The Patriarch leaned on a wood-grained scepter with one hand and held a torch in the other, slowly walking down the stone steps into the cellar deep within the Gu cave.
The light of the torch barely illuminated the heavy stone door in front of him.
The stone door was carved with raised patterns, which were some bizarre runes.
He first bowed deeply toward the stone door, performing an extremely devout salute, before whispering, "Wu Li broke the sacrificial bowl, and I have already punished him severely. I respectfully welcome the High Priest out of seclusion."
The thick stone door seemed to be pushed by an invisible hand, making a dull rumbling sound as it slowly slid open to both sides.
In the flickering firelight, a figure slowly stepped out from the darkness.
He wore a black python-patterned cloak, with a large hood covering his head.
Under the dim light, the face beneath the hood could not be seen at all; that shadow was like a bottomless black hole.
Chai Xiaomi frowned tightly and moved a few steps closer, almost face-to-face with him to get a closer look.
But it was still pitch black, and nothing could be seen.
She had followed the Patriarch here just to see this legendary High Priest with her own eyes.
The crimson blood silkworms inside Wu Li's body were planted by the High Priest. She wanted to see exactly what kind of psychopath could bear to use such a small child as a vessel for raising Gu.
But after looking for a long time, Chai Xiaomi's heart inexplicably felt a chill. No matter how she looked, it was pitch black under the hood, always giving people the illusion that it was empty inside.
As the High Priest took a step forward, she was so frightened that she subconsciously took two steps back.
"Does your heart not ache? That is, after all, the seed left by your daughter."
The voice coming from under the hood sounded like an ancient bell ringing, dull and distant.
"High Priest, please forgive me!" The Patriarch looked terrified and hurriedly defended himself, "Five years ago, Wu Ying secretly eloped with a man from another tribe, fled Mount Chi, and gave birth to that vile spawn, causing the Saintess lineage to be cut off and the Voodoo Gu tribe to gradually decline. Even if she fell into the eighteenth level of hell, she could hardly atone for her sins! How could my heart ache for that child?"
"If it weren't for the fact that he has the purest blood in his body and is still useful to the High Priest for raising Gu, I would have tied him to the divine tree and burned him alive as a sacrifice to the heavens long ago!"
The High Priest seemed a bit regretful and sighed softly, "It's just a pity that the blood of the Saintess can still be passed down from generation to generation through female infants, but the purest blood cannot be continued through offspring."
The Saintess lineage...
Just now, when the Patriarch was whipping Wu Li, he had mentioned it.
Chai Xiaomi tried hard to recall and finally remembered the records in the original novel.
Historically, the ones with the highest Gu-raising skills in the Voodoo Gu tribe were all the Saintess. They carried ancient and pure bloodlines, passed down in a continuous line. Without exception, a Saintess would give birth to a female infant after marriage, inheriting the blood of the Saintess.
And listening to the Patriarch's meaning, his daughter, as the Saintess, eloped with a man from another tribe and ended up giving birth to a male infant.
The bloodline of the Saintess was thus broken.
But it just so happened that this male infant had the even more precious purest blood, which was why they spared Wu Li's life.
However, the High Priest's next words instantly overturned Chai Xiaomi's guess.
"Burned alive as a sacrifice to the heavens?" The High Priest laughed softly, "Has the Patriarch forgotten that one who possesses the purest blood is immortal. Otherwise, being exposed to the wind and sun, drenched by rain and frost, and suffering from hunger and cold, an ordinary person would have long been plagued by diseases and at death's door."
Chai Xiaomi's heart skipped a beat.
So they hadn't spared Wu Li.
It was that he simply couldn't die.
Wind, sun, rain, hunger, and cold...
Was this the kind of life he had lived since he was a child?
She returned to little Wu Li's side once again.
The ground was being scorched by the hot sun.
Chai Xiaomi couldn't feel the temperature, but visually estimating the heat waves rising from the ground, the surface temperature was probably hot enough to fry a raw egg directly.
Although the injuries on Wu Li's body were slowly recovering, the pain was still clear.
Only when no one was around would he quietly let out some small groans, the pain causing his lips to twitch.
He licked his dry, pale lips, looking very thirsty.
Little Wu Li struggled to get up. The straw sandals on his feet were already tattered, barely tied to his ankles by a few straw ropes.
With every step he took, the scorching ground burned him so much that he trembled slightly.
Chai Xiaomi silently followed by his side, her chest feeling heavy as if something was blocking it.
If she could, she really wanted to pick him up so his feet wouldn't be roasted.
Unknowingly, she followed him to a familiar place.
That stinking ditch was what Chai Xiaomi had seen when she first came to the Voodoo Gu tribe's village.
The reason she had a deep impression of it was because Wu Li had intentionally played a trick on her back then, tricking her into drinking the water inside.
And at this moment, that small figure was kneeling by the ditch, cupping the muddy and stinking water with both hands and gulping it down.
Chai Xiaomi watched, dumbfounded, almost unable to imagine how he could drink that pungent water.
After a few mouthfuls, Wu Li suddenly muttered to himself, "This is sugar water, very, very sweet sugar water."
His voice still had a childish tone, but his tone was unusually certain, as if just by saying so, the water would really become sweet.
So this was how he managed to drink it.
Turning on self-hypnosis.
Chai Xiaomi's eyes suddenly grew hot. She crouched down beside him and couldn't help but say fiercely, "Hey, Little One! Stop drinking, there are bugs in this water, you'll get sick if you drink it!"
She had wandered around the village several times and clearly saw several clear water wells, and there was also a quiet lake on the edge of the village.
Why didn't he go there to get water?
Later, through observation, Chai Xiaomi found out that Wu Li was not allowed to touch anything in the village without permission, including the water sources shared by the tribespeople.
If he went to the mountains to fetch spring water, he would have to walk a very long mountain path and also need a container to carry it back, which was simply too difficult for someone his age.
Fortunately, his small head held a lot of intelligence.
After drinking from the stinking ditch for a few days, little Wu Li thought of a solution.
The sky suddenly darkened, and lead-gray clouds, like they had soaked up ink, pressed heavily towards the earth.
Chai Xiaomi saw Wu Li pick a few large lotus leaves, carefully prop them up with branches, and quietly wait for the rain to fall.
Beside the two lotus leaves, a large and a small head leaned close together.
Two pairs of eyes stared unblinking as the rainwater gradually accumulated, the falling drops splashing tiny ripples that spread across the green leaf surfaces.
Chai Xiaomi's head was not reflected on the water's surface; she was transparent.
But through the reflection in the water, Chai Xiaomi noticed that Wu Li was carefully washing his face with the rainwater.
That little face that was always dirty was finally washed clean and bright.
Chai Xiaomi looked up and almost fainted from his cuteness.
His childish face was as pretty as a little girl's!
Unfortunately, this dusty pearl was still buried in the filth most of the time.
The tribespeople ordered him to do all kinds of dirty and tiring chores, and after he finished, he would turn back into a dusty, dirty little bun.
It wouldn't rain every day, but fortunately, Wu Li used this method to store a lot of rainwater, so he finally didn't have to drink the water from the stinking ditch anymore.
Chai Xiaomi quietly breathed a sigh of relief. In the days when no one taught him any survival skills, he relied entirely on himself to figure things out bit by bit and learned how to survive.
In this illusory world, time seemed to have been fast-forwarded, flowing extremely fast.
Chai Xiaomi was clearly just a bystander, yet she felt like someone who was experiencing it all firsthand.
She silently "stayed" by little Wu Li's side.
She watched him forage for wild fruits to stave off his hunger, but the fruits could never truly fill his stomach. Sometimes, when the starvation became absolutely unbearable, he would stealthily creep toward the houses in the village. At one house, a woman had cooked sour soup pork for her child. She mixed the leftover broth with rice and dumped it into a dog bowl to feed their dog.
When no one was looking, Wu Li swiftly reached out and grabbed a handful.
But he was still caught by the man of the house.
Amidst a barrage of curses, they even threw leftover bones at his feet, sneering, "Eat up! It's a reward for you, you little mutt!"
That night, the haystack under the tree was deliberately set on fire by that family.
Wu Li never had a real shelter to begin with.
That haystack was where he slept every night.
With the haystack burned to ashes, his home was gone, too.
