Gui Jianchou and Helian Nanshan packed in a rush and fled from the Valley of Divine Medicine. Compared to the centuries he had invested into this operation, what truly drove Gui Jianchou into madness was the allure of extending his life for another hundred years.
What they didn't know was that shortly after their departure, a shadowy figure appeared above the valley. Upon discovering the place deserted, the man let out a cold snort and slammed a palm down from the sky. The ground of the valley sank several feet under the force. The very area that Gui Jianchou had once feared was now flattened like a pancake. The venomous insects he had painstakingly cultivated for years were crushed into pulp beneath the residual pressure of that strike. The landscape itself was altered by the blow.
With a few muttered curses—"Consider yourselves lucky"—the figure vanished into the air.
Shortly after leaving, Gui Jianchou tracked down the serving girls, gave each a generous amount of silver, and watched them depart. Once they were gone, he suddenly pulled out a pill and slapped it onto Helian Nanshan's face.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Helian Nanshan roared, grabbing Gui Jianchou's wrist, suspecting some sinister intent.
"Let go, you fool! Don't you want to live?" Gui Jianchou grimaced in pain and snapped back. "It's a disguise pill! Just one slap and your face will be unrecognizable. We're on the run now. I don't like this either, but—heh—high rewards demand high risks. I may be old, but I'm not ready to die yet. I'll gamble everything for those hundred more years of life."
He continued, his tone turning cold and resolute. "This has to be done quietly. If we bring too many people, we'll be discovered for sure. I don't care what kind of trouble you've stirred up—just know that I want my years. From now on, you follow my lead. With new faces, we'll have far more freedom. Otherwise, with our infamous mugs, half the martial world would recognize us. We'd never make it to the capital alive, let alone stay hidden."
"You first," Helian Nanshan said, still suspicious.
Gui Jianchou snorted and withdrew his hand. With a swift motion, he slapped the pill onto his own face and wiped it across. In seconds, his appearance changed completely—now just a feeble, sickly old man. Helian Nanshan stared, dumbfounded.
Without a word, Gui Jianchou took out another pill. This time, Helian Nanshan did not resist. A moment later, he looked like a plain-faced, honest middle-aged farmer. One more pill was rubbed onto Leng Ruoshuang's face. With her unconscious form in tow, the two rented a carriage in a nearby town and bought a house in a large city. From then on, they kept a low profile and rarely went outside.
Each day, Gui Jianchou would pull out his medical kit and spend hours needling Leng Ruoshuang's body. His brow was always deeply furrowed.
Helian Nanshan could do little but watch. The old physician spent his days sighing, poring over ancient, yellowed texts, flipping through them for hours.
Gui Jianchou's hair, once beginning to regain some color, turned completely white within five days. It began to fall out. His skin wrinkled and sagged. Helian Nanshan could only look on, stunned, as the man withered before his eyes—worse than he had looked even after Feng Yunwuji had once helped cleanse his marrow.
Eventually, even Helian Nanshan grew uneasy, but Gui Jianchou was already lost in his obsession. He muttered to himself constantly, unresponsive to shouts or shaking, as if he'd forgotten anyone else existed. The room was filled with jars, an acrid stench of medicine, and scraps of cloth covered in needles of varying lengths.
Knock, knock.
One night, while Helian Nanshan was resting, a knock came at the door. He opened it to find a familiar face—someone who had been with Feng Yunwuji.
"You… you're—" he stammered, but couldn't recall the name.
"I'm Gu Yuetian. The man you saw me with that day is my grandmaster," the visitor replied with a smile.
Helian Nanshan stepped aside to let him in, though an odd sense of unease settled in his chest. He couldn't say why.
"I've found it… I've found a way to save Leng Ruoshuang!" A wild cry came from inside the house.
Helian Nanshan was both thrilled and startled. "What did you say?!" he shouted, then ran toward the voice.
Gu Yuetian hesitated briefly, then followed. Inside, Gui Jianchou's hair was disheveled, his feet surrounded by scattered needles—though far fewer than those embedded in Leng Ruoshuang's body. Silver needles of varying depths formed strange, mystical patterns across her flesh.
Blood streamed from Gui Jianchou's right wrist, clearly from a self-inflicted wound. Helian Nanshan immediately understood what had happened. A physician like Gui Jianchou, with a lifetime of consuming rare herbs and poisons, essentially had a bloodstream filled with potent elixirs.
Gui Jianchou looked utterly drained, a sharp blade in hand. He didn't even glance at the newcomers. He worked quickly, slicing open shallow cuts across Leng Ruoshuang's skin. From a nearby jar, he pulled out grotesque, misshapen insects and placed them into the wounds. The creatures burrowed into her body with unnatural speed.
"These are primordial aberrations, nearly extinct. I found two deep in a remote mountain swamp and cultivated them with care. Now I have a few dozen. They can devour toxins that no other creature can—perfect for making life-bound Gu worms. Combined with golden-point acupuncture and my own blood infused with countless rare medicines, they'll roam her body, consuming the strange poisons. This… this is the best method I could devise. May it work…" Gui Jianchou murmured feverishly.
Even someone as hardened as Helian Nanshan shuddered at the sight of those blood-red parasites. Just imagining them crawling through one's veins made his skin crawl. He instinctively stepped back.
Chrrrk…
A strange, sharp insect noise came from within Leng Ruoshuang's body. Wisps of green smoke began drifting out from her pores, filling the room with a pungent, nauseating smell.
ROAR!
Suddenly, a primal beast-like roar erupted from her chest. A shockwave of invisible force exploded outward from her body. Every bottle in the room shattered. Gui Jianchou, closest to her, took the full brunt. He was hurled through the air and crashed hard to the floor, coughing up a mouthful of blood before slipping into unconsciousness.