: Disregarding rules, laws, and aesthetics.

Chapter 78: Disregarding rules, laws, and aesthetics.

The middle-aged man standing to the side was completely terrified by the sight.

He stared blankly at the pool of vomit, at the white cocoons that were still wriggling slightly.

His face went from deathly pale to ashen, and then from ashen to sallow.

That smooth face, that face that was used to putting on a smile in the streets and skillfully dodging trouble.

At this moment, it was as stiff as a piece of rotten wood taken from a coffin.

All the expressions were fear, disgust, disbelief...

Everything froze on that face, blending together, making it seem as if there was no expression at all.

"That's...that's disgusting..."

He murmured, his voice trembling with tears, as if he wanted to cry but couldn't.

The sound was squeezed out of his throat, thin and trembling, like the mournful cry of the last cicada in late autumn.

The people nearby, realizing what was happening, started chattering amongst themselves: "How come there are still silkworm cocoons?!"

"It looks like maggots!"

"Could it be that he ate too many cicada pupae?"

"Or has he contracted some strange illness?!"

"Who knows? Judging from the looks of it, could it really be too late?"

Amidst the discussions, there was fear, disgust, curiosity, and a hint of inexplicable excitement. People always feel a strange excitement when facing disaster, because the disaster has happened to someone else, not themselves.

It was a subtle, shameful sense of relief—thank goodness it wasn't me, thank goodness it wasn't me who collapsed, thank goodness those worms didn't crawl out of my stomach.

A bold young man moved closer, trying to get a better look at the white cocoons.

The young man was dressed in a Western-style suit, a sharp gray suit with a fashionable tie at the collar, and wearing gold-rimmed glasses. Behind the lenses were a pair of eyes that exuded a scholarly air.

He looks like he's had some schooling, perhaps he attended school in the provincial capital.

Perhaps he was the young master of some merchant family, traveling far from home for the first time, and everything was new and exciting to him.

He bent over, stretched his neck, squinted, and carefully examined the wriggling white cocoons.

His posture was somewhat like that of a scholar studying a specimen—

With a naive and ignorant curiosity, completely unaware of the abyss they were standing on.

Just then—

The middle-aged man finally snapped out of his fear, replaced by a feeling of disgust fueled by embarrassment and anger.

His emotions shifted so rapidly that he himself didn't even have time to notice them. When fear reached its extreme, it would turn into anger; when fear deepened, it would give rise to aggression.

This is the most subtle form of self-protection in the human heart, like an ant instinctively curling up into a ball when burned by fire.

He looked down at his feet.

When I kicked the flight attendant earlier, a few white calluses stuck to his shoe and were still wriggling slightly.

Those few white cocoons, milky white and round, stuck to his black cloth shoes, were particularly conspicuous and disgusting.

They were still moving, still struggling, as if they were about to burst open and something would fly out at any moment.

"Pah!"

He spat out a curse and kicked out with all his might!

That action contained disgust, fear, and a hint of venting ruthlessness—

It's as if everything will be over once you get rid of these disgusting things.

It's as if as long as they're not on you, those terrible things have nothing to do with you.

He flung the few white cocoons away, where they traced arcs in the air, resembling pale shooting stars in the dim carriage lights.

It bumped into the seats on both sides of the aisle and then bounced to the ground.

"Clatter".

"Clatter".

Several crisp sounds.

Those white cocoons have completely cracked open.

Li Yuan's gaze fell on the cracked white cocoon.

That gaze was as calm as the water in an ancient well, without a ripple.

But if someone could look into the depths of that gaze, they would find something there, quietly turning.

That was not an ordinary gaze, but a deeper "illumination"—

Like the bright moon hanging in the mid-sky, every blade of grass and every tree thousands of miles below is reflected in its light, leaving nothing hidden.

The milky-white shell had a thin crack split in the middle.

The slit was initially just a thin line, like the eyelashes of a baby's slightly open eye.

Then it gets wider and deeper, eventually opening up to reveal what's inside.

A small, wet thing poked its head out of the crack.

First, the head.

It has a triangular head with two compound eyes that are black and shiny, gleaming with an eerie light.

The compound eye is composed of countless tiny eyes, densely packed and layered, refracting a seven-colored halo under the light.

The halo shifted and changed, sometimes crimson, sometimes bluish-purple, sometimes golden yellow, its beauty eerily beautiful, its beauty ominous, just like those bewitching monsters in legends, always draped in the most dazzling outer garment.

Then comes the body.

It is segmented, with pale yellow stripes, and somewhat resembles a cicada larva.

The lines were very fine and dense, in concentric circles, like some kind of ancient talisman.

Its body was still covered in mucus, wet and glistening in the light, like a newborn baby, still bearing that primal mark.

Then came the wings.

Thin, transparent wings, like cicada wings, trembled slightly in the air.

The wings had fine veins, like leaf veins or blood vessels.

The wings were still soft and wrinkled, slowly unfolding, like an ancient lotus that had been sleeping for a thousand years, finally waiting for the time to bloom.

"Buzz"

A soft sound.

The first flying insect emerges from its cocoon.

It shook its wings, the frequency of which was so high that it was almost invisible to the naked eye.

The slime was shaken off, and the wings fully unfolded, thin as cicada wings, transparent as gauze, and shimmering with a layer of rainbow light under the lamp.

It flew up from the ground, wobbling like a baby just learning to walk.

Its flying posture was clumsy and innocent, as if it was still adapting to this brand-new body and exploring this unfamiliar world.

Immediately afterwards—

"Buzz—Buzz—"

—

More and more flying insects emerged one after another from the cracked white cocoon.

They shook off the slime, spread their wings, and flew into the air.

The way it took flight was initially a bit clumsy, but it quickly became agile and nimble, as if it had flown hundreds of times before.

The wings vibrated at an extremely high frequency, producing a sound like cicada chirping, but sharper and more piercing.

It wasn't the melodious chirping of cicadas, nor the clamor of a summer night, but some kind of more primal, more dangerous sound wave—like a warning, like a call, like some ancient incantation, coming from the depths of eternal darkness.

It gives me goosebumps.

The sound drilled into the ears, traveled down the ear canal into the brain, sending chills down the spine and making one's scalp tingle.

That was a voice that went straight to instinct, a fear etched deep in one's blood—

When ancient people heard this sound in the jungle, they knew that something terrible was approaching.

Li Yuan looked at the flying insects, his brows furrowing slightly.

The frown was so slight and subtle that it was almost imperceptible.

But in his perception, this frown was like a ripple on a deep pool, spreading out layers of thoughts.

He has already denied his earlier guess.

Although the Tang Clan members are skilled in poisoning, these strange flying insects in front of them are clearly not the work of the Tang Clan.

The Tang Clan emphasizes precision, restraint, and a single, fatal strike when using poison.

It is a craft, a craft that has been passed down for hundreds of years, with its own rules, its own laws, and its own aesthetics.

They were a group of craftsmen, meticulously crafting their works in the dark, with unwavering dedication.

And all of this before my eyes—

Indiscriminately poisoning everyone in the train carriage, treating people as containers for breeding insects, allowing those insects to grow inside people's stomachs, break out of their cocoons, and emerge from their bodies—this is another method.

Another method, though he had never seen it with his own eyes, was one he had heard of.

Those methods disregard rules, laws, and aesthetics.

I'll only talk about one thing—

result.

Whatever method you use, as long as it achieves the goal, it's a good method.

Whatever the cost, it's worth it as long as the goal is achieved.

This is a poison.

The Shuowen Jiezi (a Chinese dictionary) states: "Gu is a worm inside the abdomen."

The Book of Changes also has the Gu hexagram, whose image is "wind under the mountain," and whose meaning is "extreme destruction leads to trouble."

The character "蛊" itself contains the meanings of decay, corruption, and the "trouble" that follows corruption.

Like mushrooms growing from rotten wood, like flowers blooming on a decaying corpse.

Then I realized that the train was currently in the Miao region.

Outside the window, the rolling green hills, the deep canyons, and the mist-shrouded valleys all exude an atmosphere completely different from that of the Central Plains—

More primitive, more mysterious, and more dangerous.

In those mountains, there are ancient trees that are thousands of years old, deep ravines that are tens of thousands of years old, and countless uncivilized creatures that lurk in the shadows, waiting for intruders.

There is a curse in those mountains.

The answer is obvious.

Nine times out of ten, it's the work of a Gu master from Miao territory.

The thought had just flashed through Li Yuan's mind.

"belch-"

Another muffled burp came from the other end of the carriage.

The voice was exactly the same as the flight attendant's voice just now—

Dull, sluggish, as if something was blocking my throat, or as if something was desperately trying to squeeze up from deep inside my throat.

Li Yuan was about to look in the direction of the sound.

"belch"

Another sound came from another direction.

Then came a "burp".

"belch"

"belch"

The entire carriage was like a scene from a poem: "The cries of monkeys on both banks could not be stopped."

The muffled burps rose and fell from all directions.

That strange, unsettling sound was everywhere—to the left, to the right, in front, and behind.

Some sounds are near, some are far, some are rapid, some are slow; they intertwine to form a strange symphony.

In that symphony, there is the struggle of life, the approach of death, the worm breaking free of its cocoon, and the person on the verge of collapse.

Li Yuan's gaze swept across the carriage.

One by one, those who had just drunk tea showed expressions of pain on their faces.

They clutched their stomachs, bent over, mouths open, and made strange hiccup sounds from their throats.

Some leaned back in their chairs, their faces pale, with beads of sweat the size of soybeans seeping from their foreheads;

Some squatted in the aisle, curled up in a ball, their bodies twitching incessantly;

Some women clutched their bellies, squirming and fidgeting in their seats, as if they were being burned by fire.

Their bellies, like the flight attendant's, were swollen and churning.

Beneath that thin layer of clothing, something was moving, burrowing, and struggling to emerge.

Those things are awakening from their slumber, rising from the darkness, and announcing their existence in their own way.

It seems I'm not the only one whose tea has been poisoned.

Li Yuan thought to himself.

That thought remained calm and undisturbed.

"In fact, everyone in the entire carriage was poisoned!"

Who on earth is this person, capable of such depravity and madness?!

When that thought arose.

His gaze passed through those pained and contorted faces, through those swollen and churning bellies, through those flying insects that had begun to emerge from their cocoons, and landed at the end of the carriage.

It falls into the depths of twilight.

It falls into that unknown darkness.

No wonder he had such thoughts.

What we are witnessing has gone beyond the realm of ordinary "grudges".

This is not a revenge by any one person, not a vengeance in the martial arts world, and not a conflict between sects.

This is a massacre.

A massacre that cost dozens of lives in the entire train carriage.

They treat living people as containers for cultivating parasites.

Let those worms grow inside their bellies, break out of their cocoons, and emerge from their bodies.

Let those people's bodies become a breeding ground for insects;

Let those people's lives become nourishment for the insects;

Let the suffering of those people become the insects' revelry.

Such actions are utterly outrageous and insane!

A hint of coldness quietly crept into the depths of Li Yuan's eyes.

The chill was so faint that it was almost imperceptible.

But it does exist.

Like an ancient, still pool, its surface is calm, yet a chill is quietly forming deep within.

Like the first snowflake of winter, its fall heralds the arrival of the entire cold winter.

The instant the thought flashed through his mind—

Inside the carriage, bursts of violent vomiting could be heard.

"vomit-

""

"vomit--!

""

"vomit--!

""

The voice was exactly the same as the flight attendant's.

It was muffled and heavy, forced out from deep in my throat, with mucus, blood streaks, and wriggling white calluses.

One mouthful after another, one puddle after another, yellowish-green vomit spread across the aisle, its stench pungent and shocking.

Mixed with the muffled burps that rose and fell, a symphony of absurdity and horror unfolded in this cramped carriage.

But this symphony was soon drowned out by another sound.

That was a scream.

Panic-stricken screams.

Those who hadn't drunk the tea, those who had narrowly escaped death, finally snapped out of their daze.

They looked at the people around them who were vomiting violently.

Looking at the puddles of thick, turbid vomit that were spraying from the mouths and noses of those people.

Seeing the white cocoons wriggling in the vomit, seeing those cocoons cracking open, seeing those flying insects emerging from their cocoons, their reason completely collapsed.

The collapse came extremely quickly, like a flood bursting its banks, like a mountain collapsing and the earth splitting open.

In that instant, everyone ceased to be human, but rather became wild beasts gripped by fear, screaming and fleeing blindly.

The scream pierced the dome of the carriage, broke the silence of twilight, and rushed into the unknown, dark distance.