On Qin Ye’s arm, a gigantic worm crawled up and down. It eased itself onto his shoulder and paused there momentarily. Its mouth opened slightly, revealing a gaping maw full of teeth and dripping with a pale liquid.

  “This wasn’t depicted in the book,” Li Fanghua said. “But we did find other examples that appeared similar. It’s a worm that might have the power to burrow through soil and eat deep underground metals, though we didn’t dare to confirm without you being here.”

  “What she said,” Qin Ye squeaked out, struggling to keep it from coiling around his neck. “We fed it some Black Iron Ore and it dissolved them with ease. Didn’t notice anything else, though. It can eat a lot of ore but it greatly prefers Black Iron.”

  “Can it eat ingots whole? Or weapons? What can it do against flesh?”

  “Yes, yes if you force it to have only that to eat, and more than you’d expect.” Li Fanghua winced. “That saliva can even harm the skin of a Marrow Tempering expert, though external body arts help resist. Liu Yingting was fine.”

  “And I have my Earth Shell,” Qin Ye said smugly. “It can’t hurt me.”

  “Has it ever bitten anyone?” Lu Qingshan asked, raising a brow at him.

  “No,” he admitted. “It’s been pretty friendly so long as we feed it consistently. It doesn’t like to eat weapons, and when I went to touch it the next day, it scraped me with its teeth. Maybe it was expressing dissatisfaction?”

  Lu Qingshan was intrigued. He peered into his spiritual connection with the giant earthworm. Then, he got his answer as to what it could really do.

  “There’s some buried silver and gold beneath this house,” he muttered. “Release the earthworm.”

  Qin Ye brought his arm to the ground, allowing the earthworm to crawl towards the house’s corner. It quickly bore a hole into the wooden floor and disappeared. Within the time it took to brew a cup of tea, it returned clutching silver taels and gold nuggets in its mouth, and let them clatter onto the floor half-dissolved.

  Lu Qingshan picked a piece of gold up. They were authentic. “Someone who discovered treasure buried these here,” he said, tossing it back into the earthworm’s mouth. “There is a lot more beneath the soil. Let it eat all of it, and I can show you what it can do.”

  They waited for the time it took an incense stick to burn. Then, the earthworm returned, settling down beside Qin Ye. He looked at it curiously for a while before his eyes widened in shock.

  “It can produce spiritual energy?” he half-whispered, half-shouted.

  Lu Qingshan nodded. “Another cultivation aid,” he said. “Liu Wanli probably used it to help him cultivate faster in place of the butterfly. Now, you both can use it too, as long as you pay enough money.”

  Qin Ye scratched his head. “I didn’t think we’d need money,” he mumbled.

  Lu Qingshan took out all the rocks and gems he found in Liu Wanli’s room. It turned out some were spirit stones, and others were food the earthworm really liked. It couldn’t help but send a strong signal of hunger through their spiritual connection while looking at his hands.

  But spirit stones were too expensive a food when his sect could use them for trade. Lu Qingshan knew from the spiritual connection that the earthworm could produce Earth element spiritual qi through consuming metals, stones, and gems, with better effects the higher the quality of material used. It would be a great tonic to Qin Ye’s earth and wood element spirit root. Since there was little risk of the earthworm escaping their spiritual connection, he could instead have it dig through the earth for its own food.

  He looked at Qin Ye and told him this. “You have two options for rearing this worm as a cultivation aid. Feed it spirit stones — which are a great food source — or wait every few days for it to devour enough metals underground. Spiritual materials will make this even faster.”

  “That’s expensive,” Qin Ye muttered.

  “Since this is sect property, I’ll have to implement some rules for its use. Let me remind you that you still have a contribution point debt for your ownership of the flying sword.”

  Qin Ye groaned. “I helped you kill an Innate realm expert. Doesn’t that count?”

  Lu Qingshan smiled. “It helps, but it’s not enough. You can also start paying back with resources at the first cultivation realm. I suppose I should begin explaining to the others the stage above Viscera Tempering — and the source of the Innate realm.”

  Wu Ruoling and Li Fanghua perked up. “What do you mean?” they asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” he said teasingly. “It’s time to meet with the ghost market white masks.”

  They all nodded. Lu Qingshan considered which insects he should bring with him. Now that he had lots of different options, he couldn’t bring them all at the same time.

  “Keep the Hundred Venoms Centipede with Liu Yingting,” he muttered. “The Berserk Bug shall stay with me. Whoever feels up to keeping the butterfly caterpillar as a pet can do so for no cost, but it won’t be a reward either.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Li Fanghua said. Her eyes carried a hint of affection as she looked at the wiggling bug.

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  “Good.” Lu Qingshan stared at the book of exotic insects. “Anything else I need to know from the book before we go?”

  Li Fanghua shook her head. “We’ll tell you if we find something useful. Right now we’re still trying to memorize all the exotic insects. There are some missing too, especially spiritual insects like your Bloodsense Bug, of which there are none that it specifically says is a spiritual insect.”

  “Understood. Let’s go, then.”

  After giving the caterpillar plenty to eat — it needed a lot of substandard food to nibble away at to survive — they took the Hundred Venoms Centipede container to Liu Yingting’s place close by. Meanwhile, Lu Qingshan practiced commanding the Berserk Bug to fly around. This beetle had a focused frontal tilt to its body, giving it a stronger jaw but a lacking flight speed and endurance.

  The bug could only stay afloat for a few moments at a time. And its jaw couldn’t even break his skin. Lu Qingshan would have to target weaklings or shatter their defenses first, and there would be no point in the latter case. Still, he planned to test its effects on himself later on, just to try enhancing his willpower.

  Lu Qingshan and Wu Ruoling entered Liu Yingting’s room and deposited the box on his desk. “This is the Hundred Venoms Centipede,” he said to the man engrossed in reading some papers, who finally looked up after hearing the clunk. “Have you two made any progress on investigating the Innate realm Green Heart Worms?”

  Liu Yingting nodded. He shot a quick look at Wu Ruoling and motioned at them to follow him outside.

  “Here’s what we found,” he said, stopping at a wooden pen. Inside was a massive pig far beyond the size of an average boar.

  “What is that? A monster beast?”

  “No, this was a regular pig purchased from a market before I fed it a chunk of the Green Heart Worm. Now it can contend with Bone Tempering martial artists in a single meal, combined with our mixture of secret medicines.”

  Wu Ruoling nodded. “We had to try many combinations of secret medicines to uncover the right amount for the pig. It should be relatively simple to find the ratios for other animals. If you’re comfortable with this,” she added.

  Lu Qingshan took a deep look at the giant pig. “Can the Green Heart Worm regenerate?”

  “No,” they both said.

  “That’s a shame. Separate a few portions of flesh and try to help my Bloodseeker Flies break through to a higher level.”

  “Will do, sect master,” Liu Yingting said. “Do you want me to come with you to meet the ghost market white masks?”

  “It would help.” Lu Qingshan expected the ghost market to bring a lot of guards to transport their more exotic items. Since he didn’t know what would end up happening, having more martial artists by his side wouldn’t hurt. “Qin Ye, Li Fanghua, go to the Azure Wind Gang and retrieve the Divine Crossbow there. Take all the Elders with you. I need to tell them all something anyway afterwards.”

  While Qin Ye and Li Fanghua quickly gathered the others, Lu Qingshan watched them slowly feed the Innate realm Green Heart Worm chunks to the Marrow Tempering stage flies. Even then, many of them simply exploded upon biting a small piece of the meat. It took a while for the two medics to come up with a solution that was edible, but a second bite would cause another explosion of insect guts.

  “This isn’t working,” Liu Yingting muttered. “Two pieces is way too much.”

  “Hmm. My flies can even devour Qi Refinement realm meat. Why is a simple worm so different?”

  “Upon death, most of the energy dissipates back into the world. Somehow this worm contains a lot more energy than inside even an Innate realm expert. At least that’s what we think — we haven’t gotten the chance to dissect one.”

  “There’s also the fact that inner force is a different energy from spirit qi,” Wu Ruoling said. “Not to mention an Innate realm expert has compressed it into a much more powerful form of primordial qi. Give us a few more tries.”

  They eventually managed to succeed. Liu Yingting packed into a large jade box the drowsy Bloodseeker Flies who’d devoured the flesh. He then placed an excessive amount of food into the box. “They’ll need it,” he said. “A single fly ate almost twice the amount that the pig had. Expect a lot of eggs.”

  “Put more in there, then.” Lu Qingshan knew just how ravenous his flies could be when unattended. If something went wrong on their meeting with the ghost market, he didn’t want to come back to an army of Viscera Tempering flies who had somehow destroyed the entire city. “Someone should keep watch, ideally,” he muttered.

  But the ghost market meeting was too important. Instead of leaving the large jade box there, he decided to bring it with them. Outside, the others had already arrived and were waiting. He picked the container up.

  “Carry this with you,” Lu Qingshan told a surprised Jin Teng. “You’re strong and fast, right? Keep it safe — it contains a terrifying threat only I can contain. You might need to run for your life.”

  “Wait, what’s this?” Jin Teng looked confused and almost frightened.

  “It’s his army of flies he used in the last battle,” a nonchalant Liu Yingting said. “If things go wrong and you have a chance, bury it somewhere underneath our enemies. None will survive.”

  “Aren’t those already strong enough to tear apart Viscera Tempering experts?” Jin Teng was well and truly scared now, having witnessed their strength already. But he had a mission and he would do his best to fulfill it.

  “Don’t worry. I can tell you’re not far from the fourth stage of the Dragon Spine Manual. In about a year, I should be able to give you personal guidance if you haven’t achieved Viscera Tempering by then.”

  Jin Teng just nodded numbly and agreed. He hugged the large box to his chest.

  The Seven Mysteries Gate exited the city one by one through their secret passage. Lu Qingshan stayed at the front of his Elders, his flies roaming in three secondary rings around them. Where once the city had some patrols, even when just putting up a token effort, this night was quiet and dark. Still, there were a few martial artists in hiding. The chaos in the city had not stopped yet.

  “Ambushers in that direction,” he whispered. “We avoid them.”

  They stuck close to one another as they moved through the darkness. Once, a group of martial artists were chasing a pair of man and woman across a field. But they immediately stopped when they saw his massive group emerge from the shadows. After the pursuers had fled, the pair had attempted to give them thanks, but the Seven Mysteries Gate had already disappeared.

  Making it to the meeting was simple enough. But Lu Qingshan did a thorough search of the forest. There were far more ghost market white masks here than he expected.

  “How many people were supposed to be here?” he whispered to Wu Ruoling.

  “Around two to three per container. They said they’d bring four options that would satisfy our conditions. Why?”

  “Looks like we weren’t the only ones to think of an ambush. There’s almost fifty people here.” All donning a white mask, and standing close enough to one another to emerge from the darkness swiftly.

  “What do we do?”

  “Keep calm. Stay here for now. If they attack first, they’ll regret it.”