The bruised birthmark on the back of Jiang Si's neck split into bronze scales the moment he stepped into Sifang Town. The moment blood dripped onto the bronze ring at the end of the alley, the bloody crescent mark on the entire street suddenly came alive, like countless snakes wrapping around his ankles.
"You should be the treasure in the ninth coffin." The mayor's deformed body blocked the alleyway, and twelve locust wood nails darted through his body like living snakes. Only then did Jiang Si realize that the "Xuanming Lock" dark pattern on his underwear was exactly the same as the gold thread lining the altar girl's red dress; the cinnabar mole on Lu Yifan's left shoulder oozing silver liquid coincided with the "Moon Bride" mark in the sacrifice rules; the tortoise shell pattern on Hu Jiu's silver knife actually resonated with the earth vein map reflected by his prosthetic eye.
The smell of disinfectant in the ICU ward cannot wash away the bronze rust. The psychiatrist said everything was an illusion, but twenty photos of the Qinglong Temple at three o'clock in the morning appeared on Jiang Si's phone out of thin air; the silver crescent on Lu Yifan's ceramic tiles was exactly the same as the lane mark three years ago; the bronzes and turtle and snake totems found by Hu Jiu at the Provincial Museum were exactly the same as the images in the mayor's compound eyes.
Time began to twist - on July 16th in the past three years, Hu Jiu's breakfast was always the same omelette; Jiang Si always woke up at three o'clock in the morning; Lu Yifan's shoulder pain accurately corresponded to the ringing of the Sifang Town bell.
When the nine-story coffin on the inverted pyramid altar was opened, Jiang Si finally understood the meaning of the "soul house": it was the bronze chain hidden in his mother's blood, the silver memory in Lu Yifan's cinnabar mole, and the soul of his ancestors deep in Hu Jiuyi's eyes. These "foreign objects" in the flesh and blood are never a curse, but a baton of resistance for three generations.
The tenth level mirror array
