Chapter Thirty-Four: The Puppet Serpent

Little Jiu’er lifted her skirt up to her lower abdomen, then questioned me in a nearly hysterical voice, “There’s a Gu serpent inside their bodies, and that’s supposed to be a fate worse than death? Yet I suffer this piercing pain every moment! Who do I have to tell my suffering to? Is this what I deserve? Am I just…”

Suddenly, Little Jiu’er couldn’t continue. She choked up, her voice breaking.

I furrowed my brow, peering carefully beneath her skirt… and was left utterly speechless.

What a tragic woman she was… There was nothing alluring hidden beneath her skirt—only shocking traces of suffering.

Her body had been hollowed out by those tongue-like serpents, transformed entirely into a nest for the “White-Feeding Gu.”

At that moment, I was shocked to see that the skin from her legs up to her waist was so pale as to be nearly transparent. Beneath it, one could see the occasional movement of “tongues,” slowly crawling under the surface.

Each time those tongue-like things moved, her skin would rise and fall in unnatural patterns, like the trails left by earthworms wriggling across sand—so densely packed it was unbearable to look at for long.

The twisted forms of the White-Feeding Gu inside her seemed to be gnawing her body away in a frenzy.

Beneath her fair skin, her body was nothing more than a warehouse for these Gu serpents.

While we stared in silence, stunned by the scene, the immense White-Feeding Gu that had burst out from Fatty’s body was now writhing quietly, making its way toward Little Jiu’er.

Then, the serpent did something none of us could have anticipated.

Before our astonished eyes, the fat worm crawled over Little Jiu’er’s body as if no one else existed, seemingly searching for something…

At last, it entered Little Jiu’er’s mouth.

I felt as though my eyeballs would fall out from staring. Powerless, Little Jiu’er opened her mouth, “watching” as the worm burrowed down her throat. Finally, the tail of the Gu serpent stopped descending, and, in an inexplicable transformation, became her tongue, slowly settling into stillness.

So, it really was her own worm! And these Gu serpents… it seemed they had already become one with her.

This sight, unlike anything I’d ever seen, sent a wave of nausea through me. I retched a few times; had I not already vomited once in the cold storage earlier, I might not have been able to hold it back at all.

Once the Gu worm in her mouth had completely “returned” to her body, Little Jiu’er slowly let her skirt fall back into place.

She composed herself and put on her signature smile once more.

“Do you know how the White-Feeding Gu is raised?”

I shook my head—what else could I do?

Little Jiu’er kept smiling as she revealed the whole truth to me.

According to her, this White-Feeding Gu is a type of “living Gu,” and among the “Five Poisons and Thirteen Gu” of the southwestern wilds, it is the most sinister of the “Living Gu.”

In the old days, because the method for making the White-Feeding Gu was simple yet powerful, it spread far and wide. From Gu masters in Yunnan and Guizhou, to local sorcerers in Laos and Cambodia, even to the dark magicians of Thailand, similar methods existed for making such Gu. Many hunters and lamas, too, kept a White-Feeding Gu by their side for protection or hunting.

The first step in creating a White-Feeding Gu is to find a sixteen-year-old girl, just come of age, to serve as the “vessel” for the Gu. Fresh eggs from the white-flowered snake are prepared as the “mother Gu.”

At this point in her tale, a deep sorrow passed through Little Jiu’er’s eyes.

I understood then—she herself was one such “vessel.” Only, for some reason, she had broken free of the local sorcerers’ control and thus earned a second chance at life.

When Little Jiu’er reached this part of her story, she paused; the smile faded from her face.

I knew she was steadying her emotions, recalling the harrowing memories of her time as a “vessel.”

At last, she continued, “‘White-Feeding’ refers to those glistening white snake eggs… Of course, even with the vessel and the mother Gu prepared, the process can’t begin immediately. The vessel must first be ‘transformed.’”

And how is a girl “transformed”? It’s simple—by starving her.

She described it in detail: the girl chosen to become the vessel for the White-Feeding Gu would be bound upside down by the local sorcerer, hung beneath a tree for seven days and nights.

For those seven days, she would endure a trial as grueling as taming a hawk. No matter how the girl screamed and begged, the sorcerer would show no mercy. She would not be given a single grain of food, nor allowed even a moment’s sleep.

But even this was not the cruelest part.

The true cruelty came at the end of the seventh day, when they would gouge out the girl’s eyes and fill her sockets with potent, irritating medicines, in preparation for the next step—the “Gu Inception Ritual.”

After seven days, the vessel would be cut down from the tree, given some water, and then force-fed the nearly hatched white-flowered snake eggs.

I blurted out in horror, “Feeding her snake eggs at that point! Isn’t that—”

I have to admit, just hearing this made my scalp crawl. I knew all too well what it meant for a starving person to be fed snake eggs at their uttermost limit.

That image—I could not even bear to imagine…

But what chilled me even more was that this calm, matter-of-fact description from Little Jiu’er’s lips was actually the account of her own torture!

A deep sigh welled up in my heart… Was this woman truly a demoness reborn from the fires of hell?

Little Jiu’er paid no mind to my reaction, but continued in her unique, almost detached manner, recounting the suffering she had endured.

…At that point, the woman’s hunger would be so extreme that she would gulp down all the snake eggs whole, not chewing, so as not to damage the embryos inside. Because the human body is so warm, the eggs would hatch that very night in her stomach.

The hatchlings would immediately bite through the stomach lining, burrowing into the woman’s limbs and organs, ravenously devouring and growing.

There was only one place they would not go—the brain.

The secret medicine placed in the woman’s eye sockets would now serve its purpose. It would spread through the blood vessels of the eye sockets into the brain, driving the serpents away and preventing them from consuming the brain tissue.

As a result, the woman’s mind remained clear until her final breath. She could feel the serpents writhing and gnawing inside her, even sense her body being hollowed out.

If everything went as intended, once the woman’s body was entirely consumed, the White-Feeding Gu would be considered mature.

Afterwards, the local sorcerer would extract these “mother Gu serpents” from the woman’s corpse, then burn her body. Only her brain would be kept, dried and preserved until it became a black, hardened chunk.

At this point in Little Jiu’er’s story, a chill gripped my heart.

Suddenly, I realized that the twisted, blackened “meat” the old squad leader once held… was probably a woman’s brain.

“Why go to such lengths?” I asked, my face expressionless. “Once the White-Feeding Gu is obtained, why keep the brain?”

Little Jiu’er lifted her head, pointing to her own temple as she smiled, “Because only with the vessel’s intact, dried brain and certain herbs can the White-Feeding Gu truly be controlled. The sorcerers believe those serpents are the children born from the vessel’s hunger and hatred. In some sense, I… am their mother.”

I pressed urgently, “But… how did you survive?”

Little Jiu’er smiled again—this time, her smile radiated a sharp, vengeful satisfaction.

Under our anxious gaze, she let the smile linger before finally revealing the truth.

“…Because I ‘figured it out’! When the sorcerer gouged out my eyes, when they fed me the snake eggs, I already understood the key to everything! I guessed that my brain could control these ravenous creatures—I had to control them! So… I acted first and used the White-Feeding Gu to deal with the sorcerer!”

Her answer provoked not a trace of surprise in me.

Because I knew she had the intelligence—and the cunning—for such a deed. The will to survive was enough to awaken her potential.

She was a tragic soul—her brilliance and ability were astonishing, and that alone was cause for her sorrow.

I found myself wondering… Was her intelligence a blessing or a curse? I could not answer.

Little Jiu’er’s story thus came to an end.

But none of my questions had been answered—if anything, everything felt even more complicated.

It was obvious now that the “blackened meat” in the old squad leader’s hand was the brain of a tragic woman. By the same logic, if I were to smash Little Jiu’er’s brain, everything would end.

But I couldn’t do such a thing! Not me, nor any normal person, could commit such an act.

Now, I was truly at an impasse.

Just as I was caught between choices, Little Jiu’er suddenly spoke.

What she said next sent chills through my very soul.