Eldest Senior Brother of Insect Valley

With just one encounter, more than thirty burly men had become corpses strewn across the ground.

Behind the Great Elder, White Sun Sect disciples surged forward.

Human skin, eyeballs, blood essence... All the "materials" they could strip away were collected by the disciples.

"Great Elder, we found traces in this courtyard earlier. It looked like... like insects had spun cocoons..." A wounded disciple stepped forward and reported.

At his words, the two elders present furrowed their brows. It seemed that the man had already begun his Metamorphic Rebirth; they simply did not know how far he had progressed.

The group entered the main room of the courtyard and saw traces in a corner, like two pieces of folded blue-black cloth stuck to the wall.

Everyone's gaze, including the Sect Master's and the Great Elder's, focused on those two "rags."

They had never witnessed a Gu Master's Metamorphic Rebirth; the little they knew came entirely from rumors.

"According to the rumors, a Gu Master emerges from Metamorphic Rebirth like an insect breaking out of its cocoon. There are traces of a cocoon here, but it's already been moved. We're too late. Search the entire northern part of the Outer City at once."

"Could that bandit have slipped into the Inner City?"

"Those Red Moon Cult fiends drained an entire county magistrate's household dry. The government offices throughout Danhe Prefecture have been conducting a strict search. At a time like this, he wouldn't dare enter the Inner City to undergo Metamorphic Rebirth."

The White Sun Sect's Great Elder and Sect Master exchanged a glance, then hurriedly led their disciples toward the northern part of the Outer City.

In the northern part of the Outer City, inside an abandoned dyehouse.

Things were much as the White Sun Sect Sect Master had suspected. Pang Gang, the Eldest Senior Brother of Insect Valley, had indeed not undergone Metamorphic Rebirth in the Inner City.

But for him, the Outer City was more than enough.

In the dyehouse's courtyard, eight burly men stood or sat, each holding a different weapon.

These eight were unlike ordinary members of the Tooth Gang. Even the weakest among them had refined their qi into their bones, while five had refined it into their marrow.

They were no weaker than the soldiers of the Monster-Slaying Battalion. Had they been born into better circumstances, they could easily have secured positions in the battalion.

But now, the five men looked somewhat deranged. Their breathing was labored, like wild beasts ready to go berserk at any moment.

"Not one of the brothers who went out has returned. Those White Sun Sect people will be here soon."

"From what the gang leader said, there are two old men among them who are second-realm Daoists."

"We only need to hold them off for a little while. The gang leader is almost done."

The eight men knew that two second-realm Daoists were coming, yet not only did they show no reverence—they even seemed somewhat excited.

At that moment, inside the room just beyond them, a blue-black cocoon lay across the floor.

It was about nine feet long and five feet wide.

Through the raised outlines on the cocoon, one could faintly make out not only a human figure inside, but also a strange creature that looked like both a blade and a giant insect.

If Zhu Li and Shen Yushu had been here, they would have recognized it at once: it was Eldest Senior Brother's Soldier Gu, the Blade Cockroach.

Pang Gang, the Eldest Senior Brother of Insect Valley, had actually brought his Soldier Gu along when undergoing Metamorphic Rebirth, intending to use the opportunity to advance it to the second grade.

At this moment, both the Soldier Gu and the human figure inside were stretching their limbs.

As Metamorphic Rebirth neared completion, the blue-black color of the cocoon deepened. Dense poison seeped out and spread through the room as a cloud of blue-black fumes.

Just then, outside the room—

The eight Tooth Gang fighters scanned their surroundings and noticed that the courtyard had fallen eerily silent.

"They're here." The broad-foreheaded, middle-aged man—the former leader of the Tooth Gang—rose first from the ground.

Almost as soon as he stood, human skins appeared all over the courtyard walls.

More than a hundred skins, all with hollow features, slid into the courtyard in the blink of an eye.

At the same time, the bolt on the courtyard gate burned to black ash, and someone pushed open the room's door from outside.

Two elderly figures flashed into the courtyard, followed by nearly twenty White Sun Sect disciples filing in.

"Put down your weapons, and this old man can awaken your apertures," the White Sun Sect Sect Master said coldly.

By "awakening their apertures," he meant deeply polluting them with Evil Objects, making them feel as if they had been reborn with newly opened apertures.

This kind of "awakening" was familiar to White Sun Sect disciples. Every one of them had already undergone it, severing their former selves at a stroke.

"Gang leader, we'll hold them off for a while."

Facing more than a hundred human skins closing in, the broad-foreheaded middle-aged man let out a furious roar. Their qi and blood surged around them.

They were about to fight to the death when poison seeped from the doorway, and fumes gushed from the windows as well.

Along with the poison came a sound like thick cloth being torn.

"Rip, rip..." The tearing sounds continued without pause.

The moment they heard it, every White Sun Sect member in the courtyard blanched.

But the most appalled of them all was the Sect Master. The dozen or so copper balls on his wrist suddenly shook violently, as if something inside were trying to break free.

Even with all his composure as Sect Master, he couldn't help but snort angrily. "There's no time to capture him. He's about to draw out an Evil Object."

At those words, the Great Elder beside him forgot about the eight fighters and cried out in shock, "Draw out an Evil Object here? The government will surely send troops!"

Just then, a young man's voice came from inside the room.

"Come inside."

"As you command, gang leader."

The eight men outside knew that their gang leader had completed his breakthrough. Their faces lit up with joy, and they all turned and rushed into the room.

But the moment they entered, Gu poison erupted in their bodies, and they fell into the churning toxic fumes.

Right after, the cloth-tearing sounds grew faster.

The room's door swung wide. As most of the poisonous fumes poured out, the scene inside gradually came into view.

Through the slowly thinning cloud, eight long, snake-like feelers writhed in the fumes and plunged into the fighters' necks, making wet gulping sounds.

A blade-shaped monster insect rose first from the poisonous haze. At first glance, it was only about six feet long.

But at the next glance, its body swelled, its contracted abdomen ballooning into a giant, crescent-shaped blade nearly ten feet long. A mass of feelers swayed around its "hilt."

Right behind the monster insect, a man emerged from the broken cocoon, his body swelling as well. In the blink of an eye, he was as hulking as a Spirit Monster.

Blue-black lumps of flesh throbbed on both his arms, each surrounded by a ball of blue-black venom.

The venom writhed like living creatures, and he controlled it at will, just as a second-realm martial artist could send his true qi out of his body.

"Retreat!" As the hulking figure rose, the White Sun Sect members darted toward the courtyard exit.

The hundred-plus human skins all ignited with pale Nether Fire and surged toward the figure inside the room.

The man in the room wore the same faint smile at the corner of his mouth as before, but he was no longer the Eldest Senior Brother of Insect Valley.

With his second life after Metamorphic Rebirth, the Exotic Gu inside him had awakened from its slumber and now let out a shrill, ravenous cry.

"Without Insect Crystals or spirit medicines to nourish me, blood essence will do. If killing everyone in the White Sun Sect isn't enough, then..."

He couldn't be bothered to look at the hundred or so human skins rushing toward him. His gaze swept over the White Sun Sect members fleeing the courtyard, as if they were one nourishing morsel after another.

A monstrous tumor on his chest split open, and a mutilated head radiating an eerie black light emerged.

The moment it appeared, the influence of the Evil Object spread in the blink of an eye, engulfing the entire western part of the Outer City.

The next moment, the room rang with a succession of cracking sounds as floor tiles shattered in great swaths.

The figure, hulking as a bear-like Spirit Monster from the mountains, sent more than a hundred human skins flying as poison roiled around him, then charged out with his nearly ten-foot-long Soldier Gu in tow.