Chapter 122: Centipede Gu

The earth was destroyed and the mountains collapsed, yet the brave man did not die.

The sky was filled with scattered rubble and dust, and at the same time, a faint "wail" could be heard.

The group emerged from behind the cover and saw that a hole had already been blasted at the mouth of the centipede, with cracks running along the perimeter; some rubble had been knocked down, and cold-Qi was puffing out from the inside.

This was a sign of Earth Qi leaking.

"Not bad." Xu Jia pointed to a spot and said, "Start digging here, dig a zhang deep, and see if we can strike water."

Several people began to dig according to Xu Jia's instructions; even Huang Pipo and Hu Jinhua reverted to their original forms, their claws moving rapidly, while Xiaopangdun was the main force, borrowing Dharma to possess his body, possessing immense strength as he took a shovel and began to work.

The remaining Yushan Daoists went to the "Baozhu Land" marked by Xu Jia; they were to break the feet of the Centipede-Holding-Pearl, then use the power of the Jade Porcelain Thunder Pellet to pry this pearl, causing it to roll and shift to one side; once the centipede lost its precious pearl, it would lose the foundation of its gestation.

Chang Yu saw that these little demons were working so laboriously and immediately said, "You useless things, it's so difficult just to dig a hole!"

He practiced mountain arts and was an "Earth-Elephant Tengshe"; although he lived in a natural mountain cave, it did not mean he could not drill holes.

He raised his tail, the tip of which unexpectedly turned jade-colored, and then tapped it against the ground; tapping the earth as if tapping tofu, he directly opened a smooth, deep well.

Water appeared in the well, but it was not enough to gush out.

Thus, he summoned Qiu Jinsha; Qiu Jinsha had been patrolling the Water Veins, trying to find the source of the pollution from the Evil Sect's sacrifices deep within Yushan, but had not yet patrolled to the specific site of the Evil Sect's sacrifice.

Seeing Xu Jia's summons, he followed the Water Vein up and soon appeared in this large pit.

"Why has the Dharma Lord summoned me?"

"You are to divert the small surrounding Water Veins here."

Qiu Jinsha said helplessly, "The small surrounding Water Veins are all used to nourish the surrounding mountain forests; the plants and trees can only absorb them if their roots are deep. If you divert them, I fear that in less than a year, the surrounding mountain forests will wither and turn yellow in a large area. Now, we can only continue to drill downwards to see if we can find a deeper Water Vein."

Xu Jia knew that they had their own set of rules for acting in the Divine Path, so he let him continue to drill downwards.

If nothing else, the loach had a knack for digging holes; he saw his body like an electric Poison Dragon drill, *tut-tut-tut*, drilling downwards. After he became dizzy from spinning, he rested for a while and then continued to drill downwards.

After waiting for half an hour, he suddenly heard a voice: "Dug through!"

A "sizzle" of a fountain sprayed him up, and then "water lotuses" gushed from the earth.

The water was very clear and soon surged into the "Qi-mouth" of the centipede's mouth.

A sound of "gurgle-gurgle."

"Hiss-hiss!" Sounds came from the Qi-channel, and then a group of large and small centipedes crawled out as if fleeing a disaster.

Chang Yu was very disgusted by these centipedes, but Xu Jia nodded. He grabbed one; it had a red back and blue feet, twisting and turning, very fierce, opening its mouth to bite people.

"Sure enough, it still gathers living Qi, having held such a nest of centipede descendants."

Xu Jia immediately took out the "Raw Rice Bowl," placed the Centipede-Wind-Calming Pearl inside, and, just like last time, began to perform the "Gu Technique."

There were even better materials here for burning smoke, namely the "Thousand-Centipede-Chasing-Snake Flower" that Chang Yu hated; Xu Jia had intentionally picked some on the way. These flowers were shaped like centipedes, one by one, coiled together.

He spread the Mugwort underneath, and after lighting it, there was billowing thick smoke.

The smell of the smoke carried the fresh fragrance of Mugwort, as well as a pungent, irritating scent. The Mugwort smoke followed the Qi and entered the Qi-channel. The "Five Poisons Plague-Dispelling Talisman" drawn on white paper also ignited in the thick smoke, using evil to draw out evil, and using poison to attack poison.

After the thick smoke entered the Qi-mouth, more and more centipedes were attracted out, surrounding this Raw Rice Bowl in a circle; there were thousands, tens of thousands of them, making one's scalp tingle.

Chang Yu even flew directly onto the tree canopy; the smell of these centipedes made him very uncomfortable.

Xu Jia, however, became interested; he pricked his finger and dripped a drop of his own blood into the bowl, immediately beginning to perform the "Southern Descent Technique."

Southern Descent is a type of Descending Head Technique, focusing on refining Gu insects, not practicing those bloody arts.

After the smoke-Qi was added with Xu Jia's fresh blood, it immediately made the centipedes boil. They paired up and mated; after mating, the male centipede was eaten by the female centipede, and then the female centipedes gathered together, absorbing the smoke-Qi, and began to lay eggs. The centipede eggs were orange-red, one by one.

After laying the eggs, these female centipedes exhausted their original Qi and died.

This type of art was strange and evil. Zhang Zhenji, who had just blown up the precious pearl on the other side, causing it to roll several zhang away from the centipede's abdomen, saw the thick smoke here and came to check.

Seeing Xu Jia refining Gu here, he said in surprise, "This is an Evil Art. You are a high-cultivator with the Dao; how can you lower your status and practice Evil Arts?"

Xu Jia said, "Only a high-truth practitioner with the Dao should study these Evil Arts. With a firm heart and mind, not falling into evil views, one can better meet moves with moves. Knowing evil, one knows even better how to break evil. What I am refining now is the Centipede Descent; what I want to collect is the centipede eggs. These eggs will take effect when eaten by people, or of course, they can be hatched in advance. Ten thousand insects devour each other, and one can cultivate a Centipede Gu."

Zhang Zhenji wanted to say something but stopped: "The master's teachings say that practicing Evil Arts means accepting the ideology of Evil Arts, which is falling into evil views. If one has such thoughts once or twice, when one uses them with pleasure, one will completely identify with them; therefore, one must never touch them."

Xu Jia collected the centipede eggs one by one. The art Xu Jia was performing did not count as "causing harm without reason." The nature of centipedes is such that after reproduction, the mortality rate increases greatly; this belongs to the normal "life continuation" mechanism.

These centipedes hid in the Qi-mouth of Wugong Ling, nourished by Earth Qi, and were able to live long and avoid death. Speaking of which, they were also enjoying the blessings of their ancestors. Since they enjoyed the ancestral shade, the karma of their ancestors would also be reported; today, in the final kalpa, it is time to repay it.

Xu Jia still kept the collected centipede eggs in the Raw Rice Bowl. This bowl was also peculiar; I don't know if it had suppressed this centipede spirit before. Originally, it could only hold rice, but this time, no matter how many centipede eggs were put in, it was only "half a small bowl."

Xu Jia did not pick them carefully and had Hu Jinhua use wind to sweep the rest aside, so as not to pollute the water quality.

These centipede eggs were still semi-finished products; one must use a musical instrument to shake them in front of them every day, then burn talismans and drip blood to form a "conditioned reflex," so that they could be "controlled" after the enemy was struck by the Descent.

Xu Jia did not like this harmful method, nor was it hidden enough, but the centipede eggs hatched from the Southern Descent were more obedient and understood human nature; furthermore, when refining Centipede Gu and the like, the power was also greater.

The Centipede Gu had a small body, was as hard as iron, and had immense power. It liked to attack the human brain through the seven orifices, and after eating the brain clean, it would crawl out. It was no less than a type of small flying sword, and it was extremely poisonous.

A Southeast Asian Gu master that Xu Jia met in America in his previous life had refined this Gu and Gu-killed two of Xu Jia's grand-disciples.

That Gu master ran a pig farm there and used the dirty blood and internal organs of the pigs to raise Gu. The Gu insects reproduced very quickly as if they had eaten hormones, and he used biotechnology to screen them generation by generation. The Gu insects he raised had long since surpassed the legends of ancient times.

Later, it was the disciple who came forward and invited Xu Jia. Xu Jia set up an altar through the dead Gu insects and used the "Big Dipper Seven-Kill Curse" to nail him to death from a distance. His Three Souls and Seven Souls were all summoned to refine the "Five-Plague Seven-Gu Disease-Evil Chang," a new type of Chang researched by Xu Jia. This type of Chang was specifically used to release evil diseases and plagues, and its lethality was extremely great.

After cursing that Southeast Asian wizard to death, Xu Jia's disciple went to his Dharma Altar to take the Gu insect refining method and also obtained a large amount of laboratory biological experiment report data from it.

A mature "modern Gu method."

At least, other than seeing in novels that Gu insects could be impervious to swords and spears, Xu Jia had never seen such Gu insects in reality. Most were "parasitic," and the Gu master had to "poison" first to harm people; they could not be so fierce.

Later, he found out that it actually involved "gene modification technology," adding the genes of a type of "iron-shell snail" from the extremely high-temperature seabed.

Of course, there was no modern black technology here, but even the small Shanju Guan had an Earth Immortal Ancestor who could refine treasures like the Jade Porcelain Thunder Pellet and Five Elements Divine Sand. It seems that the environment here also selectively follows "science."

(End of this chapter)