Where Immortals Once Walked

“Don’t worry. With me here, your safety is assured! Besides, as long as I live, you still have hope of standing against Lu Yao.”

He Lingchuan’s ears pricked. “Oh? How so?”

“My capture by the Crocodile God caused my men to scatter, giving Lu Yao the chance to win them over.” Wu Shaoyi rallied what little strength he had to persuade him. “But if they find out that I managed to live through the ordeal, then Lu Yao won’t be able to force them to do anything. And as for Pei Xinyong, I can convince him to join us against Lu Yao.”

At that, He Lingchuan no longer hesitated. “Alright, what do I need to do?”

He followed Wu Shaoyi’s instructions and took out a turtle pearl and washed it clean.

For the massive size of the giant turtle, each of its pearls was no larger than a chicken egg—smaller, even. Once the bloodstains were rinsed away, it shone with a silvery luster tinged with pale blue, clear and lustrous.

It put any so-called luminous pearl to shame.

Moreover, the turtle pearls had other uses, too. Earlier, he had tested one of them in his mouth and found he could breathe freely underwater.

He Lingchuan gazed at it with a sigh, inwardly lamenting the waste, then found a wooden mallet and crushed it into powder with several heavy blows.

When it came to grinding pearls, one could not use iron tools.

After that, he had to go and get some rootless water.

Rootless water referred to rainwater that had not yet touched the ground. That was simple enough. Rain had fallen only recently, and the jars beneath the eaves of any house in the village were still half full.

He took the slip of yellow talisman paper Wu Shaoyi passed him, burned it to ash, and stirred it into half a cup of rootless water.

Afterward, he added the ground pearl, mixing until it dissolved completely.

Curiously, the concoction turned red. He Lingchuan did not know if that was from the cinnabar ink of the talisman.

The next step required catching a grasshopper.

Wu Shaoyi was very particular, telling He Lingchuan that it had to be female, but that the grasshopper’s belly not be overly swollen.

That was child’s play for He Lingchuan. Growing up in the countryside, he had caught more grasshoppers than he could count. And now, with the Immortal Spirit Village freshly harvesting wheat, the fields teemed with the pests.

Time was short, and the sable darted about to help. Agile, sharp-eyed, and low to the ground, it outpaced He Lingchuan at catching them.

Soon, they had trapped a hefty grasshopper. Turning it over, they found its belly was distended, signifying that it was too gravid with eggs for their purpose. He tossed it aside and searched again.

After catching seventeen or eighteen grasshoppers in succession, they finally found one that fit the criteria: vigorous, healthy, and its belly was only slightly round.

He Lingchuan dropped the green-bodied insect into the cup and clapped a lid over it. Two men and a sable—six eyes in total—watched without blinking.

The grasshopper flailed at first, but after swallowing a mouthful of the talisman water, it froze, and then it sat motionless.

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

It was gulping the liquid down in great amounts.

Strangely enough, though the volume of water was two or three times greater than the insect itself, it quickly drank it all dry.

Seeing this, Wu Shaoyi finally let out a breath. “Good, good. It’s working.”

He Lingchuan cast him a look. “And if it hadn’t?”

“The talisman was the only one I had. It was given to me by the Divine Master,” said Wu Shaoyi softly. With Hong Xiangqian dead, he had no other way of acquiring the talisman as he could not produce it himself.

Hearing this, He Lingchuan’s interest in Hong Xiangqian only deepened. The rebels called him Divine Master, and from top to bottom, they revered him. When it came to this, even the blood-soaked Lu Yao was no exception. And the Crocodile God, a monster from the northern monster state, was willing to serve him as well.

The man was even versed in spells and talisman arts, which instantly made He Lingchuan think of State Preceptor Sun Fuping.

He truly must have been no simple character.

Surprisingly, the grasshopper did not die after drinking all that water. After drinking the talisman water, it merely entered a state of stillness, occasionally raising its forelegs to groom its face and feelers. However, its color had changed. What was once fresh green had become a bloody red, mottled with irregular black spots.

Meanwhile, its belly swelled larger and larger, like a balloon being blown up, its skin stretched so thin it looked ready to split. The abdomen grew increasingly transparent until the two men could clearly see the tiny eggs inside expanding, ripening visibly before their eyes.

It was the eggs that distended the mother’s belly so grotesquely.

Just when He Lingchuan thought it might burst at any moment, the swelling finally stopped.

Normally, a grasshopper would lay its egg pod in soil, to hatch only after some time. But this one showed no sign of laying. Instead, the strange eggs hatched right inside its abdomen!

Grasshopper nymphs, also known as hopperlings, resemble their mothers, albeit smaller and wingless.

The moment they crawled from their shells, they turned savagely on their siblings, tearing and biting with fully-formed mandibles, hungrier than wolves starved for three days.

A chill crawled down He Lingchuan’s spine.

Grasshoppers were herbivores, feeders of leaves and shoots. Yet once the mother drank the talisman water, her offspring had changed nature. They were no longer plant-eaters but flesh-eaters—cannibals, even.

The brood dwindled quickly. The weak were devoured first, then the strong turned on each other.

He Lingchuan muttered, “Isn’t this no different from raising gu?”

Through ruthless competition, the nourishment of all the others would ultimately be claimed by one.

In human terms, such behavior held another name: a zero-sum game.

The slaughter was swift. While He Lingchuan stared, the hopperlings had already finished their mutual massacre. Two remained, then one consumed the other.

The victor grew larger still, its skin marked in red and black like its mother.

Throughout it all, the mother remained motionless, as if oblivious to the carnage in her belly. In its grotesque face, He Lingchuan thought he even glimpsed something like tenderness.

Once it had consumed its kin, the surviving hopperling too went still.

“All of the mother’s essence has been passed into it. Left alone, in about four hours it will grow wings and tear its way free,” Wu Shaoyi said weakly. His condition had worsened; black qi clouded his brow, and his gaze was unfocused.

“Now, take it out!” Wu Shaoyi turned his head toward the sable. “It’s ready. Go bring everyone back. The more, the better.”

The sable leapt from the bed and slipped out the doorway, its lithe shape vanishing into the sunlit street.

He Lingchuan tipped the grasshopper out, slit open its belly, and, following Wu Shaoyi’s instructions, crushed the mother’s remains into paste. He brought it to the prisoner’s mouth.

The brigand had awakened, and when he saw what was happening, he cried out, “I’m innocent! Don’t do this to me!”

“Innocent?” He Lingchuan sneered. “Then the blood on your trouser leg, what’s that from? Were you playing dress-up as a woman?”

The brigand froze. “Th-that, I was just... moving corpses—”

He Lingchuan could not be bothered to listen. He drove an elbow into the man’s diaphragm, doubling him over, mouth gaping soundlessly.