Chapter 63: Mother Gu Appears in the Stone Chamber
"Alright, business is important!" Chu Xuanyi cleared his throat and looked around. "We can't stay here for long! That giant spider is just a gatekeeper. The demons from the Withered Vine Cult must be hiding deeper inside! Everyone, cheer up and make sure to catch them all in one fell swoop!"
As soon as he finished speaking, he heard Ah Jiu's signature sniffling sound again.
"No need to look!" The little girl sniffed the air vigorously, like a hound tracking its prey. Her brows knitted tightly together, her face filled with disgust. "The stinkiest, stinkiest, most disgusting, disgusting smell is coming from behind that wall! Oh, this smell... is a hundred times worse than those socks that my parents left unwashed in the observatory for a month!"
"Master, please tell me again, I take a bath and change my clothes every day, and change my socks every day!" Chu Xuanyi roared in intolerance, but unfortunately, everyone present, including his Yulin Guards, looked at him with eyes that said "we know, we all know", which made him spit out a mouthful of blood.
Everyone suppressed their laughter and looked in the direction Ah Jiu pointed. It was an ordinary-looking rock wall, covered with moss and water stains, no different from the surrounding rock cave walls.
A Yulin Guard stepped forward and knocked, then reported back, "Sir, it's a solid wall."
"Impossible!" Ah Jiu shook his head firmly. "The smell is coming from inside! It's super, super strong, like... like putting a hundred stink bugs and a hundred rotten persimmons together and cooking them into a pot of soup!"
This metaphor... was so vivid that several Yulin Guards turned pale in the instant and their stomachs churned.
Xiao Yu said nothing. He walked over, sword in hand. Unlike the others, he didn't simply tap. Instead, he used the hilt of his sword to gently tap along the rock wall, inch by inch, in a very regular pattern. His ears twitched slightly, carefully distinguishing the subtle changes in the sound.
When he knocked on an inconspicuous depression below the rock wall, the sound finally became a little different. It was no longer dull as before, but had a little hollow echo.
He squatted down and brushed off the moss and dirt on the stone with his hands. Sure enough, he found a stone with a color slightly different from the surrounding area. There seemed to be an extremely vague, vine-like mark engraved on it.
Without any hesitation, he reached out and pressed it hard!
"Crackle—boom—"
There was a teeth-grinding sound of machinery turning and the friction of heavy stones. Under the shocked gaze of everyone, the huge rock wall actually moved slowly to the side, revealing a pitch-black hole that was only wide enough for one person to pass through!
The moment the stone door opened, a stench that was a hundred times stronger than before, a mixture of rich blood, extreme corruption and the strange sweet smell of "honey-rotten soil", rushed out from the cave entrance like a real black wave!
"puff--!"
The two Yulin guards closest to him couldn't hold it in any longer and rushed to the side, covering their mouths and vomiting violently.
"Pah, pah, pah! It stinks, it stinks!" Jiu was so choked by the smell that he stepped back repeatedly. His little face was wrinkled into a rag and tears streamed down his face. "I was wrong! This stinks a thousand times! Ten thousand times! ”
Chu Xuanyi no longer had the energy to correct her. He covered his mouth and nose with his sleeves, his face livid. The sinister aura emanating from this smell made him, a member of the Xuanmen sect, feel extremely uncomfortable.
"Everyone, hold your breath! Use your internal energy to protect your body!" Chu Xuanyi ordered in a deep voice.
Xiao Yu remained calm and walked in first, torch in hand. Chu Xuanyi followed closely behind him, while Ah Jiu clutched the corner of Xiao Yu's clothes tightly, following behind cautiously, like a curious yet frightened little tail.
The interior of the stone chamber is not big, only about thirty or forty square meters, but the scene inside makes everyone who comes in feel as if they have stepped into the Netherworld!
The walls of the stone chamber were no longer the vague totems seen outside, but were instead covered in countless twisted, tangled, and intertwined black vines. Even more terrifying, each vine bore a face wailing in agony! Their eyes widened, their mouths gaping, as if they were trapped alive within the stone, enduring eternal torture. In the flickering firelight, the expressions on those faces seemed to constantly shift, sending chills down one's spine.
"Wow! Look, sir!" Jiu pointed at a face on the wall that was squeezed together in agony, and sighed innocently yet cruelly, "This uncle's expression is just like the last time I made mustard-flavored osmanthus cake and tricked Uncle Wang from the kitchen into having a bite! Uncle Wang was like that too, with tears and snot streaming down his face. He rolled around hugging a pillar and said he saw his grandmother waving at him!"
Everyone: "..." This is not osmanthus cake, it is clearly a semi-finished product of Mengpo soup!
Chu Xuanyi's mouth twitched, and he decided to ignore Ajiu's horrific culinary history and cast his gaze towards the center of the stone chamber.
There, a black pottery jar, twice as large as the water tank, sat. Its surface was also engraved with similar sinister totems, and dark bloodstains lingered around its edges. Within that murky, bubbling, yellow-green liquid, soaked a heart... no, it should be said that it was "growing" a massive heart the size of a millstone, covered in blood vessels and tumors!
The "heart" continued to beat gently and rhythmically, "thump...thump..." Each beat seemed to coincide with the heartbeats of everyone present, causing a tightness in the chest and a surge of blood. Countless tiny, blood-red granulations extended from the heart, like octopus tentacles, densely connected to the inner wall of the pot, greedily absorbing something.
This scene has gone beyond simple disgust and has risen to a level of evil that desecrates life and distorts common sense!
"Ugh..." Jiu finally couldn't help it. He covered his mouth, his face pale as paper, and his voice trembled. "It's... it's the heart of a giant insect! So disgusting... I feel like it's staring at me! It wants to eat me!"
"This isn't a heart!" Chu Xuanyi's expression was more solemn than ever, his eyes fixed on the beating object. "This is the 'Mother Gu Cradle'! It's the core evil object used by the Withered Vine Cult to mass-produce high-level Gu worms! They feed it with the essence and resentment of living people. As long as this Cradle is not extinguished, it will continuously produce monsters like the giant spider outside! We've found their lair!"
Upon hearing this, all the Imperial Guards gasped, their grips on their weapons tightening slightly. A single Plague Swamp Giant Spider had nearly wiped them out. If it produced ten or eight more... the consequences would be disastrous!
Just as Chu Xuanyi was shocked by this evil creature and was thinking about how to destroy it, Xiao Yu, whose eyes were always as sharp as an eagle, made a new discovery in a dark corner of the stone chamber.
There was a half-burned brazier there, still untouched. A few pieces of charred paper lay in the ashes. Beside the brazier, half a blackened token had fallen, seemingly from the hasty evacuation.
Xiao Yu stepped forward, carefully cleared away the ashes with his scabbard, and picked up the letter and token that had not yet been destroyed.
The letter paper was incomplete and most of the words were burned, but by the light of the fire, a few extremely clear words written in special ink still stubbornly remained.
"...The sacred tree will awaken...Welcome the elders...Must perform a blood sacrifice...On the day of the autumn hunt...Outskirts of Beijing, at Bishui Villa......The blood sacrifice...will be accomplished..."
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