Chapter 644: From the Same Root

The more critical the moment, the less I could afford to act rashly. I adjusted my angle and finally got a clear look at the man's face.

"Gu Bei? Wasn't he dragged into the water tank by the monster? Why is he here?"

I had assumed the captured man was Chen Mo or Zhang Heng. I never expected it to be him.

He was completely drenched, and his tattered suit was covered in mud. His body was twitching slightly; he was probably still alive.

"He's a live show streamer? Impossible."

Amid my surprise, I heard Wang Wu draw a sharp breath beside me. "No wonder the White Fur and the corpses suddenly attacked us. He's the reason we were exposed. Damn it, I should have just killed him!"

Following Wang Wu's gaze, I spotted something completely out of place among the talismans and divine runes on the other side of the sand table: Gu Bei's phone.

Chen Jiuge must have seen those kidnapping texts and realized that Wang Wu had probably defected and intended to ally with the Uncorrupted Bone to escape.

That perfectly explained why the White Fur had suddenly attacked Wang Wu and me.

"Stop deceiving yourself. Your master has already seen through you," I said, pointing at Chen Jiuge inside the grand array. "Your best choice now is to cooperate with me. Let's team up and kill him."

Chen Jiuge's state atop the sand table was strange. His eyes were shut tight, his expression savage. Wang Wu and I had closed to within a dozen meters of him, yet he remained completely unresponsive. It was as if the inside and outside of the array were two entirely different worlds.

I voiced my confusion to Wang Wu, and the traitor revealed a great deal of vital information.

"The reason Mr. Paper designed this place as an array within an array is that one cannot afford any distractions during large-scale corpse control." Wang Wu pointed to the talismans beside him. "They serve two purposes: protection and early warning. That's why I stopped you from rushing in. Mr. Chen's consciousness is anchored to the grand array. All the White Worms act as his eyes and sensory tentacles to perceive the outside world. This hall is the only exception. To prevent the White Worms from damaging the talisman array, there isn't a single one in here."

Prompted by Wang Wu's explanation, I finally noticed that the walls of the hall were a perfectly normal color. This was a classic case of the darkest spot being right beneath the lamp.

"The array core is his only blind spot. Chen Jiuge will figure that out soon enough. I need to kill him before he snaps out of it!"

Killing someone was simple, but breaking the array was hard.

While Wang Wu and I were observing, an anomaly occurred with Gu Bei, who was slumped on the ground like a puddle of mud. His head drooped, pressing against the floor, and his body stopped twitching.

"Why did Chen Jiuge drag Gu Bei into the grand array? If he just wanted useful information, taking the phone would have been enough." A faint sense of unease rose within me, and it soon became reality.

Drenched from head to toe, Gu Bei looked as if he had been fished out of a vat of chemical solution. His skin was pale and covered in countless fine wounds that looked like fingernail scratches.

"His current state looks a lot like someone who drowned." But the true horror was yet to come. Not long after, Gu Bei's fingers twitched slightly. His head, still pressed against the floor, slowly twisted around like a wound-up mechanical toy.

"I get it now!" Wang Wu cried out. "Chen is preparing to refine Gu Bei into a living corpse! Then he's going to send him into the crypt to interfere with the Uncorrupted Bone!"

"What do you mean? Why does he need to turn Gu Bei into a living corpse before he can enter the crypt?"

I looked back to see Wang Wu's complexion growing worse by the second. "You don't understand. The constitution of the Gu clan descendants is extremely unique. I once heard Mr. Paper say that people with this kind of white blood were known as White Ancestors in ancient times. In uncivilized eras, some people even treated them as living elixirs, specifically drinking their blood to nourish themselves."

"White Ancestors? Didn't their whole family suffer from congenital leukemia? That's an unhealthy kind of white."

"Gu Bei and his daughter both possess this constitution. If it were really leukemia, why didn't they show any symptoms of blood cancer?" Wang Wu firmly believed this was a highly unique physical trait. "Many years ago, Mr. Paper's seal on the Uncorrupted Bone was different from how it is now. He hadn't set up the Suspended Coffin; he merely trapped it within the grand array. I was specifically put in charge of feeding it blood. I used that opportunity to strike a deal with the Uncorrupted Bone. To break the venomous curse Mr. Paper had planted in me, she expended years of accumulated power to squeeze a single drop of her own blood out from the coffin. The color of that blood was pure white."

"The Uncorrupted Bone and the White Ancestor constitution share the exact same origin. Only people with this constitution can approach the crypt without being influenced by the Uncorrupted Bone or targeted by the corpse qi radiating from the coffin."

"The Uncorrupted Bone that Mr. Paper originally refined didn't actually possess any self-awareness. Because Gu Tongtong's constitution was so similar to it, it locked eyes with her the moment the coffin was opened. Through a twist of fate, its body was ultimately possessed by Gu Tongtong's consciousness."

"For twenty years, Mr. Paper exhausted every method he knew, but he couldn't find a way to exorcise Gu Tongtong's will. He had no choice but to temporarily seal her consciousness somewhere inside the Uncorrupted Bone's body, ensuring that Gu Tongtong couldn't fully control it either."

I nodded to myself. "So, Chen Jiuge is turning Gu Bei into a living corpse so he can send him down to fight Gu Tongtong for control of the Uncorrupted Bone?"

"Actually, Mr. Paper has been searching for anyone with a constitution similar to the White Ancestors all these years. But finding one person in a vast sea of humanity is nearly impossible. Even after twenty years, he never found one."

Wang Wu continued talking, but I tuned out the rest. In truth, ever since I discovered that the Two-Faced Buddha was the mastermind manipulating the Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital from the shadows, I had formed several theories.

Why did the Two-Faced Buddha want the Uncorrupted Bone so badly?

Did he want to use the Uncorrupted Bone as his new body?

Ninefold Nether Opening, immortal and imperishable. The Uncorrupted Bone's original shell possessed no self-awareness. If someone were to attach a heaven-defying fate pattern to it now, it would give birth to a terrifying, flawless monster.

I still hadn't figured out the Two-Faced Buddha's true endgame, but with every passing live broadcast, I was inching closer to the truth.

I cast a cold look at Gu Bei beside the sand table, then glanced at Wang Wu. "Mr. Paper searched for twenty years and came up empty? Yet you managed to find one so easily. That's extremely suspicious."

"Are you doubting me?" Wang Wu opened his mouth to argue, but I raised a hand to cut him off.

"I am doubting you. I suspect Mr. Paper has been using you this entire time! You managed to contact the Uncorrupted Bone and coax crucial information out of it—there's a high chance Mr. Paper orchestrated that entire chain of events." My gaze darkened. "He deliberately let you do all this just to track down someone with the White Ancestor constitution so they could be lured into the hospital."

Wang Wu was a victim of the fact that those involved are blind, while I stood on the outside and analyzed the situation calmly.

With Wang Wu's limited tricks, it was impossible for him to deceive a feng shui master like Mr. Paper. The answer was simple: Mr. Paper had allowed all of this to happen on purpose.

His goal was to find someone with a constitution from the same root and origin as Gu Tongtong, using that physical trait to enter the crypt and completely seize control of the Uncorrupted Bone.

The tables had turned. Wang Wu had no idea this was a trap deliberately set by Mr. Paper, and he had happily walked right into it. On the flip side, Mr. Paper could never have predicted that the Underworld Live Show would intervene at the most critical moment, turning the Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital into a broadcast venue and sending multiple live show streamers directly into the fray.

This massive imbalance of information was exactly what had led to the current chaotic situation.

Now, until life and death were decided, no one could safely claim they would be the ultimate winner.

"We have to stop him!"

While Wang Wu and I were talking, Gu Bei's body underwent a new transformation.

He raised his head like a lowly servant. With his lower body plastered to the floor, he arched his upper half upward, prostrating himself right in front of Chen Jiuge.

The talismans within the grand array lit up. Looking down from our vantage point, I could see that someone had carved a cross into the crown of Gu Bei's head with a knife.

The wound was shallow. Just then, he stretched his head toward the edge of the sand table.

From the wide stone table, a stream of fine silver sand flowed straight into the wound on his crown, sinking beneath his skin to peel his scalp off like liquid mercury.

The scene was so gruesome and horrifying that even a "battle-hardened" veteran like me felt a chilling numbness spread across my scalp.

As the silver sand poured inside him, it reacted with the chemical solution soaking Gu Bei. His eyes bulged out of his skull, and a sickening, rattling sound tore from his throat. A few moments later, several fine strands of White Fur sprouted directly from his wound.

"Corpse reanimation!" I didn't hesitate for another second. I took a step back, looking at Wang Wu's back, and pulled out my Live Show Phone to secretly ask Daoist master Wan for help.