The caverns beneath Mount Li pulsed like a living heart, their walls weeping metallic tears that sizzled where they struck the blood-soaked earth. Deep within the Nine Li territory, the air hung thick with the stench of scorched metal and charred flesh—a cloying miasma that coated the tongue with the taste of burnt copper and despair. The very stone groaned under the weight of dark rituals, its veins threaded with luminous green ore that pulsed in time with the prisoners' dying screams.
Chi You stood before the central forge, his massive frame towering over even the tallest warriors. The firelight played across his bare torso, illuminating the intricate lattice of scars that formed ancient battle runes—each keloid ridge a stolen victory, each whorl and slash a forbidden character from the language of the Old Gods. His breathing echoed strangely, as if two sets of lungs worked in unison, and the shadows he cast moved independently of the flames.
Around him, his eighty-one blood brothers labored at demonic forges. The youngest, Fei Lian—whose wiry frame belied monstrous strength—dragged a line of shackled prisoners toward the largest crucible. Their bare feet left smeared trails in the metallic sludge coating the cavern floor. One prisoner, a woman with the distinctive forehead tattoo of the Jiang Clan, spat at Fei Lian's feet. The warrior merely grinned, revealing teeth filed to points, and with a casual flick of his wrist, sent her tumbling into the molten pit.
Her scream merged with the hissing metal in an unholy chorus, cut abruptly short as her body dissolved into the searing brew. The molten bronze bubbled violently, then stilled, its surface reflecting not the cavern ceiling but a starless void.
"Elder Brother!" Fei Lian bowed low, presenting a newly forged bronze halberd. The weapon's edge shimmered with unnatural violet light, its surface etched with spiraling patterns that seemed to shift when viewed askance. Along its length, ghostly faces pressed against the metal from within, their mouths open in silent wails.
Chi You took the weapon in hands large enough to crush a man's skull. Without hesitation, he drew the blade across his own forearm. The flesh parted like water beneath a prow, yet no blood welled forth—only a thick, iridescent vapor that smelled of lightning and rotting plums. The wound sealed itself instantly, leaving behind a new scar that twisted into the shape of a screaming mouth.
"Good." His voice rumbled like distant thunder, shaking loose rivulets of molten metal from the ceiling. "The soul-binding is complete." He turned to the hunchbacked figure lurking in the shadows. "Wu Zhiqi! What say the oracle bones?"
The shaman scuttled forward, his movements spider-like, his hunched back bearing a grotesque protrusion that resembled a second face pressed against his skin. From within his tattered robes, he produced a handful of human scapulae—each polished to a mirror shine, each carved with blasphemous sigils. With a practiced flick of his wrist, he cast them into the central forge's flames.
The bones blackened instantly, then split with sounds like cracking ice. The fractures formed a clear image: a mighty dragon pierced through by nine arrows, its celestial blood raining down upon a mountain range. Wu Zhiqi's claw-like finger, its nail grown into a curved talon, traced the largest fracture. "The Yellow Emperor comes. His army marches under the banner of the Northern Dipper."
Then his finger paused at a smaller, almost insignificant crack. "But..." His milky eyes rolled back, showing veined whites. "There is a girl. She walks between flame and shadow. She carries the mark of the Fire Clan... and something else." His voice dropped to a whisper. "The breath of the Zhibei beast is upon her."
For a moment, silence gripped the cavern. Even the ever-present screams from the forges seemed to hush. Then Chi You's laughter erupted—a sound like boulders grinding together—shaking the cavern walls and sending stalactites crashing down into the molten pits.
"Let Yan's daughter come!" he roared, slamming the halberd into the stone floor. The impact sent cracks racing through the rock, and from the fissures rose whispering tendrils of violet smoke that coiled like serpents. "Her blood will temper my final blade!" He turned his gaze upward, as if staring through miles of stone at the stars beyond. "And when I plunge that blade into Huangdi's heart, even the heavens will bleed!"
From the deepest pit, where the metal never cooled and the screams never ceased, something vast and terrible stirred in its molten prison. The walls trembled. The air grew thick with the scent of burning myrrh and rotting teeth. And in the reflection of the seething bronze, for just an instant, the shadows behind Chi You twisted into the shape of vast, leathern wings.