Fang Guyuan drew in a breath of cold air.
His face was like gold paper, but inside him storm waves were already rising.
He came to himself, hurriedly took that small hand drum and the bell off the rack again, his gaze shocked and unsettled, and still could not help speaking to test her.
“You… are you all right……”
Yet Chi Yujun gave no response at all.
She still stood there in a daze, as if waiting for her master’s next order.
A perfectly good living person a moment ago had now become a walking corpse that could be arranged however one pleased.
In almost the space of an instant, Fang Guyuan thought of one possibility.
He had no mind for anything else, and directly took out the communication instrument to contact Shao Feng, Sect Master of the Spirit Immortal Sect.
On Fang Guyuan’s side it was fire-urgent, heart burning with anxiety, but on the other side Shao Feng was unhurried, and only connected after the bell had rung four or five times.
Beep.
Shao Feng’s projected image appeared in the air.
The matter was urgent, and Fang Guyuan felt a few words would not make it clear.
He had to let Shao Feng see the Phoenix Body’s state in person, so what he had placed was a visual call.
“Hello? Little Fang, good afternoon. Have you eaten……”
Shao Feng was still sitting and drinking tea.
Seeing Fang Guyuan contact him, he thought it was to discuss handing over the Immortal King Sect’s items, and took his time.
“Hello, Sect Master Shao. Forgive my presumption. The matter is urgent. There’s no time for pleasantries. Can you help me look at the Phoenix Body’s state right now? She seems to have lost consciousness! Has someone put a gu on her?” Fang Guyuan had no mind for the courtesy of a junior greeting an elder, and directly cut Shao Feng off.
Shao Feng was surprised at the words, squinted at Chi Yujun for a while, and then his eyes went round, shock on his face.
“It does seem someone has put a gu on her! Speak. What happened?”
So Fang Guyuan told him about sounding that hand drum and that bell, and held the two items up in front of Shao Feng.
“Mm… if I haven’t guessed wrong, it should be the Echo Gu……” Shao Feng said, sinking into thought.
“It really is the Echo Gu?!” Fang Guyuan looked at the things in his hands with considerable regret, his gaze anxious.
Before, when he had heard of this sinister gu item, it had still felt very far away, but when the victim appeared at his side he only felt at a loss for hands and feet.
What made him feel worst was that all of this was his doing.
“Most likely. I’ve only seen the related legends in the classics passed down inside the sect. I haven’t actually seen it, so I can’t count as understanding it well. I’ve only heard that one who is struck by this gu will obey the controller in everything……”
“Then how, exactly, does one lift the state she’s in now?” Seeing that Shao Feng was about to start a long introduction, Fang Guyuan hurriedly asked the question he cared about most.
“That drum in your hand, or that bell, ought to have one of them be the ritual tool used to control her. You have to find the pattern of sounds the one who cast the gu set when they refined the gu item, and activate the melody that stands for ‘lift the state,’ and only then can she be made to return to normal.”
“Ah?” Fang Guyuan could not help being a little at a loss.
“Aiya, don’t drum sounds and bell sounds also divide into long notes and short notes? When you tried them just now, which kind did you shake out?”
Fang Guyuan drew his brows and thought.
“It seems both were one long note.”
“Then use the two ritual tools and try pairing long notes and short notes on each. You’ll always be able to try out the right one.”
“Can I… just destroy these two things?” Fang Guyuan’s gaze flickered, his eyes sharp. “Wouldn’t that settle it once and for all? And later no one would be able to control her through this either?”
Shao Feng froze, blinked and thought for a good long while, then suddenly shook his head hard.
“You can’t, you can’t! Absolutely not!”
“Why?”
“Refining this gu, it’s said, requires calling the true name of the one receiving the gu while the ritual tool gives off the matching sounds, so that the body of the one receiving the gu, and the gu insects inside her, firmly remember the command. By rights, if one wants to put her into this state of listening to every word, one ought to call her name while striking the instrument before it takes effect. But you only struck the instrument and she lost consciousness. That means……”
“That means she has already been poisoned by this to a deep place……” Fang Guyuan took it up, stunned. “Then if I call her true name, I’m afraid it would also……”
“I don’t know, but that situation isn’t ruled out.” Shao Feng also shook his head, helpless. “Although I have never come into contact with this gu, the ancestral teachings also mention it. This gu is supremely evil and supremely poisonous, and has lost all conscience. If you destroy the ritual tool, and the gu insects in her body are stimulated and go mad in backlash, that would be bad. We have no idea at all how formidable this gu is. It isn’t the certain case one fears. It’s the one chance in ten thousand.”
Fang Guyuan was silent.
He shut his eyes hard, and the tips of his teeth bit his lip fiercely until it bled.
Shao Feng looked at him, his tone heavy.
“Little Fang, I know you’re a good child. I’m someone who has come through it. I’ll give you a bit of advice from someone who has come through it. Don’t find me meddlesome.”
“Please speak, Sect Master Shao.”
“I know your heart is kind, but you must never set your heart on her. To an ordinary person, her looks truly could topple a kingdom and a city. But to old things like us, who have steeped in gu arts for many years, what we see is only a monster in a human skin, human and gu fused into one. If you come to like her, there’s no guaranteeing whether what you like is her, this person, or —”
Shao Feng tapped his own forehead, the meaning deep.
“…the gu insects in here……”
Fang Guyuan nodded lightly.
He had not had this idea to begin with.
“I’ve been taught.”
“And, since this ritual tool can’t be destroyed, you must keep it well — otherwise, once this thing falls into someone else’s hands, the consequences don’t bear thinking about. I’ve heard that the demonic dao, and also princes of certain dynasties, have peculiar tastes, and like best to take in this kind of beauty who can be hypnotized and trained, and keep them as pleasure slaves. You must be careful.”
A thread of shame showed on Shao Feng’s face.
“Ah. Speaking of it, I’m a little ashamed. Last time you made a fool of me and lectured me to my face, and I still felt my old face had been lost completely, angry enough that I couldn’t sleep at midnight. Only after I came back to the taste of it did I find that what I did then truly was not something a person does, truly not decent. At that time my whole heart was only on the sect, the sect, and I cast aside the freedom and the thoughts of a living person like her. Fortunately you came early. Only because of that did I not cast a great wrong. Otherwise, how would I be any different from those heretical demonic paths.”
Fang Guyuan froze.
He had not thought Shao Feng, as the master of a sect, would take the initiative to admit a fault.
One had to know, most of these old things were used to sitting in high places.
They were flattered all day by those below them and by the younger generation, and they were dead-set on face.
Even if they knew in their hearts they had done wrong, they would find themselves a step down, and at most they would simply not speak of it.
Where would they take the initiative to mention their own error?
This one point alone already surpassed many people.
So Fang Guyuan also returned the courtesy with a respectful cupped-hand salute.
“What are you saying? At the time it was indeed this junior who was a little abrupt, and offended you. The fault was mine.”
“All right, all right. It’s good that the words have been opened. And it’s thanks to you, boy, that you could think of a method like that.” Shao Feng let out a breath, as if a great stone in his heart had been set down, and then raised his right hand, the middle three fingers pressed together, his face solemn.
“There is one more matter. Even if you don’t say it, I am going to do it.”