Whenever General Jin drank too much, he often joked that his mother's surname was Liu and that she was a descendant of Liu Bowen.
As it turned out, the joke was not entirely in jest.
It was false that the general's mother was surnamed Liu, but true that the general himself was.
In his later years, Liu Bowen fell under the Hongwu Emperor's suspicion. Desolate at heart, he left instructions for his descendants.
They were to remove strokes from their surname and change it to Jin, but the family's supernatural powers and spells were passed down through the generations.
What General Jin did that day was to use his own great supernatural powers to forcibly destroy the very foundation of Gu insects throughout the southwest.
From then on, although the mountains still teemed with venomous insects, fewer than one in ten thousand could be cultivated into a Gu insect.
There was no longer any way to verify the truth of this legend.
But according to local gazetteers, before the end of the Ming dynasty, the number of Gu sorcerers in the southwest had indeed far exceeded that of the present day.
Now, the hardest step in practicing Gu Sorcery was finding a suitable Gu insect.
That was why Cui Jiuyang had been so curious when he discovered that Incense Master Shen was actually a Gu sorcerer. The other protectors present were equally curious.
Incense Master Shen, however, clearly had no intention of satisfying their curiosity.
His expression was solemn, and his voice was brisk and decisive as he began. "All of you protectors have come to Baise for our faith's grand undertaking. I will certainly do everything in my power to assist you."
He paused, then continued, "I haven't appeared these past few days because I uncovered some important information."