Drawback system

Ah Yue sat silently in the dark corner of the storage room, the System panel still glowing faintly before his eyes.

---

[Drawback System: Status Update]

Name: Ah Yue

Martial Level: Low-grade Level 1

Practiced Arts: Five Poison Palm (Complete), Sunflower Art (Level 4)

System Note: No active drawbacks. All reversed into benefits.

Abnormal Condition Detected: Blood Gu Poison (Juvenile Stage)

Estimated Infection Time: Unknown (Possibly months or years prior)

Blood Gu? Ah Yue's brow furrowed.

It wasn't a result of the Five Poison Palm. He had long completed the fifth stage using the spider venom, and the System had absorbed and reversed all the physical harm.

But this Blood Gu had remained hidden, deep in his body, undetected until now. If not for the System's detailed scan following the finalization of his martial art, he might never have noticed it.

And the System had done nothing to reverse this one. It wasn't a backlash. It wasn't a side-effect of cultivation. It was a foreign object. A parasite.

He pressed his fingers against his wrist, feeling the pulse of his own heartbeat—slow, even, deceptively normal.

But someone had done this to him.

---

That night, Ah Yue's work brought him to the back courtyard, where waste was taken from the main house and dumped toward the edge of the jungle.

The other kitchen slaves had long since grown used to this nightly chore. They often took the opportunity to sneak into the shade of the trees, relax, and talk quietly among themselves before returning.

But Ah Yue didn't join them.

He moved past the trash, pretending to be sorting through broken baskets, and slipped away.

He crouched low behind a thorn bush. Just a few days ago, it had been this very spot where he found the final spider—sealing his Five Poison Palm. That had felt like a victory.

Now, with the Blood Gu revelation weighing on his chest, everything seemed darker.

He lifted his head. From this spot, he had a view of the old burial grounds.

Servants who died in the estate were taken there—tucked beneath smooth mounds of earth with wooden markers bearing their names.

Odd, wasn't it? The family barely gave scraps to their living slaves. Beatings and starvation were common. Yet they gave proper graves to the dead?

Something didn't add up.

---

The next evening, he waited again. This time, a young scullery boy named Xun had died of a coughing illness the previous day. Barely anyone noticed.

But the body had been wrapped and taken to the burial field.

Ah Yue followed from a distance, hiding behind thick banyan roots. A pair of guards from the inner courtyard carried the boy's body.

No priest. No incense. No mourning rites.

They set the body down near a freshly dug pit and waited.

Minutes passed.

Another man arrived.

He didn't wear the guard's armor. He had on a gray scholar's robe. His face was lined with wrinkles, but his hands were steady as he knelt next to the corpse.

From within a pouch, he drew a long black needle and something like a clay pot.

Ah Yue squinted.

The man pierced the boy's chest with the needle—right above the heart. The motion was practiced. Deliberate.

The body convulsed.

Something squirmed under the skin.

Ah Yue bit his lip.

Within moments, a thin, bloody worm slithered out of the dead flesh and into the scholar's waiting pot. He quickly sealed the lid and whispered a chant under his breath.

The guards buried the body like nothing had happened.

Ah Yue stepped back into the shadows, trembling.

---

So that's it.

The family planted Blood Gu in the servants—probably since birth or shortly after arrival.

And when they died, those parasites were mature. Ready to be harvested.

Living or dead, the slaves were nothing more than vessels.

Ah Yue felt sick.

If his Blood Gu was still in the juvenile stage, maybe he'd been lucky. Maybe whoever planted it had been interrupted. Maybe they just hadn't gotten around to using him yet.

But they would. One day.

If he died now, someone would come to collect the fruit of his flesh.

He clenched his fists. "Not me," he whispered.

He couldn't tell anyone. Other slaves wouldn't believe him—or worse, report him out of fear.

And he didn't have the power to confront the masterminds directly.

But he had his martial arts.

He had the System.

And he now had knowledge the family wanted kept secret.

---

Later that night, back in his cramped quarters, Ah Yue sat with his knees pulled to his chest.

His System panel hovered before him.

He tapped the abnormal condition again.

---

Blood Gu Poison (Juvenile Stage)

Effect: Dormant. Will mature over unknown period.

Harm: Long-term vitality depletion. Will become fatal upon host death.

System Response: No reversal. External source. Non-cultivation-based.

He needed a solution.

A way to force the Gu out, or at least suppress it.

He had herbs in the kitchen. The trash piles sometimes held medicinal scraps. He had seen old slave women treat skin infections with strange roots and wild plants.

He would start there. Quietly. Carefully.

He might not be able to remove the parasite yet, but he wouldn't let it grow.

He refused to be a cocoon for someone else's prize.