Chapter 14: Feeling a Bit Overstuffed

Watching as the woman's upper body crawled halfway out from the pig's belly, Gu Changqing raised a gun and aimed it at her head.

Bang!

With the gunshot, a bullet hole appeared on the woman's forehead, but it slowly closed back up, restoring itself.

Her movements didn't falter in the slightest. In fact, she was even faster than before; in an instant, her entire upper body had wriggled free.

Gu Changqing tossed the gun aside without hesitation. He hadn't expected it to be effective. Back at the branch office, others had mentioned that if, during a mission, you encountered something bizarre, you were to notify the guards. If guns worked, what would be the point of calling them? Just to clean up the aftermath?

A small jade knife appeared in Gu Changqing's hand, its polished sheen reflecting the light from the window onto his face. Though the knife looked like a simple piece of jade, it was in fact a relic passed down from the Blood Sovereign's cultivation lineage—razor-sharp, unyieldingly hard, and capable of absorbing and refining blood energy. It was a true treasure.

A brilliant smile played on Gu Changqing's lips as his blood surged within him, the sound of rushing water echoing from his body. With a single push of his foot, he shot toward the woman, bringing his heel down on her head with tremendous force.

The stomp was like that of an elephant—crushing and unstoppable.

The woman's head spun a full 180 degrees, her eyes glinting with such malice that it seemed almost tangible. She rammed her skull upward in retaliation.

Boom!

The ground trembled beneath them.

Gu Changqing felt the resistance beneath his foot was even greater than before; he was launched over two meters into the air. Yet, using the momentum, he flipped himself upside down, driving the jade knife into the woman's back.

The eerie infant inside her had just begun to crawl out of her belly. Before it could leap at him, both let out a piercing shriek. Their bodies withered, and fine streams of blood were drawn into Gu Changqing through the blade.

Gu Changqing's own blood energy surged yet again. As it rose to his face, his complexion flushed red, and his veins crawled across his skin like writhing snakes.

“Hiss—” Gu Changqing gritted his teeth, a smile spreading across his lips. He stomped the ground.

Boom!

The floor cracked beneath him, webbing with fissures.

He launched into a set of Hong Fist forms, his blood energy nearly boiling, muscles bulging and twisting with each movement.

“Hoo—” After a while, his blood energy gradually settled.

One by one, the bulging veins receded beneath his skin.

“I might have overdone it...” Gu Changqing rubbed his stomach, feeling an overwhelming sense of fullness from head to toe.

“I'll rest a few hours before trying again...”

He decided he should go out for a walk to digest.

Whether crawling out of a pig or a sheep, there wasn’t much difference—just a bit more strength and denser blood energy. But not nearly enough to double the effect—at most, a twenty to thirty percent increase.

Moreover, though these things were stronger and faster, they lacked offensive abilities and weren’t difficult to handle.

Gu Changqing glanced at the remaining glass tubes in the box. He’d suspected the liquid inside was suspicious, but he hadn’t expected it to be this strange.

“What exactly was that thing?”

“Why was it the same both times?”

“If I use it again, will it still be her crawling out?”

Gu Changqing mused that perhaps he should learn some venomous cultivation methods, like those involving mother and child curses—if they even existed in this world.

Once he left the mountains, he’d be sure to look into it properly. Others would need to find the right mother and child and use all sorts of cruel, inhumane rituals for their cultivation, but his method was much simpler!

A sense of satisfaction washed over Gu Changqing, as if he’d found a loophole in the system.

He also realized something: whether it was the eerie woman and infant, or the thing inside the previous house, they were all alive.

As bizarre and inhuman as they seemed, they were alive—hence he could absorb their blood energy.

He didn’t know what they were or how they were created, but there would be time to learn. Eventually, all would be revealed.

What intrigued him more was why such things would be in Old Blade’s safe. Old Blade was nothing but an ordinary gang leader; at his level, he shouldn’t have access to things like this.

“I hope Old Blade wakes up safely,” Gu Changqing thought. He wouldn’t mind if Old Blade survived.

“Also, these things are valuable. Now that they’re in my hands, someone is bound to be anxious.”

He considered staking out near the bar, but quickly dismissed the idea. He didn’t have the patience for that.

Let’s see who makes the first move.

Gu Changqing put the box in his bag. Before he could leave, someone knocked on the warehouse door.

He opened it to find two men standing outside, with a middle-aged man watching from a distance.

“Security Bureau! We received a report of gunshots from here. We need to investigate,” one of them said, flashing his badge. The other rested a hand on his hip, ready to draw his gun at any moment.

“Same team,” Gu Changqing replied, presenting his own credentials.

This identity made everything much more convenient.

“South District Security Bureau. What brings you here?” Their tone softened. “What was that gunshot about?”

“Come in and see for yourselves. There’s something strange here—I fired a shot, but it was useless. I was just about to call the guards.”

Inside, they saw the livestock tied up—a pig and a sheep, both drained dry, their bodies little more than skin stretched over bone, bellies torn open from within.

Clearly, nothing a human could have done.

Gu Changqing picked a bullet off the ground and tossed it to them.

“I shot that thing earlier. Look, the bullet is untouched, as if it never hit anything.”

They examined the bullet, its surface still pristine, with none of the marks a normal impact would leave.

Their doubts evaporated.

“We won’t trouble you any further,” they said, quickly turning to leave. The further from these unnatural things, the better.

Gu Changqing left as well, locking the warehouse behind him and driving to the hospital to check on Old Blade.

The news wasn’t good.

Given his current condition, it seemed unlikely he would ever wake.

Standing outside the intensive care unit, Gu Changqing peered through the glass and told the nurse, “If there’s any sign of him waking, let me know.”

He considered calling Zhang Kun and Ma Xingle to keep watch near the bar, but thought better of it—most of Old Blade’s men had already been arrested and the case was nearly closed. Placing his own people on a stakeout outside the bar would be hard to justify at the bureau.

A new idea occurred to him: “If anyone else knows anything... it would be the Sea Gang’s boss.”

He decided he’d pay the Sea Gang’s boss a visit that evening—for a nice, long talk about life.