Chapter 2370 — When Words Fail
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
It was not that Piao Huotai feared them; it was simply that Piao Huotai's foundation did not lie here. In these parts, his identity was that of the King of Gamblers, and he did not wish to stir up trouble—especially since, before setting out, his master had warned him that this region was full of hidden masters, and that it would be best not to make enemies over trifles.
But it was not that Piao Huotai wanted to make an enemy; it was because he could not let Chen Xi go.
Piao Huotai harbored a secret. To the outside world, he was regarded as a most lecherous man of extraordinary endowment, yet he himself knew full well that he was no man of extraordinary endowment at all—he was a demonic cultivator! What he cultivated was different from that of ordinary cultivators.
His master had once served a formidable elder of Miao territory, and that elder had himself been a demonic cultivator who achieved his cultivation through the ritual refinement of gu poison. The elder, however, had been wiped out by others; his master had swallowed his humiliation and lain low for many years, until at last he found his chance and made good his escape, fleeing to Southeast Asia, where he established his own school and founded a new sect—the Right Miao Sect!
Every member of this sect cultivated a mutated form of gu poison. Yet the materials his master had obtained back then were incomplete, riddled with flaws, and most who attempted the ritual refinement of this gu poison perished. Only Piao Huotai succeeded.
However, if Piao Huotai wished the gu poison within his body to grow ever stronger, he had to refine it with the blood of virgins. And so it was not lust that drove him at all, but a secret he could never reveal.
Once this gu poison reached great completion, it rendered the body impervious to blade and spear, to water and fire. Though it could not match the fearsome heights of that grand patriarch of old, it could attain half his power—and even that was enough to rival those who had mastered the Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt techniques.
And Piao Huotai, who had known countless women, recognized Chen Xi's uniqueness at a single glance! Chen Xi was no ordinary young girl, but a cauldron of the finest quality for cultivation. Such a cauldron was unlike ordinary girls, who served their purpose only on the first night of shared bed; Chen Xi could endlessly supply aid to Piao Huotai's cultivation.
Therefore, even at the cost of offending Wei Zhao, Piao Huotai had to possess Chen Xi—even if it meant fleeing to Southeast Asia and never venturing out again, he would not let slip this chance of a lifetime!
Of course, his outward identity as a man of extraordinary endowment was also a disguise to conceal that he was a demonic cultivator! And his identity as the King of Gamblers was a disguise too, merely to better seek out the young girls he used as cultivation resources!
In truth, the reason he could become the King of Gamblers was simple: he could command a kind of gu worm called the ear-and-eye gu. Though such gu worms were exceedingly difficult to refine, and at present only his master could refine them, Piao Huotai was able to use them.
The so-called ear-and-eye gu was a kind of flying gu worm, tiny in size, that danced through the air and spread out across a radius of a dozen meters or even several hundred meters around Piao Huotai. These flying insects were Piao Huotai's ears and eyes: whatever they saw or heard was transmitted back to him. Thus Piao Huotai's rise to become the King of Gamblers rested entirely upon these gu worms known as the ear-and-eye gu!
As for any talk of extraordinary endowment, it was nothing but a pretext—yet Piao Huotai never bothered to correct it. When the false is taken for true, the true is taken for false; true or false, it mattered not, so long as he could borrow the identity of the King of Gamblers to ceaselessly seek out young girls and refine his demonic arts.