Chapter 617: True Locust Gu

The rain lashed against the bluestone.

The Qianhu stockade was encircled by a river.

This was the largest river in the vicinity, flowing from north to south, and was called Qingyi River.

At night, several boats drifted on the Qingyi River, manned by skilled guards keeping watch to prevent wild beasts or enemies from intruding into the Qianhu stockade.

The river Qin Sang drifted down was a tributary of the upper Qingyi River, originating from deep mountains and wild ravines, eventually converging with the Qingyi River. Countless similar tributaries existed.

During his drift, Qin Sang was intermittently unconscious and awake, yet he remembered the approximate direction.

The deep night brought heavy dew and cold, but Qin Sang's physical injuries had recovered, allowing him to endure it. He commanded the Flying Yaksha to fly at full speed.

The location where he lost his spirit beast bag was further from the Qianhu stockade than he remembered. Qin Sang and the Flying Yaksha traveled intermittently, searching for suitable spiritual veins for secluded cultivation while on the move.

Unexpectedly, this area was much more barren than Qin Sang had imagined. After half a night of travel, covering such a distance, they only found a few underdeveloped small spiritual veins, unusable for his purpose.

Leaving the Qingyi River, stockades became increasingly rare, replaced by deep mountains and ancient forests, devoid of human traces.

Qin Sang carefully discerned the path, found the small river he had drifted down, and flew along its course. By early morning, he finally arrived near the location where he had lost his spirit beast bag.

Upon reaching the puddle, Qin Sang carefully inspected it. The beast-skin man had been completely devoured by the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps, leaving not even bone fragments behind.

He expanded his search, but the corpse puppet bag was nowhere to be found.

Qin Sang recalled the events of that day.

He had been solely focused on escaping and hadn't seen where the beast-skin man discarded the corpse puppet bag before he died. If it had fallen into the river, it would surely have been washed into the Qingyi River and would be impossible to find now.

Fortunately, apart from the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps, there were no other rare insects in the spirit beast bag; otherwise, Qin Sang would truly have been distressed for a while.

Unlike the vibrant life of that day, the mountains on both sides of the river were now utterly silent, not a single bird cry or beast roar could be heard, nor even the chirping of insects.

Such an abnormal situation was undoubtedly caused by the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps; the creatures in the mountains had all been eaten.

Qin Sang jumped onto the Flying Yaksha, about to track the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps, when he suddenly saw a faint, short-lived green light, like a spark, on a mountain to the west, and vaguely heard several shouts.

"Someone?"

Qin Sang frowned and ordered the Flying Yaksha to conceal him in the shadows as they cautiously approached.

"These strange wasps are afraid of my ghost fire! Priests, use your insect gu to lure the wasps down. I'll use fire to burn them to death and take their nest."

Three figures were gathered in a mountain hollow, their auras suppressed, watching a distant cliff.

Two corpses of Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps lay scattered near them. Judging by the marks on the bodies, most had been burned to death.

At this moment, a continuous buzzing emanated from the cliff. A large swarm of Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps still circled and flew, forming a large blood-red cloud, roughly two hundred in number.

They hovered around the cliff, seemingly protecting something. Upon closer inspection, it became clear there was a black, spherical wasp nest on the cliff.

The three individuals did not detect that someone was watching them from the nearby forest.

The person who spoke was a young man with pale skin.

He wore a black robe, on the back of which a strange pattern outlined the character for 'insect'.

Behind him stood three white skeletal figures, their eye sockets glowing with eerie green ghost fire. Transparent threads bound their joints, with the other ends wrapped around the young man's fingers.

Qin Sang was intimately familiar with the art of corpse manipulation and instantly recognized that these three skeletons were bone puppets refined with a rudimentary corpse manipulation secret technique. Unlike the Flying Yaksha with its powerful physical body, their core strength lay in the ghost fire in their eyes.

This method of refining corpses was quite crude, consistent with the young man's cultivation at the twelfth layer of the Qi Refining stage.

The two elders beside the man were also at the Qi Refining stage.

One was at the tenth layer of Qi Refining, the other only at the ninth.

They likely came from the same stockade, as their tattoos were very similar, and they all wore strange decorations made of animal hides and teeth. However, their style differed from that of the beast-skin man who perished in the wasp attack.

On their forehead ornaments, one had a crescent moon, the other a waning moon.

Qin Sang thought to himself, "Are these the priests of Tianyue Stockade?"

These shamanic envoys from the stockades had pitifully low cultivation levels. He wondered about the young man's background.

The two priests seemed to be at odds, ignoring each other as they recited incantations. Immediately, a spirit insect flew out from each of their dantian regions.

One had a snake-like form, covered in fine, fiery-red scales, yet possessed two wings and two heads. It was smaller than a human finger, utterly bizarre.

The other was beetle-shaped, with a slender body and a shell as thin as a cicada's wing, but it unfurled like a blade.

Qin Sang's spirits lifted. He gazed intently at these two spirit insects. He only recognized the beetle, which the Imperial Spirit Sect named the Great Blade Divine Ox. It was not considered a rare insect.

It had the potential for only two transformations but was extremely fast, and its back shell was as sharp as a magic tool, making it quite formidable in combat.

That day, he had seen the Azure Jade Mantis fly out from the beast-skin man's qi sea and had already been curious.

The insect manipulation techniques of the cultivators here were completely different from those of the Imperial Spirit Sect.

These two spirit insects, like the Azure Jade Mantis, had a peculiar connection of vital energy with their masters, a connection clearly formed through life-and-death cultivation.

Could they be refining spirit insects into their Natal Spirit Insects?

"Go!"

The two elders obeyed the young man's command, controlling their spirit insects to charge towards the swarm.

The double-winged, double-headed strange snake opened its mouth in mid-air, spitting two streams of flames. The Great Blade Divine Ox also unfurled its wings, striking out with several wing-shadows, attracting the attention of the swarm. They then fled in separate directions.

'Buzzing...'

Enraged, the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps split into two groups in pursuit. One group was led by the strange snake towards the young man.

The young man hooked his fingers, manipulating the three skeletons, confidently preparing for battle. When the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps arrived, he commanded the skeletons to spew ghost fire.

He had expected the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps to die instantly when burned. However, a cloud of blood mist suddenly diffused from within the swarm, actually swallowing the ghost fire. Only a circle of wasps on the periphery were burned to death, while the remaining ones lunged forward as the three men watched in a daze.

"This idiot."

Qin Sang secretly shook his head.

The Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps had undergone their transformation in the blood mist of Wuyai Valley. They were not fearsome when isolated, but once they formed a swarm, a qualitative change occurred.

The strange snake failed to escape in time and was completely surrounded by the Blood-Winged Ghost Head Wasps, wildly spitting fire in retaliation.

The young man frantically continued to activate the ghost fire, finally rescuing the strange snake, but it was already covered in wounds and almost lost its combat ability.

The elder wearing the crescent moon forehead ornament cried out in sorrow, as if he himself had been injured, and his aura indeed weakened slightly.

"It truly is a Natal Spirit Insect cultivated through life-and-death connection!"

Qin Sang's eyes narrowed slightly.

When a cultivator's magic weapon or treasure, cultivated through life-and-death connection, suffered severe damage, it would backlash against the master, much like what happened to the elder.

Seeing the three men in a flurry, Qin Sang took out two large cloaks, placed one on the Flying Yaksha, and then commanded it to attack.