The abduction on New Year’s Eve had clearly been meticulously planned by Yanzi — down to the escape route, the false identity she’d used at the Flower Queen Gathering, even her deliberate approach to Situ Xin’er.
With planning that careful, how could the goal possibly have been just to disfigure Ziqing?
And besides — during the abduction itself, the human gu was the real objective. Risking exposure at a public gathering just to disfigure Ziqing’s face — there had to be a reason for it.
Yanzi was utterly, completely without hope now. She lifted her head to look at Jun Beiyue once — in this very moment, more than ever before, she wished this shrewd, capable man, this man who seemed able to do anything, could belong to her.
But instead of capturing him, she had become his prisoner.
“I can tell you — I’ll tell you anything — if you help me kill Yelu Chenyi.” Yanzi said coldly, finally no longer feigning madness, finally calm.
“You have no grounds to negotiate with me!” Jun Beiyue said coldly. It wasn’t that he had no intention of killing Yelu Chenyi — it was simply that, right now, keeping Yelu Chenyi alive was far more painful for him than death.
If the man wanted to use the human gu to seize the whole of Longyuan, then Jun Beiyue would first let him taste what it felt like to lose Western Jing.
“I have it — I know her true origins, I know the real secret of the lost island. Mingsha Mountain has no secret about the ‘Lament of Parting,’ but it holds things you don’t know at all!” Yanzi said coldly, drawing confidence from who knew where.
“I have no patience for more of your nonsense!” Jun Beiyue’s patience had run thin. He suddenly stood, grabbing hold of the mirror frame beside him — no one knew what he intended to do, only that he was furious.
The mirror was angled sideways. Yanzi’s heart lurched with dread, yet she forced herself to endure it.
She was afraid — but she was even more consumed by hatred. She hated Yelu Chenyi. She had no idea Ziqing had such a formidable weapon in hand. She hated that coward, who hadn’t even come to save her — with the whole vast city of Akbachu, with so many guards, not one of them had dared to move against Jun Beiyue.
Suddenly, with a surge of strength, Jun Beiyue lifted the enormous mirror clean off the ground.
What was he going to do?
Yanzi immediately squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to!”
She didn’t want to look — she’d rather go blind than look in that mirror. Her face was ruined, her ear was gone — she didn’t dare look.
Yet just as everyone assumed Jun Beiyue meant to force her to look into the mirror, there came a sudden, sharp crack — the enormous mirror shattered to pieces under Jun Beiyue’s hand, smashing directly down onto Yanzi’s foot!
“Ahh…!”
Yanzi shrieked in genuine agony — the pain was real, and her scream wasn’t shrill anymore, but utterly wretched.
“If you won’t talk, then you have no reason to exist at all.” Jun Beiyue said, cold and deliberate, glaring furiously at the curled-up Yanzi, his eyes dark with menace, a dangerous aura radiating from every inch of him — even Yingzi and the others instinctively took a step back.
Watching from the side, Ziqing found herself, despite herself, growing afraid of this man too. Just how angry was he? How desperate?
“I’ll ask you one last time. Will you talk or not?”
“I’ll talk — I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything, waaah!”
Was there really anyone who wasn’t afraid of death?
Perhaps — but very, very few. And Yanzi was certainly not among them.
She had sworn to herself a hundred times over that she would rather die than be ugly. But when death was truly staring her in the face, how could she not be afraid?
When she finally looked up at Jun Beiyue, she saw a man who looked like an enraged demon, fury burning in his eyes as he glared down at her — and she finally broke completely. “I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything… the poison in that flesh growth has to invade Han Ziqing’s body starting from her face. Three months into cultivating the human gu, the poison needs to slip past her face and invade her body — and at that point, cultivating the human gu means she’s no longer just fighting the poisonous beasts, she’s fighting the poison inside her own body too. Over the course of a year, if she survives every poisonous beast and the deadly toxin within her, she’ll become an incredibly poisonous human gu, controlled entirely by her master. Anyone who comes within three steps of her will be infected by the toxic miasma and become a second-tier human gu — a subordinate gu.”
The power of a human gu like this — never mind destroying everything around it, it could destroy the entire world!
Facing a single human gu, what good would a million-strong army even be?
This was simply hundreds of times more terrifying than the gunpowder Ziqing had in her possession!
Ziqing listened, chilled to the bone. She knew how gu cultivation worked — a human gu was, quite literally, raising a person like an insect.
With power like that, no wonder Yelu Chenyi had allied himself with Yanzi. No wonder Xuanyuan Zhaoxi had been so devoted.
So this was the secret of the lost island?
A person immune to all poisons — cultivated into a human gu, capable of ravaging the entire world.
Was that why the Nanzhao royal family had sealed the secret so tightly — had even made the lost island vanish from the world overnight, had even massacred every descendant of the lost island who remained on the Longyuan continent?
Was that also why the Nanzhao royal house had ordered every guardian of the ruins to kill any lost-island survivor on sight?
No one knew when a person immune to all poisons might be born, into which family — no one knew which bloodline might carry the pure lineage of the lost island!
So not a single one could be spared!
Ziqing stumbled back several steps, staring blankly at the ground, her eyes hollow.
So this — this was what “family” meant.
This was the family she had been searching for all along. The family members she’d always wanted to find.
She had been an orphan from birth; even after crossing over into the Prime Minister’s residence, she had remained without support, without anyone she could truly call family — only faint, hazy memories of her mother.
When she’d first arrived in Situ City, she’d met the kindhearted city lord Situ, and just a few words of care, a few words of warmth, a few words of fairness had made her feel, unconsciously, the warmth of meeting a father — but that had been someone else’s father, a man who, however fair, would always favor his own daughter Situ Xin’er in the end.
When she’d first arrived on Liuxian Island, she’d met the gentle-eyed Madam Gu, who had fussed over her with concern the moment they met — that kind of elder’s affection, that tenderness, was something no lover could ever give her, something she’d longed for since childhood. Whatever Madam Gu’s faults, one thing was undeniable: she truly was a good mother who loved and thought of her children. A pity Ziqing wasn’t her daughter.
She had never truly allowed herself to hope. But then the mystery of her poison-immunity had emerged, and it had given her hope — she had searched, painstakingly, all this way, only to arrive at a result like this. She couldn’t deny it — she felt utterly crushed.
Was she truly fated never to have a family, her whole life long?
Was it fate that if her bloodline were ever passed down, it would bring danger with it — that it would be an irresponsibility to the entire world?
All of this was clearly beyond even Jun Beiyue’s expectations. He found himself turning to look at Ziqing — both of them orphans who had families, in a sense. Imperial households, prime ministers’ mansions, grand family clans — and yet, in a certain sense, they truly were both orphans.
No one understood this woman’s longing for family, her longing for kin, better than he did.
A complicated look flickered across Jun Beiyue’s eyes. He turned back and continued, cold once more, “Aren’t you afraid that once the human gu is fully cultivated, it will one day turn on its master?”
Insect gu always carried great risk of backlash — how much more so a human gu?