The jagged peaks of the Lu Mountains pierced a sky the colour of faded silk, their slopes carpeted in ancient forests and shrouded in mist legendary for both its beauty and its ability to mislead travellers. Renowned as a sanctuary for Taoist hermits and Buddhist monks seeking seclusion, the mountains also harbored veins of rare minerals – cinnabar, quartz, and stranger ores whispered to hold potent, sometimes dangerous, energies. Deep within these mountains, far from established temples and accessible only by treacherous, overgrown paths, lay the small, isolated village of Qingxi ('Clear Stream'), whose inhabitants scratched a living gathering rare medicinal herbs and mining small deposits of unique, vibrant red cinnabar ore prized by alchemists. Life here was hard, dictated by the mountain's rhythms, and steeped in local lore warning against disturbing the deeper, quieter places.
Recently, those warnings had taken on a terrifying urgency. A shadow had fallen over Qingxi, colder and more persistent than the mountain mists. It began with a strange wasting sickness afflicting villagers who scavenged for firewood or dug for ore near the abandoned cliffside hermitage of Master Lingyu, a reclusive alchemist who had vanished without explanation nearly a decade prior. The afflicted grew pale, their movements stiffening unnaturally, their skin taking on a deathly chill, their life force seeming to ebb away daily despite herbal remedies. Physicians from the nearest town were baffled, speaking only of 'mountain vapors' or 'cold humors'.
Then came the desecrations. Fresh graves in the village's small burial ground were found disturbed, the earth clawed back, though nothing seemed stolen. Whispers turned to terrified certainty when Old Man Chen, gathering herbs near the abandoned hermitage at twilight, saw it – a figure, stiff and shambling, clad in rags that might have once been robes, moving with jerky, unnatural steps among the crumbling stone structures. Its face was pale and rigid, its eyes vacant. Chen fled, heart pounding, the image of the shambling horror burned into his mind. Soon after, another villager, returning late, saw several such figures moving slowly near the graveyard, drawn towards the hermitage, leaving behind faint traces of a strange, reddish powder on the disturbed earth. Panic gripped Qingxi. Was it a plague? A curse? Were the dead rising, animated by the mountain's strange energies or the lingering influence of the vanished alchemist?
Word of the strange sickness and the terrifying apparitions eventually reached Xuanzhen, who was meditating at a monastery several days' journey away. A desperate delegation from Qingxi, led by the village elder, sought him out, their faces etched with fear. They recounted the wasting illness, the disturbed graves, the shambling figures, and the connection to Master Lingyu's abandoned hermitage, begging for his intervention.
Xuanzhen listened gravely. The symptoms described – the stiffness, the pallor, the draining vitality – combined with the shambling figures and the reddish powder near the graves, strongly suggested something related to necrotic energy, perhaps even improperly animated corpses. The link to an alchemist's abandoned hermitage, especially one dealing with potent cinnabar, pointed towards a likely source: alchemy gone terribly wrong. Cinnabar, while crucial in many Taoist practices, particularly waidan (external alchemy aimed at physical transformation or immortality), was notoriously volatile, its energies capable of profound effects, both beneficial and catastrophic, if mishandled.
He agreed to accompany the delegation back to Qingxi. The journey itself felt like entering a different realm, the air growing heavier, charged with unstable energies as they climbed deeper into the Lu Mountains. Qingxi village huddled in a narrow valley, overshadowed by steep cliffs. Fear was a palpable presence, silencing the usual sounds of village life. Xuanzhen immediately sensed the disturbed qi – a thick, cold miasma clinging to the valley, strongest near the path leading up to Lingyu's hermitage. It was a complex mixture of stagnant life force, potent but unstable alchemical residues, and a distinct, chilling necrotic taint.
He examined some of the afflicted villagers. Their condition was indeed alarming. Their skin had a waxy, unnatural pallor, their joints moved with a painful stiffness reminiscent of rigor mortis, and their life force felt dangerously depleted, as if being actively siphoned away. He noted faint reddish stains around their fingernails and mouths, suggesting contact with the strange powder. He then visited the graveyard. The disturbed graves confirmed the villagers' accounts; the reddish powder found nearby felt cold, inert yet holding a latent, corrupting energy.
"This powder," Xuanzhen explained to the anxious village elder, "seems connected to the sickness and perhaps the apparitions. It likely originates from Master Lingyu's hermitage. I must investigate there."
Despite the elder's fearful protests, Xuanzhen ascended the steep path towards the cliffside hermitage as dusk began to fall. The air grew colder, the silence more profound. The hermitage itself was a collection of crumbling stone buildings clinging precariously to the mountainside, half-hidden by overgrown vines. The necrotic qi was intensely strong here, mingling with the sharp, metallic scent of residual alchemical compounds.
He entered the main structure, which seemed to be Lingyu's laboratory. Dust lay thick, disturbed only by faint, shuffling tracks. Decaying shelves held cracked crucibles, alembics coated in strange residues, and bundles of withered herbs. Scattered across a large stone table were bamboo slips and scrolls – Lingyu's notes. Xuanzhen carefully unrolled them, his senses alert to any immediate danger.
The notes confirmed his suspicions, painting a picture of escalating obsession. Master Lingyu, initially a dedicated student of herbalism and minor talismans, had become consumed by the pursuit of physical immortality through waidan. He believed the unique cinnabar found near his hermitage held the key. His experiments grew increasingly reckless, involving not just minerals and herbs, but potent catalysts like venom, graveyard soil, and even drops of his own blood, fired in complex sequences timed to specific astrological phases. He sought to create an elixir, a 'Cinnabar Seed', that could halt decay and imbue dead matter with perpetual vitality.
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The final entries were fragmented, bordering on madness. Lingyu wrote of a 'breakthrough', of infusing the cinnabar with 'a spark of enduring stillness'. But his triumph was immediately followed by chilling observations: the successful concoction, a vibrant, almost pulsatingly red paste, seemed to possess a 'hunger', a 'cold thirst'. It didn't just preserve; it consumed ambient qi to maintain its state. He noted its effect on dead insects, which became rigid yet seemed to twitch unnaturally. His last legible entry read: "The stillness spreads... it seeks warmth... the vessel..."
Xuanzhen understood. Lingyu hadn't created an elixir of life, but a catalyst for undeath – the 'Corpse Cinnabar'. This substance didn't grant immortality; it arrested decay by replacing natural life force with a cold, animating principle that needed to constantly leech qi from living beings to sustain itself. It could spread like a contagion through contact, causing the wasting sickness, and, if potent enough or interacting with recently deceased bodies still holding residual qi, could animate them into mindless, shambling automatons – the figures seen by the villagers. Lingyu himself had likely succumbed to his own creation, becoming its first victim, perhaps even the first shambling horror.
As Xuanzhen absorbed this, he heard it – the slow, stiff shuffling outside. Peering through a crack in the crumbling wall, he saw them. Three figures, matching the description of the shambling horrors, were slowly converging on the hermitage, drawn perhaps by his own life force or by the residual energy of the Corpse Cinnabar within. Their movements were jerky, their eyes vacant, their skin pale and taut. Faint traces of the reddish cinnabar powder clung to their tattered garments.
Knowing he couldn't simply fight them – they were likely resistant to normal injury and their touch could be contaminating – Xuanzhen focused on the source. Where was the main concentration of the Corpse Cinnabar? Lingyu's notes mentioned a 'cooling chamber' built into the cliff face behind the main lab, where he stored his most volatile concoctions.
Moving quickly and quietly, Xuanzhen located a heavy stone door, partially hidden by fallen debris. Pushing it open revealed a small, cold cave chamber. And there it was. In the center, resting on a stone pedestal, was a large, sealed ceramic jar, radiating the cold, necrotic qi intensely. Faint red dust coated the jar and the surrounding floor. This was the main batch of Lingyu's final, fatal creation.
As he contemplated how to neutralize it, the shuffling sounds reached the entrance of the lab. The three animated corpses lumbered into view, their vacant eyes fixing on him, their groans low and guttural. They began hopping stiffly towards the inner chamber, drawn to the source or perhaps instinctively guarding it.
Xuanzhen knew he had little time. Destroying the jar might release the Cinnabar's energy in a dangerous cloud. According to Lingyu's own notes, the animating principle was tied to a specific imbalance – an excess of Yin (cold, stillness, death) and Metal (minerals, rigidity), overpowering the Yang (life, warmth, movement) and Wood (flexibility, growth) elements. Neutralization required restoring balance.
Recalling the principles from the notes and his own Taoist knowledge, Xuanzhen acted swiftly. He drew a quick bagua circle on the floor around the jar using blessed chalk. He needed potent Yang and Wood energy. Spying Lingyu's abandoned wooden staff leaning against the wall – a tool likely imbued with the alchemist's own (now corrupted) qi but fundamentally Wood – he grabbed it. For Fire/Yang, he crushed a potent 'Sun-Absorbing' talisman he carried, releasing its stored solar energy in a controlled burst, directing it towards the jar while chanting a mantra invoking the purifying power of celestial fire.
Simultaneously, he struck the stone floor firmly within the circle with the wooden staff, channeling grounding Wood energy, visualizing it absorbing the excessive Metal rigidity. He then sprinkled a specific counter-agent mentioned in Lingyu's notes as a potential stabilizer – a powder derived from charred peach wood (a potent purifier against spirits and necrotic energy) – onto the jar.
The shambling corpses faltered at the chamber entrance, momentarily repelled by the burst of Yang energy and the purifying smoke from the talisman. Inside the chamber, the ceramic jar containing the Corpse Cinnabar vibrated intensely. The faint red glow within dimmed. A low humming sound filled the air, followed by a sharp crack as the jar fractured, not exploding, but cracking cleanly. The intense cold radiating from it lessened dramatically. The potent, animating qi seemed to collapse inward, neutralized by the combined application of Fire, Wood, and purification. The remaining reddish powder within the cracked jar looked dull, inert.
As the energy dissipated, the three corpses at the entrance froze mid-shuffle. Their limbs went slack. With a final, rattling sigh, they collapsed into heaps of decaying flesh and rags, the unnatural animation gone.
Silence returned to the hermitage, broken only by the distant sigh of the mountain wind. The immediate threat was neutralized. Xuanzhen carefully gathered the fragments of the jar and the inert cinnabar, sealing them within a container lined with purifying talismans. He also took Lingyu's notes.
He returned to the village, explaining that the source of the affliction was a corrupted alchemical substance created by Master Lingyu, now neutralized. He provided guidance on purifying the affected homes and tending to the sick, suggesting remedies to slowly restore their depleted qi. He advised them to give the collapsed corpses (and Lingyu's remains, if found) a proper burial with full rites to appease any lingering echoes, and to permanently seal the hermitage and avoid the area, especially the unique cinnabar deposits Lingyu had used.
Leaving the weary but relieved village of Qingxi behind, Xuanzhen carried the sealed remnants of the Corpse Cinnabar and Lingyu's tragic notes. The alchemist's quest for physical immortality had birthed only a cold, hungry undeath, a contagion born of obsession and imbalance. It was a stark reminder of the profound dangers inherent in waidan, the pursuit of external elixirs, when undertaken without sufficient wisdom, humility, and respect for the natural boundaries between life and death. The stillness Lingyu had sought was not the vibrant stillness of enlightenment, but the cold, consuming stillness of the grave, inadvertently unleashed upon the world through the perilous beauty of his Corpse-Eating Cinnabar.
