Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 306 Ghostly Gift of Evil Arts
The room was deathly silent.

Only the breathing of a few living people could be heard.

Ran Qing lowered her head and looked at the woman lying beside her. The woman's empty eyes were completely vacant, and her breathing had completely stopped.

Her hands became soft and weak, limply held in Ran Qing's hands, and gradually grew cold.

One by one, the Gu worms wriggled on her body.

Tiny, wriggling bumps were constantly appearing under the skin of her temples, collarbone, and wrists.

Countless Gu worms have built nests within this living person's body.

With the passing of the Gu Master, these Gu worms began to stir.

The middle-aged woman, who was ferocious and savage in life, was nothing more than a powerless corpse after death, left to be consumed by Gu worms.

This woman did indeed like her sister, and because of her sister, she also developed some feelings for him out of love for her sister.

At least this point is not false...

She is an evil person, there is no doubt about that. Her evil deeds and harming others have brought her divine retribution, and the fact that her body is covered in sores is irrefutable proof.

Even though she was utterly wicked, she still retained a touch of softness and warmth in her heart.

Ran Qing couldn't help but sigh, murmuring, "Fate is truly unpredictable..."

In the old days, many master-disciple traditions were passed down only to the eldest son or eldest daughter.

His mother, being the youngest in the family, escaped the fate of being devoured by the Gu worms and lived a normal life.

Ran Qing's aunt endured the pain of being a Gu Master all by herself. She clearly hated and loathed everything about Gu Masters, hated her own fate, and hated being chosen by her parents.

But she didn't hold a grudge against her sister because of this.

The younger sister who always helped her wipe her body's wounds and took care of her became the brightest and clearest light in her last memories.

In her final flashback, many things were unclear or blurry, but the image of her younger sister remained vividly in her memory.

Ran Qing gently put down the woman's limp hand and said, "Carry her away and burn her."

There are many things in the house that need to be dealt with.

Besides Aunt's corpse, the eerie jar in the inner room, the zombie that Chen Laosan turned into, and the bed and bedding they slept in... all of these must be burned.

If the Gu Master dies and her belongings are not properly disposed of, leaving behind Gu worms or their eggs, these ownerless and out-of-control Gu worms, though they won't live long, may cause harm before they die.

Behind Qingyuan Road are desolate mountains and forests, where you can't see a soul during the day, and there are hardly any vegetable plots. It becomes even more desolate at night.

Ran Qing carried her aunt's body on her back, shook the corpse-driving bell, and drove Chen Laosan's body to the mountains behind Qingyuan Road.

Ran Qing found a dark and secluded flat area in the forest, placed her aunt's body on the ground, cleared away the surrounding weeds, and began to pile up dry firewood.

Ordinary corpses cannot be burned in this way; the temperature required for cremation cannot be achieved by burning firewood.

However, the corpses of Gu Masters and zombies are extremely flammable.

After adding a little dry wood to ignite it, the two corpses in the flames quickly burst into flames.

The worms danced and crackled in the flames.

That was the Gu worms inside the corpse being roasted and burst open.

A similar crackling sound came from inside Chen Laosan's zombie body, but it was very faint.

Gu masters do not know how to refine corpses, nor do they know how to transport them. They only use Gu worms to kill living people, keeping the corpses in a state of living dead under the influence of the Gu worms in their brains, obeying the commands of the Gu master.

Looking at the two corpses burning in the fire, Long Zongshu said with some regret, "What a pity about this zombie. If we sold it to Daoist Liu Fang, we could have gotten tens of thousands of yuan..."

The corpse-driving Taoist priest in Xiangxi was in dire need of zombies and had previously wanted to ask Ran Qing for help in refining walking corpses. However, Chen Laosan had been following Ran Qing's aunt for a month, and Ran Qing and the others didn't know if other ghost-raising people had seen Chen Laosan.

If Chen Laosan's zombie is sold and discovered by other ghost breeders, and this lead is followed, it will soon be possible to find out that one of the ghost breeders was harmed by Ran Qing, a spirit medium.

Therefore, despite the tempting price of selling zombies, the three had no choice but to burn them.

After Aunt Ranqing's body was burned, a pile of loose bone fragments and a lot of ashes remained.

The air was filled with the smell of roasted grasshoppers.

Ran Qing simply packed the ashes away.

As for Chen Laosan's body, it was burned to ashes.

The zombies were more flammable than the Gu Master's corpses, and were burned directly into some kind of foul-smelling slime, eventually being consumed in the fire, leaving nothing behind.

The last thing to deal with was Aunt Ran Qing's strange jar.

There was no ghost in the jar, but the rustling noises coming from inside seemed to be accompanied by the wailing and pleading of a dead person.

It seems that a ghost and a Gu worm are together.

It's as if these Gu worms have acquired special abilities.

Long Zongshu listened for a while, then felt a chill run down his spine for no apparent reason: "The Gu worms in this jar... I've never heard of them before."

The viciousness of Gu worms was something that even ordinary people in Zangke had heard many rumors about.

As a descendant of an exorcising clan, Long Zongshu was even more familiar with Gu worms, after all, his family elders must have frequently dealt with this most common unorthodox practice.

He explained to Ran Qing and the other person the classification of Gu worms and some preventative measures.

According to his explanation, the Gu worms in this jar were indeed very strange.

The entire jar exuded a sinister and deathly aura. Although it was a jar for raising living creatures and poisonous insects, it gave people a chilling feeling as if it were a jar for raising ghosts.

Not to mention, the faint wails of the dead could be heard coming from inside the jar...

Ran Qing said expressionlessly, "Perhaps it was something that ghost taught her?"

That was his guess.

That ghost is strange and eerie, capable of making so many ghost keepers obey orders and worship it. And judging from the situation, it seems that the ghost keepers dug it up and worshipped it on their own initiative...

These ghost breeders must be making a profit from doing this.

It must be that ghost that can bring them benefits, and huge benefits at that!

It's not surprising that a sinister ghost taught some kind of eerie and bizarre sorcery that no one had ever seen before.

Ran Qing mixed goat blood with the incense ash of the spirit medium and smeared the entire jar twice to dissipate the deathly aura within.

After the eerie jar quieted down a bit, a fire was lit separately, and the jar was placed on the fire.

Soon, the jar heated up, and crackling sounds came from inside.

It looked like a lot of insects had been roasted in the jar.

It wasn't until the entire jar exploded from the intense heat that Ran Qing smashed it open, revealing many charred corpses of poisonous insects.

Judging from their appearance alone, they are all just poisonous insects. Although they may be somewhat rare, and even include the seven-colored centipede that Gu masters seek, these poisonous insect corpses do not appear to be anything evil from their appearance.

Their abnormalities, as they were scorched by the flames, all turned to ashes.

(End of this chapter)