Chapter 591: The Secret of the Witch Clan

Ye Qingning was thrown so hard she saw stars, and it took a good while for her buzzing head to react.

She struggled to crawl up, and by the light of the torch on the stone wall, she finally slowly made out the situation inside the room.

This was a mountain cave, not very large in area, with a lot of dried grass spread on the ground; besides her, there was another woman in the stone room.

That woman was holding an infant in her arms, and she was currently shivering while clutching her child.

This girl was none other than the missing Yuexiu; her face was deathly pale, and she held the infant in her arms tightly, looking in terror at Ye Qingning, who had been thrown in by the mountain demons.

"Yuexiu." Ye Qingning was startled, and she hurriedly stepped forward, saying, "How are you? Did they hurt you?"

"Don't eat me, please, I beg you, don't eat me." As soon as she touched her, Yuexiu screamed in terror, shrinking back desperately and clutching the child in her arms tightly, terrified it would be snatched away.

"Don't be afraid, it's me, I'm Ye Qingning, we've met before." Ye Qingning hurriedly held her to comfort her.

"Is, is it you?" Yuexiu finally saw Ye Qingning clearly, and her delicate face calmed slightly; then, she suddenly buried her head in Ye Qingning's arms and burst into tears.

"Don't be afraid, Yuexiu, don't be afraid, we will be fine." Ye Qingning held her and comforted her, saying, "Someone will save us, don't worry."

After comforting her for a long time, Yuexiu's expression finally settled, and she cried, "I'm sorry, Miss Ye, it was me who implicated you, I'm truly sorry."

"Why are you saying that? No one implicated me; you went missing, and everyone was very worried about you." Ye Qingning held her and said, "What on earth is going on? Can you tell me about it?"

"But, but..." Yuexiu's expression was still somewhat nervous; there were some things she still dared not speak aloud.

"We've reached this point, is there still anything you dare not say?" Ye Qingning stamped her foot in anxiety: "Tell me quickly, we will help you."

"Miss Ye, the people in this village, they seem kind on the surface, but in fact, it is not as you imagine." Yuexiu steadied herself and poured out the words hidden in her heart all at once.

"Because their village has little contact with the outside world, and every year many children enter what they call the Sacred Land to practice Gu Technique; once these selected children enter the Gu Clan, they can never come out again."

"The reason these children don't come out, is it because they are, as they say, cultivating inside to adulthood before leaving the valley for training, or is there another reason? And are these children locals, or from elsewhere?" Ye Qingning asked with a serious expression.

"There are children of the villagers, and there are also people abducted from elsewhere."

"As for cultivating? Leaving the valley?" Yuexiu smiled, a miserable smile: "When I was first caught and brought here, I wasn't married to my current husband, but was locked in a place within their Sacred Land."

"There was a group of people there who treated us as tools for bearing children and procreating; I was very scared at the time, having been caught there with a group of women, and it was only by pretending to be unconscious that I learned a little of their secret."

"What secret?" Ye Qingning held her breath.

"Of all the children selected to enter the Sacred Land, a portion do indeed stand out to become heirs of the Gu Clan, but their cultivation is of the 'raising Gu' style; they lock a group of children together, not letting them eat or drink, starving them until their ferocity flares up, and then they pick up any available weapon to strike down the others and eat their flesh and blood raw."

"Only the child who survives in the end is qualified to inherit their Gu Clan legacy; this method is, in fact, the way of raising Gu." Yuexiu said, tears streaming down her face.

Ye Qingning's expression was horrified; six or seven-year-old children, sent to that dark, sunless place, and then having their survival determined by this method of raising Gu—what kind of cruel means could lead to such cruel things being done?

"How did you escape?" Ye Qingning asked.

"Of the women caught and brought there every year, some are used by the people of the Sacred Land as tools for reproduction, while others are sent to the village to be taken as wives by villagers with ordinary aptitude."

Yuexiu paused for a moment again: "I was sent outside with five other women and forced to marry my current husband; except for me, the other four didn't live to see a year before they were beaten to death for trying to escape."

Speaking of this, Yuexiu's body trembled uncontrollably; it was clear that those events were a nightmare for her, one that would never fade away.

"It will be fine, it will get better." Ye Qingning patted her shoulder to comfort her.

"I know that if I try to escape, I will be beaten to death, so I acted more obediently than ever before, which is how I kept my life." Yuexiu said, tears streaming down her face: "But here, women, especially women from the outside, have the lowest status."

"I know that if I try to escape without absolute certainty, I will surely fail, so I have only been able to endure; I want to go home, I want to see my mom and dad."

"Don't worry, we will get out, we definitely will." Ye Qingning's expression was firm: "I will take you with me, and we will get out together."

"Really?" Yuexiu raised her head, looking at Ye Qingning through tear-blurred eyes: "To tell you the truth, from the moment I saw you, I knew my savior had come."

Ye Qingning looked at her with a complex expression; this woman, who was about the same age as her, had endured much more.

She just never could have imagined that beneath the kind, smiling faces of these villagers lay such a dark heart.

"These mountain demons, do they have any connection to the people of the Witch Clan?" Ye Qingning suddenly remembered these terrifying creatures.

"A co-existence relationship; these mountain demons and the Elder Council of the Witch Clan must have some kind of agreement. They regularly provide food to these mountain demons, so the mountain demons guard the forest in front of the Sacred Land, and those who approach die." Yuexiu said: "I have been here for three years, and they have never come out, but I don't know why they came out today."

"Provide food?" Ye Qingning looked at Yuexiu with some confusion.

"It is... the corpses of the children who were eliminated." Yuexiu gritted her teeth: "These mountain demons are extremely terrifying; they are cruel by nature and like to snatch women and children, then play with them like toys until they die, and finally eat them."

Ye Qingning's body shuddered involuntarily; in this place of cannibalism, everything she saw and heard was hair-raising.

She could never have imagined that such a terrifying place still existed in today's society.

Just at this moment, the infant in Yuexiu's arms let out a cry.

Mountain demons are cruel and irritable by nature; having suffered heavy casualties today from Chen Yu's Lichen Slash, the few remaining mountain demons were already incredibly agitated.

Now that the infant was crying, it provoked these things even more; with a 'whoosh', a two-meter-tall mountain demon charged into the cave and let out a terrifying roar at the infant in Yuexiu's arms.