Fang Yuan calmly reached into his storage pouch.
One by one, clumps of materials fell from his fingers—withered bones ground into powder, viscera sealed in wax, fragments that still carried the faint resentment of their former owners.
They spilled across Jiaying's ruined abdomen, sank into the torn flesh, and vanished as though swallowed by a bottomless abyss.
The black cocoon resting atop her body trembled.
It pulsed—slow at first—then greedily, like something rediscovering the pleasure of feeding.
Its surface rippled, layers folding over one another as it began to swell, inch by inch, as though something inside was stretching its limbs for the first time.
Fang Yuan narrowed his eyes.
"…Is it... because she is old?" he muttered, more to himself than the corpse before him.
His gaze drifted downward.
Jiaying's body was no longer recognizable as a person.
Blood had long since soaked into the ground beneath her, leaving dark, sticky stains that refused to dry.
Her limbs were bent at angles that mocked human anatomy, her breasts collapsed inward like a broken shrine.
The stench of death clung to the air, thick enough to taste.
Fang Yuan nodded slowly, as if confirming a trivial hypothesis.
"That must be it."
There was no sorrow.
No hesitation.
He produced another pouch—this one writhing faintly.
With a flick of his wrist, he scattered its contents.
Gu worms poured out like a living black mist, buzzing, crawling, screeching softly as they struggled in midair.
The moment they drew near the cocoon, it reacted violently.
The black surface split into countless tiny pores, and with a sudden suction force, the Gu were ripped apart mid-flight and dragged inside.
Their death cries were short.
Wet.
Abruptly silenced.
The cocoon shuddered in delight.
Fang Yuan's lips curved.
"So that's how it is," he murmured, eyes glinting with cold understanding.
Without hesitation, he drew a blade.
Steel kissed flesh.
A thin cut opened across his palm, neat and controlled.
Blood welled up—not rushed, not wasted.
He held his hand over the cocoon, watching.
Tap.
The droplet fell.
The instant it touched the surface, the cocoon shimmered.
It was no longer matte black, but speckled with faint starlight, like a night sky smeared with oil.
The blood was absorbed instantly, as though it had been expected.
The cocoon is hungry.
Fang Yuan poured out yet another set of materials, rarer this time—items soaked in qi, fragments of endless failures.
They hovered near the cocoon… and remained untouched.
Because the cocoon ignored them.
It drank only his blood.
Slowly.
Reverently.
Soon the materials began to disappear anyway, one after another, dissolving into nothing as the cocoon shrank.
Its swollen form deflated, compressing inward, layer after layer folding neatly, as if the excess had finally been refined away.
Fifteen minutes passed.
The black mass had condensed into something smooth, pale, and disturbingly perfect.
An egg.
About the size of an ostrich's egg, its surface porcelain-white, faint veins pulsing beneath the shell like something breathing just out of sight.
Fang Yuan stared at it.
Then he spoke.
"Come."
Crack.
A hairline fracture appeared.
Crack.
Another followed, spreading like a spiderweb.
Then—
SCREEEECH—
A shrill, warped cry tore through the chamber, sharp enough to pierce the skull. It was not the sound of a newborn, nor of a beast—but something caught between hunger and recognition.
Fang Yuan's eyes lit up.
Joy—pure, unrestrained as the shell split open.
Something clawed its way out.
Eight legs unfolded first, slick with translucent fluid, scraping against the ground with an insectile rasp.
A swollen abdomen followed, segmented like a cockroach's, twitching as if testing its balance.
A barbed tail dragged behind it, curved and sharp like a scorpion's stinger, dripping with venomous ichor.
Wings unfurled last—delicate, iridescent, fluttering like a butterfly's, yet smeared with blood and membrane.
Then—
Its face emerged.
Human.
Unmistakably so.
A woman's face, eerily familiar, frozen at the age Jiaying had once been in her prime.
Smooth skin stretched too tightly over unnatural bone structure.
Her eyes were pits of black and crimson, swirling with madness and obedience.
Her nose tapered into a needle-like pincer, twitching as it tasted the air.
Her mouth opened.
Rows of sharp, uneven teeth glistened inside, stained dark, built not for speech—but for tearing flesh, for drinking blood down to the marrow.
She looked at Fang Yuan.
And Fang Yuan smiled.
"Success."
Fang Yuan slowly closed his fingers around the newborn abomination and lifted it from the shattered shell.
It was small—pathetically so—barely the size of a frog, light enough to be crushed with a careless squeeze. Yet the moment it rested in his palm, an instinctive revulsion crept through the air.
Its body was slick and warm, coated in half-coagulated blood and translucent membrane.
Threads of viscous fluid stretched and snapped as it shifted, its many legs spasming weakly, scraping against his skin like blunt needles.
The creature breathed.
Each breath was shallow and wet, accompanied by a faint sucking sound, as if it were still trying to drink from a womb that no longer existed.
Its human face twisted slightly, the remnants of Jiaying's youth distorted into something obscene.
The eyes—black flooded with red—rolled toward Fang Yuan, locking onto him with a devotion that bordered on madness.
Fang Yuan stared back.
His gaze was bottomless, cold enough to extinguish life by proximity alone.
There was no disgust, no curiosity, no triumph—only the detached calm of someone inspecting a finished refinement.
Slowly, he lifted his head and swept his eyes across the surroundings.
The room had been reduced to a slaughterhouse masquerading as a ritual chamber.
Blood coated every surface, layered thickly enough to dull the stone beneath it.
Some of it had dried into dark, cracked stains; the rest remained fresh, pooling in uneven puddles that reflected the dim light like broken mirrors.
Viscera clung to the corners of the room, giving off a sour stench that crawled into the lungs and refused to leave.
Fragments of flesh were everywhere—stepped on, smeared, indistinguishable from the ground itself.
This was not a place where death had occurred.
This was a place where death had been used.
Fang Yuan lowered his gaze back to the creature.
A thin line of blood leaked from its mouth, dripping onto his palm.
Its tail twitched, sharp and eager, piercing the air again and again as if sensing the lingering vitality soaked into the room.
The creature trembled—not from fear, but anticipation—its instincts screaming that the man holding it was both creator and food chain.
Fang Yuan felt the blood soaking into his skin.
He did not wipe it away.
After a brief pause, he spoke.
"You will be called the Blood Child Gu."