I Became the Alchemy Master by Picking Up Trash-Chapter 239 - 237: Tales of Folk Anomalies

"To be able to get Blind Huai’s token, you must be someone special! Are you a descendant of the Chu, Jiang, Chen, or Lin families?"

Although this girl dressed plainly, her demeanor was extraordinary, and being able to persuade the eccentric Chu Hui to hand over a personal token to ask for help—it couldn’t be that she was a descendant of the Chu Family?

Li Xing shook her head: "None of them, I am from the Li Family."

"Li Family?" The one-armed man frowned, he hadn’t heard of a noble family with the surname Li before he entered the tower. Could it be a newly risen family in recent years?

"Who is your family head? What do you people do?"

Li Xing stowed away the token and pointed to her own nose, saying:

"If nothing unexpected happens, I will be the head of the Li Family. I’m currently in the stage of accumulating wealth, doing whatever makes money, but for now, selling medicine is the main business. The Li Family doesn’t have any other members yet. Once we’ve grown in numbers, I’ll consider expanding into other areas. I believe that in the not-so-distant future, the Li Family will definitely become richer than the Chu Family."

The one-armed man was startled for a moment, then burst into unrestrained laughter, his laughter echoing throughout the silent Book Collection Pavilion. Fortunately, there were arrays in place, otherwise, everyone in the pavilion reading would have been disturbed.

The one-armed man only stopped laughing after tears formed at the corners of his eyes.

"Interesting, interesting! You’re a young girl with grand ambition, daring to outshine the Chu Family? But I like it! Just because of your ambition, you have my help without needing to use Blind Huai’s favor!"

The one-armed man casually tossed a scroll aside, sat up from a pile of books, with his long legs hanging outside the bookshelf, facing Li Xing directly.

"So, what do you want?"

"Senior, you have read extensively in the Book Collection Pavilion; have you ever seen a book mentioning a kind of three-eyed strange insect, which looks like a cicada, flies extremely fast, and can become invisible?"

"Well..." The one-armed man’s brows furrowed, as he muttered to himself while thinking: "A three-eyed strange bug? I’ve seen it somewhere... where could it be... let me think... got it—!"

The one-armed man’s eyes suddenly lit up, and he leapt off the bookshelf. A flying device appeared under his feet just in time, like a somersault cloud, carrying the one-armed man through the array, flying across the vast Book Collection Pavilion.

Li Xing followed closely behind him, her heart pounding like a drum, it seemed promising!

After flying for a quarter of an hour, the one-armed man’s flying device hovered under the "Bazaar Fiction" category, rifling through the bookshelves before finally finding a thread-bound book, which he tossed into Li Xing’s arms.

"Here, in the entire Book Collection Pavilion, only Songling Wanderer’s novel mentions the thing you’re looking for, called a three-eyed worm. It’s on page thirty-nine, read it yourself."

Li Xing quickly opened the book, found the story, and read it carefully. After reading, Li Xing’s expression became grave.

The story roughly describes how two young woodcutters, Zhang and Li, were friends and neighbors, going up the mountain to chop wood together every day, one to the south mountain, the other to the north mountain. After chopping wood, they would meet by a large pine tree halfway up the mountain to go home together.

One day, as Woodcutter Zhang reached the south mountain, he suddenly felt unwell, dizzy, weak, unable to stand, let alone chop wood, so he descended the mountain early.

Near the large pine tree where he and Woodcutter Li agreed to meet, Woodcutter Zhang experienced a sharp abdominal pain, so he squatted in a patch of tall grasses to relieve himself.

At that moment, he saw Woodcutter Li arriving, who also seemed to have not chopped any wood as his basket was nowhere to be seen.

Peculiarly, Li’s movements were stiff and clumsy, like a child just learning to walk, stumbling several times before finally making it to the large pine tree.

Woodcutter Zhang felt Li’s behavior was suspicious, so he continued to crouch in the grass to see what Li would do. What happened next frightened Zhang out of his wits.

He saw Li’s head split open like a pine cone from the center, from which a strange insect with three eyes on its head crawled out. After consuming Li’s brain, the bug became faintly transparent before disappearing completely.

Witnessing this bizarre event scared Zhang out of his wits; he scrambled down the mountain to tell his fellow villagers. When they arrived at the large pine tree with weapons, Li’s body had already been gnawed incomplete by a Star Beast, and they couldn’t even find where his head had gone.

Without evidence, no one believed Zhang’s story.

By coincidence, Songling Wanderer was visiting his hometown to pay respects to his ancestors and was staying in this village. He thought Zhang didn’t appear to be lying and thus documented this story as a strange tale in his book of supernatural fiction.

Since Songling Wanderer’s stories were known for lacking factual basis and consisted mostly of ghost and monster stories, this particular tale mentioned as a folk legend was also dismissed as fiction for thousands of years.

If Li Xing hadn’t personally seen the three-eyed strange cicada, she would’ve thought it was just a ghost story like "Painted Skin," but upon closer reflection, the truthfulness of the story was terrifyingly high.

Combining Jiang Junnan’s experience, Li Xing could now deduce several characteristics of the three-eyed strange cicada—it parasitizes humans, feeds on human tissues, and can control human actions.

Most importantly, the three-eyed strange cicada is definitely not a species that suddenly woke up from dormancy; they existed in the world at least during the Songling Wanderer’s fairy departure era.

An inherently cruel and evil species that has existed for thousands of years, yet there’s no formal record and no attention drawn—this is unusual in itself.

Either the three-eyed strange cicada is extremely rare, with too few human hosts eaten and parasitized for the authorities to notice.

Or—the three-eyed strange cicada is being artificially raised, supplied with everything it needs, occasionally a few causing trouble, yet making no significant ripples!

A force capable of nurturing such insects must be huge, with the Starring Cult being highly suspect.

Could the Starring Cult’s mass slave trade be a means to stockpile food for the three-eyed strange cicada?

Under the guise of the Holy Pill, they deceive followers, openly searching for hosts for the three-eyed strange cicada. If it weren’t for her accidentally killing one, no one in the entire federation would’ve known about these strange bugs.

Having grasped the key points, Li Xing’s face suddenly turned grim.

How many three-eyed strange cicadas does the Starring Cult actually have? What is their true intention in breeding them? Is it merely to turn followers into disposable Berserkers to charge for them?

If that were the case, all would be fine, but there’s a fear of a greater conspiracy.

Beyond that, the aura emanating from that invisible creature is a hundred times stronger than the three-eyed strange cicada, likely being the Insect King. Why did it target Chu Yunyi?

The word ’parasitism’ suddenly appeared in Li Xing’s mind, sending chills down her spine.

If even a minor minion like the three-eyed strange cicada can control Jiang Junnan’s body and engage her in battle, then being the Insect King, it might fully take over a host’s body, performing perfectly to go unnoticed—the answer is undoubtedly yes.

If that invisible creature successfully parasitizes and exploits Chu Yunyi’s identity and abilities, it could easily overturn the entire Qianyuan Continent’s order, reaping millions of lives with a mere flick of the wrist.

Li Xing has no intention of meddling in others’ destinies, but she is a self-preservationist at heart, refusing to allow anything that threatens her safety and interests to exist.

Until she finds a way home, Qianyuan Continent’s fate is intertwined with her future, so even for her own sake, she won’t allow an invisible monster to occupy Chu Yunyi’s body and wreak havoc on the world.