Gu God Centipede

Prince Jian's horrific death sent a violent shock through everyone present in the estate.

They had watched with their own eyes as a royal prince and imperial noble was buried in the jaws of the demon he had raised. Even with the bloodline of heaven's descendants, once retribution arrived, none could escape Yama's demand for life or the Impermanence Ghosts' soul-hooking chains.

How many schemers and petty, fly-and-dog strivers were so frightened by this sight that their calves went weak?

"Gu God! This is the Five Gods Cult's Gu God!" Someone immediately recognized the enormous dragon-like centipede.

"Prince Jian actually fed people to such an evil thing. If word gets out, how will the people of the realm view our Great Zhou?" These officials knew more or less about the Five Gods Cult's background, but they had never known that the Five Gods were nourished with the spiritual essence of living people. After all, this involved the Five Gods Cult's secret arts and its most taboo secrets.

"So the Immortal Pills bestowed by the Five Gods that we ate actually came from this thing." Several officials who had been extremely close to Prince Jian turned pale as sheets. Suddenly recalling something, they began retching again and again.

Like The Current Emperor, Prince Jian revered Daoism and Buddhism and loved the art of refining pills. Prince Jian claimed that the Five Gods Cult possessed Immortal Pills personally bestowed by deities; consuming them could prolong one's years, strengthen the body, and banish illness and pain.

Yet those who used them discovered that although these Immortal Pills had endless marvelous effects, once one had eaten them, one could never again escape Prince Jian's control.

Still, their effects were so powerful that many elderly, frail, sickly people begged Prince Jian for them. Others even took the initiative to draw close to Prince Jian, asking for Immortal Pills and seeking the path of immortality alongside him. Most of Prince Jian's confidants and River Prefecture's high officials had taken these pills.

As the Gu God Centipede climbed upward, its stench and bloody wind turned into thick black smoke that spread through the air. Seeing such a spectacle, many people nearby retreated again and again, desperate to avoid it.

The people trapped in the cages had not seen this monster for the first time. Whenever it had appeared before, more than a dozen people from the cages had been thrown down for it to devour.

Now that they saw it climbing up, they were so terrified they could barely form complete sentences. They curled up in their cages, trembling and weeping, crying out as though they had forgotten how to speak human words.

The first thing the Gu God Centipede saw was the white-robed youth standing at the very top of the opening, looking down at it.

Having just devoured Prince Jian, the Gu God Centipede seemed to feel as though some kind of shackle had fallen from its body.

It impatiently wanted to rush out from underground and then feast to its heart's content, eating every person on the surface clean.

It sprang upward, leaping a hundred meters, gliding out from the depths below like a flying centipede.

Its sharp mouthparts snapped toward the white-robed youth. In its memories, such little humans were fragile beyond measure, mere offerings for it to swallow.

"Hiss—" The giant dragon-like centipede leaped out with a terrifying shriek.

"Thud—" Sword light streaked across the night sky. With a thud, the giant centipede came fast—and fell even faster.

The divine sword nailed it firmly to the cave wall. Azure light continuously spilled from it, like a seal.

Cracks split open throughout the entire cavern, from top to bottom. Rolling stones tumbled endlessly into the depths, plunging into the bottomless abyss.

Yet the white-robed figure standing high above the cavernous abyss did not change even the look in his eyes as he gazed down at it.

The bloody wind brushed past the hem of his robes. Kongchenzi did not even move before suppressing it back into the cavern.

Only then did the Gu God Centipede realize that the person it had encountered this time was completely unlike those before.

It struggled violently, and for a time, all of Yuande Square seemed to tremble as mountains shook and earth cracked.

The Gu God Centipede stared toward the outside of the cave from afar, yearning desperately to burst out of the underground.

It was as though, so long as it escaped this abyssal cavern, it would be a fish leaping over the dragon gate, free to roam beneath vast skies and broad earth.

But it no longer had the chance. This sunless cavern was the boundary it could never cross, and the place where its bones would be buried.

"Hiss!"

Donkey Guardian General stood beside Great Immortal Kongchenzi. Knowing that it was his turn to take the stage, he stretched out a hoof over the edge of the abyss and looked down, snorting several streams of flame from his nostrils.

"Do not struggle. I have already refined your three brothers. Now General Donkey will send you down to keep them company."

"Behold General Donkey's divine might—Four Gods Fire Refinement!"

General Donkey opened his great mouth, and fire dragons coiled through the sky before descending one after another, turning the entire cavern into a roaring furnace.

This time, the centipede was like something dropped into a vat of boiling oil.

The divine sword pinned its waist, and its upper and lower body lashed about like two whips, violently battering the surrounding cave walls.

The afterimages it carved out displayed its despair, pain, and final struggle.

"Bang bang bang bang bang bang..."

From top to bottom, all the estate's guests and high officials listened to the earth-shaking pounding beneath the ground, feeling the despairing shrieks of the being that countless people of River Prefecture had regarded as a god.

Their eyes watched the figures of one man and one donkey beneath the flames shooting into the sky, illuminated red by the blazing fire. Their long shadows stretched from one end of the cavern all the way to the other end of the estate.

It was as though they covered heaven and earth alike.

At last, the Gu God's cries gradually weakened, and the rhythm of its strikes against the cave walls became feeble, until it was completely devoid of life.

As the Gu God Centipede died, great numbers of people within the estate collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain.

Then they vomited terrifying crimson centipede Gu insects from their mouths.

The moment these centipede Gu insects were expelled, they struggled a few times before dying. With the Gu God's death, these Gu insects that depended upon its existence naturally lost all meaning as well.

When Great Immortal Kongchenzi turned around, the estate's hall full of high officials and nobles were all prostrate at his feet. The servants and maids of the estate knelt behind them in a solid mass.

"Great Immortal, please spare us. We were all deceived by Prince Jian. We knew nothing of the Five Gods Cult, much less that beneath this estate lay such a demon's den."

"He controlled us with Gu insects. We had no choice but to obey him!"

"We merely acted under Prince Jian's orders. We never knew of such utterly inhuman, conscience-destroying atrocities, much less took part in them."

In the end, everyone left Prince Jian's Estate drenched in sweat. Everything that had happened tonight, whether to farmers and peddlers or high officials and nobles, would remain engraved in their memories for the rest of their lives.

Those who had been trapped in cages were also helped out by the estate servants. On the streets, they embraced relatives who had likewise escaped death and wept bitterly.

Outside the estate, countless people had gathered in layer upon layer. Such a huge disturbance naturally drew many residents of Yuande Square, while constables and armored soldiers from River Prefecture rushed over as well.

News of the demon's den beneath the estate, along with Prince Jian and the Five Gods Cult feeding people to monsters, spread through the crowd.

With those who had escaped the cages personally testifying to it, the news spread even faster.

Just as everyone was pointing at the estate and discussing it, with some even secretly cursing it and spitting in its direction, a tremendous sound came from within.

"Rumble!"

The entire Prince Jian's Estate turned into a raging inferno.

This blaze not only burned the Five Gods Cult's monsters to death, but also reduced every sin, evil desire, and crime above and beneath this estate to ashes.

Finally, the entire estate collapsed into the earth.

The whole of River Court shook as though an earthquake had struck. Many people nearby were knocked flat onto the ground. When they rose again, half of Yuande Square had become an enormous sinkhole.

The vast hollow originally excavated below by the Mountain God, along with the Five Gods Cult's underground palace caverns, had also been completely buried.