Fangxian Heretical Path

Chapter 239 Teacher's Kindness and Disciple's Respect
Inside the Gu Palace.

The head of the scaleless serpent was fully revealed from the darkness.

It was not a snake's head, but a human head.

If Fang Shu were here, he would recognize him at a glance as his friendly second senior brother, Hao Junliang.

Hao Junliang's snake body from the head down is the same toad-skinned snake that used to be coiled on the screen wall of the Gu Hall.

Hao Junliang stared in the direction Fang Shu had disappeared, and whispered, "Master, our sect now only has Junior Brother left. Could you, for the sake of our sect's bond, spare Junior Brother's life?"

"Live?"

Upon hearing this, the withered-looking Dragon Maiden Immortal immediately revealed a cold smile: "I give others a way to live, but have others ever given me a way to live?!"

Her eyes widened, fixed on Hao Junliang's head, her face contorted, and her laughter rang out like that of a night owl:
"Besides, I am your master. How could I possibly take your lives?"

"My dear disciple, don't you agree? If it weren't for your master, how could you have broken through the shackles, possessed this Foundation Establishment body, and achieved your desires?"

Upon hearing these words, Hao Junliang's eyes immediately revealed a look of pain.

Inside the Gu Palace, the Dragon Maiden Immortal stopped laughing and coldly gave the following orders:
"I only asked Fang Shu to help me gather herbs. Who do you take me for?"

But then, she changed the subject, and said through gritted teeth, "I never expected that back then I only made a casual move to improve my appearance and make up for my shortcomings."

Now, it has become our only hope.

As she spoke, the old woman stroked her utterly withered face, her eyes and face filled with resentment.

Suddenly.

Just then, worms resembling maggots and earthworms crawled out of her eye sockets, causing blood to flow from her eyes and her to scream in terror.

"My beauty, my magic!"

With a scream, the Dragon Maiden's body was enveloped in black energy. She immediately made a hand seal and cast a spell. Countless runes appeared on her body and rushed into her body, attempting to suppress the rampant Gu worms inside her.

But not only in her eye sockets, but also in her ears, nose, and other seven orifices, insects were emerging everywhere.

She suddenly reached out, grabbed Hao Junliang in front of her, and strangled him by the neck. She bit down and began sucking large mouthfuls of blood from Hao Junliang's body, blood that was hard to tell whether it was snake blood or human blood.

After a long while, Hao Junliang's breath weakened, and his huge snake body lay limply in the hall, unable to even lift his head.

The Dragon Maiden's aura finally stabilized, and the insects that had crawled out of her seven orifices were suppressed.

The woman regained her senses. She glanced indifferently at the long snake on the ground and said, "Considering your merit in helping me heal, I will not hold your act of disrespect against me today and will not punish you."

After he finished speaking...

The Dragon Maiden, her figure hunched over, slowly walked into the depths of the Gu Palace. She was no longer as ghostly as before, but looked exactly like an old woman.

It took Hao Junliang inside the Gu Palace a full quarter of an hour to recover after the other party disappeared.

"Junior Brother..." he murmured, his face pale.

Based on what the Immortal Longgu just said, it's clear that the other party didn't just ask Fang Shu to help gather herbs in the secret realm as they claimed.

Based on his understanding of the Dragon Maiden Immortal Clan and the Yin-Yang True Qi cultivated within his junior brother, it is highly likely that once Fang Shu returns from the secret realm, he too will become a medicinal plant of the Dragon Maiden Immortal Clan, just like him.

I just hope that, as she just said, the Dragon Maiden will spare Fang Shu's life out of consideration for their master-disciple relationship.

Lost in thought, Hao Junliang's face was contorted with pain, and he uttered weakly, "Master... it wasn't like this before."

………………

On the other side. After leaving the Gu Hall, Fang Shu kept his head down and didn't look around. He walked quickly until he was out of the Gu Hall before slowing down.

But at this moment, Fang Shu's face remained tense, and his expression showed no sign of relaxation.

His eyes shifted, and he thought to himself, "Why does Aunt Long seem like a completely different person?"

For a moment, Fang Shu even doubted whether his previous impressions of the Dragon Maiden's family were all false.

However, after careful recollection, all the clues in the past indicated that before he descended the mountain, although the Dragon Maiden was cold-hearted, she was indeed a frank person.

If he wasn't wrong about the other person back then, then there's only one reason.

That means that something major must have happened to the Dragon Maiden during the years he was down the mountain, which not only caused the hidden dangers in her body to become completely unbalanced, but also caused her mentality and even rationality to undergo earth-shattering changes!

Thinking about this, Fang Shu was quite curious.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of information, no matter how much he pondered, he couldn't come up with anything.

"Once my second senior brother comes out of seclusion, I can ask him and find out something," Fang Shu thought to himself.

However, to his surprise, it didn't take long before he roughly understood why the Dragon Maiden's attitude towards him had changed so drastically in just a few years.

After leaving the Gu Hall, he did not return to his cave, but instead headed towards where Senior Sister Fang Lu was.

Fang Lu was the person he was most important to in the temple, so naturally he had to pay him a visit in person upon returning to the mountain.

Fortunately, after receiving the message from the hall, Fang Lu knew that Fang Shu had returned to the mountain, so he waited for him in the hermitage and did not let Fang Shu make a wasted trip.

With a creak!
The door to the study opened, and the siblings met again, each carefully examining the other.

When they saw that both of them were fully recovered, genuine smiles appeared on their faces.

"Greetings, elder sister."

"Come in quickly!"

After a few pleasantries, the two walked into the room side by side as if they had never been separated before they came down the mountain.

However, upon entering the room, Fang Shu unexpectedly discovered that besides the deer, there was another living creature inside.

It was a small, snow-white deer, but it was different from the large white deer that Fang Lu had ridden before; this creature was a living being.

After a few words, Fang Shu learned that the little deer was a spirit pet that Fang Lu had specially raised. The two were now bound by life and death and helped each other.

"It is thanks to this little guy that I was able to barely survive these past few years of turmoil."

Fang Lu chuckled as she spoke, "By the way, it was also this thing that helped me retrieve the message you sent from the main hall. Otherwise, my sister wouldn't have known you had returned to the mountain today."

Upon hearing this, Fang Shu's heart stirred.

Keeping spirit pets to deliver messages is a common practice among immortals. Furthermore, many tasks that are inconvenient to perform personally can also be handled by spirit pets.

Fang Shu couldn't help but think to himself, "Although I don't have a spirit pet, I do have a spirit pet egg in my bag."

What he was referring to was the embryonic egg he obtained from the giant toad by the river after encountering the ghost-spirited immortal on his way down the mountain and slaying the ghost.

Unfortunately, although Fang Shu has tried to incubate this thing over the years, there has been no progress, and it is unknown when it will hatch.

Suddenly, Fang Lu's words interrupted Fang Shu's thoughts.

Upon hearing this, his expression changed, and he blurted out, "Is this true? The injury to the Gu Hall's Dragon Master was actually inflicted by Senior Sister!?"

(End of this chapter)