A Dao that is one foot higher is the heaven.

Chapter 90 The higher the virtue, the greater the reward.

Blood and flesh flying everywhere!

Torn clothes, ripped flesh, and broken ribs, along with a thick, foul-smelling liquid, sprayed in all directions!

The fragments flew through the air, carrying body heat, death, and all the chaos of a life's final moments.

But even more terrifying than the flesh and blood was the worm-like thing that gushed out of the ruptured abdominal cavity.

Countless insects.

They swarmed out of that bloody hole like a flood bursting its banks, like a swarm of bees exploding from their nest.

They poured out of that bloody hole, as if an endless nest of insects was hidden inside that person's stomach.

It was as if those insects had been waiting inside for this moment.

Those insects were smaller than the white cocoon-like flying insects from before, and they were completely black, with their carapaces gleaming with a dark metallic sheen.

That luster was not the luster of a living thing, but the luster of a weapon, the luster of an inanimate object.

They had no wings, but they crawled extremely fast, and in the blink of an eye, they covered the Gu Master's body, climbed onto the chair, and crawled towards the ground.

Wherever they crawled, the Gu Master's corpse disappeared bit by bit into the surging darkness, like a reef swallowed by a black tide.

Where the black insects crawled, the fabric of the seats was gnawed into holes.

The wooden handrails were riddled with tiny holes from the borers, and even the metal window frames creaked and groaned under their gnaws.

Their target is the people inside the train carriage.

"what!"

"Bugs! So many bugs!"

"Help!"

The carriage immediately erupted in chaos.

The passengers who had just escaped death from the poison were once again plunged into extreme panic.

The fear I felt just now was internal, invisible, churning inside my stomach:

The fear at this moment is immediate, overwhelming, and coming from all directions.

Some people screamed and ran to the other end of the carriage, some jumped onto seats and stomped their feet frantically, and some picked up their children and tried to shove them into their arms.

Use your body to block the black tide.

When people are most terrified, their bodies react before their brains: running, jumping, hugging, and stuffing. These are all instincts, survival commands etched into their genes, even older than language.

But there were too many black insects.

They poured down from the seats, spread through the aisles, and converged from all directions into a black tide, surging towards the panicked people.

That tide isn't just water; it's alive, it moves, and it has a purpose.

Its purpose is those people, those who are alive, those with bones, those who can be gnawed at.

Wei Shufen's expression changed instantly.

She is a Gu master from Miao territory, and she recognizes this insect as the "bone-eating beetle".

The most vicious and taboo of Miao witchcraft.

These insects don't feed on flesh and blood; they gnaw on bones.

Flesh and blood can regenerate, but bones are gone once they're gnawed on.

Once it climbs onto the human body, it burrows into the skin and gnaws along the bones, causing the person to die in extreme pain. That pain is not instantaneous, but continuous, drilling out from the cracks in the bones, a deeper and more primal pain than any knife wound or burn.

What's worse is that this stuff is impossible to get rid of using ordinary methods.

They cannot be burned out by fire, drowned by water, or poisoned by medicine because they are not ordinary insects; they are Gu, something artificially created specifically to kill people.

"Run!" Wei Shufen shouted.

"Everyone run to the other end of the carriage! Don't get hit by them!"

But her voice was drowned out by screams.

Her voice was too soft, too thin in the face of fear, like a leaf falling into a waterfall, not even making a splash.

The black tide is getting closer and closer; the most recent wave has already spread to within three feet of Li Yuan's feet.

The black insects seemed to sense something and suddenly increased their speed.

They swarmed forward like black waves, crashing towards the abyss.

They didn't rush towards him, they rushed towards the people behind him; he was just the one blocking the way.

But when he stood there, the road was blocked.

To get past the insect swarm, we must first get past him.

Wei Shufen instinctively reached out to pull him: "Quickly."

She didn't get to finish her sentence.

Because she saw that Li Yuan had moved.

He simply raised his right hand.

Fingers slightly spread, palm facing down.

The movement was extremely light, as light as gently pressing an invisible chess piece in the air.

That lift, that open, that press—the three movements flowed together, as smoothly as water flowing over stone or wind rustling through bamboo groves.

There was no building up of momentum, no exertion of force, no channeling of inner energy; it was simply raising, opening, and pressing down. That was all.

But the moment that palm struck, the entire carriage lit up.

The light emanated from his palm.

It wasn't the dazzling golden light that bound the Gu Master earlier; that light was outward-emitting, radiant, and meant to be seen.

It wasn't the faint, clear light that emanated from between his brows when he was healing everyone—that light was restrained, gentle, and reassuring.

Rather, it is a purer, more primal, and more solemn light.

The light was golden, but it wasn't an ordinary gold.

Ordinary gold is the color of the sun, the color of metal, the color of power and wealth.

This gold is different; it carries an indescribable warmth, like the first ray of sunlight piercing through the clouds in winter, or like the last afterglow enveloping the earth at dusk.

It is not dazzling, not scorching, and does not even illuminate anything. It is simply there, beneath the palm of that hand, existing.

But where it exists, darkness is no longer darkness.

It surged from Li Yuan's palm, spreading in all directions and instantly enveloping the entire carriage.

That diffusion is not a spread, not a flow, but an unfolding.

Like a scroll unfolding on a table, like a sky unfolding overhead.

It's not that the light is moving, but that the light is "present".

It is here, therefore it is everywhere.

The black insects stopped where the light passed.

Countless bone-eating beetles froze instantly in the golden light.

Their bodies froze in place, their whiskers no longer twitched, their carapaces no longer shimmered, and their instinct to frantically devour everything was completely frozen in that moment.

They weren't held down by external force; they were seen in that golden light, and they saw themselves.

Having seen a version of myself that shouldn't exist, I dared not move again.

Just as a lie sees the truth, it is not the truth that defeats the lie, but the lie that falls apart in the face of the truth.

That instinct to frantically devour everything was completely frozen at this moment. It wasn't killed, but suspended as if time had stopped. The insect was still an insect, and the blackness was still black, but it just stopped moving.

They neither died nor escaped.

They just huddled and trembled, like a group of prey being stared at by their natural enemies, their courage to even flee completely taken away.

That curling up is instinct, an instinct etched into their bloodline from the moment they were created. Faced with a certain being, the only recourse is to curl up, to submit, to shrink oneself into the smallest possible ball, praying not to be seen.

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Then, the golden light began to change.

It no longer just "shines," but begins to "flow."

Like invisible streams, they flowed continuously from Li Yuan's palm, spreading in all directions along the aisle, seats, and windowsills.

Wherever those golden streams flowed, the black insects, like withered leaves swept up by the tide, were helplessly swept along, converging in the same direction.

It was not the golden light that drove them away, but the golden light that embraced them, just as the ocean embraces all rivers, just as the earth embraces all things.

Rivers flow into the sea, not because the sea forces them to; all things return to the earth, not because the earth forces them to.

It is where they should have gone back to, and now they are going back.

All the black insects were being "gathered" by that golden light.

Countless bone-eating beetles were swept away by the invisible golden stream.

From the Gu Master's corpse, from the chair, from the floor, from every corner, the blood converged in the center of the passageway, forming a black river that surged towards Li Yuan's palm.

The black river flowed faster and faster in the golden light.

The black insects struggled, rolled, and emitted tiny, piercing hisses, but they were unable to break free from the golden light's grasp.

The hissing sound was initially very loud, densely mixed together, like thousands of fine needles piercing the eardrum at the same time;

But as they drew closer to Li Yuan's palm, the sound grew softer, farther away, and quieter.

It was as if something was taking away their "voices" as well.

Three inches in front of Li Yuan's palm, they were compressed, condensed, and gathered by an invisible force.

That compression is not squeezing, but returning to its place, like scattered strokes returning to a single character, like disordered musical notes returning to a single melody.

Every insect has its own place; every insect has found its place in that thing that is taking shape.

In the end, the black insects condensed into a fist-sized cocoon under Li Yuan's palm.

The cocoon was completely black, with faint golden patterns flowing across its surface. It floated quietly beneath Li Yuan's palm, motionless.

The golden patterns weren't engraved; they appeared naturally. They were the last traces left by the black insects during the process of being gathered together. They weren't a seal; they were a signature.

It was the person who gathered them who left the marks on them, proving that they once existed.

Occasionally, a very faint "creaking" sound can be heard from inside the cocoon, as if something is struggling inside.

But the sound grew fainter and fainter, farther and farther away, until it finally disappeared completely.

They didn't die; they fell asleep and were soothed by the golden light, subdued by that power, and placed where they belonged by the one who gathered them from chaos.

The carriage was deathly silent.

All the passengers were stunned.

They stood there with their mouths agape and their eyes wide open, frozen in the same position they had been in when they fled, not daring to move an inch.

It's not that I don't want to move, it's that I've forgotten how to move.

What they had just witnessed was so unreal, so beyond their comprehension, that their bodies had to press the pause button before their brains could even process the information.

Those who jumped onto the seats are still standing on them, with the clean floor beneath their feet. Not a single black insect remains.

Those who were huddled in the corner with their children slowly raised their heads and saw only the figure in the moon-white Taoist robe and the black cocoon floating in his palm.

Wei Shufen stood beside Li Yuan, the closest to him, and had the clearest view.

The moment she saw the golden light surge from Li Yuan's palm, the Bone-Eating Beetles did not struggle or resist, but surrendered completely.

It was as if within that golden light lay something, an irresistible natural enemy etched deep within their bloodline from the day they were born.

Not natural enemies, natural enemies are adversaries; that is the root of the problem.

That is the source of why they became "insects".

Facing the source is not about surrendering, but about returning to it.

Like waves returning to the sea, it's not that the waves have given up, but that they have finally remembered that they were originally water.

She suddenly remembered a saying her grandmother had said: "No matter how poisonous Gu magic is, it is still a kind of magic in the world."

"Since it is a 'technique,' it cannot escape the realm of 'principle.'"

"The higher the virtue, the greater the heavens."

"No matter how advanced the Gu technique is, it can't surpass the heavens."

At that moment, she finally understood.

Technique is human, but the Way is Heaven.

Techniques have limits, but the principles are boundless.

Techniques can be learned, mastered, and applied, but the Way can only be seen, comprehended, and become.

Li Yuan didn't use superior techniques to overwhelm those Gu worms; he used the Dao to make them see their true selves, which shouldn't exist.

Li Yuan lowered his eyes and looked at the floating cocoon.

He stretched out his left hand and gently touched the cocoon with his index finger.

"seal up."

The word fell.

The golden patterns on the surface of the cocoon suddenly lit up, like talismans, completely sealing the cocoon.

The word "seal" is not an order, but a confirmation that it is no longer a threat, and that it has completed the transformation from "insect" to "cocoon".

From this moment forward, it was confirmed that it was simply this bead, just this small, quiet, harmless black bead, about the size of a thumb's pad.

Then, the cocoon began to shrink from the size of a fist, to the size of an egg, then to the size of a walnut, and finally to a black bead only the size of a thumb, lying quietly in Li Yuan's palm.

The bead was jet black, smooth as a mirror, with faint, fine golden patterns visible on its surface, like some kind of ancient rune.

It lay there, so quiet it seemed it had never lived, never gnawed on anyone's bones, never caused any fear.

It was just a bead, a bead held in that person's hand.

Li Yuan withdrew his hand and looked at the Gu Master's corpse.

That person was no longer recognizable as human.

His abdomen was blown open, leaving a bloody mess and exposed bone fragments.

His face still held the expression of his last moments before death—not fear, not pain, but a blankness, as if he hadn't had time to react to anything.

He didn't have time to feel fear, pain, or even realize he was dying. Everything happened so fast that he didn't even have time to scream "Ah!"

That blankness is a person's final expression, and also their most authentic expression. Before all the pretense, all the fear, and all the scheming have a chance to unfold, all that remains on that face is blankness.

There were worms in his stomach.