The Corpse-Sealing Ridge of Xiangxi's Cursed Gu

The Xiangxi Gu Curse: Corpse-Warding Ridge

Synopsis

In the seventeenth year of the Republic of China, rain fell relentlessly over western Hunan for forty days. Overnight, black water flowed from Corpse-Warding Ridge, upstream of the Mengdong River. The water carried incomplete corpses, with gu worms breeding in their bellies.

Luo Qianyan, the last bandit chief of the Ridge-Splitting School, blinded himself to avoid "gazing at evil." He had held sway on the Hunan-Guizhou border for twenty years, with more than three hundred "mountain-hanging guests" under his command. They had made their fortune robbing tombs, yet had never dared to touch Corpse-Warding Ridge, not because they didn't want to, but because they were afraid. According to local legend, it was the ancestral tomb of the Miao "gu raisers," and what lay buried there wasn't a corpse, but the "Gu Mother."

At the same time, Cen Jiuchan, the sole heir of the Mountain-Shifting Taoists, followed clues from the clan's ruined scroll, The Art of Moving Mountains, to track a Soul-Devouring Golden Silkworm Gu to western Hunan. Since the end of the Ming dynasty, the Mountain-Shifting School had sworn to "seek the pearl to quench their thirst." But Cen Jiuchan wasn't looking for the Muchen Pearl. They were searching for the Witch King's Gu Cauldron, which could dispel the "Sterility Gu." According to legend, the gu raised in the cauldron could change one's bloodline and continue the family line. For more than a century, the Mountain-Shifting School's dwindling numbers had all come down to this.