And so, around the small Third Grandpa Temple Village, four groups of people endured days that felt like years.
First was Master, sitting in Three Matron Temple as if on hot coals, drenched in sweat.
Second was Xu Feng. Mountain mosquitoes were plentiful, and waterside mosquitoes were huge. Between the mountains and the water, they were both. Mr. Li had not released his kidney qi to crush them, but they left him alone and went straight for Xu Feng.
Against those mosquitoes, skin of bronze and bones of iron counted for nothing.
The huge mosquitoes bit in swarms, leaving patches of skin aching and itching. Worse, there were relatively few where they were.
Not far away, mountain mosquitoes buzzed in a cloud as thick as smoke.
A living person left there would probably be a dried corpse within a day.
Facing those mosquitoes, Xu Feng gritted his teeth. He found them even more hateful than the Earth-Fire Cultists and wanted nothing more than to release his miasma and kill them all!
The mosquitoes were not picky about their meals.
They drank Xu Feng's blood, and they had no objection to the Earth-Fire Cultists' blood either! The misery Xu Feng suffered was one the cultists could not escape.
That made the cult's followers and its Elder of Transmission the third and fourth groups.
What the elder was doing underground was unclear.
On the first day, Mr. Li said, "My ears are ringing."
On the second, Mr. Li said, "It feels like a saw dragging across my neck."
He said no more after that. As far as Xu Feng could tell, Mr. Li remained as healthy as ever.
On the ninth day, the Earth-Fire Cult took a rooster underground. It had spent days pecking at bloodstained pebbles, and its crop was now