Die!

Someone as attached to her own life as Situ Xin’er would never actually want to die!

This was nothing more than an empty threat aimed at Jun Beiyue.

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous you’re being? You’ve thrown away every shred of the Situ Cheng clan’s dignity, and now you’re threatening your own life against someone who wants to kill you—how do you even have the nerve? How shameless can you possibly be!”

Situ Haonan laughed coldly, pressing his foot down harder. Situ Xin’er, terrified, immediately released her grip on the dagger, afraid it might actually cut into her.

Situ Haonan watched her coldly. “What, no longer want to die?”

Situ Xin’er scrambled up, shouting loudly to cover her embarrassment. “I—I! If I really died here, Father and Mother would never let Jun Beiyue off the hook!”

“You really think he’s holding back for the Situ Cheng clan’s sake?” Situ Haonan laughed bitterly. What sin had he committed in his past life to be saddled with a sister like this in this one?

Situ Xin’er pursed her lips, unwilling to argue further, asking instead coldly, “Where’s he going?”

“Get lost!” Situ Haonan suddenly roared.

Situ Xin’er’s voice rose even louder than his, staring at him in disbelief. “Try being fierce with me one more time!”

“Slap!” Without warning, Situ Haonan swung his hand and struck her across the face. “I’ll hit you too, you know! Now get lost!”

Situ Xin’er snapped back to herself, immediately erupting in fury, jabbing a finger at Situ Haonan’s nose, shouting angrily, “Situ Haonan, you hit me! You dared to hit me! Father and Mother never hit me my whole life, and you dare to hit me!”

“Slap!” Another sharp crack rang out, Situ Haonan’s veins bulging with anger. “So what if I hit you! Don’t you dare talk to me about your whole life, my whole life, I’ve wanted to hit you this entire time! Get out of my sight right now!”

“You! Wuwu… You, I’m telling Father and Mother, you dared to hit me! Situ Haonan, this isn’t over between us! I’m telling them! And I’ll tell them about Yelu Qianqian too!”

Situ Xin’er covered her face, crying like a rain-soaked mess, and turned to storm off!

Situ Haonan took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. His palm still stung fiercely—he’d struck her both times with real force, and yet even that hadn’t been enough to satisfy him.

He knew that having hit that girl, he’d only brought more trouble upon himself going forward, but he’d made peace with that.

On one side stood his own sister, blood thicker than water. On the other stood a brother closer to him than family.

Jun Beiyue had given him repeated leeway, sparing him embarrassment out of the bond between brothers—but he couldn’t keep doing nothing forever. He bore some responsibility in this too—it was he who had given the box of Yanzi rouge to Ziqing in the first place!

Though the full details remained unclear, they both understood the problem had originated from that very box of rouge!

Even now, he still couldn’t bring himself to say the words “I’m sorry” to Beiyue. All he could do was hold this port steady and pray with everything he had that nothing terrible had befallen Han Ziqing.

Something terrible?

Fallen into Yanzi’s hands—could Ziqing possibly be faring well?

Among all the guardians of the Solitary Island ruins, Yanzi alone knew the secret of raising poison gu. If Xuanyuan Lige hadn’t uncovered the secret of poison-gu cultivation left behind by Madam Ci, perhaps he too wouldn’t have decided, even while standing against Jun Beiyue, to divert some of his own strength toward stopping them from finding the Solitary Island ruins.

Raising poison gu was an extraordinarily terrifying and closely guarded technique of Nanzhao’s Medicine Clan Poison Den!

The method involved capturing dozens of species of venomous creatures on the Dragon Boat Festival—venomous snakes, poisonous eels, centipedes, poisonous frogs, scorpions, earthworms, caterpillars, mantises, and the like—placing them all into a jar with a wide belly and a narrow mouth, then sealing it for an entire year. Throughout that year, the venomous creatures would devour one another within the jar—those with stronger venom consuming those with weaker venom, the powerful consuming the weak—until finally only a single creature remained, the most venomous and powerful of them all. Having consumed dozens of others, this creature’s form and coloring would change entirely, becoming utterly unrecognizable from its original self!

After a full year, the poison gu would be complete. From that point on, it still required daily feedings of various poisonous substances, and the gu would then serve its master like a loyal death-warrior, obeying every command!

Though this sounded simple enough in description, the actual process of cultivation was anything but—some people had attempted it for ten years, ten separate times, without ever once succeeding.

Truly, the number of venomous creatures that survived the full year was vanishingly small, which was precisely why even within Nanzhao’s own Poison Den, a completed poison gu remained an extraordinarily rare treasure!

If a poison gu wasn’t fed sufficient venomous matter, its master would suffer the backlash—poisoned and devoured by the very creature they’d raised. For this reason, ordinary people never attempted to cultivate one lightly!

Using animals to raise a gu was called “insect gu.” But what Xuanyuan Lige had discovered among Madam Ci’s belongings was a method of gu cultivation a hundred times more terrifying than this—the human gu!

Human gu, as the name suggested, meant using a human being to raise the gu!

A single person would be trapped within a sealed space together with a swarm of venomous creatures—the same principle of mutual devouring, survival of the fittest, over the course of a year. So long as that person remained alive at the end, the result would be a human gu!

The power of a human gu could rival that of an entire army of insect gu—even Nanzhao’s beast-tribe legions would stand no chance against it!

Where insect gu poisoned individuals, human gu could bring ruin upon the entire realm!

Raising a human gu required not only a constant supply of feed, but also demanded that its master possess sufficient strength and presence of will to keep the gu subdued—otherwise, the master themselves would suffer the backlash, poisoned and devoured in turn!

There was no fixed type of creature required for raising an insect gu. But raising a human gu demanded a person of a very specific constitution!

An ordinary person, pitted against venomous creatures, would inevitably meet death by poisoning no matter how the struggle unfolded. And the poison-trained death-warriors cultivated by poison masters had limited lifespans and limited venom tolerance besides—hardly the ideal choice for raising a human gu either.

Only one type of person would truly suffice!

Those born of the Solitary Island’s direct bloodline who possessed complete immunity to all poisons—one yin, one yang, one female and one male. The yin-natured individual was the ideal candidate for raising a poison gu, while the yang-natured individual’s own venom served as the natural check against the human gu’s backlash.

To cultivate a poison-immune individual in the first place naturally required medicinal poisons.

If the sole purpose behind Nanzhao’s destruction of the Solitary Island and their subsequent suppression of all information about it had simply been to cultivate human gu, that reasoning didn’t quite add up—after all, the Solitary Island hadn’t produced poison-immune individuals across every single generation.

Xuanyuan Lige had puzzled over this endlessly, always sensing there was some greater secret hidden within the Solitary Island, something far larger and more terrifying than merely raising human gu.

Yet he had no time to dwell on it further!

The days passed one after another as they hid deep within the mountain forests, subsisting on wild game and foraged fruit, cut off entirely from the outside world. The ice-thaw season was drawing near.

Yet even now, he still hadn’t managed to see Ziqing even once!

The man in black remained his constant guard, while Yanzi would occasionally slip away—he understood well enough that she was going to check on Ziqing.

The one thing that gave him some measure of comfort was that, at least during their flight, Yanzi hadn’t been able to formally begin her assault on Ziqing—hadn’t been able to start the gu cultivation itself.

All she could do for now was prepare.

The requirements for raising a human gu were far more demanding than those for an insect gu.

He had no idea whether Jun Beiyue had found the note he’d left behind, nor whether Jun Beiyue would even understand the true meaning behind those three characters, “Yaoshun Island.”

As he sat lost in thought, Yanzi suddenly returned, smiling. “We set out tomorrow! This year’s ice-thaw has come early!”

Xuanyuan Lige was mildly startled—this woman clearly maintained contact with the outside world, yet had kept it hidden from him, evidently still deeply wary of him even now.

Yanzi walked over, clearly in good spirits, and said with a smile, “Xuanyuan Lige, tell me—if we raised the human gu using not just poisonous creatures, but threw in a few poison death-warriors as well, wouldn’t that be even more interesting?”

…