The Wicked System: Path of the Devourer Chapter 30 The Black Silkworm

"Clumsy movements—not a whisker of formal training, and she's trying to raise gu. Whoever taught her this was barely a half-wit themselves—look, even the way she put on the blood robe is wrong."

Zhang Wenbin shook his head. Apparently the practitioner's instinct was strong enough in him that he felt the urge to stride out and give her a hands-on correction.

"Wait—Master—"

Sharp as ever, Xu Fei seized on the key point and asked, trembling, "Gu-raising doesn't always succeed, does it? And if it fails—what happens?"

Zhang Wenbin stroked his chin. "Depends what she's raising. Purely lethal gu—the simpler kind—if it fails, the worst outcome is a violent death. But if it's the kind that targets the soul or acts on the three ethereal and seven corporeal souls… the backlash can produce almost any result. Mild cases: shattered mind, vegetative state, severe intellectual disability. Worse cases: the soul is scattered entirely, never to be reborn—a fate worse than that ghost-infant, because at least that infant's soul still existed."

Xu Fei's voice trembled: "Master—will my daughter's gu… succeed?"

Zhang Wenbin shook his head. "No matter what she's raising, the odds aren't good. She's entirely self-taught—probably came across some method somewhere and is feeling her way through it alone. Without a proper master, these things go wrong very easily."

"That blood robe alone is already wrong. Wearing the blood robe is a solemn act of reverence toward heaven and earth—you wear it properly. Your daughter just threw it on and her cleavage was already showing. Then there's the rooster blood—after you bleed the bird, you collect the rooster comb and dry it in the yin light, grind it to powder, and apply it to your face before the ritual to mask your own living yang energy."

"Gu must be raised in a sealed earthenware crock. The dedicated practitioner even steals bones from grave urns for it. Using plastic bins is farcical. And I see no proper ritual implements at all—only that brass censer, which is at least somewhat appropriate, except it's filled with sand rather than incense ash that's been stirred with rooster blood."

"Honestly—this is like watching a toddler play house. Anyone with even passing knowledge of the craft would be coughing blood."

As Zhang Wenbin clicked his tongue in scorn, Xu Fei's face had gone entirely pale. Half to herself, half to the air, she was murmuring, "No, no—I have to stop her—this child has lost her mind—how could she—"

She stumbled forward—and Zhang Wenbin caught her instantly, one arm around her waist, the other clamped over her mouth. "Do you want to kill her?! The most absolute prohibition during a ritual is interference—if anyone breaks the circle now, even I can't predict the outcome."

This was not an exaggeration. In both orthodox and dark paths alike, interrupting a ritual mid-way was catastrophic—the consequences sometimes exceeded even the practitioner's worst imaginings.

Xu Fei froze, no longer daring to move. The mist over her eyes now had nothing to do with desire—it was a pure, grieving terror of a mother, as she kept her gaze locked on the girl inside the room.

Yang Leguo had pushed both boxes open. She looked frightened, but with her little lips puffed out in determination she was willing herself to be brave. In any other context this would have been an irresistibly adorable sight—but Zhang Wenbin stayed his hands and released her. Under the warning she had received, Xu Fei did not dare breathe too loudly either, her eyes fixed unblinking on her daughter.

Yang Leguo opened the larger, white plastic box. She steeled herself with a series of long, trembling breaths, and then reached inside with a long pair of tongs.

After a moment's rummaging, what she extracted made Xu Fei clap both hands over her mouth to hold in her cry—for her daughter had produced a large, black scorpion, clearly alive and snapping aggressively.

Her daughter shrank back in alarm, then crept forward on tiptoe and dropped the scorpion into the black plastic box. She repeated this five times in total before snapping the lid shut with a visible sense of relief, then crouched before the dark container to observe it—like an earnest child watching a fascinating little game.

"That black box must contain her gu-in-progress. Raising gu requires five venomous creatures to fight each other—you feed the survivor. In the city, she'd have a hard time sourcing proper materials; she probably got these from the exotic pet markets."

"Honestly, a gu crock or a cattle skull is the proper vessel—using a plastic bin is absurd. The quality of anything raised in that would be questionable at best."

"At least she's been feeding it scorpions. If she'd used non-venomous spiders or the like, she'd have killed the project months ago."

Xu Fei's inward prayer was: Please let the gu die on its own and let this whole business be done with. If it just withered away naturally, perhaps that would be the end of it.

Zhang Wenbin read her thought and laughed coldly. "Don't dream. The fact that she's at the feeding-of-venomous-creatures stage means the gu is already established. No matter how weak it becomes, it's now a life-bound gu—her life-bound gu. If something goes wrong now, your daughter won't escape the backlash."

He pulled her into his arms, both hands kneading the round, full weight of her breasts, licking his lips. "What you should be praying for right now is that nothing goes wrong. A self-taught amateur trying to raise gu is reckless enough to make you want to laugh—and cry. Lose control for even a moment and the backlash will find her."

"She's like a two-year-old clutching a knife, and very likely to cut herself. And that's what I find interesting about it—a complete beginner stumbling toward something she can't entirely predict. You never know what might come crawling out of those boxes."

Xu Fei's blood had gone cold. Her voice dropped to a frightened whisper: "Master—please save my daughter. She's so young—"

Zhang Wenbin chuckled softly. "Teacher Xu, I don't call it interesting because your daughter is doing anything clever. It's interesting because she's so dangerously reckless—and that kind of recklessness almost always points to one very strong motive. She didn't wander into this by accident."

"If something goes wrong—I can intervene. After all, I'm not about to let a perfectly good little toy break before I've had my fun with it."

Just then, the small black plastic box began to shake—a violent rattling, as if fierce combat was taking place inside. Yang Leguo's face went taut; she clasped her hands together in what looked like prayer.

"Do you see that expression? It's because right now the gu is, in a way, part of her—like something she raised with her own hands. Notice how she looks—isn't it a little like you?"

Xu Fei looked more closely, and felt the truth of it. In that grave, focused expression on her daughter's face, she recognized something—something that made even her own mother's heart feel briefly foreign to it.

A moment passed, and then Yang Leguo relaxed with a visible rush of relief. On the face of that young girl appeared an expression of maternal warmth wholly incongruous with her age—a tenderness that was almost unsettling.

She rose slowly, gently removed the blood robe and folded it back into the wardrobe. When she returned to the black box she was facing away from the walk-in wardrobe.

Without hesitation, she slipped off the last thing covering her—and in the fleeting instant that she bent forward, the cleft of her tender sex was faintly visible. Identical to her mother's.

Pale and soft and pink—like a plump little bun with a delicate crease pressed down the middle. That crease, so slight, so carefully sealed, guarded the most bashful ground of a girl's youth. One could not help wanting to pry it open and discover what lay within.

Zhang Wenbin's breath quickened despite himself. His voice, when he spoke, was low and rough: "Teacher Xu—you and your daughter are both little white tigers, I see. As expected—every female of Three-Yin or above tends to be. The old texts don't lie."

"Look at the two of you—mother and daughter, both perfect little slits. She's just a miniature version of you, especially the way the labia close so neatly—like an adorable little bun. This little girl's cunt is as adorable as she is."

Listening to that filthy mouth deliver its obscene appraisal of her daughter's most intimate parts—as a mother, Xu Fei felt a shame that was bone-deep and consuming. And yet she did not dare breathe a word of objection.

The cock still stood rigid against her hip, twitching rhythmically—making utterly clear just how aroused he was by the sight of her daughter's pale, tender sex.

"Greedy little creature. You've had enough for today—you scared me half to death."

Yang Leguo stood upright—her body flawlessly white, milk-smooth, every inch of her soft perfection pressed close. Legs together, mound rounded and swollen with youth, not a thread of clothing anywhere. The tiny, flawless loli—tender and adorable and somehow radiating an absolute temptation toward violation.

As she spoke, Yang Leguo bent forward and extended both hands with utmost care into the black plastic box.

Xu Fei stared, eyes wide. Her daughter's palms held something—but they were too far away to make it out clearly.

"It's a silkworm!"

Zhang Wenbin resumed his idle play with the full, ripe tits, and smiled. "A complete amateur, and probably not even aware that she herself is a Four-Yin female—anyone else attempting this would have been in serious trouble long ago. But she managed to cultivate a silkworm gu. I can only say your daughter has remarkable luck."

"Master—that thing is the gu?"

Xu Fei thought it all very strange. A silkworm was not one of the five venomous creatures. And yet that tiny black worm had apparently eaten all those live scorpions. It was barely the size of a finger.

"Your daughter's life-bound gu—" Zhang Wenbin narrowed his eyes, "—the girl has quite the fate working in her favor. A proper apprentice wouldn't jump straight to gu-raising—you start from the beginning, from the five venoms. Yet she managed to cultivate a black silkworm-gu, apparently with a specific goal already in mind."

"Hehe—it's tickly! I know, I know—let's tidy up and go to sleep!"

The black silkworm seemed very lively—it had begun to crawl across the pale canvas of Yang Leguo's body. The little loli giggled, watching it with all the patient fondness of a mother indulging a restless child.

She tidied away her things slowly, then lay back onto the bed, her clear voice calling softly, "Then I'll keep you company until you fall asleep." She lay on her back, hands folded over her stomach, and gently closed her eyes. "Even Mama doesn't know what name to give you yet," she murmured sweetly. "We'll have to find you a beautiful one."

The black silkworm seemed to understand human speech. It traversed her shoulder, crept upward across her cheek, wandered briefly—and then settled squarely on her forehead without moving.

"What… what is this?" Xu Fei stared, filled with a strange feeling she couldn't name.

Zhang Wenbin passed his hand briefly across her line of sight—and when Xu Fei looked again the scene had transformed entirely. The black silkworm on her daughter's forehead looked as though it had fused with her body—its presence woven perfectly, naturally into her aura.

Threads of black light radiated from the silkworm's body, tracing along every vessel and meridian, the flow serene and utterly harmonious.

"It's now a part of your daughter. This is the meditative state—it allows the gu to blossom more fully and grows the bond between your daughter's spirit and its presence. Every gu-raiser tends their gu the way a parent tends a child."

Zhang Wenbin smiled softly. "Before, when you felt I was being easy to get along with—that was because I was deliberately suppressing my aura. If I hadn't kept it contained, the little creature would have been frightened, and your daughter's life would have been in very real danger."

"A self-taught amateur using a silkworm as a gu vessel—if she hadn't had the particular blessing of the Four-Yin body, her crude methods would have gotten her killed by the gu long ago."

Zhang Wenbin released her now, lit a cigarette, and drew on it with a lazy, satisfied air, grinning. "Come then, Teacher Xu. Now we can go in for a closer look."

"No—won't that disturb her?" Xu Fei startled, and instinctively moved to put her clothes back on.

Zhang Wenbin was not about to allow that. He caught her before she'd taken a step and pulled her back, suppressing his grin with visible effort. "The gu isn't fully formed yet. Only when it's entirely safe does a gu-raiser enter meditation with the gu. Right now they've already merged into a single form and are wandering the inner landscape together—even if I took your daughter right now, she wouldn't feel a thing."

Xu Fei steeled herself and bit down, then followed him out of the wardrobe.

She walked behind him in a kind of daze. On Zhang Wenbin's face was a glow of undisguised excitement. The enormous cock stood at its full, arresting height—twitching with his pulse—as he smiled his ominous smile and stepped toward the girl on the bed, lying bare and still as a sleeping figure in a painting.