A cold shaft of dawn light cut through the mist of the eastern bamboo grove, creeping silently through the cabin slats.
The interior of the room exhaled a thick, asphyxiating heat, impregnated with the sweet, inebriating perfume of distilled nectar after the raw friction that had ravaged the previous afternoon and devoured the entire night in an uninterrupted cycle.
Seated on the edge of the ruined mattress, Zhì Yuǎn observed his own forearm in the penumbra. The muscle fibers beneath his skin throbbed with a static and incredibly dense weight. The thick gold they had ground and forced into his veins had cemented his flesh far beyond any limit. Human fragility receded, purged from his bones.
The young man's dark, lethargic gaze descended.
Sprawled face-down on the damp sheets, Yù Qíng breathed in a dragged manner. Sweat dried on the young woman's back, revealing a polished and frighteningly symmetrical pallor. Only the bite marks and purplish fingerprints left by the grip of Zhì Yuǎn's hands broke the predatory purity of that image.
The newly forged fleshy foundation of both had already banished the need for muscular rest, but the girl's mind had been ground by the exhaustion of sustaining the frantic extraction in the dark. Her mind had sunk into absolute lethargy, face buried deeply in the straw pillow.
Zhì Yuǎn's large, calloused hand rose in the air.
In a rapid movement, charged with that rustic and silent humor of one who holds absolute control over the borders of what he dominates, he brought his open palm down with force directly against his wife's bare, exposed buttock.
Smack!
The dry snap whipped through the stifled air of the room. The impact shoved the soft flesh with brutality against the mattress wood.
"Nnnngh…" a hoarse, strangled moan tore from Yù Qíng's throat.
The slight body jolted on the straw. She turned her crumpled face, black eyes half-lidded fighting the clarity of the gap to focus on the mountain of muscle seated beside her. Possessive stubbornness tugged at the woman's swollen, reddened lips, while her pale hand descended instinctively to massage the site of the blow. The heat of skin burning against her palm sent a residual shiver of pleasure up the girl's spine, tearing a second short, panting, involuntary moan from her mouth.
The corner of Zhì Yuǎn's lips curved in a mild, genuine smile. Seeing the implacable, possessive woman reduced to that murky, whiny confusion filled the man's chest with a human, heavy, dominating warmth.
"The forge needs to cool for today, Qíng," his grave voice vibrated in the room, tranquil, as the young man picked up the charcoal-gray tunic from the floor and slid his broad arms in. "Close your eyes and recover your head."
"You crushed my judgment against this straw all night until I forgot my own name…" she murmured, velvety voice failing in a dragged, sulky whisper, fingers massaging her own hot skin. Feverish stubbornness made her try to raise her chin and drag her husband back to the bed, demanding he pay for the provocation, but the implacable weight of exhaustion crushed the girl's eyelids, forcing her to sink her face back into the sheet. "And you still have the audacity to wake me by marking my skin…"
Zhì Yuǎn finished tying the leather belt at his waist.
"The mark reminds you who this skin belongs to while I am away," he retorted, dragged tone sealing the affectionate provocation.
The young man's armored body operated in silent passivity, the strength of the cells repelling the invisible dust hovering in the morning light.
"I will take a look at the northern slope," he said, firm steps walking to the door threshold, tone exuding the rustic and unshakeable pragmatism of one assessing the wood of a broken roof. "The imperial intendant demanded double the coal from your father. I want to see what still remains of those old, abandoned galleries. My vision finds the thick veins in the dark. I mark the firm stone and leave the workers to beat the rest of the quota in peace."
The sound of the heavy bamboo bar accompanied the young man's exit, leaving the woman immersed in the sweet penumbra and silence of the cabin to recompose her mind, while Zhì Yuǎn marched to resolve the suffocating demand outside.
The smell of muddy earth, sour sweat, and chipped iron permeated the entrance of the main mine, driven into the base of the northern slope.
The low morning mist mixed with the short breaths and hunched shoulders of the miners. Yù Chéng rubbed eyelids covered in coal dust, eyes sunken in darkened bags. Beside him, Lao Gui spat opaque saliva on the earth and leaned the weight of old bones on a pickaxe with a completely dulled metal tip.
The war quota demanded dried the men's throats. The hollow emptiness of the wooden carts attested to the Empire's weight on the valley.
Heavy, rhythmic steps crushed the gravel of the trail.
Zhì Yuǎn emerged from the mist. The charcoal-gray tunic fell perfectly over the young man's broad structure. His skin radiated a mild, constant heat. His leather boots sank into the mud in exact beats, cemented with a mild weight that silenced the murmurs of the nearest workers.
"The stones in the middle galleries have dried, Zhì Yuǎn," Yù Chéng's voice rasped through his scratched throat, trembling arm pointing to the shallow walls of the mountain. "The veins have thinned. The iron shatters against the rock before filling half a sack. The army's demand asks for raw stone beyond what these fissures can spit."
Zhì Yuǎn's dark gaze absorbed the hoarse cough and hunched shoulders of the workers in absolute silence. The young man's attention shifted from human exhaustion and bored directly into the far right of the rock wall. The entrance to the southern gallery was blocked by thick oak planks nailed in a cross, covered in moss and stagnant moisture.
He marched toward the sealed wood.
"That gallery has smelled of rot for fifteen years, boy!" Yù Chéng warned, voice failing in a high tone, taking a hurried step forward. "The ceiling cries thick stones just with the echo of our boots. The wood of the supports back there has turned to dust. It is a dark tomb hungry to collapse!"
The cadence of Zhì Yuǎn's steps ignored the warning. The young man stopped a palm's breadth from the decaying barricade. Large hands rose. He assessed the central plank with calloused fingers, feeling the points where rot loosened the wood fiber.
The soles of Zhì Yuǎn's boots fixed in the mud. Supported on the density his flesh had acquired at dawn, he dispensed with the use of levers. He simply gripped the oak log and pulled the raw wood toward himself with a short jolt of his wrists.
Crack.
The sharp snap tore through the camp. The thick, rusted iron nails squealed in metallic agony as they were torn by force from the ancestral rock. The thick plank shattered in the middle, thrown aside like a twig. A second mechanical movement of the arms tore the next plank, throwing the barrier wide open.
Lao Gui's mouth opened. The pickaxe slipped from the old man's calloused hands. The miners watched, inert, as the young man tore beams embedded in the stone using only muscular traction, broad chest rising and falling with the tranquility of one breathing the morning breeze.
Zhì Yuǎn crossed the destroyed line, leaving the empty carts behind. The damp darkness of the abandoned cave swallowed the man's back all at once.
The air of the ancestral gallery permeated the nostrils with the acrid smell of rotten mushrooms and stagnant dust.
The thick darkness of the cave receded before the man's invasion. The energy inhabiting his open pores devoured the temperature variation. Zhì Yuǎn's dark irises dilated in the penumbra. The raw understanding he had of things projected beyond his eyes, and the opaque rock in front of him yielded. The mountain dissected itself into sharp layers in the young man's mind, revealing thick rivers of black, pure, heavy coal, dormant right behind the side walls.
The mountain was an untouched vault, merely awaiting the right artisan to be opened.
The beat of leather boots crushing the ground disturbed the fifteen-year static of the tunnel. The ceiling cried sharp gravel. A snap of dead wood tore the cave's quiet.
The central support beam right above Zhì Yuǎn crumbled. A massive slab of stone fragmented from the ceiling, plummeting in free fall toward the young man's skull.
Zhì Yuǎn pulled the golden matter stored beneath his sternum. He pushed the thick heat directly against the wall of his own skin.
The millions of open pores gushed the energy. A scalding wave of Qi sprayed from Zhì Yuǎn's shoulders and arms into empty space. The impact of that force against the falling stone generated a muffled boom that shook the mine. The energy anchored in the darkness, forming invisible pilings that crushed gravity and suspended the tons of rock in the air, a palm's breadth from the man's unshakeable face.
The load of the effort stretched the tendons of his neck. Hot sweat burst at his temples, the body charging the price of absolute weight.
Beneath the invisible prop, the gallery ceiling stopped collapsing.
Zhì Yuǎn dragged his gaze across the damp earth and pulled a rusted iron pickaxe from the ground. Assessing the mountain's bones with his usual precision, he walked the safe fissures. The iron blade struck the side rock mercilessly, driving deep, exact markings into the blind angles where the stone's foundation guaranteed absolute support.
They were the vital flaws of the stone, the bloody and exposed routes where the workers could strike to extract coal without being buried. He guaranteed the war quota and his father-in-law's peace.
The sun was already plummeting in the west, bathing the slope in a rust tone, when the first heavy cart emerged from the darkness.
Wooden wheels creaked beneath the load. The cart was stuffed to the brim with colossal black coal stones, torn from the mountain's core. Yù Chéng staggered forward, calloused hands trembling as he grabbed one of the stones. The old miner's face lost color beneath the soot.
Lao Gui swallowed dry. The deep markings driven into the rock exposed the purest veins the village of Qīngshān had seen in three generations. The Empire's demand was no longer a guillotine on the leadership's neck; it would be paid with leftovers.
The miners' tired eyes saw in Yù Chéng's son-in-law merely a boy blessed with a brilliant intuition for the earth's fissures.
The young man's gray tunic was stained by cave dust, but his step crushed the trail with the same calm. The toll was paid. The door of his cabin was guaranteed. Zhì Yuǎn turned his back on the noisy relief of the men and walked back toward the shadows of the bamboo grove.
The silent air of the forest washed the smell of panic from the slope. When Zhì Yuǎn stepped into the cabin yard, the dust he carried collided with the inebriating perfume of nectar leaking from the gaps of his house.
Yù Qíng awaited him on the veranda.
Bare feet stepped on the perfectly clean floor, and her black eyes immediately descended to the dirt covering her husband's broad shoulders. The disgust of seeing the world's dust stuck to the skin that belonged to her wrinkled the girl's nose. A large tub of fresh water and cloths already awaited him.
"The mountain dirtied your linen," Yù Qíng's velvety voice slid through the cold air, thin fingers advancing to untie his leather belt, pulling the dust-covered fabric away from his rigid flesh with aggressive urgency.
"The army's quota is in the carts, Qíng," Zhì Yuǎn's grave voice sounded low, a trace of human warmth and relief tempering the fatigue as he raised his arms for his wife to remove the heavy tunic. "The old man has enough coal to drown the intendant. The Empire stopped barking in our yard."
Yù Qíng plunged the cloth into the icy water and pressed it against her husband's burning chest, cleaning the mine dust. The contrast between the pallor of her fingers and his feverish musculature quieted the veranda.
"Then the roads are free of their plague," she murmured, drawing a contained smile as she scrubbed his shoulder. She raised her eyes to meet her husband. "And our cart for the city of Qīngshí? Your sister needs those old roots and scrolls as fast as possible to solder the holes in her own chest, A-Yuǎn."
Zhì Yuǎn raised his hand. The calloused thumb rested on the line of Yù Qíng's jaw, his touch welcoming the girl's possessive haste.
"The street out there reeks of old dogs and provincial peddlers, Qíng," his reply descended gentle, but with the absolute weight of pragmatism, assessing the latent heat her skin exhaled. "The gold we ground in these dawns still overflows in your veins. You are leaking pure heat through your pores. If I let you walk in the middle of Qīngshí's market tomorrow, any trash with sharp eyes in the city will smell the power we hide in our blood."
Yù Qíng stopped her wet hand on his rib, absorbing the cold, non-negotiable intuition of that barrier.
"We will remain locked in the dark of our room for a few more weeks," he decreed, finger sliding to his wife's nape, subtly tugging her neck. "We will use the friction of our bed to thicken your roots until your body cools on the outside and becomes a perfect wall. Only after no trace of our fire escapes your skin will we rent a cart and cross the valley."
The perspective of spending the next weeks confined in that room without any external obligation, subjected solely to the brutal collision he demanded to thicken her own roots, made Yù Qíng's stomach contract in a dense, feverish heat. The young wife dropped the cleaning cloth in the tub with a dull thud.
"Then…" she whispered. The velvety voice descended to a hoarse, dragged octave, throat dry from the ardor already climbing the skin of her own neck.
Icy fingers advanced, short nails digging without hesitation into her husband's large hand. Yù Qíng pulled the man's massive weight back into the cabin's interior, pressing her spread palm against his rigid abdomen to force him to sit on the edge of the straw mattress.
She turned her body, walked to the entrance, and dropped the heavy wooden bar against the frame. The dry snap sealed the slats in absolute penumbra.
The girl returned in mute steps. Yù Qíng knelt on the floor, squeezing her slight body in a territorial and exact manner between the man's open legs. Pale hands yanked the leather belt knot with urgency, sliding the dark linen pants downward. The crimson lip curved slowly, showing the tips of white teeth in mute anticipation at the exact instant her icy fingers wrapped around her husband's giant, burning shaft, freeing the scalding mass outward and igniting the forge for another day.