The entire sect is obsessed with love, but I'm the only one who's truly insane.

Lin Du was like someone who had just learned the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and was forced to read professional English literature. It took him a lot of effort to finally translate a passage that was entirely written in seal script.

"The Love Gu is nurtured with the Gu Master's own heart's blood essence. When the person is afflicted with the Gu, the Gu worm parasitizes their heart's blood essence. The two essences and blood essences merge, and the person afflicted with the Gu will gradually fall in love with the Gu Master, unable to extricate themselves, and willing to give everything for them."

"If they cannot see the Gu Master, they will be heartbroken and gradually lose their minds."

"If the person poisoned by the curse falls in love with someone else, they will die of a broken heart."

Lin Du tilted his head, wondering why he always seemed to be at odds with himself.

Shouldn't the brain be the one controlling emotions? Why not just grab a few venomous insects and stuff them into people's brains?

If you eat brains, and your brain is empty, then you can just say whatever you want.

Lin Du turned his head and chuckled to himself, saying that while it was called the heart, the real focus was probably on the essence and blood.

A cultivator's essence is their blood and essence; if these essences and blood are fused together, they will instinctively regard each other as blood relatives.

Whether this is love or not is still hard to say.

Lin Du forced himself to continue reading the next section when he suddenly heard a knock at the door.

Tao Xian suddenly opened his eyes. Lin Du had one arm resting on two books, his fingertips tracing the pages. He didn't move even when he heard the sound. "Go open the door."

"...Who would be knocking on the door in the middle of the night?" Tao Xian wondered to himself, somewhat hesitant to open it.

"In the middle of the night, it must be a ghost knocking on the door." Lin Du's eyes never left the book, while his other hand was jotting down some complicated things in the notebook.

Tao Xianqian chuckled, "Young Master Lin, you just love to joke with me."

"I'm not kidding. Haven't you noticed? The village is filled with a heavy yin energy. And the village chief and the pregnant woman, whom we only met once today, look quite old, but their actual bone age is only twenty-four. The village chief looks extremely old, like an old man, but he's only thirty. Isn't that strange?"

Lin Du lifted his eyelids and glanced at him. "Didn't you notice?"

Tao Xian's face gradually turned deathly pale. His lips were still slightly parted, but they were beginning to droop, as if he were quite frightened. "Young Taoist priest, you still dare to stay here for the night?"

Lin Du then realized that there was something wrong with this person's divine palace, so perhaps her divine sense had never been released outwards, which was why she hadn't noticed it. Moreover, Daoist cultivators are generally more polite, unlike her, who lacked virtue and had to think things through before acting.

"What's even stranger is that these people, although they have spiritual energy within them, seem to have no idea how to use it."

If they were proper cultivators, they could naturally use spiritual energy to resist yin energy and prevent themselves from having too much vitality wasted within yin energy. But in their current state, they are more like containers of spiritual energy.

The knocking grew more urgent, but not loud. At the same time, the person outside finally spoke, "May I ask if the Taoist priest from out of town is here? I am truly sorry to disturb you so late at night. I am here to see the elder for the sake of the child in my womb."

Tao Xian thought the voice sounded strangely weak, "And it's a female ghost..."

Lin Du sighed, and a wisp of spiritual energy rolled up and covered the doorknob. Then the door creaked open.

A woman with a slightly protruding belly stood outside the door. When she saw the door open and the person inside still sitting properly, she subconsciously covered her stomach.

"Why were you crying this afternoon?"

The woman looked at the speaker in surprise. The young Taoist priest looked quite young and was dressed in the simplest Taoist attire. Only the fabric of his clothes and the simple white jade hairpin made him look extraordinary. He was still facing away from her, his back straight but thin. He was probably engrossed in reading something at his desk and did not even turn his head.

Seemingly afraid the woman hadn't heard him clearly, Lin Du turned a page and asked again, in a good-natured manner, "You said you didn't want to have a daughter, why?"

Tao Xian was taken aback. For some reason, he felt that Lin Xiaodao's tone had turned cold when he said those words.

The woman hesitated for a moment, then went into the house, carefully closed the door, and then knelt down on the ground with a thud.

Lin Du paused in his rapid writing, turned to look at Tao Xian, and asked, "Aren't you going to help?"

Tao Xian felt it was improper, but after Lin Du saw it, he obediently got out of bed and helped the man up.

The woman was stunned for a moment when she reached out her hand. Then she grabbed the man's wrist and, without getting up, said in a tearful voice, "Taoist priest, please take me away. Or, give me an abortion pill."

Lin Du turned his head and glanced at the woman with surprise.

Tao Xian dared not move rashly and said in a low voice, "Please get up. Can't you get up and talk about it later? Besides, kneeling to me won't help. You have hands and feet, who can stop you? The healer is next door, you knocked on the wrong door."

The woman looked up, her eyes filled with tears. "I didn't knock on the wrong door. You've come back, so you must have a way to get me out of here, right?"

Lin Du's hand holding the pen paused, and Tao Xian also looked surprised, as if he was puzzled. "What did you say?"

"I can't be mistaken. Only children born in the village have the mark left by the Moon Goddess. You have a scar on the base of your palm."

Lin Du's divine sense, which had been focused on the woman, naturally landed on the indentation at the base of Tao Xian's palm, and sure enough, there was a scar there.

Tao Xian was stunned for a moment, then withdrew his hand. "What nonsense are you talking about? This is clearly... clearly..."

He thought it might be something he did when he was a kid, just like Lin Du, who was at that age that even cats and dogs wouldn't like. He might have gotten a slap on the hand. But for a cultivator, having a scar that can't be erased is definitely abnormal.

Lin Du withdrew his divine sense again, then turned around and pretended to still be reading a book, but in reality, he gently poked the ball of divine thought in his divine palace that clearly did not belong to him.

After several attempts, the divine thought finally responded.

"What is it?" Yan Ye's voice rang out in her divine abode, somewhat ethereal and otherworldly.

"Master, I have a question. I encountered a cultivator who was over four hundred years old and at the Cloud Ascension Realm. His divine palace seemed to be visibly injured or damaged. Even my divine sense could freely intrude into it, and sometimes it felt like he was a completely different person, as if someone was monitoring me through his eyes and ears. What could this be? A puppet? Or has someone controlled his divine palace?"

Yan Ye's voice became more serious. "Is there anything else unusual about him? For example, is he mentally unstable? Has he lost his memory?"

"I think so. My memories are fragmented, and I don't remember when I was used as a vessel. Also, when I withdrew from his divine palace, I felt a power that didn't belong to him."

"His memories must have been erased, and because the method was too crude, it wasn't properly repaired afterwards, so his divine palace is incomplete. As for replacing him with someone else, if the other party has a strong divine sense, they can temporarily take over and cover it up. It's a bit like a split soul brand."

Yan Ye paused for a moment, "For example, I've separated a very, very small part of myself into your brain right now, but it's just residing there; I haven't forcibly imprinted myself on you. I'm being polite and respecting your privacy..."

Lin Du interrupted him, "Get to the point. Have you been too idle in seclusion? Haven't spoken in too long?"

The white mass within the divine palace, a hundred times colder than Lin Du's aura, suddenly transformed into the shape of a hand, and then flicked Lin Du's divine palace on the head.

Lin Du clutched his head, veins bulging on the back of his hand, and gritted his teeth. "You're a lonely old man living alone, and I'm about to play the role of an old corpse in a mountain village. Please."

Yan Ye: ...

"It means the person who performed the spell has a larger portion of their consciousness, which is probably the main soul. Because their consciousness is very strong, they have placed a master-servant mark, which can directly take over a person's five senses and even their body. But from your description, it seems to be just the five senses. This is not something a decent person would do. Even among demons, it is rare. It is a great loss of virtue. Okay, be careful. I'm going back to seclusion."

Yan Ye spoke rapidly, and after he finished speaking, the white light curled up into a ball again and stopped moving.

Lin Du suddenly stood up and took away the books and writing implements on the table. "I'm going next door to find my nephew. You guys chat, you guys chat."

Tao Xian was a little scared. "Little Taoist priest, you're just leaving like this? When are you coming back? Are you really going to leave me here alone? It's not appropriate for a man and a woman to be alone in a room."

The village woman could only hold his hand and cry, but seemed unwilling to say anything, which really troubled him.

It just cries and doesn't say anything, and then it comes up and says some nonsensical things that no one can understand. Who wouldn't be scared?

If the man comes knocking on his door, who will he complain to?

Lin Du glanced at the village woman, then left without looking back, thoughtfully closing the door behind him. "Go find the abortion pills soon."

Tao Xian: ...It still has to be Lin Du. No matter when he speaks, he's always so rude.