Chapter 81 Nether Grass

In the study of the Prince Regent's Palace, the candles remained lit all night.

Xiao Yu closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, looking a little tired.

Jiu had been sent back to his room to rest a long time ago. At this moment, the study was so quiet that only the sound of his steady breathing could be heard.

"Bang--!"

The door of the study was suddenly pushed open.

Chu Xuanyi rushed in like a gust of wind, his eyes were bloodshot, his hair was messy, and his robe was stained with unknown dust, but his expression was extremely excited.

He held the golden silk book tightly in his hand.

"Xiao Yu!" He even forgot to use the honorific.

"I found it! I know it all!"

Xiao Yu slowly opened his eyes and looked at his friend's distraught look.

"Sit down and talk."

"I can't sit still! This matter is too big, I can't sit still!" Chu Xuanyi paced back and forth in the study.

He spread the golden silk book in his hand on the table and pointed at the words on it.

"We were all wrong! We were wrong from the beginning! So wrong!"

"What's wrong?" Xiao Yu's tone remained steady.

"The mistake is... the enemy we thought we were was not even on the same level as the real enemy!"

"The Wugu tribe, they are not a cult from our Daqi native land at all, they are not even from this world!"

"What's the meaning?"

"They are visitors from 'foreign lands'!" Chu Xuanyi pointed at the words on the silk book and explained word by word.

"It records that in ancient times, a rift appeared between heaven and earth, and the Wugu tribe was an evil race that invaded from that rift! They don't cultivate spiritual power or practice Taoism, but they are born with the ability to control something... called 'Netherworld Qi'."

He paused, as if searching for the right words.

"Do you know what the Netherworld Qi is? The silk scroll says it's the lingering resentment of deceased souls, combined with the foul air of heaven and earth... the 'rust' of the world! It can corrode all life, infect spiritual veins, and even transform the dead into murderous walking corpses! At the beginning of the Great Qi, the Wugu tribe launched a large-scale invasion. The 'great plague' recorded in history books that swept across half the country was not a natural disaster, but a man-made calamity! It was the work of the Wugu tribe!"

Xiao Yu's pupils suddenly shrank. That dark period of history that was glossed over by the historian with the eight words "disasters from heaven, people's livelihood is in misery" actually hides such a horrible truth!

"What happened next?" he asked.

"Later, the First Imperial Master joined forces with an ally and, at great cost, sealed the main force of the Wugut tribe, along with their king, at the main spiritual vein node beneath the capital!"

"And that seal is not just a magic seal!"

He looked at Xiao Yu, his eyes becoming extremely complicated: "Xiao Yu, do you still remember the Lin family's murder case ten years ago?"

Xiao Yu's eyes instantly turned cold, and the air pressure around him dropped to a terrifying low: "Remember."

"We all thought the Lin family was just an ordinary medical family, silenced because they held some secret." Chu Xuanyi laughed bitterly. "Wrong again! Dead wrong! A medical family? That's just a facade they put on the surface! The true identity of the Lin family, since their first ancestor, is... the guardians of the seal!"

"Guardian?"

"Yes!" Chu Xuanyi pointed excitedly at the silk scroll. "The powerful ally who joined forces with the first-generation Imperial Master to seal the Black Bone Tribe was none other than the Lin family's ancestor! The Lins are no ordinary people; they are a clan of 'spiritual observers' with a special bloodline! Their bloodline is naturally able to sense and even purify 'ghostly energy'! Their abilities are passed down from generation to generation, and every generation of the Lin family's direct descendants is an indispensable part of the seal!"

He slammed the table and finally connected all the clues.

"Do you understand now? Why can Ah Jiu see the flower of luck above your head? Why can she smell the scent on that piece of wood that none of us can smell? Why can she see the 'snaking black bugs' on Uncle Lin's body?! That's not some childish gift at all. It's the awakening of an innate ability deep in her blood! She's from the Lin family! The only survivor of that annihilated Guardian family!"

The study fell into deathly silence.

This truth is too shocking and too heavy.

Ajiu's life story, the cause of the ten-year family extermination case, the true purpose of the Wugu Cult...

Everything points to the terrifying ancient seal buried deep underground.

"So, they destroyed the Lin family in order to weaken the seal." Xiao Yu's voice was terribly low, "And now they are looking for Ah Jiu..."

"It's not just about breaking the seal!" Chu Xuanyi continued, "The silk scroll says that the Lin family's bloodline power is both the 'lock' and the 'key' to the seal! The Black Bone Clan may not only want to use Ah Jiu's bloodline to open the seal, they... they may even want to use her bloodline to connect with, or even awaken, the more powerful being sealed deep within - the Black Bone King!"

"Hiss..." Even though Xiao Yu had a strong character, he couldn't help but gasp when he heard this.

"Then... is there a way to crack it?" He asked the most crucial question.

"Yes!" Chu Xuanyi pointed to the end of the silk scroll. "The first generation of the Imperial Master and the ancestors of the Lin family had long anticipated that this disaster might happen in the future. They left behind an ancient secret method that can specifically restrain the 'ghostly energy' of the Wugu tribe and even strengthen the seal!"

"But..." He smiled a smile uglier than tears. "This secret method requires a key medicinal ingredient to achieve its maximum effect. A unique plant... that can only grow in the ancestral land where the Lin family has lived for generations, nurtured by their family bloodline for thousands of years."

He raised his head, looked at Xiao Yu, and said word by word:

"It's called, 'Nether Grass'."

"Ancient texts say that 'Netherworld Grass' is extremely cold and must grow in extremely cold places, accompanied by 'corrupted fireflies'. But there are too many haunted places near the ruins of Yuquan Mountain that meet these conditions!"

Chu Xuanyi grabbed his hair and paced back and forth in annoyance.

"The Lin family's ancestral land," Xiao Yu finally spoke, "where is it?"

Chu Xuanyi seemed to have been drained of all his strength and slumped down in his chair. He scratched his messy hair, his face full of bitterness.

"That's the problem," he groaned. "Ten years ago, the entire Lin family was massacred. Official records show the entire Lin residence burned to the ground! That place is now a desolate mountainous area outside the capital. Who would even know if it was ancestral land?"

"Dig three feet underground to find it."

"So what even if they find it?" Chu Xuanyi raised his bloodshot eyes and looked at him desperately, "Do you think those bastards of the Wugut tribe don't know about the existence of the 'Netherworld Grass'? They wiped out the Lin family just to eliminate future trouble! That place must have been set up with a net by now, waiting for us... or rather, waiting for Ah Jiu to fall into it!"

He became increasingly agitated as he spoke, and suddenly stood up. "This is a dead end! We know we need the 'Netherworld Grass,' and they know we need the 'Netherworld Grass' too! If we take Ah Jiu with us, we'll be pushing her into the fire pit! But if we don't take her... the silk scroll says that the 'Netherworld Grass' is spiritual, and only those of the Lin family's bloodline can see it!"

"That's an open conspiracy."

"Yeah! An open conspiracy!" Chu Xuanyi paced around the room irritably. "Even though we knew it was a trap, we still had to step into it! What the hell is going on?"