Chapter 166

Chapter 166

“The people of Tu Family Village… You were the one who killed them?!”

Though Li Cheng’s heart was filled with fear, he still could not help voicing the question when he heard the truth.

After all, he had seen the miserable scene with his own eyes. He truly found it hard to believe that the killer could be the same frail woman who had once knelt before him, begging him to reopen the case.

Ren Fengjue asked, “After you failed to get Town Officer Li to seek justice for your sister, the hatred in your heart would not fade. So you refined this Corpse Gu and avenged your sister by killing the people of Tu Family Village.”

“Then who taught you to refine this gu?”

Zeng Qiao seemed somewhat surprised that he could name the Corpse Gu, but she still answered truthfully, “A wandering Daoist.”

Li Cheng and Ge Chuan were both startled. “A Daoist too?”

Zeng Qiao nodded.

That day, in the curtain of rain, the person who had spoken to her had indeed been a Daoist.

His words made the hatred in Zeng Qiao’s heart burn even fiercer.

So when he told her there was a way for her to help her sister take revenge, she agreed without the slightest hesitation.

That method was the Corpse Gu.

The Daoist said that her pregnant sister had died with a grievance.

Therefore, her corpse was the best vessel for refining the Corpse Gu.

Once it was successfully refined, forget killing one household of the Tu Family-even wiping out the entire village would be nothing difficult.

More importantly, gu worms killed without leaving a trace. Given the authorities’ habit of only wanting to smooth things over, even if the matter came to light, it would be difficult for them to uncover the cause.

For some reason, Zeng Qiao believed the Daoist’s words without question. Following the method he gave her, she dug her sister’s corpse out of the earth and secretly brought it home.

Because the Mother Gu had to be fed with the blood of the living,

she took blood from her father every day to feed the gu worms inside her sister’s body.

After forty-nine days, her sister’s belly began to swell.

The Corpse Worms began crawling out from her mouth and nose. After shedding their shells, they attached themselves to the corpse once more.

But as time passed, her sister’s corpse began to rot, and the stench aroused the neighbors’ suspicions.

The Daoist, however, had his own solution.

He gave Zeng Qiao a bottle of talisman water and told her to sprinkle it around the corpse at regular intervals.

He also told her that after the Corpse Gu was refined, if she wished to control the Corpse Worms, she would have to swallow the Mother Gu alive and become one with it.

Zeng Qiao was frightened when she heard this. But whenever she thought of her sister’s death and the scenes from her dreams, monstrous hatred surged up in her heart.

She forced herself to use a sharp knife to cut open her sister’s belly, remove the Mother Gu from within, and swallow it down raw.

The Daoist said that after the Mother Gu entered a living body, the host would not die, but from then on, they would have to live on the blood of the living.

Father Zeng, having been used to refine the Corpse Gu, had already died from excessive blood loss.

And so, Zeng Qiao began taking blood from her mother instead.

Just as they had taken “blood” from the two sisters for the past sixteen years.

That night half a month ago, she had controlled the Corpse Worms and sent them sneaking into Tu Family Village.

Once the Corpse Worms entered their bodies, those people died in an instant. Their bodies became like puppets, controlled by the Corpse Worms.

She then used the Corpse Worms to drive those infected bodies to the village entrance, where she watched them lose their humanity, gnaw at one another, and gradually fester and stink.

One hollow skeleton after another, wrapped in human skin, collapsed to the ground until it was impossible to tell one from another.

After Ge Chuan and Li Cheng finished listening to Zeng Qiao’s account, they thought back to the scene from that day, and a bone-deep chill rose in their hearts.

Xia Ximo spoke up then. “Do you know you were used?”

Those words made Zeng Qiao pause slightly. Clearly, they had hit the mark.

But a moment later, she asked back with utter indifference, “As long as I got my revenge, how can you call it being used?”
Xia Ximo’s expression remained cool and detached. “You only know that you suffered a backlash from the gu worm, but you don’t know that your sister was affected too.”

Zeng Qiao froze. “What do you mean by that?”

After taking her revenge, her body had gradually begun to rot as well, giving off a foul stench.

Left with no choice, she went to find the Taoist priest and ask him for talisman water.

But the priest’s attitude had changed. He would only give her the talisman water if she paid him silver.

Ten taels of silver for one bottle of talisman water-it was an astronomical price.

And its effects only lasted three days.

Once those three days were up, she had to bring more money to exchange for another bottle.

Zeng Qiao realized she had been used. She tried to turn the Corpse Gu against the Taoist priest, but she was no match for him at all.

The talisman water could mask the stench, but it could only slow the rate at which her body decayed.

She began to look neither human nor ghost, and she could not even stand the light.

When sunlight touched her skin, it burned.

Zeng Qiao knew this was what the Taoist priest had meant when he said the Corpse Gu had completely fused with its host.

Only then did fear begin to creep in.

Three days ago, the Taoist priest had vanished from town.

Then, last night, inside the money house, Zeng Qiao had seen Yan Zhengchu.

When Yan Zhengchu secretly slipped into her family’s courtyard, a bad feeling rose in her heart. She realized she would be exposed very soon.

So she took her sister’s corpse, left Yunxia Town, and came to this cave, thinking she could hide here for as long as she was able.

But she had never expected that after only one night, they would find her.

Xia Ximo did not answer her. Instead, she asked, “Do you know who brought me here?”

Zeng Qiao stared at her blankly, not daring to reply.

“It was Zeng Xiao’s ghost. She came to me and begged me to help you.”

Aside from Ren Fengjue, the other three were all startled by those words.

Were there truly ghosts in this world?

Xia Ximo looked at Zeng Qiao and continued, “There is still much of the truth you don’t know.”

“Not long after your sister died, her soul was shattered by someone.”

“For a period of time, you were often plagued by nightmares. In truth, that person was using the bond between you twins to send her scattered soul into your dreams, making you see false visions.”

Zeng Qiao stiffened again, panic filling her eyes. “How is that possible? It was clearly my sister visiting me in my dreams…”

“Your sister never visited your dreams.”

“But one thing was not wrong. She was indeed killed by her husband’s family and then made to look as though she had hanged herself.”

“Zeng Xiao has always wanted to stop what you were doing. That is why she came to me.”

Zeng Qiao’s thoughts gradually became clearer, but doubt still lingered. “Can you really see my sister’s soul?”

Xia Ximo lightly brushed the Soul-Ferrying Lantern inside her pouch. “She has been by your side all along. You simply couldn’t see her.”

“But now, you have a chance to speak with her once.”

Zeng Qiao glanced at the rotting corpse on the ground. Tears filled her eyes, and her emotions surged.

“Really? You’re not lying to me?”

Xia Ximo did not answer. She merely glanced at Ren Fengjue.

He immediately understood what she meant and gestured for Ge Chuan and Li Cheng to step back with him.

The two men did not understand why.

Of course, neither could they see the wisp of shadow that drifted out of the Soul-Ferrying Lantern and swiftly slipped into Xia Ximo’s body.

She lowered her head slightly. When she raised her eyes again, the feeling she gave off had changed completely.

“Ah-Qiao.”

At that address, Zeng Qiao’s eyes instantly reddened.