The afternoon sun filtered through the emerald leaves of the ancient spirit willow. He cast dappled patterns of light across the cedar table of the inner study.
Lin Xiao hovered slightly above a broad wooden platter, resting his jelly-like sapphire form against a folded silk cushion. Spread out before him on the polished tabletop was the parchment scroll surrendered by the captive scout Chen Feng. The scroll was made of thin, cured thick parchment that radiated a faint, rancid greasy odor. Its surface stained with was dark brown blotches. Inscribed across the parchment in jagged, dried crimson ink were the ancient characters of the sect’s core scripture: the Blood River Soul-Melting Art.
Across the table, Su Ling’er leaned forward, her delicate brow furrowed with unconcealed distaste. Her fox ears were pulled back slightly, her snowy tails twitching as she kept her distance from the foul scroll.
“Even looking at these characters makes my skin itch,” Su Ling’er murmured softly. “The ink was mixed with powdered bone ash and dried blood from unweaned lambs. The demonic patriarch who wrote this took great pains to infuse resentment into the very calligraphy.”
“Well, let’s see what kind of garbage passes for high-level martial arts in the southern ridges,” Lin Xiao said.
He extended a slender, semi-clear azure slime arm from his flank, gently pressing the tip against the title seal of the parchment. A faint ripple of golden light traveled through his jelly-like body as his spiritual mind linked with his internal partner.
“Dao Spirit, give me the full check,” Lin Xiao communicated mentally. “What kind of technique are these people actually practicing?”
Within the quiet expanse of his spiritual sea, the familiar, sweet-sounding bronze chime rang out. The cool, deadpan voice of the Dao Spirit answered without a second’s pause:
“Command acknowledged. Starting deep load-bearing deconstruction of the recorded energy pathways... Parsing ideological intent, spirit vein flow anomalies, and living consequences.”
The parchment seemed to hum as a faint azure soft glow swept across its stained surface. Characters dissolved and reassembled within Lin Xiao’s mental vision, mapping out a fine, detailed, three-space-folding model of the human spirit vein network.
A crisp, sixty-four-character system manifest materialized within his mind:
“Deconstruction complete,” the Dao Spirit reported, her tone as dry as autumn parchment. “The technique is an atrocious, leech-like pseudo-training methodology. It possesses seventy-four total spirit vein divergence points that actively speed up cellular black rot.”
“Seventy-four?” Lin Xiao was genuinely baffled. “How does someone even walk after practicing something like that?”
“They don’t walk for long, Host,” the Dao Spirit explained smoothly. “The manual operates on a fraudulent premise. By forcing practitioners to ingest cursed blood marrow, it introduces millions of tiny parasite larvae—chosen as Sanguine Thread-Worms—into the lower dantian. These parasites eat the fighter’s natural marrow and bone essence, secreting high-potency rotting hormones that temporarily stimulate explosive bursts of fight-or-flight rush and pseudo-qi.”
“So they think they’re breaking through to higher training tiers. But they’re actually just having a massive living seizure?”
“Exactly. The illusion of rapid power progression masks progressive outer-brain degradation, manic paranoia, and certain blood-vessel rupture within ten to twelve years of first breath flow. Plus, the true purpose of the technique is load-bearing aggregation. When the main sect elder activates the Nine-Ghost Blood Soul Cauldron, all lower-tier practitioners functioning as hosts for the thread-worms will suffer immediate systemic marrow collapse, their refined lifeforce automatically siphoned into the cooking pot as fuel.”
Lin Xiao retracted his slime arm, a deep, bubbling sigh shaking through his elastic mass. He shook his blue dome in utter disgust.
“Good grief,” Lin Xiao muttered out loud. “This isn’t an immortal training method. This is an ancient, hungry multi-level marketing pyramid scheme where the executive founder literally eats the downline contractors when his sales quotas fall short!”
Su Ling’er blinked, her amber eyes widening in curiosity. “A... Multi-level marketing pyramid scheme, Master? Is that an ancient heretical sect from your homeland?”
“Something like that,” Lin Xiao grunted, wobbling in place. “A hungry enterprise where naive young fools pay exorbitant fees in their own blood, hoping to become rich bosses. Meanwhile, the monster at the very top sits in his office waiting to harvest their organs. No wonder those three scouts were crying into their steamed buns. Their internal organs are crawling with blood parasites right now.”
At the doorway of the study, the young scout Chen Feng stood trembling. He was flanked by two stalwart bear guards. Hearing Lin Xiao’s words, Chen Feng’s face turned an ashen grey. He clutched his lower belly with trembling hands, falling to his knees once more.
“S-Sovereign...” Chen Feng stammered, tears welling in his hollow eyes. “Is it true? The elder told us that the burning fire in our guts was the sacred sign of our Sanguine Core forming! He said that when we reached the Foundation realm, we would become immortal lords of the southern plains!”
“He lied to you, kid,” Lin Xiao said bluntly. “The burning in your belly isn’t a core. It’s millions of tiny parasite worms chewing on your kidneys and liver. In three more years, your blood vessels would have turned to dry chalk. The moment your elder struck his bronze cooking pot, you would have melted into red soup.”
Chen Feng let out a choked cry, pressing his forehead against the floorboards. “We’re doomed... There’s no cure for the blood curse in the southern barrens! Once the thread-worms take root, only the sect master’s Blood Elixir can suppress the gnawing pain!”
“Who said there’s no cure?” Lin Xiao asked, his tone turning crisp and practical. “You gave us their deployment plans. You didn’t draw weapons on my people once you surrendered. We don’t let guests die of tapeworms in this house. Dao Spirit, what do we need to scrub their plumbing?”
“Formulation checked,” the Dao Spirit responded instantly. “The Sanguine Thread-Worms possess high vulnerability to bitter-salt sulfur compounds and high-hum vegetative cleansing agents. Recommended prescription: an infusion of wild silver-needle mountain grass, bitter pond lotus root, crushed wild white ginger, and two drops of Host’s refined Jade-Dew honey to stabilize the gut lining.”
“Ling’er, fetch those herbs from the drying racks behind the herb pavilion,” Lin Xiao commanded.
Su Ling’er nodded with sharp smooth speed. Within five minutes, she returned with a wide bamboo basket laden with silver-tipped grass, pungent dried white ginger roots, and thick cakes of bitter lotus root dried under the autumn sun.
Lin Xiao didn’t bother lighting a potion-made fire or stoking a charcoal fire bowl. For an Ancient Chaos Slime whose internal dantian was an infinite cosmic void, brewing medicine was as simple as having a healthy snack.
Opening his top sky-slit, Lin Xiao swept the entire basket of dried herbs into his semi-clear body. Next, he added two ladlefuls of pure mountain spring water drawn from the willow roots. He was followed by a dense dollop of golden, fragrant jade-dew honey.
Within his elastic inside, a gentle, golden vortex began to spin.
The Dao Spirit directed the tiny breakdown of each plant component. The bitter lotus root yielded packed astragalus alkaloids. The silver-needle grass released pure rotten-egg cleansing essence. The white ginger provided heat energy to stimulate stomach motility. Meanwhile, the jade-dew honey bound the energetic compounds into a stable, non-toxic liquid. The entire potion-made synthesis took less than twenty heartbeats, with zero fire melted rock waste and zero healing toxicity.
Lin Xiao wobbled slightly, leaning over three wide clay pot bowls set upon the table.
Glug, glug, glug.
From his slime arm flowed three steaming servings of a rich, glowing golden tea. The beverage radiated a sharp, invigorating herbal fragrance with notes of spicy ginger, bitter lotus, and the pure sweetness of spring honey.
“Drink,” Lin Xiao told the three kneeling scouts. “All of it. Don’t leave a drop.”
Chen Feng looked at the golden bowl. The bitter, cleansing aroma stung his nostrils. That made the parasites inside his gut thrash with sudden, violent agitation. His stomach convulsed in a sharp, burning burst. Gritting his teeth, Chen Feng lifted the bowl with both hands and swallowed the hot tea in long, desperate gulps. His two companions followed suit, draining their bowls down to the last dregs.
For ten heartbeats, nothing happened.
Then, Chen Feng’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. A searing wave of golden heat erupted in his stomach, rushing through every spirit vein in his limbs like a river of molten sunlight. The dormant, icy pain that had plagued his gut for years shattered under the heat onslaught.
“Urrrrk!”
Chen Feng doubled over, his hands clutching his stomach as an intense nausea seized his throat. His two companions collapsed beside him, gagging wildly.
“Get them outside onto the gravel patch!” Lin Xiao ordered.
The bear guards hauled the three men out onto the open courtyard just in time. The three students dropped to their hands and knees, vomiting wildly onto the grey gravel. What emerged was not bile or half-digested food. But thick, clotted streams of black, tar-like sludge that hissed and sizzled against the cold stones. Within the black goo, thousands of tiny, hair-like crimson worms writhed wildly before shriveling into brittle grey ash under the sunlight.
Xiao Hei stepped forward. He exhaled a quiet puff of black shadow-fire that instantly burned up the foul puddle into clean stone ash.
Chen Feng lay sprawled on the gravel, panting heavily. The choking weight that had crushed his chest for eight years was gone. The cold, poisonous fire in his gut had vanished, replaced by a soothing, golden warmth streaming from his restored dantian. His vision, long plagued by crimson halos and manic shadows, was crystal clear.
He raised his hands to his face, weeping openly. “The gnawing... The voices in my head... They stopped. They really stopped!”
His two companions sat up, clutching each other’s shoulders in weeping disbelief. For the first time since their childhood, their minds belonged entirely to themselves.
Lin Xiao hopped onto the porch railing, watching them with quiet satisfaction.
“You see?” Lin Xiao said, his voice cheerful. “Good tea cures what ails you. Now go wash your faces in the lower creek and tell the cook to give you an extra portion of roasted yams. You’ll need the calories to rebuild your strength.”
“Sovereign!” Chen Feng cried, throwing himself forward until his forehead knocked against the bottom step. “Our lives are yours! We’ll forge iron, we’ll till the fields, we’ll dig ditches! Even if Elder Han Gu tears us to pieces, we’ll never lift a finger against this safe hall!”
“Nobody is getting torn to pieces,” Lin Xiao said firmly. “Just work hard, don’t cause trouble, and remember to wash your hands before meals.”
As the three cleansed students were led away to the bathhouses, Su Ling’er walked up beside Lin Xiao. Her snowy tails gently wrapped around his blue dome in an affectionate embrace.
“You have a strange way of waging war, Master,” she whispered with a fond smile. “Other sect masters torture prisoners for secrets. You feed them dumplings and cure their internal sickness.”
“Torture only breeds more resentment, Ling’er,” Lin Xiao replied, leaning contentedly into her soft fur. “A cured worker who understands the scam will work ten times harder to protect the farm. Now, we have an invasion of one hundred thousand hungry beasts to prepare for. Call Elder Tie and Xiao Long. It’s time we turned our river into an uncrackable castle.”