Chapter 139: Shoulder Pole Hook

"Don't worry, with me here, your safety is guaranteed! Besides, as long as I'm alive, you'll have hope against Lu Yao."

He Lingchuan immediately perked up his ears: "Oh, how so?"

"My capture by the Crocodile God led to the collapse of my troops, and Lu Yao seized the opportunity to recruit them," Wu Shaoyi said, gathering his resolve to persuade the young man, whose life now depended on him. "If I'm alive, they won't be used by Lu Yao."

"Also, I can convince Pei Xinyong to join us against Lu Yao."

Hearing this, He Lingchuan no longer hesitated: "Alright, what do we need to do?"

Next, following Wu Shaoyi's instructions, he took out a turtle pearl and cleaned it.

Though the giant turtle was enormous, its pearl was only the size of a small egg. After the surface blood was washed away, it glowed with a crystal-clear, soft, silvery-white light, tinged with a hint of pale blue.

Isn't this far more impressive than any luminous pearl?

Furthermore, the turtle pearl had other marvelous uses; for instance, he had just tried holding one in his mouth and could breathe freely underwater.

He Lingchuan sighed as he looked at it, muttering a few words of regret to himself, then found a wooden pestle and quickly crushed it into powder.

There was a specific method for crushing the pearl into powder; iron tools were forbidden.

Then he went to find "rootless water."

"Rootless water" referred to rainwater that hadn't touched the ground. This was easy to obtain; it had recently rained, and water barrels under any eaves were half full.

He took a yellow paper talisman handed to him by Wu Shaoyi, burned it to ash, and soaked the ash in a small half-cup of rootless water.

Afterward, he poured in the turtle pearl powder and stirred until it was completely dissolved.

Strangely, the talisman water was now red. He Lingchuan wasn't sure if it was due to cinnabar.

At this point, he needed to catch a grasshopper in the wild.

Wu Shaoyi specifically instructed that it must be a female, and its abdomen should not be too large.

This was no challenge for He Lingchuan; he had lived in the countryside as a child and had messed with hundreds, if not thousands, of grasshoppers. Moreover, Xianyue Village had just harvested wheat, and these small pests were hopping around most vigorously in the fields.

Time was short, so the marten also went out to help.

With its agile movements, sharper eyes, and low profile, it caught grasshoppers much faster than He Lingchuan.

Before long, they caught a plump and robust stick grasshopper, but upon turning it over, they saw its abdomen was distended.

It was autumn, and the eggs inside the female were mature, ready to be laid.

A belly too large didn't meet the requirements, so they discarded it and searched again.

After searching through seventeen or eighteen of them, He Lingchuan finally found one that met the criteria.

It was healthy and vibrant, with only a slightly bulging abdomen.

He Lingchuan dropped the green insect into the water cup and covered it. The two humans and one marten, with their six eyes, watched it intently without blinking.

The stick grasshopper fell into the talisman water and instinctively struggled a few times, but after taking a gulp of the water, it froze and became perfectly still.

At the same time, the water level in the cup began to drop.

Evidently, it was drinking the water in large gulps.

What was bizarre was that the volume of water in the cup was at least two or three times that of the stick grasshopper, yet it drank it all.

Seeing this, Wu Shaoyi breathed a sigh of relief: "Good, good, it's mostly working."

He Lingchuan glanced at him: "Otherwise?"

"There was only one talisman paper, obtained from the Saint Master," Wu Shaoyi replied. With Hong Xiangqian dead, this secret technique could not be replicated.

Upon hearing this, He Lingchuan became even more intrigued by Hong Xiangqian. The rebels called him the Saint Master, and everyone, from top to bottom, was sincerely devoted to him—even the notorious killer Lu Yao was no exception. Even the Crocodile God from the Northern Demon Kingdom was willing to serve him.

This person was also proficient in arcane arts and talismans, which immediately reminded He Lingchuan of Grand State Preceptor Sun Fuping.

Truly remarkable.

The stick grasshopper hadn't burst; after drinking the water, it entered a state of stillness, only occasionally raising its forelegs to clean its face and antennae. But its color changed, gradually turning from grassy green to blood red, and irregular black spots appeared all over its body.

Meanwhile, its abdomen swelled increasingly, looking like an inflated balloon, its skin stretched thinner and thinner. The abdomen also became more transparent, and they could even see tiny insect eggs inside growing larger and fuller at a visible pace.

In fact, it was these eggs that were expanding the mother insect's belly.

Just as it became grotesquely round, and He Lingchuan suspected it would explode any second, the stick grasshopper's abdomen finally stopped growing.

Ordinarily, grasshoppers would lay their egg pods in the soil, and after some time, the egg pods would hatch into larvae.

However, this female insect showed no intention of laying eggs; instead, those strange eggs hatched directly into larvae inside its abdomen!

Grasshopper nymphs, though wingless and small, otherwise looked very similar to the adult insect.

As soon as they crawled out of their eggshells, they eagerly pounced on their siblings, tearing and biting with their fully developed mouthparts. Even wolves starved for three days weren't as voracious.

A chill ran down He Lingchuan's spine as he watched.

Grasshoppers are typically strict vegetarians, feeding on plant leaves and tender stems, but after the mother insect drank the talisman water, the larvae in its belly suddenly changed their nature, not only eating meat but also becoming cannibalistic.

Soon, the number of larvae in the mother grasshopper's abdomen rapidly decreased.

After the weaker ones were devoured, it was time for the stronger ones to prey on each other.

He Lingchuan murmured, "Isn't this like raising *gu*?"

Through brutal competition, all the nutrients acquired by the smaller individuals ultimately went to just one.

In human society, this behavior has a more sophisticated term: a zero-sum game.

The death match between the larvae was incredibly swift; by the time he snapped out of his daze, they had finished killing each other, and the two remaining nymphs had determined a winner.

After devouring the defeated one, the largest nymph became the ultimate victor.

Its size had grown again, and its skin was also mottled red and black, almost identical to the mother insect.

Throughout this period, the mother insect remained still, not writhing in pain despite the fierce activity within its abdomen. He Lingchuan even perceived a hint of maternal affection in its grotesque, distorted face.

After digesting its kin, the nymph also stopped moving.

"All of the mother's essence has been transferred to it. If we don't intervene, it will grow wings in two hours and burst out of the abdomen." After waiting so long, Wu Shaoyi's condition had worsened; a dark aura clouded his glabella, and his gaze was somewhat unfocused.

"Now, dig it out!" Wu Shaoyi turned to the marten and said, "Alright, go find everyone and bring them back, the more the better."

The marten leaped off the kang and its slender figure vanished out the doorway.

He Lingchuan poured out the stick grasshopper, removed its abdomen, then, following Wu Shaoyi's instructions, crushed the mother insect and was about to force it into the captive's mouth.

The bandit had already woken up and, seeing this, cried out, "I'm innocent, don't harm me!"

"Innocent?" He Lingchuan chuckled. "Then where did the bloodstains on your trousers come from? Are you perhaps a woman disguised as a man?"

The bandit froze: "Th-this, I was just helping move bodies..."

He Lingchuan didn't bother to listen to his arguments. He struck the man's diaphragm with an elbow, making him lean forward, mouth agape and unable to speak for a long time.