Madam Song stared pale-faced toward Fuyi’s direction, then turned to look at Lang Jiuchuan, her expression filled with fright and alarm.

Lang Jiuchuan steadied her, produced a medicine vial, tapped out a pill, and fed it into her mouth. “Forgive the intrusion just now. The resentment of a living person is far more potent than that of the dead. If it were to build up to full force, it would turn and devour you from within. Once you die in that state, you will become a vicious, wrathful ghost who recognizes no kin. Better to keep your life and take good care of your daughter.”

Tears streamed down Madam Song’s face in a steady fall. She grabbed Lang Jiuchuan’s wrist as though seizing a lifeline and said: “Immortal Elder, can I still take care of her? Will she die because of me too?”

“Since you have found your way to the Know-It-All Shop, your troubles will naturally be resolved,” Lang Jiuchuan said, her voice cool and level — yet to Madam Song’s ears, it was like a flame, scorching warmth back into a heart that had nearly grown cold.

The mule-cart came to a stop at the entrance of the lane where Madam Song lived. The two of them stepped down and walked inside. Along the way, a neighbor happened to come out their door — and the moment they laid eyes on Madam Song, their expression changed completely. They slammed their door shut with a bang, and from inside came the muffled sound of someone muttering something about bad omens.

Madam Song seemed long accustomed to it, and smiled bitterly. “Ever since last year, with death and misfortune striking one after another at our home, everyone has come to regard me as a bringer of ill luck. They have been pressuring us to leave this place, lest we disturb everyone else’s peace and safety.”

People naturally seek fortune and avoid misfortune. Being on good terms in the past was all well and good, but when one’s own safety was at stake, such neighborly bonds were not worth maintaining — after all, sympathy was one thing, but no one could afford to drag their entire family into it along with her.

Reaching a certain house door, an unpleasant odor drifted forward. Lang Jiuchuan glanced at the wall — something foul had been splattered on it. Someone had thrown filth at the door.

Madam Song’s face showed not a ripple of emotion. She produced her key, unlocked the door, and entered the courtyard — which was in a state of decay and dilapidation throughout.

From within one of the rooms came the sound of loud thumping and low, guttural growling. Madam Song’s expression changed at once. She hastily fumbled for her key to unlock the room’s door, but the more she rushed, the more badly her hands shook. “Yuedie — Mother is here.”

Lang Jiuchuan looked toward the direction of the room and said: “General…”

Fuyi whooshed through the wall and passed straight inside.

Lang Jiuchuan: “!”

By this time, Madam Song had already unlocked the door and rushed in.

Lang Jiuchuan was just about to follow when, at the very first step, a wave of foul stench hit her full in the face. She furrowed her brow, stepped back two paces, and pressed hard against the hollow between her thumb and forefinger, waiting for the stench to dissipate into the air.

Of all the foul odors in the world, what was the worst — the most persistent, the kind that, once encountered, could never be forgotten?

The smell of a rotting corpse.

From within this room came the stench of decomposing flesh.

Lang Jiuchuan formed a hand-seal to cleanse away impurity, sealing off her sense of smell, then summoned her talisman brush. She walked into the room and drew a Corruption-Cleansing talisman in the air, burning it within the room as she went.

Madam Song had already rushed to the bedside. Lang Jiuchuan saw that Fuyi had caught hold of a writhing ghost — it was the same man she had spotted trailing behind Madam Song the other day.

She had driven him off then, yet in the span of only a few days, the malevolent aura on his ghost form had deepened considerably.

This one has taken a life.

A cold light entered Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes. She said to Fuyi: “He has human blood on his hands — don’t let him escape.”

Fuyi immediately drove the killing aura within him into full force, binding the ghost tightly — and as a military commander who had fought through years of war, the ferocity of battle etched into his very soul transformed into threads of blade-energy, piercing into the ghost’s spiritual core.

The man let out a harrowing shriek, his ghost-form going unstable and faint. And at the sound of that wail, the little girl on the bed also began to shriek and thrash, her face contorting grotesquely, both eyes bulging and bloodshot, as though on the verge of bursting open.

A sharp crack.

“Ahhhh—” Madam Song let out a shriek, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Yuedie!”

Lang Jiuchuan looked over and saw the child convulsing violently — with a raw, sickening crack, she had wrenched her own wrist free from the rope bindings that held it, her body shuddering without cease, foam frothing at her mouth.

“General — stop!” Lang Jiuchuan’s voice rang out sharp and commanding. She strode forward in quick steps, her talisman brush driving directly toward the little girl’s spiritual core.

Hissssss.

A piercing, shrill cry shrieked from within the small girl’s body — and then it vanished without a trace. The girl went limp and lost consciousness.

Lang Jiuchuan’s face darkened. She pulled back the blanket. The stench surged up in a nauseating wave, yet she had no attention to spare for the indescribable smell. She pulled up the child’s sleeve, and what met her eyes were bones barely covered by skin — the flesh was almost entirely gone. Black-blue veins stood out in vivid relief, faintly moving, as though something were crawling through them.

A terrible suspicion formed in Lang Jiuchuan’s mind.

She transformed her talisman brush into a blade and made a small, gentle cut at the child’s elbow. Black-green pus and blood seeped from the incision, reeking with an indescribable foulness — like a corpse in the midst of decomposition.

The stench was overpowering.

Even Madam Song could no longer endure it; she retched several times and asked with a white face: “Are those venomous insects?”

Lang Jiuchuan snapped her head up to look at her. Madam Song wore an expression worse than weeping, her voice a pitiful rasp: “Yuedie said her head hurts — that there are bugs growing in her head. I went to fetch a doctor, but the doctors said the house smelled too foul and refused to come.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s face was tight with a grim darkness. She leaned down and looked at the child’s face, then let out a slow, quiet breath.

In these past days she had dealt with the eldest child of Shen Qinghe’s household, with the problem afflicting Xue Shi’s grandson — but neither of them was anything like this child. This was true skin-over-bones: both cheeks had sunken hollow, and her blood had become that. This was not the work of ordinary venomous insects.

Lang Jiuchuan parted the thinning, patchy hair of Song Yuedie, and on a bare patch at the back of her skull, she saw several thread-like worms crawling out from the hair follicles, then retracting back inside.

“Despicable, damnable—!”

Her fury erupted. A violent aura of killing rage tore out from her body and shot straight toward the heavens.

Bang.

Several roof tiles shattered and came crashing down.

Madam Song clutched her child in terrified arms.

Lang Jiuchuan pulled her back. “Don’t touch her — the insects on her body will transfer onto you.”

Madam Song went rigid. But then, something seemed to occur to her — a faint brightness lit in her eyes. “If they transfer onto me, will my daughter recover? If it means she’ll be healed, I am willing.”

How heartbreaking is the love of all parents in this world.

Lang Jiuchuan looked away. “It would not. You would simply die faster than she would. They would gnaw you down until your flesh and blood were gone, and then return to her body, carrying their nourishment back into the worm within her — and once that worm reaches its full power, that is when she will die. It is the same as worker bees and a queen bee.”

Madam Song was stunned into silence.

Even Fuyi felt a chill run through him. He asked: “What kind of venomous insect is this? How did such a thing come to be on this child?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s expression was ice-cold. “Naturally, an evildoer practicing evil arts, a wicked person carrying out the act of taking a life.” She stared at Song Yuedie’s skeletal form, grinding out the words through clenched teeth: “Someone has turned her into a hive — a vessel to nurture a queen. But what is growing inside her is no queen bee.”

“Then what is it?” Fuyi had a foreboding feeling in his gut, and he instinctively glanced toward Madam Song, sympathy in his eyes. Whatever could make Lang Jiuchuan this furious must be something truly terrifying.

“It is a Corpse-Rot Gu.” Lang Jiuchuan’s voice was heavy and grim. “Rotting flesh is fed into the Gu to nourish it; the Gu insects build their nest within the host’s body, feeding on blood to sustain themselves. Once the Gu king reaches its full form, the host dies. When this Gu is used upon a person, that person becomes its source of vital energy — emitting a foulness like that of decomposing flesh, and once all blood and flesh are consumed, the Gu seeks a new host. It is the most profoundly Yin, the most lethal of all dark Gu arts.”

Fuyi: “!”

Even as a ghost, he felt his stomach turning over.

What an unspeakably vicious thing.

Madam Song let out a sharp cry — and fainted dead away.