The thing walked on twelve segmented brass legs, each ending in a bloodstained spike. Its torso was a cube of hammered iron, and from its center protruded a massive wooden screw—turned not by gears, but by the bound arms of a dozen skeletal cultivators fused into its frame. Their mouths were sewn shut, but their eyes wept tears of amber resin.
This was the Soul Screw Press, a Grade-3 alchemical construct. And it was hunting.
Qingzi scrambled backward, but her foot snapped a dried femur. The press stopped. Its screw rotated once, slowly, as if turning to look at her.
Then it spoke. Not with a voice, but with a vibration: the creak of wet wood, the hiss of steam. Yet she understood perfectly.
"Defective product. Return for re-processing."
The twelve legs unfolded like a spider's. It charged.
Qingzi ran. She ran faster than she ever had in her life—faster than when the Sect butchers had chased her, faster than when the slurry drain had nearly drowned her. But the press was faster. Its brass legs punched holes in the earth, closing the distance.
Ten paces. Five. Two.
Then she fell.
A buried root caught her ankle. She tumbled into a shallow ravine filled with bones—human, beast, and things that might have been both. The Soul Screw Press loomed at the rim, its screw descending.
This is how I die, Qingzi thought. Crushed. Juiced. Turned into paste for some noble brat’s tea. Xia Qingzi - The Demon Girl Juicing. Chapter 1....
The screw touched her chest. She felt her ribs begin to bow.
And then—something inside her broke.
The taste was indescribable. It was the bitterness of a thousand failed cultivators, the sweetness of their unrealized potential, the salt of their tears, and the umami of their crushed dreams. It should have killed her.
Instead, it named her.
The hollow space behind her heart became a core—not a golden core, not a nascent soul, but a Press Core. From now on, Xia Qingzi would not cultivate. She would not meditate. She would not study ancient texts or learn elegant sword forms.
She would press. She would squeeze. She would juice every living thing that possessed even a drop of spiritual essence—beasts, plants, cultivators, and eventually, perhaps, the very heavens.
She looked toward the Sect’s inner mountain, where the Alchemy Hall gleamed like a blood-soaked pearl.
"I used to be the fruit," she whispered, her voice harmonizing with the unquiet souls inside her. "Now I am the press."
And for the first time in three years, Xia Qingzi smiled.
It was not a dantian. It was not a meridian. Those had been shattered by the Sect’s evaluators when she was seven, marking her as worthless. The thing walked on twelve segmented brass legs,
This was something else. A hollow space behind her heart, smaller than a grain of rice. She’d never noticed it before because it had been empty.
Now, under the press’s crushing force, it opened.
And it was hungry.
The screw touched her skin, and instead of breaking, her skin absorbed it. Not the brass—the force. The pressure. The millennia of crushed bones, squeezed herbs, and pressed souls that the press had collected.
Qingzi screamed, but the sound turned into a gurgle. Her veins lit up like molten copper. The hollow space behind her heart began to fill—not with Qi, but with something denser, darker, more alive. It was the essence of the press’s victims, undigested and screaming.
Give me more, the hollow space whispered.
Qingzi reached up with both hands—not to push the screw away, but to grab it. Her fingers sank into the iron as if it were wet clay.
The press shuddered. For the first time in two hundred years, it tried to retreat.
Too late.
Qingzi pulled. The screw came free with a sound like a tooth being extracted from a god. Bone shards and amber resin sprayed across the ravine. The twelve brass legs folded inward, and the fused cultivators inside the press opened their sewn mouths—not to scream, but to breathe for the first time in decades. It was not a dantian
And in the center of the destruction, Xia Qingzi stood up. Her rust-colored hair had turned black, slick with a liquid that looked like ink but smelled like overripe plums. Her eyes were gone—replaced by two swirling vortices of crimson and gold.
She looked down at her hands. They were no longer the hands of a starving girl. They were the hands of a harvester.
In her left palm, a single drop of liquid swirled: the condensed essence of the Soul Screw Press itself. She raised it to her lips.
And juiced it.
Title: Dive into the World of Xia Qingzi - The Demon Girl Juicing: Chapter 1 Insights
Content:
Hey everyone, have you been following the adventures of Xia Qingzi in "The Demon Girl Juicing"? Today, we're diving into Chapter 1, and it's packed with interesting developments.
For readers who have already read Chapter 1:
For new readers:
Discussion Points:
Join the Conversation! Let's talk about Xia Qingzi and her adventures. Share your thoughts on Chapter 1 and what you're hoping to see in future chapters. Whether you're a long-time fan or just discovering this series, your insights are welcome!