My Name Is Yun Gu!

"You aren't a tormentor, nor do you have a host mother you can borrow. If you want to animate a flesh-and-blood fortress, you must rely entirely on the brain core itself. But the remaining divine power inside is truly pitifully meager... Well, you can probably only use it once. It will last at most two shichen, and its size will be far smaller—it couldn't possibly be as vast and intricate as the Chifeng mine tunnel." General Red said, "You can treat it as a magic artifact. If you can lure an enemy inside to fight, you will hold a significant advantage. As for how specifically to use it, you will have to figure that out on your own when the time comes." Conjuring an entire flesh-and-blood fortress out of thin air with just a sliver of divine power? He Lingchuan felt that General Red's definition of "pitifully meager" differed quite a bit from his own. Then again, considering she was actually the god Mitian, this hardly seemed surprising. Holding the tormentor's brain core, He Lingchuan felt that his hours of hardship had not been in vain. Yet remembering the price paid to obtain this core, he found he could not smile. "By the way, activating the tormentor's brain core will most likely alert the ferry mother. After all, they share the same bloodline—assuming this ferry mother still exists." He Lingchuan asked cautiously, "What would the consequences be?" "As long as you don't bow down to worship her or pray for divine descent, there usually won't be any immediate consequences," General Red said leisurely. "But she will remember you." What happened when a deity bore a grudge? He Lingchuan took the underlying meaning to be: do not use it unless absolutely necessary. He still had another question. "This mission..." Why had it been assigned to the patrol guards? He Lingchuan hesitated for a moment. "No, never mind." "We only just discovered that among the ferry whelps descending into the mortal realm this time, there was a tormentor." General Red seemed able to read his thoughts. "Even without a tormentor, however, this mission indeed should never have been assigned to you." Her saying it shouldn't have meant that once they returned to the city, someone would be held accountable, and someone would pay the price. Before the moon climbed above the treetops, the party finally returned to Chifeng Town. Returning from the desolate wilderness, a flood-dragon-head faceplate formed over General Red's face of its own accord, concealing her features behind the ferocious visage of a black flood dragon. He Lingchuan stole occasional glances; behind the faceplate seemed to be pure darkness. Indeed, when normal people wore a mask, they would at least leave their eyes exposed. The shape of the eyes, creases, and pupil distance would still be recognizable to acquaintances. General Red's faceplate, however, was peculiar. Inside the flood dragon's eyes was an empty void of pitch-black darkness. Even when she stepped into a brightly lit room, light could not penetrate it at all. General Red's dark red armor with black accents was intricately crafted and imposing, with a dark-gold flood dragon head set upon her breastplate. Paired now with such a mask, a fierce, chilling aura struck anyone who looked upon her. The townsfolk of Chifeng Town came out to watch. A child four or five years old took one look at General Red and burst into wailing tears, terrified. Turning his head, He Lingchuan actually spotted an old acquaintance here—Hu Min. Hu Min smiled at him, whispered a brief report to General Red, and only then came over to greet He Lingchuan. The party went indoors. The severely wounded were taken away to be settled in, while General Red walked up to the unconscious woman and gently brushed a hand over her face. The woman let out a weak moan and woke up. Her face was fraught with terror. She tried to sit up, but had no strength. The face was completely unfamiliar to He Lingchuan. As it turned out, the human mother the ferry mother had found for the ghost fetus wasn't the person he had assumed. He had guessed wrong? General Red's voice was calm as still water: "Your internal organs are ruined beyond recovery. The only reason you aren't rolling on the floor in agony right now is that the venom the tormentor injected into your body has an anesthetic effect. I will not neutralize it." Despite the treatment she had received, the stretcher beneath her was still stained crimson. The bleeding simply could not be stopped. Had General Red not woken her now, she would have slept until she died. "Tormentor?" the woman asked in a trembling voice. "Do you mean my baby? How is it?" "Dead," General Red said. "It built a fortress with your body and digested food through you. All told, you partnered together to devour over two hundred people. What do you have to say for yourself?" "I... I didn't eat people." The woman shook her head weakly. "I only prayed to the gods to deliver me from my sea of suffering." General Red said coldly, "Countless people pray to the gods, but rare is the person answered by the ferry mother." Otherwise, wouldn't ghost whelps be running wild all over the world? The woman wept. "My life has been so bitter, I..." She had thought her sincerity moved the god. "Which god did you pray to?" "Yao... Yaoji," the woman murmured. "The deity answered me. She told me I would have lovely children, and that I would never be bullied again." Counting them up, both promises had technically been fulfilled. General Red asked again, "Why did you come to Chifeng Town?" "The deity originally wanted me to stay in Panlong City, but I... I accidentally went into labor early." The woman grew increasingly weak. "Panlong City began searching for my children, so I had to leave. But it was freezing cold outside. I found a courier station hoping to steal some food, but... but the children ate people again, so I headed north." She sobbed, "The deity was very displeased. She told me to go somewhere crowded. But halfway there, I gave birth to the youngest, and after that... I don't remember anything." Hu Min chimed in from the side, "You gave birth to the ghost whelp near the mine tunnels?" "I think... so?" The woman pondered for a long while. "Before I passed out, I saw a row of low houses." Hu Min muttered under his breath, "So it was all an accident?" "The area around the Chifeng mine tunnel is sparsely populated, definitely not a good place to build a flesh-and-blood fortress," General Red said to the others. "The ferry mother uses salvation as a pretense to lure suffering women into bearing her ghost fetuses. But this time, it seems she entrusted herself to the wrong person." He Lingchuan couldn't help asking, "Why didn't she pick someone else?" "Perhaps because she couldn't find a suitable candidate," General Red replied. "The people within Panlong's domain already have their faith." Most subjects within Panlong City's sphere of influence naturally worshipped Mitian. The god kept a tight grip on her core base. Having seemingly obtained the information she wanted, General Red turned and left. Seeing the woman's face turn increasingly pale, Willow brought a bowl of water to feed her, saying, "Don't cry. Conserve your strength." "I couldn't go on living like that," the woman said, clutching Willow's hand as her tears streamed faster. "What did I do wrong to suffer so much? I just didn't want to be all alone in the world anymore." He Lingchuan watched from the side and suddenly asked, "What is your name?" Finally, someone asked for her name. The woman looked at him. "Yun Gu! My name is Yun Gu! I'm from Luancheng! My family used to... used to..." She murmured a few more words after that, her voice growing fainter and fainter until it fell completely silent. Willow checked her carotid pulse and shook her head. "She's gone." She sighed softly and instructed the Chifeng townsfolk to handle Yun Gu's burial arrangements. He Lingchuan vaguely recalled that Luancheng had once been on the map of the Panlong Wasteland, wiped out by the Xianyou Kingdom roughly twelve or thirteen years ago. Wiped out along with it were the lives of countless commoners. Such a helpless, destitute woman had thrown the entire city into turmoil during the final month of her life, only to be crushed into dust now, returning to silence and obscurity. The room felt rather stifling. He Lingchuan took Hu Min outside and handed him a piece of chewing tobacco. Hu Min popped it into his mouth, chewed a few times, and let out a comfortable sigh. "You suffered immensely this time. Someone is going to be in deep trouble." "Oh? Why?" "A mission like this should have been given to the Gale Army at the very least." Hu Min clapped his shoulder. "Brother, no offense meant to you." "I know. General Red said so too." He Lingchuan asked, "By the way, why did General Red come in person?" "The higher-ups discovered that Headman Hu of Chifeng Town concealed the true death toll in the mines, underreporting by more than half. What's more, he deliberately stalled for two days to secretly tip off someone else, claiming monsters were causing trouble in the tunnels. That other party sent a squad of around forty to fifty men to exterminate the demons, but every single one of them was wiped out." "Tip off someone else first?" He Lingchuan was startled, recalling Skinny's discovery. "Right. Gold was found in the Chifeng mine tunnel. Others might not have known, but Headman Hu certainly did." "They were illicitly mining gold in the tunnel without reporting it to Panlong City!" Hu Min had also pried Headman Hu's mouth open and learned some inside information. "When trouble broke out here, he reported first to his superior. That party wanted to eliminate the demon first and sweep the matter under the rug, never expecting the target inside to be such a tough nut to crack." "That nest of monsters went north and devoured an entire village," Hu Min sighed. "Only three were left, yet they were that voracious. General Red judged that a tormentor must have appeared among them. That was no longer something regular troops could handle." "Why else do you think I said someone's going to be in deep trouble?" He gave a chuckle. "They almost let a tormentor take root and mature on the Chipa Plateau—think of how immense a liability that is!" He Lingchuan glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, then slung an arm around Hu Min's neck and whispered, "Let me ask you something else. Has General Red always been like this?" "Like what?" "Wearing a mask even when there's nothing going on!" "Uh." Hu Min shrugged. "That's why I told you before, I was at a loss for words and couldn't describe it." "General Red—" He glanced at the main house, lowering his voice as far as it would go. "—usually wears a mask on the battlefield and in public, only showing her true face in private. I heard that was the combat habit of ancient deities. Let me tell you about something from way back." "A few years ago, when General Red first appeared, everyone was dying of curiosity. But she kept to herself, rarely venturing out, so others hardly ever had a chance to run into her. As it happened, there was a long-distance raid to support an outer city once, and everyone made bets on how many days it would take before someone saw her true face." "And then?" "And then everyone lost," Hu Min sighed. "No matter the circumstances, General Red never took off that faceplate." "Did she eat alone?" During wartime, who had such luxurious conditions? "That's the incredible part." Hu Min lowered his voice further. "According to her personal guards, General Red doesn't eat, doesn't drink water, and doesn't even need to use the latrine!" "Well, if she doesn't eat or drink, of course she wouldn't need the latrine—nothing in, nothing out. Wait..." It seemed he was focusing on the wrong point. "General Red is always bursting with energy and never needs sleep." Hu Min gave a bitter smile. "Two years ago, when Baling and Xianyou joined forces to attack Xitan, General Red commanded for seven days and seven nights straight without resting for a single moment. Her stamina was boundless."