The city had already died.
Its towers collapsed, its rivers turned black, its temples soaked in the memory of prayers no longer recognized. What remained was not ruin, nor aftermath.
What remained was womb.
Beneath the rubble and the blood-soaked streets, under the altars devoured and the chants devoured deeper, there pulsed something that had no name in any language spoken by men or gods.
It was not a treasure.
Not a weapon.
It was a pulse—an ancient rhythm hidden within the very soil, felt only by those born from it.
The heartbeat of the Maternal Vein.
And Shen Wuqing came to drink.
---
He walked through what had once been Zhuihe's inner sanctum—the core of the city's cultivation roots. Here, every birth had once been blessed. Every child anointed by soil drawn from the oldest wellspring beneath the city.
But that wellspring was not water.
It was not qi.
It was flesh.
The pulse of the earth, connected not to the sky, but to the buried veins of mothers long dead and never remembered.
This was where life was cultivated—not by spirit, but by womb.
And now, Wuqing stood over it.
His shadow dripped bloodless across the obsidian floor.
The silence was no longer passive.
It was pregnant.
The stones throbbed faintly under his feet.
Not out of fear.
But out of anticipation.
They had waited too long.
They had waited for this.
---
He reached the center of the chamber.
It was not grand.
A flat circle, engraved with runes that pulsed like arteries.
Around it, the bones of midwives.
Women who had once guided life into the world and had been buried beneath the pulse they served.
Now, their mouths were open.
Not from screams.
From offering.
Shen Wuqing crouched, one palm to the floor.
It was warm.
Not with heat.
But with blood remembered.
The kind that had once passed from mother to child, unbroken for generations.
He closed his eyes.
And the earth began to speak.
---
Not in words.
Not in visions.
But in temperature.
He felt it against his skin—a soft, rippling ache. The way an infant feels the warmth of its mother's belly. The way silence feels before it is broken by a child's first cry.
This was no artifact.
No spirit well.
It was the umbilical soul of the city.
And it had never been claimed.
Because to claim it, one must be born without mother.
Without blessing.
Without name.
Only hunger could open it.
And so, it opened.
---
The floor split—not violently, but gently, like a caesarean from the earth itself.
Ribbons of red mist rose.
Beneath it, a cavern.
Veined in glowing flesh.
Beating.
Pulsing.
Alive.
This was the Mother's Pulse.
The foundation of Zhuihe's spirit system.
Where all the blood of its people had once been refined.
Where every birth took its first rhythm.
Where the city's soul had been nursed for millennia.
And now, it had become an offering.
Not by will.
By design.
Because the one who walked now was not heir.
He was reversal.
---
Shen Wuqing descended into the cavern.
The walls quivered with each step, like muscle adjusting to trauma.
But they did not resist.
They accommodated.
The way a womb accommodates a growing parasite.
He did not smile.
He did not look around.
He simply approached the core.
It was not beautiful.
A massive, heart-like bulb of flesh suspended by sinew and spirit-thread, pulsing in colors that had no names.
It beat in irregular rhythm, as though uncertain.
As though sensing it was no longer pregnant, but preyed upon.
And Wuqing stopped before it.
For a long moment, he simply stared.
Then, he raised his right hand.
---
He pressed his palm against the surface.
It was soft.
Warm.
Then, it burned.
Not like fire.
Like memory flooding back too fast.
Visions hit him in waves.
Not his own.
But generational memory.
A thousand mothers screaming in agony and ecstasy.
A thousand children pulled from silence into breath.
A thousand deaths in childbirth, honored and forgotten.
All of it flowed into him—not as witness, but as digestive current.
The pulse tried to resist.
But resistance was not enough.
He drank.
---
Not the blood.
Not the qi.
He drank the rhythm.
The pattern that had once connected every birth to the land.
The spiritual latticework of Zhuihe's fertility.
It did not enter his veins.
It replaced them.
And then—
He changed.
---
His bones cracked.
But made no sound.
His skin grayed at the edges, taking on the hue of twilight flesh.
Veins crawled across his chest, then vanished—absorbed.
His breath stilled.
His heart paused.
And the Mother's Pulse shrieked.
Not with voice.
With collapse.
It tried to reject him.
Tried to recoil.
But it could not.
Because he was not taking from it.
He was becoming it.
The city had once drawn from this core to create life.
Now, he had drawn it into himself—
To uncreate.
---
Above, the ground ruptured.
All across Zhuihe, women collapsed to their knees.
Pregnant mothers screamed—not in pain, but emptiness.
Their bellies thinned.
Not by miscarriage.
By removal.
The pulse that had once connected them to the city had been devoured.
Their children had not died.
They had been unborn.
Not reversed.
Not killed.
Simply unlinked from possibility.
As though they had never been conceived.
And the mothers wept.
Not knowing what had been lost.
Only that something had.
---
In the central chamber, Wuqing opened his eyes.
No glow.
No aura.
Only void.
The kind of void that makes heaven lower its gaze.
His feet left the floor.
Not by flight.
By repulsion.
The earth could no longer hold him.
It had nothing left to offer.
He hovered above the pulse, which now shrank.
Withered.
Its skin peeled.
Its light dimmed.
And it beat one final time.
Once.
Then silence.
Shen Wuqing descended.
He placed his foot upon its husk.
It burst.
No sound.
No blood.
Only dust.
He walked through it, untouched.
And as he rose from the cavern, the entire city exhaled.
Not in relief.
But in acknowledgement.
Their maternal vein had been consumed.
Their births had been reabsorbed.
They were no longer part of the earth.
They were part of him.
---
At the edge of the crater, a single figure knelt.
Old.
Worn.
Eyes pale with tears long dried.
A Daoist.
Unknown by name, forgotten by sect.
He held in his hands the last gift he could offer—
His own heart.
Torn from his chest.
Still beating.
He held it out to Wuqing, kneeling so low his forehead touched ash.
"Take it," he whispered. "Take the last rhythm of an old man who never became anything."
Wuqing paused.
He did not reach for it.
He breathed.
And the heart disintegrated.
Not burned.
Not crushed.
It simply ceased.
The Daoist fell forward.
Not dead.
Just erased.
A final offering.
The pulse of the forgotten, willingly given.
And it, too, was accepted.
Not because it was sacred.
But because it was true.
---
The city would never recover.
No lineage would continue.
No womb would sing again.
The spiritual foundation of fertility had been unthreaded.
And yet, from the highest tower of the dead palace, a single bell rang.
Not by hand.
By remnant.
A soundless toll.
Marking not the end of Zhuihe.
But the beginning of its aftertaste.
In the lungs of Shen Wuqing.
Who had not only devoured blood.
But the very rhythm by which life had once begun.
He now carried it.
Not as tribute.
But as sentence.
To all those who would one day hope to be born—
Know this:
The womb is no longer yours.
It has been heard.
And it sang silence.