Chapter 153: Gu Sorcery as Chains

"Look, it's him again. He runs over to the stockade every single day..."

"Mm, has he really hooked up with Yixiang?"

"How strange. Why doesn't Yixiang's mother take a big stick and break his legs?"

"You're really hoping someone gets beaten, aren't you?"

"Nonsense, what does that have to do with me?"

"If Yixiang's mother beats him up, you'd be able to step right in and take her place, wouldn't you? Don't think I didn't see the light in your eyes. You've got your eyes on him..."

Banter and laughter broke out in the tea garden.

A faint smile played at the corners of Lin Xiaosu's lips as he quickened his pace.

The sensational news of Yixiang's mother thrashing a young Han man with a thick wooden pole was already known throughout the entire mountain stockade.

However, absolutely no third person knew the true inside story behind that beating.

Ten miles of mountain paths vanished in the blink of an eye.

The thousand-year-old Miao stockade came into view once again.

Yixiang's small courtyard was very quiet.

After Lin Xiaosu knocked on the courtyard gate, Yixiang emerged from the house. The moment she caught sight of him, her eyes lit up, and she trotted over to open the door.

"Have you eaten breakfast yet?"

"I've already eaten!" Lin Xiaosu asked. "How is your mother doing?"

Yesterday, preoccupied with a certain someone back at the hotel, he had left in quite a hurry, departing immediately upon seeing that her mother seemed to be out of mortal danger.

Yixiang nodded gently. "Mother woke up last night, spoke a few words to me, and then fell asleep again. She's fine now."

"To think she was stuffed inside a hollow tree for nearly a year and could still wake up—your worm-charming arts are truly admirable."

"The key is still her natal gu worm. The natal gu worm redirected the vital life energy it had drawn from her back into her body..."

The fat white worm Lin Xiaosu had laid eyes on yesterday was precisely her mother's natal gu worm.

Natal gu worms are cultivated by practitioners of the insect-charming arts from a very tender age.

Through long years of nurturing, they become almost like an external avatar of the person.

If the host dies, the natal gu worm is bound to die.

If the natal gu worm dies, the host will also suffer severe injuries.

From this perspective, the existence of a natal gu worm actually poses a huge trouble for a person, adding an extra layer of existential risk to one's life.

Yet every gain has its loss, and a natal gu worm truly serves two major functions. First, it can act on behalf of the master to accomplish tasks the master cannot complete themselves. For instance, her mother's natal gu worm could roam the mountains and forests on her behalf; wherever the gu went was where she saw, allowing the gu to reach places humans could never attain and find medicinal herbs humans could never discover.

Second, when the master faces a major crisis, the natal gu worm can reversely supplement the master's energy.

Without her natal gu worm, her mother could never have been saved.

In fact, had it not been for her natal gu worm, the Thousand-Face Saber God Chu Tiankuo would have had no reason whatsoever to spare her life; he would have casually snuffed her out long ago...

This knowledge left Lin Xiaosu deeply shocked.

Because these details were completely absent from the Hidden Dragon intelligence files.

At the very least, they had never appeared in any Hidden Dragon archives Lin Xiaosu had accessed.

Yixiang said, "I told you to come over today not to talk about my mother, but about the gu worm that crawled into her body."

Lin Xiaosu's eyes brightened. "That green worm is also a gu worm?"

Yixiang replied, "Yes! This gu worm is the very key to keeping my mother in that state of neither living nor dying."

Truth be told, for Chu Tiankuo to maintain her mother in a state of suspended animation was an almost impossible feat.

To avoid exposing himself, he had to ensure her mother's natal gu worm remained alive.

And for the natal gu worm to stay alive,

Her mother had to remain alive as well.

Yet, could stuffing a person inside a hollow tree guarantee their survival over a prolonged period?

Dying of hunger and dying of freezing are both still death.

Yet there exists a certain wondrous gu that can maintain a person in a state of neither living nor dying.

That was precisely the long green worm that had entered her mother's body.

This long worm was called the "Corpse-Life Gu."

*Corpse* referred to a dead body.

*Life* referred to vitality.

Their essences are inherently irreconcilable, but the corpse gu is a creature that defies the creation of heaven and earth, capable of making even a genuine corpse move...

A blazing light flashed in Lin Xiaosu's eyes. "In the case of the annihilation of the Dong family's entire household, there were traces of witchcraft and gu arts, which also confirmed that Chu Tiankuo was backed by a master of the gu arts."

"Yes, that is the fundamental reason I asked you to come today!"

"Can we find the master of this Corpse-Life Gu?" Lin Xiaosu asked.

This master was definitively the other of the two murderers who had slaughtered the Dong family.

Of that there was no doubt whatsoever.

Once he found this person, the commission entrusted to him by the Blue Demon would be fully completed.

An ordinary person could never trace a gu worm back to its master, but the person before him was the sole direct descendant of the generation's witch god of the Miao frontier—she might just have a way.

Yixiang said, "The Corpse-Life Gu is a taboo gu. Even in the Miao frontier, it has nearly vanished. It is the heritage of Corpse God Mountain, yet I have never heard of anyone who has mastered this taboo art."

"Is there no way to find them?"

Yixiang said, "There is a method, but it carries a high probability of failure."

"What method?"

"I can stimulate this gu worm so that it returns to its master's side. However, its speed is terrifyingly fast. Once it touches the ground, no one can catch up to it, and the tracking chain will completely fail to form."

Tracking!

Lin Xiaosu slowly raised his head. "I can catch up!"

"Are you certain you can? Its speed is far faster than the slickest snake!"

"No problem!"

Yixiang walked into the inner room and picked up a glass bottle.

Inside the glass bottle, the green gu worm was darting up and down with extreme hyperactivity. Observing it with his Heavenly Dao Wisdom Eyes, Lin Xiaosu was shocked by its appearance. This creature looked nothing like something from Earth; it resembled an alien organism, looking part centipede and part earthworm...

"Do you need to make any preparations?"

"Unnecessary! Release it directly."

"Xiaowu!"

Yixiang uttered a soft call.

From the room where her mother lived, a small, snow-white head poked out from beside the door—it was precisely the small turtle she kept as a pet.

"Let's go together!"

Like a little puppy, the small turtle leaped up and landed in Yixiang's hand.

Lin Xiaosu cast his gaze toward the room. "With us going away like this, there will be nobody in the house. Will your mother be all right?"

"It's fine. Xiaohu is at home. With it here, nobody can step foot inside."

Ah, right, she had another companion—a little kitten.

This little kitten possessed the power to slay a Hidden Dragon Number 37 Gold Medallion expert with a single claw!

With it around, who could possibly enter the courtyard?

As Lin Xiaosu's gaze flickered, Yixiang had already uncapped the glass bottle. The moment the bottle was opened, the long green worm sprang upward, hit the ground, and in the span of a single breath, vanished without a trace.

Yixiang's expression changed.

The speed of this gu worm exceeded even her expectations...

Once returned to the earth and dissolved into the mountains and forests in an instant, could this green worm truly be tracked?

It sounded utterly unbelievable.

Why had she lost her mind and actually believed it?

What was most fatal of all was that the moment she released it, Lin Xiaosu had seemed lost in thought, making no move to pursue it whatsoever. Great, now the trail was broken.

Lin Xiaosu turned his gaze to her. "There's something I feel rather embarrassed to mention..."

"What is it?" Yixiang frowned slightly.

"To catch up with this gu worm, conventional ways of traveling probably won't cut it. I need to hold you."

Yixiang's cheeks instantly flushed crimson...

Lin Xiaosu shifted his gaze back to her mother's room. "Your mother seems to have woken up again. She doesn't actually have a habit of beating people with carrying poles, does she?"

"Elder brother, you're bad..." Yixiang was terribly shy.

With a stretch of his arms, Lin Xiaosu scooped her up, soared into the air, and vaulted across the courtyard wall.

Yixiang let out a soft exclamation...

Suddenly, a flash of white shadow cut through the air, and a small white cat appeared out of nowhere on the slope ahead. Its fur stood on end, and its eyes burned with boundless hostility.

Good grief! Lin Xiaosu's heart gave a violent thump. He was merely going off to handle official business with Yixiang.

He was not kidnapping Yixiang.

Yet this startled little white cat had actually assumed an aggressive posture.

Naturally, he wouldn't care about ordinary cats and dogs, but this particular white cat had sent Chu Tiankuo fleeing for his afterlife with a single paw. The terror of that combat prowess was enough to make even the Blue Demon change her expression...

Yixiang let out a soft cry. "Xiaohu, go back!"

The hostile glint in the little white cat's eyes abruptly vanished. With a flicker of its figure, it cleared the courtyard wall and retreated into the house.

Lin Xiaosu sighed with emotion. "Who would have thought? Before facing your mother's big carrying pole, I had to face your little bodyguard first... Luckily, I harbor no unmentionable intentions, or else I certainly wouldn't have made it past your family's trials and tribulations..."

Yixiang gently pinched him. "Stop talking nonsense and hurry up and chase that Corpse-Life Gu. I'm somewhat skeptical that you can actually catch it... It's truly out of sight now."

Indeed, the Corpse-Life Gu was out of sight.

Yet under Lin Xiaosu's divine eyes, could anything truly escape?

No matter how fast the Corpse-Life Gu moved, and no matter how thoroughly a tiny green worm could conceal itself by blending into the mountains and forests, nothing posed an issue before his eyes.

The Corpse-Life Gu threaded through the grass and plunged into a deep valley.

Holding Yixiang, Lin Xiaosu leaped down in a single bound.

Ahead lay a wide ditch, which he cleared with a single vault.

At this moment, the cool wind of the mountain forest failed to dispel the rosy flush across Yixiang's face...

She had never experienced a moment quite like this—held tightly in a man's embrace, crossing mountains and forests, rising and falling without cease...

Though she told herself eight times over that this was official business and an unavoidable necessity, the female hormones within her body were still quietly awakened by another kind of hormone. Her body was soft, her blood was boiling hot, her cheeks were flushed, and the little turtle she held in her hand seemed to be laughing at her...

Finally, another mountain peak came into view ahead.

A peak shaped uncannily like a coffin.

Here, even within the Miao frontier, was a place held in great dread, for this mountain was known as Corpse God Mountain.

Corpse God Mountain, as the name implied, dealt in corpses.

Over fifty years ago, Corpse God Mountain had a taboo figure named Gu Shan, who became obsessed with the gu arts to the point of madness, actually digging up his wife who had been dead for three years and resurrecting her through gu techniques, which had provoked immense panic among the villagers.

The great-grandfather of Yixiang, who was the supreme witch god of three generations past in the Miao frontier, had summoned the leaders of the eight major sects of the Miao frontier to severely denounce such taboo behavior that disrupted life and death, sparking a massive magical duel concerning the gu arts of the Miao frontier.

In that calamity of the gu arts, Gu Shan and his direct disciples perished.

The entire gu tradition of the Miao frontier suffered a devastating blow.

From then on, the lineage of corpse gu became a taboo in the Miao frontier.

The gu arts of Corpse God Mountain were nearly eradicated at the root.

Yet judging by the current situation, things might not truly have ended...

For the Corpse-Life Gu had reappeared in the martial world.

Who on earth was manipulating things behind the scenes?

With the tip of his foot touching the ground, Lin Xiaosu held Yixiang and broke through the void in a single step, landing upon a desolate slope.

This desolate slope had no dwellings around it, only burial mounds. Beneath the dense, brooding shade of towering cypress trees, even in broad daylight, it remained chillingly ghastly.

Yixiang's heart skipped a beat. "The ancestral grounds of the Gu family?"