She halted her futile attempts and raised the walnut for a closer look. Its shape was exquisite, rounded at the top and tapering to a heart-like point. The surface was smooth and glossy, its carved lines as delicate as filigreed woodwork, with a faint pinkish hue. When she gave it a gentle shake, it seemed as though a kernel rattled faintly within.
If Emma had once scoffed at Taoist matters—mocking her father's talisman drawings as scribbled nonsense—now she dared not dismiss them so lightly.
For something so carefully concealed within the statue of the Lingbao Tianzun could never be ordinary. Surely, it must be linked to the Daoist arts.
Though she had little patience for the Taoist books filling her father's study, she had seen her share of horror films. Whenever a Taoist priest drew talismans, they would seal it with a drop of essence blood, vastly amplifying its power. The same held true for ritual implements.
And of the body's blood, none was purer than that drawn from the tip of the tongue. Without hesitation, Emma pressed against the earlier cut in her mouth and smeared a drop of blood across the walnut's shell.
The moment the blood touched, it vanished—absorbed completely, like water into dry earth.
She waited, but nothing happened. Frowning, she lifted the walnut to the light. It looked exactly the same. Shaking it again, she realized the kernel's faint rattle had gone silent. She paused in unease.
Just as she considered fetching something heavy to strike it with, music suddenly chimed from the corner of the sofa. Emma froze, her whole body tensing. She hadn't touched a cell phone in over ten years—the device had been utterly useless in the apocalypse.
After a moment's hesitation, she shifted the walnut into her left palm and dug into the cushions until she pulled out the phone. A quick glance, and she pressed accept.
At once, a furious tirade erupted from the speaker:
"Late again, you lazy, careless—you've cost the company dearly! Don't even think about getting paid. Pack your things and get out!"
Emma let the voice rage for a few seconds before tossing the phone back into the cushions. In the apocalypse, money was meaningless, and this so-called internship was less than nothing to her. She turned back toward the walnut—
—when her left palm suddenly seared with unbearable heat.
She gasped, snapping her hand open.
The walnut shell had turned a luminous rose pink. The seven tiny black dots that had once marked its surface now gleamed cinnabar-red, faintly shimmering with violet light. Her once-dull left palm now thrummed with clarity, as if awake for the first time.
She could feel something unseen, a force in the very air, surging wildly into the walnut in her hand. Her meridians screamed with pain, her body drenched in sweat, as though she were being wrung through water. Yet the seven points on her palm churned like storm clouds, unrelenting.
From the outside, however, she seemed only to sit pale and dazed on the sofa, eyes fixed on her hand. No one could have guessed the tempest within.
Time blurred. Slowly, the pressure eased, the stabbing pain receded, and the heat in her palm faded. The seven dots dimmed back to dark gray.
Then—
A sharp crack.
The walnut split neatly in two.
The process lasted no more than a few heartbeats, yet Emma's T-shirt clung to her skin, drenched, her shorts plastered to her legs. Exhaustion pressed upon her, but her spirit remained taut, unwilling to blink.
Inside one half of the walnut, the kernel had sprouted. A tiny green shoot stretched upward, unfurling two delicate leaves, their tender color vivid and bright. The other half of the walnut lay hollow, spent.
Unlike the sprout she had once found by chance in her palm after swallowing the kernel, this one had forced its own way out, cleaving the shell apart.
And now, nestled within the circle of seven dots on her palm, the sprout pulsed with life. Emma could sense its vitality with unnatural clarity—every vein in its leaves, every tiny hair on its surface, sharp as though etched in high definition. She didn't need her eyes to see; her awareness alone laid it bare.
Something she had never before experienced.
But the strain was too much. Her body quivered uncontrollably, fatigue dragging her down like a weight. Darkness swallowed her vision, and she slumped sideways onto the sofa, sinking into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
The walnut and its newborn sprout did not fall. They dissolved into her palm, vanishing from sight.
She slept until dusk.
Finally, the blare of Love Story blasted from the phone, wrenching her awake. Years of vigilance jolted her upright in an instant, eyes scanning the room until memory returned.
Only then did her body relax, and her gaze drift to the phone blinking beside the sofa.