Shi Ming tried to push past the two burly men blocking his way.
Just as he reached out, he realized the men blocking his path had stopped moving.
Looking up, he saw Du An and Li Ban leap down from a white cloud.
"I saw the two green bugs crawl into the carriage with my own eyes. I just don't know if they slipped back out while I was tangled up here."
"They didn't," Li Ban said. "I sealed the carriage the moment you were stopped."
He had actually used the Protection Spell, a new application he had devised while transporting the Corpse Worms earlier.
As for the rest of the crowd being frozen in place, that was Du An's doing.
His Terror Spell was clearly more practiced than Li Ban's, boasting more variations and the ability to affect multiple targets at once.
Furthermore, Li Ban noted with a quick glance that the people here were merely rooted to the spot; no one had fainted or died.
Their eyes darted around frantically, wide with terror and showing far too much white.
They cried out for help or begged for mercy.
After immobilizing the crowd, Du An immediately walked toward the carriages.
The group appeared to be a traveling theatrical troupe.
Two carriages carried their luggage: large drums, small drums, and suonas, along with hemp ropes, various decorative fabrics, and stacked wooden benches.
A third carriage towed a small, vaulted cabin covered in a stained, dark blue cloth.
There was no door, only a cotton curtain weighed down by wooden strips.
Shi Ming had said the two green bugs crawled through the gap in this very curtain.
If Du An was wrong, and these two bugs hadn't chosen to return and feed the Broodmother after regaining their freedom, but had instead gone out hunting again, why hadn't they attacked the men outside? Why did they crawl into a cabin with an obscured interior?
It was a bit strange.
Thinking this, Li Ban told Shi Ming to wait to the side while he followed Du An into the carriage.
As they approached the carriage, the two immobilized men began begging loudly for mercy.
"Great heroes, great heroes, we have all the money right here! Please, don't hurt the women!"
The other yelled, "My lords, my lords, my wife is pregnant! Please be merciful!"
Turning a deaf ear, Du An stepped forward, waited for Li Ban to dispel the Protection Spell, and tore the curtain off the carriage.
Three women were sitting inside.
One was older, and the other two were relatively young.
One of the younger women had a heavily bulging belly, looking as though she were about to give birth at any moment.
But right now, the pregnant woman's mouth was wide open. The instant Du An ripped the curtain away, both he and Li Ban saw a flash of green disappear inside it.
"The Corpse Worm went into her mouth," Li Ban said, frowning. His usual method for dealing with Corpse Worms was simply to slice off half the host's head.
But before him was a pregnant woman, and she was currently still alive.
"What do we do?"
"This woman isn't a host," Du An said, narrowing his eyes as two silver fragments manifested around him. "The Corpse Worm did indeed return to find the Broodmother, which can only mean—"
"The Broodmother is inside her body?" Li Ban asked in astonishment, his gaze naturally falling upon the woman's belly. "The Broodmother can actually hide in there?"
"Hiding within a pregnant woman's womb without killing her. This Broodmother is smarter than any I've seen."
A smile touched Du An's eyes. "It might be a rare mutated breed. Cut her open and take a look."
Obviously, the "her" Du An was referring to was the pregnant woman in the cabin, who was already terrified out of her wits and covered in snot and tears.
Li Ban raised his hand, then lowered it.
The Broodmother hidden within the pregnant woman's body absolutely had to be extracted. Otherwise, it would be two lives lost anyway.
"Don't take her life."
The silver fragments Du An controlled were agile and razor-sharp; he naturally had a way to search for the Broodmother without killing her.
It just depended on whether he cared enough to do so.
"Ah! Don't touch her! Or I'll kill you!"
Seeing Du An about to operate on the pregnant woman, the others had already shut their eyes or begun to sob.
Having witnessed the duo's unfathomable strength, they didn't dare to resist.
Only the pregnant woman's husband glared at Li Ban and Du An with bloodshot, hateful eyes, his gaze so intense it seemed his eye sockets might tear apart.
But unable to move, he could only curse from where he stood, biting down so hard that blood seeped from his gums.
With a flicker, Li Ban appeared before the man.
The man was stunned. He had traveled all across the land, but when had he ever seen such an ability?
Since they made their living performing magic tricks and singing operas, he instantly thought of a certain kind of entity from those plays.
"Immortal Master? Immortal Master, please don't hurt Yaoniang! If you need to dig out a heart or a liver, take mine—"
The man cried and shouted, leaving Li Ban utterly exasperated.
He might be calling them "Immortal Masters," but in his heart, he probably saw them as "evil spirits," right?
Li Ban placed a hand on the man's shoulder, undoing the paralyzing effect of the Terror Spell, then grabbed him and flashed back to the carriage.
By this time, Du An's silver fragments had already sliced open the woman's abdomen.
Yellowish-green fluid oozed from her belly, accompanied by a foul stench that permeated the air.
The other two women in the cabin had already fainted from fright.
Seeing this, the man opened his mouth wide but couldn't even manage a scream. His legs went weak, and he nearly collapsed to the ground.
Li Ban held him up by the arms to keep him from falling and said in a low voice, "Look closely. Your wife's womb... was infected by a Gu bug. The infant died a long time ago. We are saving her."
Hearing this, a bit of strength returned to the man's legs.
He looked into the cabin in terror and saw that while his wife's face was deathly pale, she hadn't completely passed out yet.
Meanwhile, the other Immortal Master had just extracted a full-term infant from Yaoniang's womb.
But that infant—
"Ah!" The man was horrified, the color instantly draining from his face.
The infant only had a human head; its lower body had completely turned into a fat, emerald-green bug.
There was a small bulge at the tail end of the bug, and a much smaller bug was wriggling its body, trying to squeeze out from inside.
Noticing the man behind him, Du An deliberately turned his body slightly so that both the man and the conscious woman in the cabin could get a clearer look.
Since they had decided to spare these ordinary people, there was no need to leave behind a terrible reputation.
"It is unfortunate, but your child is already dead. We must take this harmful Gu bug away to prevent it from burrowing into anyone else."
Hearing this, the man's fear temporarily overpowered his grief. He nodded repeatedly and begged, "Please, Immortal Masters, you must destroy that Gu bug! Oh, my poor child..."
As for the woman, the sight of her child pushed her beyond her limits. Unable to bear the grief and the agonizing pain any longer, her eyes rolled back and she passed out.
By the medical standards of ordinary people in the Wizard World, Yaoniang would surely not survive this.
However, Li Ban had asked Du An to spare her life, and he certainly hadn't done so just to let her die in agony.
He let go of the man, allowing him to slump to the ground, and stepped forward to check on the woman's condition.
Taking some clean water from his Cubic Space, he washed the wound that was still oozing yellowish-green pus.
Only when fresh blood replaced the pus and welled up did he put the water flask away and press his hand against her wound.
Flesh on White Bones!
Yaoniang was just an ordinary person, so treating her barely consumed any of Li Ban's spiritual rhinoceros.
Her wound healed at a visible rate.
Li Ban's Flesh on White Bones didn't just regenerate bone and flesh; it also fully restored blood, fascia, and internal organs, returning the injured to their original state.
Otherwise, it would be quite a joke to heal someone's injuries only for them to die of blood loss.
Seeing that although Yaoniang was still unconscious, her complexion had returned to normal—looking even rosier than the other two fainted women beside her—Li Ban finally pulled his hand back.
While Li Ban had been treating Yaoniang, Du An had already returned to the cloud above, holding the processed dead infant.
He concealed it slightly so no one else could see what the dead infant looked like.
Information regarding the Corpse Worms was kept secret from ordinary people.
Li Ban tossed Yaoniang's husband onto the carriage, warned them not to speak carelessly about what had happened, and then turned and walked to the perimeter, bringing Shi Ming up onto Du An's cloud.
The white cloud drifted away, disappearing into the distance.
Over the next three days, Li Ban and the other two searched the surrounding area again. Their luck wasn't bad, and they found another Broodmother.
Feeling that this was enough, Li Ban immediately took his leave.
Du An didn't try to persuade him otherwise. Knowing that Li Ban was in a hurry to escort Shi Ming back to complete his task, he simply raised an eyebrow and let them go.
Aside from his urgency to head to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, Li Ban had another reason: there was word of goods from 9899's side, and he needed to go over and inspect them within the next couple of days.
What Li Ban didn't know, however, was that by leaving right then, he had narrowly avoided a disaster.
After Li Ban left, Du An had no intention of continuing the search for Broodmothers either.
Without an inside man like Shi Ming, it wasn't impossible for him to catch Broodmothers, but the time and energy it would consume simply weren't worth it.
When Priest Jun suddenly shoved this mission onto him, he had known that while the task wasn't too difficult, it was extremely time-consuming. It was a deliberate attempt to waste his time.
But now, he had already acquired two Broodmothers, one of which was even a mutated specimen. This would yield greater merit and was more than enough for him to report back and complete the mission.
Du An even planned that if the Myriad Ancient Pagoda had no special arrangements for Shi Ming, he would propose upon returning that Shi Ming be put solely in charge of catching bugs in the rear, which would free him from this troublesome assignment.
After organizing his gains from this period, Du An prepared to fly back to the Unreturning Place.
But to his surprise, just as he flew back into the sky, the heavens darkened. Dark clouds drifting in from afar plunged the land into premature night.
Du An looked at the cloud layer and frowned, but he still plunged right into the dark clouds.
Seeing there was no lightning, he barreled through the dark clouds, wanting to fly above the cloud layer before the rain began to fall.
But just as he was about to break through one of the dark clouds, his body suddenly froze in place.
Du An's pupils shrank drastically and his face stiffened. Using the power of his Wizard Embryo Fragments to resist the Terror Spell that had suddenly descended upon him, he scanned his surroundings to see who was ambushing him from within the dark clouds.
A partially shattered, ashen-grey hand covered in cracks suddenly appeared in front of him, its index finger abruptly piercing into the center of his brow.
Du An immediately felt a splitting headache.
Ever since he became a Priest, he had known about a group of black-robed priests. A small number hid within the Wizard World, while the majority concealed themselves in the Shattered Realm.
However, because the Wizard World was overseen by the Wizard Lord and the White Robes, there were no Priests of the Sun rank or higher present.
The lower-ranking black-robed priests absolutely wouldn't dare to make grand, conspicuous moves within the Wizard World either.
He never expected that there was actually one daring enough to hide in the dark clouds.
Du An raised his hand. The formidable power of his Wizard Embryo Fragments helped him slowly break through the opponent's suppression, allowing him to grab hold of that shattered, grey wrist.
"Huh?" a very pleasant voice rang out. "Have I grown weaker? How come there's always some little White Robe who manages to break free of my control?"