Chapter 1 She Wants to Help Her Father

Hu Ma, seeing the little girl's surprised expression, simply sat down beside her, took her hand, and poured a blood pellet into her palm.

At the same time, afraid that she wouldn't eat it, he poured one into his own palm as well and swallowed it.

It was a subtle psychological suggestion. The girl named Wu Ya, seeing this, felt that the blood pellet must be eaten. In a daze, she imitated Hu Ma, stuffed the blood pellet into her mouth, and puffed out her cheeks.

Hu Ma was relieved. The witch people in these villages naturally had some skills, but their foundation was shallow, their power was weak, and they rarely interacted with the outside world. Therefore, they rarely saw high-quality tonics like blood food, which he thought would help to bring them closer.

While thinking, he looked at her and asked again with a smile, "Can you speak Mandarin?"

"Careful?"

Wu Ya tentatively said a word, but blushed first and said, "I haven't left the forest, and my father doesn't let me talk to people from outside, so I don't speak it well."

"But I used to talk to my brother, and my brother speaks Mandarin better than my father. I learned it from him, so I know it!"

"..."

Hu Ma could indeed hear that she could speak it, but it seemed that she rarely spoke it usually, and her tone was a bit strange, but coupled with her beautiful and lovely appearance, this strange Mandarin had a unique charm.

"You speak very well already. If you talk to people more often, even we won't be able to tell."

Hu Ma smiled and chatted with her for a bit, saying, "Do you all have to learn Mandarin? Did your brother learn Mandarin from your father?"

"Brother has always known it."

Wu Ya thought for a moment and said, "He always said that he wanted to go out more, but I don't know why he didn't go. My father has always been angry with him, and they haven't spoken for a long time."

"Then..."

Chatting with this girl, Hu Ma's heart stirred slightly, and he slowly said, "Today, listening to you, it seems like your brother is a very terrifying person..."

As soon as he asked this question, Wu Ya suddenly stopped talking.

She seemed a little lost, but she didn't refute it. After a while, she whispered, "People in the village are afraid of my brother. They all say that my brother will harm people, but my brother has always been very good to me, but I haven't seen my brother for a long time."

"Last time I went into the forest to find my brother, but he didn't see me and told me to leave quickly."

"..."

'It's time...'

Hu Ma could feel the little girl's emotions, so he carefully considered and slowly asked the most important question: "So, now that your father wants to refine Gu and kill your brother, what do you think?"

"My brother..."

Facing Hu Ma's simple and crude question, Wu Ya's expression was a little flustered, her eyes were filled with excited red, and after a pause, she said, "I..."

Hu Ma was also nervously waiting for her answer.

To distinguish whether the Wu Gong clan leader or Monkey Wine was the one lying, there was no doubt that Wu Ya was the most suitable. They both described each other as the most evil person, and only Wu Ya knew who was the most evil.

This was the most direct and effective method that Hu Ma could think of now.

It was obvious that when asked this question, Wu Ya's expression was a little flustered, hesitant to speak, and just when Hu Ma felt that he was about to get the answer, he saw Wu Ya lowered her head slightly and suddenly said:

"I want to help my father."

"Brother Wu Song, he is very good to me, but he is not good to others. He likes to kill people and refine Gu. He has killed many, many people..."

"My father also advised him many times before, not to kill people, saying that we witch people are few in number and weak, and if we offend people from outside, we will be driven away, or even killed..."

"But my brother always doesn't listen. He kills more and more people. He... he is very crazy, so crazy that everyone in our entire village is afraid of him..."

"Even, even the Witch God has issued an order to kill him..."

"This time my father is serious. Before coming, he asked the clansmen in the village for heart blood, promising them that this time he would definitely kill my brother, so that people in the village would no longer have to be afraid, afraid that he would refine Gu and harm people, and also afraid that he would bring disaster to the village..."

"..."

"Huh?"

Listening to Wu Ya's words, Hu Ma felt that something was wrong. He subconsciously glanced at her, and his pupils suddenly trembled.

Now that he was only lacking some blood food, his ascension cultivation had already been completed, and his seven orifices and five senses were naturally excellent. After undergoing the transformation from death to life, his eyesight was much better.

Although it was night now, and Wu Ya was still looking down, Hu Ma could still see clearly with this glance. He saw that she was speaking slowly, but a hint of panic and pain had flashed across her face.

The most important thing was to look at her mouth shape, which was getting more and more awkward.

Her mouth shape and the words she spoke were completely inconsistent, like a movie with unsynchronized sound and picture, with a strange sense of bizarreness.

Looking at it more intently, Hu Ma was even more shocked. He suddenly saw that Wu Ya's tongue, at some point, had turned into a forked tendril, like a snake.

It was this tendril that was trembling and making her current voice.

This was originally easy to distinguish in normal conversation, but her Mandarin was not very standard in the first place, which concealed it. If he didn't have extraordinary eyesight, he wouldn't even be able to discover the trick inside.

"Huff..."

He didn't act rashly, but silently listened to Wu Ya's words. After a long time, he nodded slowly and said, "I understand. In our Han people's words, it's called cleaning up the house."

Wu Ya nodded silently, still not looking up at Hu Ma.

"It's getting late, you should rest early, and help your father refine this Gu well, so that you can stop your brother from doing more wrong things..."

Hu Ma didn't say much, he smiled, got up, and said goodbye to return to his room. After turning around and closing the door, his face slowly changed. He turned around and looked out through the crack in the door, and saw that Wu Ya was still in the same place, but a little at a loss, looking towards the vicinity of the shack.

From the shadows next to her, a pale-faced young man emerged, took a deep look at Wu Ya, and whispered, "Sister Wu Ya, the clan leader is calling you over!"

"Yes."

Wu Ya slowly stood up, carefully reached into her mouth, touched her tongue, as if she had committed some terrible disaster, and slowly, carefully, walked towards the Gu refining shack.

"What kind of ability is this?"

In the room, Hu Ma was thinking anxiously: "He can actually change a person's tongue while they are talking?"

"Borrow someone else's mouth to say what you want to say?"

"..."

He had seen a lot of tricks, but it was the first time he had seen something so strange. At the same time, because of this bizarre scene, he inexplicably thought of the so-called Tongxin Gu that Monkey Wine had mentioned. (Tongxin Gu - Heart-linking Gu)

Since Wu Ya's words were not what she originally wanted to say, then what did she want to say?

Why did she borrow Wu Ya's mouth to say these things at this juncture?

Others wouldn't know the secret of the reincarnated between him and Monkey Wine, but they would probably think that he, the little manager from the Red Lantern Society, would probably be suspicious of what was happening here, so was this to reassure him?

If that was the case, then things were simple...

He took a deep breath and sat back on the bed. From the package next to the pillow, he pulled out the saw-tooth knife full of gaps. The current situation was certainly bizarre, but the Night Watcher's way of doing things had always been simple and direct.

"Manager Hu..."

Just then, someone knocked on the door, accompanied by a careful call. Hu Ma nodded, supported the knife, turned around and said, "Come in!"

He saw the door being pushed open, and it was Village Chief Zhuang and his two apprentices who walked in. Suddenly seeing Hu Ma's murderous appearance, they were also obviously startled. After a moment of hesitation, they quickly said to Hu Ma, "We have something important to ask you to decide..."

"Clan Leader Wu Gong is now worshiping the Gu, but he said that the red lantern hanging outside the door is affecting the progress of refining the Gu. He wants to ask us if we can temporarily take down the red lantern..."

"After he has refined the Gu, he will personally kill Wu Song. Then we can hang it up again..."

"..."

"Red lantern?"

Hu Ma was stunned for a moment when he heard the words, and then laughed, put the knife back into its scabbard, held it under his ribs, and went out, saying, "Let's go together."

He directly followed them to the shack in front of the valley, where Clan Leader Wu Gong was holding the Hundred Gu Basin of their clan, sitting upright in front of the Gu altar, dark and unclear as to what his expression was.

The girl Wu Ya and the pale-faced young man were standing on the left and right sides in front of the altar, silently looking outside the valley.

"Manager, once we take down the red lantern, I can worship the Gu."

Clan Leader Wu Gong in the shack said in a low voice, "But if we take down the red lantern, Wu Song will definitely attack us. He will know that I am refining a Gu to restrain him, and he will definitely try his best to stop it."

"Wu Ya and Neng Neng will deal with his Gu, but their skills are weaker, and I cannot take action during the Gu refining period. I am afraid that we will still need your help with the skills of the Night Watcher to have the confidence to deal with Wu Song's Twelve Pai Zi Gu." (Pai Zi Gu - literally "plaque Gu", name of a type of Gu)

"..."

Hu Ma looked intently and saw that the pale-faced young man was silent and expressionless, while Wu Ya was looking down, her expression unclear.

He smiled and said, "Then take it down."

"As long as you do things properly, I think the Red Lantern Goddess will not mind this little thing."

"..."

As he spoke, he glanced at Zhou Datong, who had followed him. Zhou Datong understood, his body was as light as a ghost, and he scurried up the archway and took down the red lantern.

As soon as the red lantern was taken down, the eerie red light that had enveloped the front of the valley for several days disappeared immediately. When it was hanging there, no one knew what it was for, but now that it was taken down, they felt empty in their hearts, as if they had suddenly lost some kind of protection.

At the same time, a rustling sound suddenly rang out outside the valley, and a flock of black crows fluttered up from the forest.

Village Chief Zhuang, who was close by, suddenly smelled the putrid stench in his nose, and panicked immediately, shouting, "Hide, this thing is the same kind that injured me before..."

(End of this chapter)