Miao territory, many years ago, was always a place full of legends and mysteries.
With the vigorous development of tourism in recent years, more and more travelers have come to Miao territory to experience its primeval forests and the awe-inspiring creations of nature over thousands of years, which has gradually lifted some of the mystery surrounding the region.
Lawa Village is located deep within the Ten Thousand Mountains of Miao territory.
It is a place rarely frequented by humans, shrouded by countless towering ancient trees.
"Abba, Abba!"
A woman, wearing a very revealing short skirt that exposed her arms and thighs, rushed into a wooden house in Lawa Village.
In Lawa Village, almost all houses were built of wood.
However, this wood had undergone a special manufacturing process to make it resistant to rain and insects.
*Smack, smack.*
A middle-aged man, puffing on a water pipe, frowned like the character "chuan" upon hearing the shouts.
"What are you yelling about, you girl?"
Seeing his daughter rush to him with a panicked expression, the middle-aged man was a little displeased.
The woman in the short skirt extended her hand towards him, "Abba, the Tongxin Gu that I tied to Alang has died. Something must have happened to him! I want to go down the mountain to find him!"
In the woman's palm lay a coin-sized insect that looked somewhat like a ladybug.
However, this insect was completely black, with a pair of sharp mouthparts, making it look chilling.
"That fellow deserves to die. I didn't agree to you marrying him back then. Our Lawa Village has never intermarried with people outside of Miao territory for generations. You girl..."
Before the middle-aged man could finish speaking, his daughter directly placed a pre-prepared dagger across her throat.
Her fair, delicate neck formed a stark contrast with the cold, gleaming dagger.
"Abba! If you don't let me go, I'll die right in front of you!"
The woman's resolute attitude instantly made the middle-aged man panic.
"Ouch!"
In his haste, he lost his grip on the water pipe.
The fiery mouthpiece instantly burned his hand, turning the back of his hand red.
However, seeing his daughter about to take her own life, he gasped, shook his hand vigorously, and then ignored it.
"Girl, leaving the village is no small matter. In the past ten years, fewer than a handful of people from our Lawa Village have left. Don't be foolish!"
The middle-aged man made a move to take the knife from his daughter's hand, but seeing her determined expression, he retracted his half-extended hand.
The middle-aged man was named Yang Guang. Since his birth, the farthest he had ever been was the neighboring village where he got married.
In his mind, people from outside Miao territory were all cunning, deceitful, and sly.
Take his daughter, for instance. In Yang Guang's eyes, she was always obedient, sensible, and well-behaved. Everyone in the village praised him for having a good daughter.
But a few years ago, after his daughter saved a man she found on the mountain, everything changed.
The man his daughter rescued claimed that the plane he was on had malfunctioned, and he had narrowly escaped death before it crashed, thanks to a parachute.
When the villagers learned that Yang Guang's daughter had brought back an outsider, they intended to kill him.
However, this cowardly fellow, using some unknown method, managed to get his daughter to plead for him. In the end, he even risked his own life as a guarantee, which allowed him to live.
From then on, his daughter was inseparable from him. Within two months, she actually told Yang Guang that she wanted to marry him.
Yang Guang was stunned at the time.
It was known that for hundreds of years, no one in Lawa Village had ever married someone from outside Miao territory. This was an unimaginable event.
Yang Guang naturally strongly opposed it, even threatening to kill the man.
But his daughter cried, saying she had fallen in love with him and that she would only have him in this life.
Seeing his crying daughter, and thinking of how she had lost her mother at a young age, Yang Guang could only reluctantly agree in the end.
However, because his daughter's actions set a precedent for Lawa Village in nearly a hundred years, he had to take his daughter and the man to the village chief.
In Lawa Village, all matters, big or small, were decided by the village chief.
The village chief's word could even determine the life and death of the villagers.
To Yang Guang's surprise, the village chief did not object to his daughter marrying an outsider.
He only proposed that Yang Guang's daughter plant a Tongxin Gu on the man.
Tongxin Gu was a type of Gu worm that many girls in Miao territory raised from their own vital essence from childhood. These Gu worms were divided into mother and child Gu.
When a girl grew up and met a compatible partner, she could plant the child Gu of the Tongxin Gu into the other person's body.
From then on, the life of the person who had the child Gu planted in them was in the hands of the person with the mother Gu.
As long as the person with the mother Gu willed it, with a mere thought, they could instantly kill the person carrying the child Gu.
Similarly, if the child Gu encountered any accident, the mother Gu would also die immediately, while the owner of the mother Gu would only suffer some loss of vital essence and would not die.
Since the village chief had agreed, Yang Guang had no choice but to let his daughter marry the man.
However, not long ago, the man left Lawa Village due to some matters.
He had been gone for several months.
During this time, Yang Guang told his daughter that the man must have changed his mind and would never return, urging her to use the mother Gu to kill the unfaithful man.
Unexpectedly, his daughter completely ignored his words. She believed that her lover would definitely return, but was merely delayed by some matters.
Now, the mother Gu in his daughter's body had died, and she proposed to leave the village to find him. Yang Guang naturally would not agree.
Just as Yang Guang was racking his brain on how to persuade his daughter, a villager from the same village came to inform him that the village chief wanted him and his daughter to go over.
Upon hearing that the village chief wanted to see them, the daughter, who had been threatening to die or live, quickly put down her knife and, with her father, walked towards the village chief's house.
The reason for their change in demeanor was that in Miao territory, the village chief of each village was the most authoritative person.
No matter what happened in the village, the village chief had the final say.
Yang Guang and his daughter walked for about ten minutes, and a house that was unlike any other in the village appeared before them.
The village chief's house was the only one in the village not built of wood, but of stone.
It was said that this stone was carried from the deepest parts of the Ten Thousand Mountains of Miao territory.
Furthermore, after each village chief of Lawa Village passed away, the next village chief would move into this house.
This house had existed since the day Lawa Village was founded, and it was now over a hundred years old.
Yang Guang and his daughter stopped at the entrance of the village chief's house.
After the person who notified them went inside to report and returned, the two of them then entered the village chief's house.