The Deming Mountain Retreat

The De Ming Mountain Retreat is not a painting, but a blood-written imperial testament from 214 BCE. I, Chen Deming, have lived in seclusion on Daming Mountain for ten years, dreaming every night that I walk into the painting. Then, at midnight one day, the woman in the painting wept tears of blood. One drop fell beside my pillow, and where it rolled, a black glutinous rice plant broke through the earth. In its grains, I saw a memory of myself drowning at the age of five. Granny A Yuan brought me glutinous rice. At the bottom of the bowl lay a message in Qin script: “The person in the painting is waiting for you to harvest the rice.” Village secretary Zhao Ergou's snake tattoo burned on his left hand. He took me to explore the Lingqu Canal at night, where the water reflected a battlefield from two thousand years ago: a man identical to me was tied to a bronze measuring rod and bled, while the executioner was none other than Ying Ji, the Qin general from the history books. Ying Ji tore open his human skin with a feral grin, revealing the bronze skeleton of an Orion Reaper. “Chen Deming, haven't you figured it out yet? The De Ming Mountain Retreat is a seal hiding your true name. You have always been a prisoner in the painting!” Forced to awaken the forbidden arts lost to the Xi'ou shamans, I use the Yijin Jing to reconstruct my genetic chain, the Strong Kidney Way to kindle the qi of life, and the Xisui Jing to cleanse the harvesting mark. In Immortal Rock Cave, ten jade skeletons of the Wuxian bow their heads to me. “Once you reach mastery, you will no longer be human. Are you willing to become a seed of rice and save this dying world?” In my left hand lies Jinghong's palm, reaching across two thousand years: “Come back. I am waiting for you to harvest this last stalk of antimatter rice I have.” In my right, Ying Ji's bone blade hangs over humanity's gene bank: “Hand over the mother seed, or the harvesting protocol will begin, and Chinese civilization will be erased forever!”