In the third year of the Xuande reign, as autumn winds clawed at the window lattice with skeletal leaves, Song Mingde pried open the final packet of medicine using a silver hairpin. The murky brew swirling in the porcelain bowl mirrored his sunken cheeks—seven days had passed since his mother slipped into unconsciousness. That very dawn, the physician from Renjitang Clinic had bowed deeply to him beneath the corridor’s eaves, his silence heavier than any diagnosis.

  “De’er…” The rasping whisper slithered from the brocade quilt. Song Mingde wiped spilled medicine from his wrist, only to find his mother’s clouded eyes suddenly lucid, her bony fingers clutching his collar. “The betrothal contract… behind the Kitchen God’s portrait… Yunniang’s…”

  The water clock’s drip became deafening. Her grip slackened as the bedside tranquility incense snuffed itself out. Lunging for the ginseng slices, Song Mingde froze—in the dressing mirror’s reflection, two officials in pointed black hats materialized, their iron chains clinking from the ceiling beam.

  “Song Mingde of Yishui County, your lifespan ends at the third hour of dusk.” The lead bailiff unfurled a document glowing with corpse-light, its vermilion seal shaped like a xiezhi beast. Turning, Song Mingde saw his own body still cradling the medicine bowl, a wisp of blue smoke escaping its crown.

  The stone bridge through the mist bore claw marks like ancient scriptures. At the bridgehead, a hunched crone ladled murky soup. The ghostly bailiffs halted abruptly, their chains coiling around Song Mingde’s throat. “Your mother Lady Wang’s life-candle was meant to gutter out last Spring Awakening.”

  The words struck like lightning. He remembered that rain-drenched day—carrying his mother through the mud, three ribs snapping as they fell. When she awoke three days later, the eternal flame at her bedside had burned cyan ever since.

  “We arrive.” The bailiff hurled him onto cold stone. Looking up, Song Mingde saw the plaque “Examination Hall of Merit”, its twelve human-skin lanterns illuminating three bronze desks. To the left sat a Ming eunuch in embroidered robes, his neck still bruised from strangulation; to the right, a peasant scholar with field mud clinging to his straw sandals.

  “Silence!” A bull-headed judge unfurled a scroll. “This year’s thesis: When sons perish before their parents’ destined hour, how shall fractured bonds be mended?”

  As Song Mingde lifted the brush, the jade inkstone seethed. Crimson ink snaked across the paper, coalescing into his mother’s deathbed visage. He saw his own Spring Awakening bloodstains in the snow, transforming into red threads binding her fraying lifeline.

  “Impudence!” The judge’s roar shook dust from the rafters. Song Mingde started—his brush had pierced the parchment, carving “Sky’s Theft” into the desk. A spectral tome of destiny materialized, its pages cracking where his mother’s name bled through vermilion ink.

  The bull-headed judge trembled as he snatched the exam scroll. “You dare plunder the threads of fate?” Golden eyes blinked open on the hall’s coiling black dragons. Crushed by their gaze, Song Mingde roared through cracking bones: “If filial love be heresy, I renounce this judgeship!”

  A xiezhi statue atop the eaves blazed crimson, illuminating Song Mingde’s golden heart-chamber. As the hall erupted in chaos, an elder in a five-tiered crown emerged from the shadows. “Stay your judgment,” his voice rumbled like temple bells. “This candidate must face the Tenth Trial…”

  The elder’s fingertips grazed the air, and the world inverted. Song Mingde found himself kneeling beside his mother’s deathbed, yet the bronze mirror above her pillow had split—its left half reflecting the mortal realm, its right revealing the ghostly courtroom.

  “This is the Dual Hourglass Mirror,” the elder’s voice echoed from the void. “Your mother’s thread of life snapped last Spring Awakening. It was your heart’s blood in her medicine that stole three extra months.”

  Song Mingde touched his sternum, where his underrobe bloomed crimson. Those broken ribs from the rainy night—they’d been shattered not by mud, but by a Reaper’s soul-hook meant for his mother. The mirror’s right side flickered: he saw himself lunging between the spectral harvester and the sickbed, his chest blazing like a phoenix at dawn.

  “A Filial Heart!” The courtroom erupted. The bull-headed judge’s iron brush quivered. “A once-in-a-millennium virtue… No wonder the Book of Life and Death went blind…”

  The mirror’s left half suddenly darkened. Song Mingde’s mother sat bolt upright, plucking a sewing needle from her basket. With monstrous strength, she drove it through her own brow. “No!” Song Mingde screamed, but the realms held him paralyzed. Blood streamed down the old woman’s face as she drew arcane sigils on the window—the same patterns he’d glimpsed daily at the bottom of her medicine bowl.

  “Foolish child,” the elder sighed like a mourning bell. “Your blood prolonged her days, her blood paints life-stealing talismans. Mother and son plundering fate—this is what roused the Ten Kings of Hell.”

  The earth cracked open, disgorging a nine-foot bronze clepsydra. Its crimson sands bore his mother’s name. “Each grain is a stolen breath,” the elder intoned. “Take the City God’s seal, and she keeps three days.”

  Song Mingde stumbled back, tangling in soul-chains that slithered like serpents. The links shimmered with his mother’s dying lamplight—the wick now barely a pinprick in the dark.

  “Choose by the noon bell,” the bull-headed judge slammed the City God’s seal onto the altar. Its xiezhi-shaped knob glared bloody light. “Filial devotion, or filial duty?”

  Outside, the storm broke.

  When Song Mingde grasped the seal, his heart shattered like jade. The Dual Hourglass Mirror exploded, its shards revealing fragments of destiny: a paper effigy spooning medicine by day, a blue-faced judge condemning souls by night; his mother’s lamp refilling drop by drop, each replenished by verdicts screamed in ghostly courts.

  “The pact is sealed.” The elder’s voice dissolved. Kneeling in mirror shards, Song Mingde stared at the divine sigil burning his palm. Where his broken ribs had ached, a phoenix tree sapling now sprouted—the very tree his mother planted at his birth.

  Rain lashed the blood-sigiled window. When Yunniang burst in, she found Song Mingde feeding his mother medicine. She missed the paper seams behind his ears, the soul-chains coiling around a salt merchant’s murdered concubine in his sleeve. Outside, the phoenix tree stretched skyward, its newborn leaves swallowing the storm.

  Translation Notes

  “Xiezhi”: Retained as transliteration, contextualized as a mythical justice-divining beast.

  “Spring Awakening” : Directly translated with cultural context embedded in narrative.

  “Life-candle”: Metaphor kept intact for its visceral symbolism.

  “Sky’s Theft”: Literal translation to retain philosophical weight.