bookcurios Chapter 1623
Chapter 1623
A hundred meters above the huge plaza in front of the City Lord's Mansion, as Chen Xuan, wearing a bamboo hat, appeared, Su Ying, a disciple of the Heavenly Dao Ancient God Sect, was instantly imprisoned in the air, unable to even move her eyelids.
With a slight release of his power, Chen Xuan forced the three Gu worms out of the head of the man groaning in pain in the air.
Then, under the watchful eyes of countless people, the three Gu worms absorbed a large amount of Su Ying's blood energy, rapidly growing from their juvenile forms into mature ones. The mature Gu worms emitted an aura similar to that of demonic beasts, yet they were even more eerie than demonic beasts.
Su Ying's eyes were filled with fear as she looked at Chen Xuan and asked tremblingly, "This world has been controlled by sects for two hundred thousand years. Who exactly are you?"
Chen Xuan glanced at the female cultivator Su Ying; to him, such an ant could be easily killed with a flick of the wrist.
The reason he helped these mortal beings was because he had his eye on this Gu God Star, believing that it might become a temporary base outside the realm.
Chen Xuan looked down at the square below, where hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were gathered.
Some of them stared wide-eyed and gaped in disbelief—the sect elders they once regarded as gods and high above had been suppressed and rendered immobile in an instant.
Chen Xuan stood with his hands behind his back, ignoring Su Ying and other marginal disciples, and said loudly to the people below: "These so-called pills are probably taken by you and children of all generations, and the reason why you people cannot live past forty years old is because of this."
As he spoke, Chen Xuan waved his hand and drew three mature Gu worms into his body.
The worm struggled, screamed, and twisted, but it could never escape his control.
The people below, seeing the three mature Gu worms up close, all turned pale and retreated repeatedly.
"I know you won't believe me anytime soon, but this is the truth." Chen Xuan said, gesturing slightly towards the void outside the city. With his divine sense covering the area, he locked onto a new burial mound about several dozen miles outside the city.
Using the technique of shifting the universe, Chen Xuan moved the entire grave over.
A mound of earth appeared in the sky above the square. With another wave of his hand, the mound disintegrated, revealing a woman's corpse that had begun to decompose slightly, standing before everyone below.
"Look carefully." Chen Xuan waved his hand, pointing the back of the corpse's head downwards. When everyone saw the three thumb-sized bloody holes at the back of the corpse's cerebellum, they all gasped in horror.
Chen Xuan nodded and said, "As you have seen, once the three Gu worms mature, they will burst out of the brain and return to their master. Can you guess who their master will be?"
At this moment, the people who heard these words could no longer disbelieve them. Some covered their faces and wept bitterly, while others broke down and pointed at Su Ying, cursing her.
A woman dressed in animal skin trembled violently, her withered fingers digging tightly into the fabric of her clothes. Gazing at the imprisoned figure in the air, her voice was hoarse as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper: "My daughter... my daughter was taken into the immortal sect by you sixteen years ago!"
She suddenly raised her voice, tears mingling with the dust on her face, streaming down her cheeks: "Sixteen years! She hasn't come home even once! Tell me, what happened to her?!"
Suddenly, another woman also awoke from her shock, her face filled with fear as if she had remembered something. She swayed and almost collapsed to the ground: "And my Da Niu! When he was brought back last time, he was already mentally impaired, unable to speak, and could only cry when he saw us... Did he still have a shred of sanity left when you... didn't you completely turn him into a walking corpse?!"
The last few words were almost shouted out, and the square instantly fell silent. Countless gazes were cast at Su Ying, some with anger, some with fear, and most with the same desperate questioning as the woman.
Two undeniable facts were laid bare before them. Even though their 200,000 years of admiration and respect for the Immortal Sect had been etched into their very bones, despair now spread wildly along the cracks, like ice breaking.
Some people suddenly remembered those disciples of the immortal sects who had been sent back to their hometowns—some were as dull as puppets, others had empty eyes like walking corpses. Comparing this with Chen Xuan's words just now, every detail became a heart-wrenching confirmation.
The wails in the square instantly turned into a sea of tears. Some people knelt and crawled towards Su Ying, crying and shouting, reaching out for their children who had been taken away.
Someone clenched their fists and roared, demanding answers about the whereabouts of their flesh and blood; the blood and tears in their voices almost stained the void red.
Chen Xuan stood high in the sky, with Bai Li, a girl dressed in white, standing beside him. The two of them looked down at the collapsing crowd and shook their heads slightly.
Chen Xuan spoke again, his voice carrying a barely perceptible hint of melancholy: "Based on my understanding of the Heavenly Dao Gu God Sect, if you children who were taken away did not become official disciples of the sect, then they may very well have already..."
He paused, the rest of his words stuck in his throat. Chen Xuan was of ordinary origin, and was more able to empathize with ordinary people.
The young parents below were already crying their hearts out, their shoulders heaving like candles in the wind, their breaths filled with broken sobs.
Chen Xuan understood this deep-seated despair all too well. Some truths, if left unsaid, might be the final act of mercy.
Just as the entire audience was overwhelmed by despair and sorrow, the distant horizon suddenly changed dramatically.
The world, which was originally bathed in the light of the sun, suddenly turned from daylight to night, billions of stars appeared, and a bright moon hung high in the sky, its clear light shining everywhere.
Chen Xuan's eyes narrowed: "A divine body phenomenon? It's Yu'er's doing."
Before the words were even finished, waves of shrill, ghostly laughter swept in from afar. Then, ninety-nine dragon-like creatures, each with horns on its head but no claws, twisted and spread across the sky. These insects, each about a hundred meters long, began to frantically devour the earth the moment they appeared.
Suddenly, a purple mist began to emanate from above the heads of the people in the square, gathering in wisps towards the sky.
This phenomenon was not limited to this place; the same thing was happening above the heads of mortals throughout the entire Star Continent.
As the purple smoke continued to pour in, the ninety-nine strange Gu worms grew wildly in size, their auras soaring from the Perfection of the Myriad Manifestations Realm all the way to the Reverse Void Realm.
They intertwined and converged, emitting a piercing shriek, dyeing the sky a strange purple, which could rival the starry sea and bright moon manifested by Qing Tian Yu Er.
"Not good!" Chen Xuan's expression changed slightly. With a wave of his hand, he severed the connection between the continent within a radius of ten thousand miles and the Gu worms in the sky. "So that's how it is. The contents of these pills are not the actions of individual disciples, but the trump card of the Gu God Sect's higher-ups! When the sect is attacked, they release the Primal Gu to absorb the insect eggs in the bodies of mortals to grow stronger and fight against external enemies!"
The original plan was completely disrupted. Chen Xuan frowned as he looked at the increasingly listless faces of the people below, whose life force was rapidly draining away. As time went on, their life force was continuously flowing into the bodies of those giant Gu worms.
"Such ruthless methods... Is this the price a sect pays for ruling a star?" Chen Xuan felt a pang of pity, unwilling to see this world turn into a wasteland. He flashed away, ready to leave, "We can't wait any longer for Yu'er and the others."
Before leaving, he transmitted his voice to those below, his words resounding throughout the heavens and earth: "You shall all return to your homeland at once! From this day forward, you will all live past forty!"
"However, you have been severely affected by the Gu worms, and your life force has been greatly depleted. Even if you survive to forty, you will probably only live to seventy or eighty at most—unless you embark on the path of immortality and completely change your level of life."