[To Become a River of Stars] Dong Xiange - Chapter 111

The night deepened, and the scattered cooking fires had all ceased.

In the dilapidated side room, a creature that was almost but not quite human lay on the ground, its wrist twisted into a grotesque shape. Through the thin layer of skin, the misaligned bones beneath were faintly visible.

A pair of boots, black with cloud patterns, stepped onto the wrist, the toe grinding against the dislocated bones, causing the creature on the floor to emit a low, guttural roar from its throat.

The sound, thick with blood, echoed within the small, broken-down room. Behind them, the old woman’s face held a strange expression, as if some emotion was struggling to break through her aged skin, yet was ultimately trapped by numb wrinkles, leaving only a face full of absurdity.

“Speak, before this hand is completely ruined.” Li Xuanci tilted his head slightly, his eyes overflowing with a wicked aura.

The old woman slowly closed her eyes and finally began to speak.

“He is my grandson, A’Nian. He grew up here.”

“A great fire broke out in the village, followed by a plague. Many of the sick were driven away. He was disobedient, insisted on going to find A’Feng. I couldn’t stop him. When he came back… he was like this.”

“If he doesn’t drink blood, he goes mad. First chickens, then dogs… later, bigger ones. So I came.”

The old woman spoke with difficulty, her pauses chaotic and disjointed. Such a short statement was laborious to follow.

However, it didn’t differ much from what they had heard before. Shiliu spoke up to ask, “Who is A’Feng? Was he also from this village?”

The old woman nodded slowly. “A’Feng is A’Feng. A’Feng and A’Nian.”

This seemed to drain the last of the old woman’s strength. She leaned against the table leg, her face ashen. Dried blood, no longer bright red, clung to the wrinkled skin of her neck.

Seeing her like this, Shiliu’s expression turned grave. She stood up to go examine her, but halfway there, her path was blocked by those same cloud-patterned black boots.

“Not afraid of being bitten?” Li Xuanci shot her a look that was half challenge, half mockery. “Maybe he has a taste for plump, fair morsels like you.”

Shiliu couldn’t be bothered to argue with this childish, petty tyrant. Puffing out her cheeks, she retorted, “So what if I’m plump? I worked hard, eating bite by bite to get this way!” and tried to step past him.

Li Xuanci was caught off guard for a moment, letting her slip by. He suppressed the corner of his mouth that wanted to quirk up and didn’t stop her further, merely watching her movements from behind.

He saw Shiliu squat decisively beside the old woman. But upon closer look, the old woman appeared even more frightening, especially when she suddenly shuddered violently as Shiliu approached.

Thus, Li Xuanci saw the mushroom-like figure, hugging her knees, pause for a beat, then subtly shift backward, thinking herself unnoticed.

The smile at the corners of his eyes and brows became increasingly hard to suppress, and he continued to watch idly, thoroughly enjoying the scene.

But Shiliu was, after all, a professional Taoist. Her professional integrity was relatively solid. After just clearing her throat, she carefully examined the old woman’s wounds.

After a thorough inspection, she stood up and came back, moving closer to Li Xuanci’s side. She hesitated, words caught in her throat, but finally swallowed her pride and asked him to keep pinning the person on the ground firmly so she could examine him.

Li Xuanci teased her with a barb. “Your skin is so thick, he probably couldn’t bite through it even if he tried. No need to worry.”

Then, before Shiliu could get angry, he reached out and lightly pinched her puffed-out cheek, saying, “Go on. He can’t move.”

Just a simple statement, yet coupled with the warmth of his fingertips, it inexplicably carried an illusion of gentleness.

Even after he withdrew his hand, Shiliu was still somewhat dazed. Under the amusement in his eyes, she turned away as if to hide her reaction, squatted down, and began examining the creature on the floor.

Sure enough, Li Xuanci had him pinned securely; the man didn’t have a chance to move.

When Shiliu stood up again, her eyes held more certainty. “I thought so. He’s been poisoned with a Gu.”

He Chong’s expression shifted, becoming stern. After a moment of thought, he said, “A craving for blood, beast-like yet not fully animal, loss of reason, golden patterns in the pupils… such strangeness does sound like a Gu poison. But which Gu is it?”

“I can’t say for sure yet, either. But I suspect it’s a type of Mother-Child Gu,” Shiliu said.

Li Xuanci interjected, “Why?”

“Don’t you think the old woman and A’Nian are somewhat similar?” Shiliu looked toward the old woman on the floor. “I noticed earlier that her reactions seem unusually slow. She clearly has feelings but can’t show them on her face, and her speech is disordered.”

“She hasn’t left this place. So the only possible reason is that her grandson has affected her in some way.”

“Gu is terrifying, but it’s not a contagious disease; it doesn’t spread from person to person. There’s only one type of Gu that might cause such a strange phenomenon: the Mother-Child Gu. A Child Gu is planted in a person. After it hatches, the Mother Gu can control and influence them.”

“If what was planted in A’Nian was a Child Gu, the unhatched child gu parasites could have entered the old woman’s body through the bite. It’s just because the Child Gu’s target isn’t her that even if planted in her body, it can’t fully hatch. That’s why she’s like this—her body numb, but her inner self still retains clarity.”

He Chong’s eyes lit up. “If it’s a Child Gu, then we can use it to track the Mother Gu!”

Li Xuanci, however, asked her, “Are you certain?”

Shiliu didn’t answer immediately. After thinking for a while, she said, “I’ve only read about the Mother-Child Gu in books. I’m not fully confident I can force it out of a human body and still keep the Gu insect alive. However, if it remains inside the person, and we use the resonance to track the Mother Gu, that might be possible.”

Li Xuanci raised an eyebrow and lifted the foot that had been pinning the wrist for so long, nudging the now limp A’Nian on the floor.

“It seems we have to take on more dead weight,” he said.