A Face with Nine Eyes

Inside the Stone Chamber, the legs of the Soldier Gu Split-Tooth unfurled and swiftly clung to Liu Feng's back again.

Liu Feng picked up the medicine box from the ground. Inside were thirty-six pills that replenished blood and qi. He hadn't touched a single one, intending to give them to Leng Qiuyue.

After all, he had received two Insect Crystals from Leng Qiuyue's parents, and pills of this sort wouldn't help him much at present. They were just right for Leng Qiuyue.

Setting the medicine box aside for now, he looked at the bloodstains on the ground, his eyes flickering with uncertainty.

"Liu Xing may have hatched an Exotic Gu. He's a hidden danger."

"Second Senior Brother wants the Soldier Gu, and I beat up his two dogs. That's another hidden danger."

"After hatching an Exotic Gu, I'll have to go see that old ghoul Lu Huai. According to Third Senior Brother, only one of us may survive..."

After thinking it over, he no longer hesitated. A flick of his sleeve sent an Exotic Gu Egg tumbling out, its shell fiery red.

"I have to prepare for the worst. I can only succeed, never fail. I must be the one who walks out of that old ghoul Lu Huai's place alive."

"If I become the fourth disciple of Insect Valley, I should get chances to go out and handle affairs..."

Liu Feng's gaze was resolute. He picked up the Exotic Gu Egg Fire Eater with one hand. If he wanted to widen the gap between himself and ordinary Gu Masters, he couldn't rely solely on Buddha Eye Insight and a single Exotic Gu.

After leaving the Medicine Garden, his body had grown robust. He was all but certain to hatch his first Exotic Gu, and he had confidence in planting a second!

Of course, the key was still the Insect Crystals. He needed enough to nourish the hatching of two Exotic Gu Eggs, so they wouldn't drain him dry.

He planted Fire Eater that very day. It wouldn't hatch for some time, but even the physical boost he'd gain once the Exotic Gu Egg melted into him would be enough to raise his strength by a considerable margin.

A muffled groan rang out in the dim Stone Chamber.

The flesh over Liu Feng's chest was cut open for the second time, but this time, he had done it himself.

Dark clouds pressed overhead, and the rain had continued for days.

The winding paths in Insect Valley were a sea of mud. The Gu Children finally had a little free time, needing to work only half a day in the morning.

That afternoon, two Gu Children sat beneath the stone eaves, attempting to find their qi sense.

The next moment, they suddenly saw a figure stumble out of a cave.

"Ah..." A frenzied howl rang out.

The figure charged into the rain. Before it had gone far, it lost its footing and fell into the muddy ground.

Both Gu Children were still young. When they saw the person's appearance, their eyes went wide.

"M-monster!"

"Hurry, run! Tell the steward to come!" the two Gu Children shrieked as they fled.

If the Gu Children who used to haul goods were still alive, they would have recognized the figure sprawled in the mud: it was none other than the team leader, Ma Kun.

But Ma Kun had changed beyond recognition!

"What kind of Exotic Gu is this... to have made me so hideously deformed!"

Kneeling in the mud, Ma Kun clawed frantically at his own face, as if trying to dig off the clumps of "dead flesh" that had appeared there!

At that moment, he wasn't the only one in this state.

Every Gu Child who had refined a Dead Strange Gu Egg had either died or survived in a deformed state. The results were being revealed at nearly the same time.

One after another, frenzied figures burst from several cave entrances at the foot of the mountain.

"Steward Zhang, sir, they're over there!"

"Steward Xu, come take a look too!"

"There are two more in the cave. They're dead!"...

About an hour later, almost every Gu Child and Gu Servant in Insect Valley had gathered.

These Gu Children had only recently arrived in Insect Valley. They hadn't even found their qi sense yet and knew nothing about many of the Valley's affairs.

They had only heard the stewards mention that of the previous batch of more than a hundred and eighty Gu Children, only forty had come out of the Gu Cave.

More than ten days later, only fourteen of those forty were still alive!

Now, after three more days, some of the survivors had died horribly, while those who remained alive had become monsters.

In the crowd, a big-headed Gu Child stood in a daze. Behind him followed a group of Gu Children responsible for mixing Medicinal Mud.

Among them were two girls with striking looks, far prettier than the female Gu Children on his team.

Li Xiang'er's hands trembled as she clutched the hem of her clothes. Her voice quavered. "Sister Qiuyue, I heard they turned out like that because they planted Exotic Gu... Liu Feng, who helped you that day, was in the previous batch too. Did he also..."

There was no mud on Leng Qiuyue's face now, but her little face was deathly pale. It wasn't that she was worried about Liu Feng, someone she had met only once.

"Their fate may be ours one day. We can't escape it... My parents too..." Leng Qiuyue was worried about herself and her parents.

"It's all that wretched old hag's fault. I only owed her a little money, and she sold me to Insect Valley..."

Terrified as she was, Li Xiang'er hadn't even heard the words "my parents" in Leng Qiuyue's sentence. She continued cursing without pause.

Just then, one of the "monsters" in the mud got to his feet and roared.

"Liu Xing."

Then the other four got up one after another, and all five monsters charged in the same direction.

As they rose, their deformed appearances were fully exposed, drawing a chorus of gasps from those around them.

In the crowd's view, all five of them, Ma Kun included, had arms that were either swollen or thin as hemp stalks. Besides the bulging tumors on their skin, black lumps had appeared across their bodies.

Those black lumps were about the size of human eyeballs, like eyeballs someone had gouged blind.

But that wasn't all. Their faces were revolting!

Their exposed faces looked like those of demons, as though chunks of flesh had been ripped away while they were still alive.

In the patches of missing flesh, three or five eyeballs were crammed together in each hollow.

Counting them up, each face had seven or eight extra eyeballs, as if strange insects had laid eggs on their faces.

"Liu Xing, you were the one who told me to go against the grain and taught me to refine a Dead Strange Gu Egg."

"I listened to your and Ma Kun's bullshit, and this is what I got for it."

"Liu Xing, you... you got your looks back?"...

The monstrous Ma Kun and the other four rushed up to a cave.

There, a slightly stooped figure strolled leisurely, seeming to admire the rain outside the cave.

The other Gu Servants present glanced over. When they saw Liu Xing today, every one of them couldn't help but look on with envy.

If they hadn't heard the name "Liu Xing," no one would have connected the cool, slightly stooped young man before them with the Mad Dog Liu Xing of the past.

He had undergone a complete metamorphosis!

He was handsome. Aside from his spine not having fully healed, the tumors on his body had all disappeared. His arms were still a little thick, but they were bearable.

Watching the five "monsters" charge toward him, Liu Xing teased, "You wanted a way to stay alive, so I gave you one. Not only are you not kneeling to thank me, you actually want to kill me?"

His words only made things worse. At once, Ma Kun lunged at him.

"Kill you? I'm going to eat you alive..."

The other four were no less eager. Their ugly, twisted, frenzied forms today were practically identical to the Mad Dog Liu Xing of the past, if not worse.

But halfway through their charge, the scene before them suddenly changed completely.

The landscape in their vision tore apart, shattered into pieces, and jumbled itself together.

Forget killing Liu Xing—they couldn't even see the path beneath their feet. Unable to react in time, they fell one after another.

"I'm a Gu Master now. From this day on, I'm not one of you monsters."

Amid the Gu Children's cries of alarm, Liu Xing's appearance changed before their eyes.

Three eyes appeared on his cool, stern face—one in his forehead and four more across his cheeks. Together with the two he'd already had, that made nine eyes, all open.

Unlike the deformed, crowded eyeballs of Ma Kun and the others, Liu Xing's nine-eyed face looked not the least bit ugly. Instead, it gave him an air of mystery and majesty.