Song Zang vigilantly backed away two steps and maintained a safe distance from Village Chief Tian.
Tian Yao Zu was not dead, but his throat was writhing unnaturally. The densely packed scales covering his chest rose and fell almost as though breathing.
Countless tiny living things had suddenly become active inside his body. They crawled upward from his stomach, rushed into his esophagus, entered his windpipe, tore at his vocal cords, and prevented him from revealing any further secrets.
Before long, Tian Yao Zu’s entire body began convulsing violently. The muscles across his shoulders and neck tightened to their absolute limits from pain, turning an unhealthy bruised red.
Yet he did not seem frightened. Instead, he clenched his teeth with practiced numbness and endured, waiting for the agony of the gu insects biting him to slowly end.
So that was how it was. Village Chief Tian was not actually afraid of torture. What shattered him physically and emotionally was that Song Zang, his own biological grandson, despised him enough to attack him with his fists.
Of course, Song Zang’s punches were much more brutal than the insects.
The thick soil of Cangmu Mountain had been smashed into a deep crater, exposing an interwoven network of tree roots beneath it.
Village Chief Tian lay at the bottom of that pit.
He genuinely could not speak. All he could do was wave his hand with great effort and repeatedly mouth “gu poison acting up,” signaling that Song Zang did not need to worry and that he would soon recover.
Song Zang did not agree. His senses were sharper than Tian Yao Zu’s.
The gu insects that had suddenly become restless were not the only danger. Cangmu Mountain itself deserved even greater vigilance.
At some unknown point, the mountain had fallen silent too.
Earlier, Song Zang could still faintly hear people shouting drinking games at the banquet, children running and playing, cups clinking and noisy conversation… Now every sound gradually vanished.
Birdsong and insect cries disappeared as well. The only sounds remaining were Tian Yao Zu’s rasping breaths, the eerie friction of scales rising and falling, and the faint wet gurgling of saliva and bloody foam around his broken gums.
Quiet. Far too quiet. It felt as though an invisible, soundless membrane had quietly formed around them and completely enclosed the two inside.
The absolute silence that previously appeared only alongside nighttime hallucinations had now begun emerging openly beneath broad daylight.
Song Zang was slightly excited to see what would happen next.
He had done this deliberately. He had intentionally brought no player with sufficient combat strength and had proactively climbed the mountain alone twice, all so he could finally wait for the silence to descend.
Beneath an ancient pine growing beside a broken cliff halfway up the mountain, a small round stone suddenly moved.
Song Zang noticed it immediately and waited patiently. Sure enough, he witnessed something nearly miraculous.
The stone’s shadow stretched beneath the sunlight, growing larger and larger until it slowly developed a head and limbs, transforming into a young child around five or six years old.
It wore the rough short jacket of an ordinary farming household. The dusty gray fabric was completely unremarkable, yet could not conceal an appearance far too refined for a poor peasant.
The little boy was extraordinarily beautiful. His lips were red, his teeth white, his huge black eyes bright and round, and his plump face looked tender as a ball of fresh snow. He was as exquisite as a doll.
The child tilted his head, took several unfamiliar steps, and tottered toward them.
It was a wangliang, a mountain spirit born from stone. Song Zang recognized it immediately.
Yet for some reason, the child looked inexplicably familiar…
“Erlang! Erlang!”
Only when Tian Yao Zu suddenly sat upright, eyes wide, and shouted twice in astonished terror did Song Zang finally understand.
The stone spirit had transformed into Song Zang himself as a child! It was simply fatter and cuter than the real young Song Zang had ever been. Its cheeks carried two rosy patches, its arms were soft and chubby, and one glance revealed a spoiled child who had been raised with exceptional care.
So the target was not Song Zang at all. The spirit wanted Tian Yao Zu. Even the hallucination was aimed solely at Tian Yao Zu!
Song Zang was still staring blankly when Tian Yao Zu nearly collapsed emotionally. Enduring both his beating injuries and the unbearable agony of gu insects writhing inside his body, the old man roared and desperately crawled out of the deep pit.
He completely ignored Song Zang’s existence. Digging his fingernails into the dirt for leverage, he slowly dragged himself toward the beautiful little child.
Perhaps his determination was simply too strong. Tian Yao Zu actually broke through the gu poison’s silencing restriction and forced himself to vomit out two differently shaped insects. His damaged vocal cords began vibrating again.
As he crawled, he shouted hoarsely and indistinctly, “Erlang, run! Don’t come closer…”
“No, no! Grandfather is coming to protect you…”
Song Zang leisurely followed behind him, picked up the two insects Tian Yao Zu had forced from his body, wiped them clean, and examined them carefully.
One was a juvenile centipede with countless legs and a pair of vicious hooked limbs capable of secreting powerful venom. The other… was sticky, a dark yellow-green with several faint black stripes, and possessed a head shaped like a semicircular hammer.
Song Zang recognized it. Many ancient texts recorded this classic earth-borne gu creature. It resembled a small snake, was aggressively carnivorous, and like an earthworm could survive even after being cut into several pieces. It was the extraordinarily resilient hammerhead flatworm.
No wonder Yin Chen had suspected from the beginning that gu poison existed in this instance but had never managed to find any.
The people carrying gu poison simply had not entered the players’ field of view earlier.
Song Zang pinched the soft exterior of the hammerhead worm. While Tian Yao Zu was still struggling across the ground, Song Zang quickly threw both insects into his mouth and chewed them casually.
Mm. A powerful rush of protein and earthy flavor hit his nose. The centipede shell scratched his mouth a little, but it was not particularly unpleasant.
【You consumed Myriad Flowers Gu · Larva. Resistance +1.】
Two identical system notifications in succession were enough for Song Zang to confirm the type of gu poison.
The name Myriad Flowers Gu was suggestive enough on its own. The insects inside Tian Yao Zu’s body probably included far more than these two species. There would be all kinds of strange creatures, plus… marine parasites that had invaded his body during the transplant modifications.
It prevented him from committing suicide, revealing certain truths, and controlling his own behavior. The name 【Myriad Flowers】 suited the poison perfectly. Its functions truly came in every imaginable variety.
Tian Yao Zu had suffered endlessly because of the gu and therefore submitted to the evil organization and worked for them. From a rational perspective, Song Zang could understand that choice.
But Song Zang had no intention of allowing him to leave Cangmu Mountain alive.
As a survivor of the famine years, Tian Yao Zu deserved to walk the same path as his ancestors, abandoned by his own blood descendants inside a deep mountain full of women’s bones so he could properly atone to the Tian family’s foremothers.
That was what one called Heaven’s justice and inevitable retribution.
Once he decided Tian Yao Zu would never return, the tension inside Song Zang’s mind immediately eased.
He had listened to suona horns screaming like a soul-summoning ritual all day. Now he could finally enjoy a little peace, rest, and watch the show.
Song Zang casually found a dead tree stump and sat down, enjoying the nearly absolute silence.
Tian Yao Zu continued dragging himself forward with great difficulty. The densely packed scales on his arms trembled and lifted, revealing uneven insects wriggling madly beneath them. The sight was extremely unpleasant.
The child version of Song Zang began putting on a clumsy performance, opening his round eyes and awkwardly squeezing out two tears. “Grandfather, who are these monster uncles? They smell bad, like salted fish.”
“Don’t! Don’t touch him! My grandson is innocent! If you have to take someone, take… ugh… blegh…”
Halfway through shouting, Tian Yao Zu abruptly vomited dozens of brilliantly colored venomous insects.
The insects showed absolutely no attachment to their host. They burrowed into the soil and scattered in every direction.
Song Zang rested his chin on one hand and watched the entire process before narrowing his eyes slightly. His deliberately relaxed back became tense again.
Interesting.
When the gu poison first activated, its purpose had been preventing Tian Yao Zu from revealing the secrets of the mermaid-hunting team.
But everything the insects did afterward served a completely different purpose.
The gu insects were actively dragging and restraining Tian Yao Zu, trying to prevent him from moving forward. When he refused to stop, they attempted to tear through his flesh and abandon the host altogether.
That was right. The insects were afraid. They feared Tian Yao Zu’s insane hallucination, feared this invisible barrier, and feared that absurdly weak child version of Song Zang…
The more Song Zang thought, the more interested he became. Rather than continue watching passively, he personally grabbed Tian Yao Zu by the collar and dragged him rapidly toward the stone spirit.
Tian Yao Zu struggled desperately and shook his head while crying, “Aah! Erlang, run! Close your eyes, don’t look! Ah, mm… mm…”
The terrified gu insects finally found an exit. They poured from Tian Yao Zu’s ears, nose, mouth, and lower bodily openings in a violent flood, mixed with unidentified fluids as they splattered and fled. Plenty even landed across Song Zang’s robe, sticky and filthy.
This small patch of mountainside quickly transformed into a nest of every variety of sinister insect.
Song Zang frowned but resisted the urge to brush them away.
It was disgusting, yes, but every insect could give him one point of Resistance. If he collected several together and fried them, the profit was guaranteed.
As large numbers of insects escaped, a corpse-like stench suddenly erupted from Tian Yao Zu’s body. Several places hidden beneath the scales seemed to rapidly rot, inflame, and suppurate as his immune system violently rejected the foreign tissues forcibly grafted onto him.
Of course, there were always a few stupid insects that could not find an exit. Eggs reproducing inside the flesh could not escape either, which barely slowed the speed at which Tian Yao Zu’s life force collapsed.
As long as he remained crudely alive and did not suddenly drop dead, that was enough.
Song Zang threw him aside and met the child version of his own gaze.
Seeing the child reveal an utterly innocent expression of confusion, Song Zang’s voice abruptly softened. “Little friend, why are you bullying Grandfather?”
The stone spirit’s eyes widened even farther in shock. “Y-you can see me? Impossible! That’s impossible…”
It seemed terrified. Hearing those words frightened Tian Yao Zu too. He opened his hollow eyes warily and shouted, “Who’s there? Who wants to hurt my Erlang? Come out!”
Song Zang kicked Tian Yao Zu farther away, then grabbed the stone spirit by the collar and lifted him high enough that both feet left the ground.
The dangling little boy kicked helplessly in panic. His confused, lost expression really was ridiculously cute.
Song Zang’s smile widened until he looked like some terrible pervert. In a soft voice, he questioned, “What are you trying to do to him? Who ordered you to bully an elderly man? Children need to respect their elders. How can you make trouble like this?”
“I didn’t! I’m saving him! Put me down!” the stone spirit protested righteously, its face flushing red with anxiety.
“Really? But look at him. You’ve almost killed him. He smells like a rotting old man now.”
Song Zang kicked Tian Yao Zu’s loosened scales, releasing even more of the fermented stench trapped beneath them.
“That’s not it, that’s not it! I need to, um, what was it… I need to stop him from… forgetting his roots…”
The stone spirit suddenly paused. Its expression became cold and stiff with almost no excess emotion, while its voice became calm and mechanical.
It slowly spoke as though reciting lines programmed long ago. “He will have his mind devoured by gu insects. His body will mutate and turn him into an abnormal creature that should not exist and does not conform to the laws of nature.
“He will break through the limits maintaining the balance of all things, causing tens of millions of humans to mutate along with him, leading humanity toward degeneration and extinction and creating an irreversible catastrophic outcome.”
Song Zang became quiet and listened until it finished, staring unblinkingly at that mechanical little face until the stone spirit fell silent again and its expression instantly became lively.
The stone spirit seemed rather proud. It secretly glanced at Song Zang and clumsily adopted an aloof expression as it said haughtily, “Understand now? Foolish human, I’m a good spirit devoted entirely to righteousness and rescuing people from suffering! Put me down!”
Song Zang not only refused but maliciously tightened his grip on the collar and lifted the child even higher.
“Who taught you those words?” Song Zang threatened gently with a pleasant smile. “Little friend, tell me, or I’ll cut you into tiny pieces, boil you into stone porridge inside my iron pot, and feed you to the piglets at home.”
“No!”
The stone spirit turned pale with fright and tried twisting its little body free. But it had been born with intelligence and quickly recognized one brutal reality.
Song Zang truly was powerful enough to crush countless tiny spirits like it with his bare hands.
The aggrieved little stone filled its eyes with tears and struggled not to cry. “I-I knew it from the moment I was born. It was inherited from my ancestors. Big Brother, don’t hit me.”
“From the moment you were born… How old are you this year?” Song Zang became thoughtful.
“I’ve only been alive for three days. Big Brother, believe me. I’m not lying.”
Three days?!
Song Zang became interested and forced the little stone to reveal plenty of secrets.
The foolish stone spirit was actually exceptionally easy to fool. All one needed to do was ask nicely, pair the request with a little “vicious” intimidation, then follow the threat with a few gentle words… and the spirit could be coaxed into reluctantly revealing the truth.
Apparently, it merely wanted to stop humanity from performing more 【insane acts】.
These included, but were not limited to, the mermaid-hunting team’s brutal bodily modifications, establishing large numbers of Daoist temples and Buddhist monasteries while twisting their teachings, gathering worshipers’ incense and faith for personal use, then ultimately using that power to study wicked arts and construct secret cults centered on personal worship and absolute supremacy.
Methods as inhumane as Myriad Flowers Gu were likewise among the forbidden practices that had to be eliminated.
Only then could humanity’s viable population be preserved and protected, preventing uncontrollable mutation and stopping the human race from entering an irreversible nonhuman path.
For a very long time, every spirit naturally born within Cangmu Mountain had inherited this knowledge at birth. Everything described above was their ultimate mission, a critical task deeply engraved into their souls.
The stone spirit believed everything it did was unquestionably righteous. In its telling, tormenting Tian Yao Zu with hallucinations was merely a necessary method.
“Little Stone, have you ever seen an immortal?”
Song Zang offered no judgment and abruptly asked the unrelated question.
The stone spirit shook its head. “Only mountain spirits, water ghosts, and monsters. There are a few especially powerful masses of demonic aura too. There used to be lots and lots of ghost grandmothers.
“I heard other spirits say Cangmu Mountain used to be a place where immortals lived in seclusion, so it has especially strong spirituality and is better for absorbing moon essence… But I’ve traveled all over the mountain and there are no immortals. Spiritual energy can’t circulate or regenerate either.
“Since the energy doesn’t cycle, clever spirits like me can’t live long. At most I can survive around seven days before turning back into an ordinary stone.”
The stone spirit counted on its fingers without much concern and continued, “Let’s see… I have another three to five days before I die. Then a new wangliang will replace me~”
Song Zang froze. “Only seven days?”
“Yeah. I’m not actually afraid of dying, but I’m really afraid of pain. No one ever hit me before except you.” The stone spirit looked pitiful and begged quietly, “Big Brother, can you not cook me into stone porridge? Wait until I turn back into a stone that doesn’t know anything, then feed me to the piglets. Is that okay?”
Song Zang stroked his fluffy head and softened his voice. “As long as you behave, I won’t bully you. Tell Big Brother where those especially powerful masses of demonic aura are.”
The so-called demonic aura was probably the Chi-Mei responsible for creating hallucinations. Song Zang did not dislike little spirits, but he genuinely hated anything that interfered with his sleep.
“One of them is inside Tian Yao Zu’s brain. Once all the unnatural demonic and foreign things that shouldn’t belong inside a human are stripped away from him, the demonic aura will leave by itself.”
Song Zang became thoughtful. “I understand why you’re targeting Tian Yao Zu. What about the Song family? They’re all ordinary humans. None of them turned into monsters.”
“Huh? Let me think… Because the Song family are sinners! This particular Song line possesses the ability to unlock a secret treasure capable of surpassing humanity’s limits and stealing power that does not belong to humans. They must be stopped!” The stone spirit paused carefully. “I don’t know what the secret treasure is. Don’t hit me.”
“I won’t. Keep talking. Even members of the Song family who aren’t biologically related can activate the secret treasure?” Song Zang narrowed his eyes.
“Yes. Only this special branch of the Song family. As long as the surname is formally inherited through the family line, they can unlock the treasure! Other people named Song are useless.”
“I understand.” Song Zang slowly curved his lips. “So, Little Stone, where are the other masses of demonic aura? Explain clearly, or I’ll still cook you into stone porridge.”
The stone spirit shuddered but did not immediately surrender. “Big Brother, you’re already so powerful. Do you want that secret treasure too?”
“I have absolutely no interest in it. But those masses of demonic aura you mentioned already killed my grandfather and nearly frightened my elder brother into insanity. In the future, they may kill even more people, especially innocent people who know nothing about the secret treasure… I want revenge for my family. Do you understand?”
When Song Zang mentioned Grandfather Song, his throat suddenly experienced a strange squeezing sensation, as though the will of the world were deliberately restricting him.
It was uncomfortable, but nowhere near as severe as what Yin Wu Xue had suffered inside the Ning residence.
After all, the wild spirits of Cangmu Mountain had inherited their ancestors’ intentions and more or less knew the truth behind Grandfather Song being forcibly erased.
After listening to Song Zang’s unexpectedly sincere explanation, the stone spirit remained silent for quite a while and stared at him carefully.
“Big Brother, you’re a strange person. You lie constantly, but those last few sentences were more sincere.”
Song Zang froze. “Mm. I genuinely have no desire for the secret treasure. Tell me. I only want to protect my family.”
The stone spirit nodded, sighed with deliberate maturity, then finally explained.
“The source of the demonic aura gathers around the spring eye of Cangmu Mountain. An ancient formation restricts it, with the pearl of a mermaid queen from a thousand years ago serving as the formation’s suppressing core. Now the pearl has weakened, so the seal is loosening. That’s why the demonic aura can move around Cangmu Mountain, but none of it can completely escape the formation and cause large-scale disasters in the human world.
“The demonic aura has no shape or color and is extremely difficult to track. It can escape through any gap. Even though Big Brother is very powerful, you can’t kill it easily.
“How about this? I’ll think of a solution for Big Brother. Find an even stronger pearl and use it to reinforce the ancient formation… Then for the next thousand years, the demonic aura absolutely won’t be able to leave the spring eye even by half a step.”
A stronger pearl? They might need to find a new mermaid queen.
Song Zang immediately remembered the murdered player. Her role background and main storyline must inevitably connect to the pearl.
While Song Zang was thinking, the stone spirit spoke again with a troubled expression. “Sigh, actually I don’t like those strange demonic auras either. Their methods of saving humanity are too brutal. They’re vicious and cruel and deliberately create suffering and fear. These last two days they keep secretly bullying me too.
“…Also, sorry, Big Brother. It really was that hallucination-producing aura that killed your grandfather. If I had handled it, I definitely wouldn’t have been so crude.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Song Zang rubbed the spirit’s head and finally stopped clutching his collar.
Truthfully, Song Zang rather liked this stone spirit. Merely looking at that round little face inexplicably improved his mood.
This was not because Song Zang was narcissistic. The child version of himself simply resembled a happier Song Zang from some parallel world.
A youngest son of the Song family born in Tianjia Village, always supported and protected, never lacking food or clothing, and even spoiled excessively.
He possessed endless love and attention and the confidence to behave boldly, energetically, and without fear. That was why he grew into someone kind, adorable, and charming.
Aside from appearance, this child resembled Song Zang in absolutely no way. Their personalities could hardly have been more different.
And precisely because of that, Song Zang liked him especially. He liked that unmistakable sense of happiness around the child… something Song Zang himself could never obtain.
Song Zang produced the iron pot almost like a magic trick. Amid the stone spirit’s astonished cheering, he grabbed several clumps of gu insects and threw them inside.
He cooked the child an enormous pot of fragrant, golden, crispy “fried silkworm pupae.”
The stone spirit had never eaten ordinary human food. Oil covered its mouth as it ate, and its bright eyes widened before it declared extravagantly, “Big Brother, you’re amazing! Can you raise me? I want to be your son!”
Song Zang had been waiting for those exact words.
“Of course. Just reincarnate into my wife’s stomach. That way you can live a little longer too. I want to take you outside Cangmu Mountain, show you the world, and let you eat more delicious food.” He crouched down and coaxed gently.
The child clearly found the suggestion tempting, but looked troubled. “Re-reincarnate? I don’t know how to reincarnate…”
“It’s fine. I’ll make my wife figure it out. He’s even more powerful than Big Brother.” Song Zang’s lips curved.
“I’ll listen to everything Big Brother says! Good Big Brother, let me eat two more fried insects~”
The two got along splendidly and immediately came to an agreement. The stone spirit became so excited it completely forgot its original mission.
Tian Yao Zu, barely clinging to life, was completely ignored and gradually became quiet too.
He was dying.
The gu insects had escaped his body too violently, taking most of his remaining life force with them. While fleeing, they tore recklessly through the organs around them and caused severe internal damage.
Now Tian Yao Zu was not only covered in injuries but nearly deaf and mute, incapable of forming even half a clear sentence.
His trembling hand picked up a tree branch and wrote two characters on the ground.
【Imperial Preceptor】
After finishing with great difficulty, he drew several thick lines beneath the words, emphasizing that the Imperial Preceptor’s involvement in everything was anything but minor.
After carefully confirming the details with him, Song Zang learned that the Imperial Preceptor’s surname was Xu. He was a Daoist whose true name was unknown, trained at the historically renowned Qingyang Temple.
Imperial Preceptor Xu possessed powerful Daoist arts and many followers. He was not only the mermaid-hunting team’s patron and greatest beneficiary but personally researched and continuously refined bodily modification techniques, alchemy, and several kinds of gu □□ methods.
Elio’s Notes: The □□ is already missing from the Chinese source here. I’m preserving the gap rather than inventing which kind of gu technique the sentence originally named.
His inspiration for modifying human bodies apparently came from the notorious Art of Transforming Humans into Livestock. No one else could make sense of that method, yet he somehow had the ability to repeatedly refine and innovate upon it…
Elio’s Notes: 造畜之法, literally an “art of making livestock,” belongs to Chinese occult and horror folklore about sorcerers transforming humans into animals. The novel is treating that grotesque tradition as the conceptual ancestor of Imperial Preceptor Xu’s surgical experiments.
With proper restraints, he undoubtedly could have become an exceptional figure of his generation. What a pity.
When an extraordinarily intelligent, ruthless character chose a crooked path, the consequences were always especially horrifying.
Song Zang became thoughtful. “Do you know what the Imperial Preceptor ultimately wants? What exactly is his end goal?”
Tian Yao Zu’s wrist had already lost all strength. He could no longer lift the branch. Collapsed on the ground, he numbly shook his head.
“Fine. Then I need to go home and find my wife. Before you die, is there anything else you want to say?” Song Zang tilted his head.
Hearing that, Village Chief Tian raised eyes already filled with death and struggled to form two words with his dry lips.
“Yue Xiang…”
“Relax. I’ll make sure Mother lives well.”
Song Zang spoke calmly, then raised his hand and snapped his maternal grandfather’s neck with a crisp crack.
He pulled every mermaid scale from Tian Yao Zu’s body and collected them, then dressed the corpse again and threw it into the deepest part of the forest.
At least he left the old man with one final trace of dignity and did not allow the village chief to depart completely naked.
While Song Zang handled all this, the stone spirit bounced happily around him, and Song Zang never stopped thinking.
The setting of this world was genuinely fascinating.
There were no gods or Buddhas filling the heavens, no Underworld and reincarnation. Spirits could inherit the will of their ancestors, yet survived only briefly by absorbing moon essence before dying and being replaced.
Meanwhile, Daoists had only two remaining cultivation paths: worship-based faith and cult practices. Orthodox Daoist methods had become useless street-stall rubbish.
Connecting this with past experience, Song Zang quickly considered one possibility.
Immortals absolutely had existed in this world once. Now all of them had mysteriously disappeared, severing both the road to ascension and the cycle of reincarnation and completely isolating this world.
They had severed communication between Heaven and Earth.
Elio’s Notes: This echoes the ancient mythic concept 绝地天通, the “severing of communication between Heaven and Earth,” in which direct traffic between gods and mortals was cut off. The novel’s wording varies slightly, but the idea is the same: the divine realm has withdrawn and shut the door behind it.
As for the so-called ancestral will inherited by spirits, their mission to 【save humanity】… that was probably another measure deliberately left behind by the vanished immortals.
They had not only separated immortals from mortals but also wanted to stop humanity from using any special method to break through that uncrossable boundary.
Every supernatural or transcendent power was being forcibly suppressed by some invisible mechanism. Whenever humanity became too powerful, it could even invite fatal retaliation.
Aside from Yin Wu Xue’s unusual circumstances, Imperial Preceptor Xu appeared to be the only person anywhere in the Lin Dynasty to have achieved significant supernatural “success.”
And he had accomplished even that only because he genuinely dared to violate every taboo under Heaven. He was vicious, insane, utterly without limits, and completely disregarded human morality.
But Song Zang was thinking too.
Humanity resisting gods and immortals and searching for its own path toward transcendence… There seemed to be absolutely nothing wrong with that in itself.
The true evil lay only in the methods, not the motive.