Pan Long was digging when the ground around him suddenly shook, followed by countless cries of battle.
"What's going on?"
Startled, he hurried back to the surface, only to see monsters closing in from every direction.
On closer inspection, there were only seven or eight kinds of monsters among them. Besides the Wolf Demons and Wolflike Demons he had seen before, there was a Centipede Spirit with a golden-red body clad in black armor, a Toad so fat it looked as though it must roll everywhere, a scorpion with a stinger that looked dangerous at a glance, a lanky creature with a Snake's head, and a huge Spider with a human face.
"Wolves and wolflikes working hand in glove was bad enough, but they've even added the Five Poisons..." Pan Long could not help muttering. "Could this get any more Yun Province?"
Gu arts had once flourished in Yun Province. Even now, Gu remained an important part of its local culture.
In the Gu arts, the most common method of refining Gu was to "extract the Five Poisons."
This meant catching five venomous creatures—a centipede, a toad, a scorpion, a Snake, and a Spider—on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, placing them in a special Formation, and letting them fight and devour one another. The last survivor became a Five Poisons Gu.
Of course, the actual method of refining a Five Poisons Gu was complicated. It was not as simple as some tales of the strange made it sound: toss the Five Poisons into a black earthenware jar, seal it, bury it somewhere damp and shaded, then dig it up on the next Dragon Boat Festival...
Doing that usually produced nothing but a jar of rotting, stinking muck, not a Five Poisons Gu.
The true method of refining Gu