Yu Jin Chang An (With Jin's Chang'An)

PROLOGUE

In the gloomy dungeon, a cloaked man with disheveled hair was hanging on the wall with his limbs bound. There was blood everywhere on his body, already making it impossible to tell exactly where the wounds were and where the blood was snaking down.

Outside the cage were several graceful women. They were led by a woman named Muli wearing a veil covering her entire face. However, one could still feel her gaze fixed tightly on the man inside the cage.

She was focused on listening to his heavy breathing inside the cage, each breath longer and weaker than the last. The woman tightened her grip on her palm: "Go in, draw blood." as she spoke, her voice was unexpectedly hoarse and rough, similar to that of a ninety-year-old woman.

"Mistress" the woman behind her hesitated slightly, "Blood has already been drawn today. The next blood extraction should wait until noon tomorrow..."

Before she could finish her sentence, with a sharp 'slap', the woman covered in veil slapped the maid across the face.

"Can't you see he's about to die tonight?" The eyes behind the veil stared coldly at the maid who had been slapped to the ground. "You want me to waste all my previous efforts by waiting until tomorrow noon?"

Not long after, the maid covered her face and began to wail and scream. The screams slowly became louder. She rolled around on the ground in pain, when the action slowly stopped, the crowd only saw clearly, that the place on her face where the veiled woman had hit her had rotted away a large portion of her face. Blood and flesh, white bones horrifyingly exposed.

She screamed miserably twice, and finally, the hand covering her face fell, and she lay on the ground, propping up her eyes, no longer breathing.

"Does anyone of you have anything to say?"

The women behind remained silent as cicadas in winter. Each silently cleansed their hands, opened the cage door, and entered the cage.

One person opened a golden brocade box, in which a worm that looked like a mulberry silkworm was wriggling. One person wiped the blood near the man's heart. One person from the side got a golden knife. They cut the man's heart, fresh blood flowed out. At that moment, the worms in the brocade box began to wriggle manically as if they were strongly attracted.

The maid placed the box on top of the man's heart, and the worm instantly crawled to the man's wound and began to suck his blood.

It sucked extremely large mouthfuls, causing its body, which was originally a white jade-colored gradually turned blood-red.

As the color approached completion, the maid used a soft brush to brush the worm back into the box. However, after brushing twice, the maid's face suddenly turned pale.

"Mistress."

Outside the cage, the woman's voice grew heavy: "What's wrong?"

"His... the head of the jade silkworm crawled into the wound and can't come out..."

The woman, named Muli, dashed forward, stepping into the cage. However, in the short time it took her to reach there, the maid had already exclaimed in shock several times: "It crawled in, the jade silkworm crawled in!"

By the time Muli entered, there was no trace of the jade silkworm on the man's chest.

The cell fell silent. Suddenly, the maid on the other side caught a movement in the corner of her eye. She watched as the man, who had been bound and motionless for ninety-nine days, flicked his fingertips slightly. As she stared in disbelief, she heard another person on the other side exclaim in astonishment: "His wound..."