Chi Yujun sat alone in the antique-styled room, stretching lazily, relaxing and extending her legs on the bed.
On her fair, tender jade feet crawled gu insects with strange patterns, swinging their mouthparts as they gnawed at flesh, covering the backs of her feet completely.
The delicate skin was destroyed until the flesh was a bloody mess, yet inside the meat there were also slender, horrifying little white tapeworms wriggling, and the blood bitten out was swallowed clean in almost the blink of an eye.
The sky-blue ruqun she wore seemed to be a spirit-tool Dharma robe with a certain inhibitory effect on gu poison, but unfortunately the effect was minimal for her.
Letting these little ones out for some air was completely unaffected.
The furnishings in the room were very simple, nothing more than a bed, a tea table, two tea stools, and a bookshelf holding some books, all made of wood.
Thinking of that physician’s reaction just now, Chi Yujun could not help finding it funny.
Originally she had thought she would be brought back and killed.
She had not expected that they would only lock her in this room, and had not even placed restrictions on her, only laying down a barrier formation around the room.
It was about the same as at home.
At the time she had been sitting by the table in a daze when the door was suddenly knocked upon.
A woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a Dust Sword Palace sect Daoist robe, pushed the door open and walked in.
On her hands she wore white gloves glowing with spiritual light, and she carried a mahogany box filled with a pile of tools and instruments Chi Yujun had never seen.
“My name is Li Suxin. I am the physician who has come to examine your body. What is your name?”
The woman spoke while rummaging tools out of the box.
Chi Yujun ignored Li Suxin’s latter question and only looked at her indifferently.
How could she be willing to speak with birds of a feather of the murderers who had wiped out her own sect?
Li Suxin seemed to see that the girl before her did not intend to respond, and did not entangle further.
“If you don’t want to say it, then forget it. Put your right hand on the table.”
Li Suxin also did not directly contact Chi Yujun’s skin.
She only took out a bronze mirror with neat square patterns on the side, circulated her spell, and spiritual power rich with a dense healing aura flickered and interwove, emitting green light throughout the room.
Chi Yujun found it quite novel.
It was the first time she had seen such vivid, bright pale-green spiritual power.
When her father and sister examined her body they would also use spiritual power, but it had never been this color.
Moreover, these instruments were completely different from those used for physical examinations at home.
The instant Li Suxin’s gaze fell upon the surface of the bronze mirror, she sucked in a cold breath.
Her face was filled with unconcealable surprise and shock, and the look she gave Chi Yujun was as if she were looking at a monster that merely possessed human skin in human shape.
Chi Yujun wanted to know why she had that expression, but was unwilling to open her mouth, so she could only pretend not to see.
Li Suxin shook her head and sighed.
Her right hand pointed virtually in the air, manipulating a writing brush dipped in ink to record something on paper, her mouth murmuring words such as “the muscle tissue is almost entirely hollow, the organs have also been eaten until half of them are empty and completely black, the blood is full of insects and insect eggs… so this is a human gu… truly terrifying, if not for the Phoenix Body she probably wouldn’t have survived.”
Chi Yujun did not understand.
She was clearly a gu master.
What was a human gu?
And what was a Phoenix Body?
“Sequence 7, Endurance Realm.”
Li Suxin then took out a bottle and held it near her mouth and nose, shaking it.
Chi Yujun only looked at her with a baffled face, not understanding what she wanted to do.
“Loss of smell and taste.”
Li Suxin withdrew the bottle, and the writing brush in the air also recorded at flying speed.
“Can you take off your clothes and let me see your back?”
she asked again.
Back?
What was there to look at on the back?
Why did a physical examination need to check the back?
Shouldn’t she look more at the little cuties she raised?
Chi Yujun stiffened and did not move, wary as a stray cat that had wandered the streets, facing a great enemy approaching and having no choice but to extend sharp fangs and claws, arching its body about to bristle.
A pair of green snake pupils like rippling light subtly stood vertical, carrying a soul-hooking warmth.
“You seem rather unwilling.”
Li Suxin had clearly seen Chi Yujun’s resistance, but she did not give up because of it.
“This is my work. Please forgive me. I am a physician.”
In the blink of an eye, Li Suxin suddenly struck, seasoned and fierce as if she often dealt with uncooperative patients, suppressing Chi Yujun with an absolute advantage in force, pinning both of her hands behind her back, and as she wished saw the elegant phoenix tattoo on her back, head raised and wings spread.
“Oh, the pattern is actually purple.”
She exclaimed in considerable surprise.
“It seems different from all previous records. Previous Phoenix Bodies seemed to all be gold.”
“Let go of me!”
Chi Yujun struggled in both anger and annoyance, yet it was useless.
Her hands were bound behind her, the wide robe slipping down to her waist, revealing only a large stretch of snow-white spine and the vivid pattern on her back.
Her mind stirred slightly, and she tried to call out several gu insects to attack Li Suxin, but the other party seemed to have come prepared.
She did not know whether some treasure had been used or the gap in strength was too great, but she could not shake her in the slightest.
“You immortal dao people really have fine methods!”
To her this was simply an insult.
Her family and sect had all been killed by the people of this Dust Sword Palace, and she was living on in humiliation yet still had to be forced to undergo some strange physical examination!
“So you’re not mute. You can speak. I thought you would keep this silent state until the end.”
When she heard there would be a chance to give the legendary Phoenix Body a physical examination, Li Suxin had even specially flipped through previous classical records to broaden her knowledge.
She did not like to fight unprepared battles.
But when she saw that of the phoenix’s colorful long tail feathers only one remained, Li Suxin suddenly fell silent.
That was a physician’s silence.
Time seemed to freeze.
That long, soundless silence startled even Chi Yujun, who was still cursing and reviling, because the other party had become quiet far too suddenly.
That strange feeling even made Chi Yujun stop her futile struggling.
“I’m sorry.”
Li Suxin’s tone suddenly softened.
The strength in her hands relaxed, and she carefully put her clothes back on for her, smoothing the folds at the collar, solemnly and slowly releasing her hands, then turning unhurriedly to face her, pressing her palms together and closing her eyes, her expression calm yet mournful.
“We came too late.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Chi Yujun sneered coldly.
“I would rather you hadn’t come.”
What did she want them to come for?
To come and make her watch her own father being killed with her own eyes?
“The examination isn’t finished yet.”
After only a fleeting moment of sentiment, Li Suxin recovered her previous ordinary expression.
She took a delicate silver-white pair of tweezers from the box she had brought and looked toward Chi Yujun.
“May I continue?”
This instrument Chi Yujun was familiar with.
She did not speak, merely turned her head aside and blinked to indicate agreement, actually watching Li Suxin with a faint hint of expectation in her heart.
This time it was finally her turn for the confident strong point she could show.
She had understood none of the previous examination items, and though she wanted to ask she felt she could not let people look down on her, so she was unwilling to ask aloud.
Chi Yujun rarely cooperated by extending her hand, like a child expecting praise, treating the gu insects surging out like a tide as treasures she knew like the back of her hand.
“This is Heart-Piercing Gu,”
she said, slightly proudly puffing out her chest, her eyes fixed on the white-spotted black spider covered in tiny dots that rapidly crawled along her fingertip.
“How is it? Pretty good condition, right?”
Li Suxin froze on the spot.
“Wait.”
She interrupted Chi Yujun’s words.
“I am here to examine your body.”
The hand holding the tweezers trembled slightly as she repeated it.
“Right, isn’t this examining my body?”
Chi Yujun lifted her eyes and looked at her as a matter of course.
“No.”
Li Suxin took a deep breath.
“Those are gu insects, not you.”
Chi Yujun felt the physician in front of her had something wrong with her brain.
What was this Li Suxin saying?!
“But they are part of my body, aren’t they?”
she asked in return.
“They are gu insects! Not you!”
Li Suxin, as if stimulated by something, suddenly raised her voice and roared, swords drawn and bows taut.
“No, they are the most important part of my body!”
Chi Yujun also grew anxious.
Clearly her father and sister had both told her so.
That shining expression, as if looking at the most brilliant treasure in the world, absolutely could not deceive anyone.
Clang.
The tweezers in Li Suxin’s hand fell to the floor, letting out a dull yet painful sound.
That sound was clearly not loud, yet it was deafening.
She could no longer control her expression.
Two lines of clear tears flowed down.
She viciously seized Chi Yujun’s collar, so angry she was hysterical, her entire body even trembling violently.
“You are human! They are only insects! They are not you! You are not them! You are human!!! You are human!”
That appearance of glaring eyes wide and hair standing on end truly startled Chi Yujun.
Chi Yujun dared not talk back again.
She also did not understand the meaning of Li Suxin’s words.
She was only frightened by the other party’s imposing manner.
Every time she was roared at like this by her father, she also dared not speak anymore.
And Li Suxin seemed as if all the strength had been drained from her body.
She looked like that for a good while before dejectedly releasing Chi Yujun’s collar, her eyes hanging powerless, and squatted down to pick up the tweezers that had fallen on the ground.
“I’ll go change to a new pair.”
Li Suxin said dully, lifted her foot, and left the side room.
“Physician Li, what’s wrong?”
Through the door, Chi Yujun heard the disciple guarding the door asking, and she also heard Li Suxin’s sobs.
But what did any of this have to do with her?
Chi Yujun found it funny.
These so-called immortal sect people were truly strange.
They simply did not understand what these gu insects meant to her.
They simply did not understand.