[Mysterious Miaojiang, ten thousand Gu devour the heavens. When blood-red Gu markings crawl across a boy's back, is it the descent of the Witch God, or the end of humanity?]
During the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty, Miaojiang in Guizhou is battered by the erosion of Han culture and oppression by the authorities. Ajiu, a boy from the Mashan Miao village, is forced onto the path of Gu cultivation after his father dies protecting the Miao ancestral witch's secret treasure. A finger severed as an offering, hundreds of insects entering his body, a blood centipede acknowledging him as its master... Through the twin agony of Han Chinese massacres and the backlash of Gu arts, he gradually uncovers the thousand-year-old secret of the ancient Chiyou tribe's symbiosis with the blood centipede. The so-called “raising Gu” was, in truth, a defiant spark planted in the Miao people's blood by their ancestral witch, to fight back against the oppression of Heaven's law.
