The grudges of the martial world are like parasites, and the human heart is an unfathomable mystery. When the twin blood pact emerges, who is whose pawn? And who is the one moving the pieces?
During the misty rains of Jiangnan's plum rain season, Liu Hu, leader of the Taihu Gang, is ambushed. The ink-black poisonous blood seeping from his wound conceals a mystery: the deadly poison, a fusion of ice and fire, comes from his sworn enemy's sect, and only the Miao frontier's "Twin Gu" technique can cure it. The Miao traveler Zhou Buyi arrives with his spirit snake, Cai'er, to save him, but the rescue draws him into an old shipwreck case from three years ago, the surviving remnants of the Three Lotus Cove massacre, and the young gang leader Liu Jing's bizarre transformation. When Liu Jing holds a blade to his own father's throat, the golden glint in his pupils reveals the truth about the mind-controlling gu: he is actually the orphaned son of the late Third Chief, implanted with a gu worm in childhood and turned into a pawn for revenge.
The Three Lotus Cove mark on an assassin's palm, a letter bearing the deputy gang leader's private seal, and the theft of ice-soul grass from the dungeon: layer upon layer of mysteries point to a scheme involving swapped identities and poisonous gu, spanning several years. When Zhou Buyi breaks the gu with the blood pact, he uncovers not only the truth behind the poisoning, but also the ruthless struggle for power and profit behind the prestigious sects of the martial world. Even after the true culprit is brought to justice, the Twin Gu diagram on a scrap of a page continues to circulate in the shadows. And the next mystery awaiting the Miao traveler is already drawing near, hidden in the rain and mist over the river...
