Imperial henchmen? My divine skills are all hacked versions.

...

Yan Jun, carried on horseback by Lu Jing, had regained some of her strength. Although her face was still pale, her eyes were much calmer than when she had just escaped the night before...

Perhaps it was because the worm in his chest was removed and the itching stopped, or perhaps it was because Hua Xi shared her sugar figurine with him.

He sat on horseback, holding the unfinished sugar figurine in his hand, his fingers sticky.

Xu Xian rode beside him on horseback, pointing to the side streets and landmarks by the roadside, and asked him, "Yan Jun, when you ran out of the dark house, how long did it take you to reach the alley entrance?"

"We ran for a long time, and then it got dark."

"Did you pass by anything conspicuous? Like a bridge, a big tree... just tell me whatever you remember."

There is a red wall.

Yan Jun gestured with his fingers, "It's very tall, taller than my dad, and there are many withered vines climbing the wall."

Xu Xian ordered the Black Cavalry Guards to search Yan Jun's memories.

He led Yan Jun to inspect all the buildings in the capital with red walls, including the Guandi Temple in the east, the City God Temple in the south, the Earth God Shrine in the west, and the abandoned theater in the north.

The search area expanded from inside the city to outside, and when they reached an abandoned dye house on the western outskirts of the city, Yan Jun suddenly pointed to the red wall covered with withered vines and shouted,

"This is it!"

Xu Xian was overjoyed, dismounted, and looked at Lu Jing.

"Brother Lu, have our men surround them quietly."

Lu Jing nodded and gave the instructions.

The front yard was overgrown with weeds, the wooden rack for drying cloth was mostly rotten, and several dye vats had overturned on the ground with a layer of dried blue dye on the bottom.

As you pass through the front yard and push open the door to the back of the dye house, a stench of herbs and decay hits you.

Xu Xian and Yang Xu drew their swords at the same time.

  

The back hall was transformed into rows of cubicles, each only three feet square, separated by iron railings.

Each room contains three to five children, ranging in age from seven or eight to twelve or thirteen, both boys and girls.

Some huddled in corners, staring blankly at the firelight outside the fence; others lay on the iron fence, reaching out to grab at it, their fingernails leaving dense scratches on the metal.

A rough count revealed at least forty children.

"Tsk..."

Yang Xu's expression was grave. "These beasts..."

Xu Xian's grip on the knife tightened unconsciously, then he suddenly glanced around.

"Something's not right. Why aren't there any hidden sentries?"

Such an important place couldn't possibly be without sentries, but there just wasn't one.

clap clap...

The sound of clapping came from behind. Xu Xian looked up and saw a handsome man with delicate features emerge from the back hall of the main house. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and there were a few larvae between his slender fingers.

The person following behind him was the shop owner who had escaped from the pastry shop during the chaos.

The handsome man smiled slightly at Xu Xian, "Xu Xian, you came faster than I expected. Last time, my three men were killed by you in the shop, and I knew you would come looking for me—I just didn't expect it to be so soon."

Yang Xu gritted his teeth, "Tsk...how could you lay a hand on such young children! You caught so many, I'm going to chop you into mincemeat!"

"Arrest? You're wrong, that's too risky and too crude..."

The Gu Master smiled slightly, "Most of my test subjects are volunteers, and their parents are mostly refugees... Every year there are natural disasters and man-made calamities, and there are many people who cannot survive..."

"We were just having a fair trade. Those commoners signed contracts for money and sold their children. The children in the Black House were turned into Gu soldiers by me. When they are completed, these children will become the strongest army in Jing Kingdom."

"Children of poor people are born to be sold... It's just that last year, when the world was at peace, we had no source of children, so we had no choice but to arrest some."

Xu Xian gripped the knife tightly and asked coldly, "Whom do you serve?"

"Sorry, I cannot answer that question at the moment."

As he spoke, the Gu Master tore off a bone whistle hanging around his neck and blew it.

The whistle echoed in the back room, and the children inside the iron bars simultaneously let out heart-wrenching screams.

Some rolled on the ground clutching their heads, some banged their heads against the iron fence until their heads were covered in blood, and some stood still, convulsing, their eyes rolling back, and uttering low growls that sounded inhuman.

Within moments, the screams ceased, and the children stopped struggling, got up from the ground, and stood up straight.

Their eyes became empty and sharp, and an aura of cultivation beyond their age surged from their bodies—the lowest was at the sixth level of Body Tempering, and the highest were already at the Meridian Opening Realm.

More than forty children turned around at the same time to face Xu Xian and the others.

The girl closest to the fence reached out and grabbed the iron bar, bending it with her bare hands.

Yang Xu took a step back, gripping the knife. The youngest boy he was staring at was only seven or eight years old, barely reaching his waist. He was holding a brick that he had broken off from the partition wall and staring blankly at him.

"Mr. Xu, how should we discipline these children?"

Yang Xu turned to look at him, "Tsk...they're all ordinary people's kids! Me..."

Xu Xian gritted his teeth and didn't answer; these children were no longer children.

The Gu worms devoured their minds; they were now slaves devoid of pain and fear, only able to obey the Gu master's commands.

Even after he understood this, his hand holding the knife was still trembling.

He could unflinchingly unleash the "Regretful Dragon" technique on his enemies, but he found it incredibly difficult to bring himself to harm these children whose bodies were possessed by Gu worms.

The Gu Master chuckled and crushed a mother Gu.

The children pounced at the same time, their speed far exceeding that of martial artists of the same level. They showed no self-protective reaction to pain, and all their actions were aimed at mutual destruction.

Lu Jing stabbed the shoulder of the girl who was charging at the front with his sword. The girl didn't even retreat. Even with the sword piercing her shoulder, she kept charging forward, her fingernails scratching Lu Jing's face, leaving three bloody marks.

Yang Xu was punched in the chest by a boy at the Meridian Opening Realm, and was sent flying backwards, crashing into the wall.

Liu Shan was tackled by two children at the same time. One pinned his arm down while the other bit his throat. He pushed away the child biting his throat, but the child immediately bounced up after landing and pounced on him again.

Xu Xian sent the two children who rushed in front of him flying with a single palm strike, daring to use only 30% of his strength.

The two children fell to the ground but immediately got up and continued to rush towards him, their voices hollow.

...

Meanwhile, not far outside the courtyard.

A little girl was swaying along with her short legs, holding a turtle in one hand and slurping a candied hawthorn in the other.

The turtle's head peeked out from her arms, its tiny, beady eyes looking around.

While biting into a candied hawthorn, Hua Xi muttered to herself, "Brother said a cunning rabbit has three burrows—that's true, all the rabbit spirits I know like to dig holes. But why do humans like to dig holes too? I really don't understand..."

"Prince Xiang, you say people aren't born like rabbits, so how can they hide better than rabbits?"

The turtle retracted its head into its shell and ignored her.

Hua Xi strolled around the perimeter of the dyehouse for most of the time. She had finished eating the candied hawthorns, with the bamboo skewer still in her mouth, and her eyes darted around.

When she reached the outer wall of the dyehouse's backyard, she suddenly stopped, took the bamboo skewer out of her mouth, squatted down, tapped it, blinked, and then a faint golden light emanated from her body and spread outwards.

A moment later, the golden light subsided, and Hua Xi grinned.

"It's empty... I found it! The 'long hole' my brother was talking about!"

She leaped up and landed on a large locust tree not far away, then sat down.

"Now we just have to wait for them, but how did you know someone would come... Prince Xiang, is he a turtle spirit like you?"