"
"And those blackguards?" Xu Ling's voice carried winter's edge.
"His mercenary curs!" The chieftain's Adam's apple bobbed. "Fangs bared for slaughter!"
Xu Ling's smile congealed into Arctic determination—this blight required cauterization.
Wang Huifen interposed with hearth-warmth: "Return to ancestral halls tonight, child. Your sire harvested river-dancing crustaceans—still vibrant with life's spark!"
Li Ruoya annexed Xu Ling's arm with orchid-delicate possessiveness. "We shall attend to you, Elder Brother!"
Liu Shuxiang lingered in their wake, envy's ivy creeping through her gaze. "The restorative draught you prescribed nears its dregs…" Her lashes performed clandestine semaphore. "Might your wisdom replenish my phial ere nightfall?"
The retinue wound through crepuscular paddies, villagers' mirth weaving a fragile tapestry over latent storms. At the hamlet's threshold stood Xu Dajiao—his turbaned crown wept carmine testament to valour.
"Had you witnessed!" a tiller exclaimed. "The pretender-king wallowing in filth, while Ling's Valkyrie felled titans like autumn reeds!"
Xu Dajiao approached, humiliation's mantle upon his shoulders. "I have dishonoured your commission."
Xu Ling's grip became a benediction. "Your defiance preserved celestial nectar's flow. Sans your vigil, our harvest's heart would lie plundered."
Yu Mengna's summons pierced the revelry: "This yield lacks ambrosial essence—the very soul's been leeched!"
Xu Ling's sprint to the sacred grove became a desperate pilgrimage. Crossing the sylvan threshold, he faltered—necrotic miasma assailed his meridians in suffocating waves. Spiritual conduits flared incandescent as he expelled the venom's kiss.
"Envy's serpent strikes anew," he hissed, surveying the blighted arboreal cathedral. Lunar rays illuminated sabotaged aqueducts and a serpentine insignia carved into tainted loam—the skirmish had transcended flesh to become alchemical warfare.
The Cankerous Harvest
Villagers trailed Xu Ling into the moribund grove like mourners attending arboreal funerals. "These sentinels stood verdant at daybreak!" lamented a hoary farmer, gesturing at branches drooping like executioner's nooses, foliage curled into necrotic talons.
Xu Ling's ocular meridians pierced the loam's veil, revealing rhizomes putrefying like ancient parchment serpents. "Lay bare their subterranean anguish," he ordained.
Shovel blades gnashed at the earth with ferric hunger. A communal inhalation arose as ebonized root networks disintegrated into carcinogenic dust. "Celestial punishment!" wailed a matriarch, alofting dismembered tendrils exuding formaldehyde's acrid perfume.
Denunciatory digits thrust toward Xu Dajiao's kin. "Their demesne alone evades this plague!"
Xu Dajiao's paternal uncles materialized like provoked warthogs. "Filth-caked dullards!" The patriarch expectorated betel quid nectar near the accusers' hemp sandals. "Would we despoil lands sworn to Xu Ling's agrarian sovereignty?"
The throng's susurrations stilled as Village Chief Wang exhaled a cumulus of harsh tobacco. "Conjure Xu Dajiao's progenitor—the thanatologist of pomological demise."
Elders' oculars glazed with ancestral recollection: in bygone eras, the Xu patriarch had perfected sylvan euthanasia for crop rotation—esoteric rites blending lunar-infused tinctures with geomantic alignment, leaving earth chaste for rebirth.
Yu Mengna's luxury sedan materialized in a vortex of dust and diesel. She emerged brandishing chromatographic analyses, pallor visible beneath Carrera lenses. "The soil weeps glyphosate tears—manufactured in corporate alembics."
Xu Ling's device pulsed with digital condemnation: night-vision footage of Ten-Li Orchard tankers disgorging steel wombs of venom at the village periphery. The fruit war had metastasized from peasant skirmishes to boardroom-engineered ecocide.
As gloaming gilded the perishing orchard in mordant hues, Xu Ling knelt to caress toxin-laden humus. His dantian churned with karmic retribution—the grove's final exhalation coalescing into a miasmic oath of vengeance.
The Alchemist's Industrial Secret
As the villagers clamoured to confront Xu Dajiao's father, the village chief silenced them with a resonant tap of his bamboo pipe. "Let Ling coax wisdom from guarded alchemies."
Xu Ling followed Xu Dajiao to a smoke-veiled cottage where the patriarch reclined, exhaling bitterness through amber-stained lips.
"Father!" Xu Dajiao intercepted the pipe mid-drag. "Our lineage drowns in suspicion—unveil your craft!"
The elder's clouded gaze drifted to a pallid pail in the shadows. "Sodium hydroxide—industrial dragon's breath. Hydration awakens its devouring flames."
Xu Dajiao squinted. "Like the leavening powder for dough twists?"
"Nay." The patriarch's laughter rasped like rusted hinges. "This chemical titan consumes root systems ere three moons wane. Its power I learnt at the eastern alkali crucible."
Xu Ling arrayed ten crimson notes upon the hemp-stuffed pallet. "Your arcana merits more than obscurity's shroud."
The elder recoiled as from branding irons. "Such knowledge now dwells in the digital ether! Keep your lucre!"
"Consider it consultation's retainer," Xu Ling pressed. "Our groves require your geomantic wisdom."
As Xu Ling departed, the patriarch clutched the currency to his breast, saline trails etching canyons through decades of soot. "A singular spirit—this Ling sows trust in suspicion's fallow fields."
Beyond the threshold, villager anxieties hung denser than monsoonal vapours.
"Sans orchards, we regress to mud-caked penury!"
"Our newly bought tractors shall oxidise into relics!"
Li Ruoya caressed a necrotic bough, its sap crystallized like venomous topaz. "Must we kneel once more to rice paddy tyrants?"
Xu Ling's pronouncement cleaved despair's shroud. "Before seven suns set, these roots shall imbibe purity. The serpent's toxin becomes our pharmakon."
As indigo shadows lengthened, surveillance sentinels hummed toward Ten-Li Orchard's chemical arsenals—Xu Ling's technomantic stratagem wedded ancestral erudition to deliver karmic equilibrium.
To be continuous…