The little girl was remarkably well-behaved. Seeing Xiao Shu in floods of tears, she used her small, soft hands to gently wipe the tear tracks from his face and slowly said, "Mommy says brave children don't cry easily." Xiao Shu leaned into her, clutching those small hands, nodded at her, and managed to force out a weak smile.

Just then, Old He walked over from the side, handing the girl a packet of compressed biscuits. "Take these back to your grandmother to eat. Your uncles are busy right now and can't play with you." The girl nodded understandingly, took the biscuits, and walked toward her own tent. Xiao Shu craned his neck to look in that direction, vaguely spotting an elderly person lying inside the tent.

"What is going on? You haven't said a word all this time," Old He murmured, lowering his voice to a whisper after the girl had gone.

"Sigh!" Xiao Shu let out a breath, halting as he tried to speak.

"When we went to retrieve Hua Jinlan's corpse, you were pinned to some mechanism. Both Xiaoyu and I thought you were beyond saving," Old He explained, pulling a small bottle from his pocket and shaking it in front of Xiao Shu so he could clearly see what was inside. "But then the Sea of Spirits suddenly appeared. Even though it was the first time I'd ever witnessed it, that miraculous healing power held me captive; I couldn't pull myself away. Because of that, I investigated everything connected to you and Xiaoyu—including your family history and Xiaoyu’s ordeal at the asylum. There's no love without reason in this world, nor is there hatred without cause. The greater the power of the Sea of Spirits, the greater the number of souls sacrificed for it; the two are directly proportional." Old He’s few words left Xiao Shu utterly stunned. He had assumed that after leaving Miao Village, Old He would return home to retire and assimilate back into a normal life. He never imagined Old He was orchestrating things from the shadows, delivering such a profound speech.

"The world of the Sea of Spirits is expanding and strengthening, so the number of innocent sacrifices is increasing. The order of this world is changing rapidly. But the march of civilization will not be halted," Old He continued, pouring the wriggling worms from the bottle onto the ground. He then took a small knife and lightly sliced his own wrist, a streak of crimson blood flowing down and dripping onto the mass of worms. In an instant, every worm touched by the blood divided in two. What had been a tiny cluster multiplied geometrically, rapidly growing into a substantial pile. Old He looked up at Xiao Shu, smiling at him. "For every thing in this world, there is another thing that can subdue it."

Xiao Shu was inwardly shocked. "How do you still have those things? I thought all the Man-Eating Nether-Worms were on Silent Mountain, poured out onto the postal album."

"Not all of them. One was left stuck to the bottom of the bottle. I brought the bottle back. It was just a small experiment—dripping my own blood onto the Nether-Worm to see how it fed. Unexpectedly, upon contact with the blood, it split into two, becoming two, then four, and so on, multiplying until I had a whole bottle full again."

"You... want to use... them for what?" Xiao Shu stammered, taking a long time to get the question out. Seeing Old He looking as if he understood the secrets of the universe, Xiao Shu felt like he must be dreaming, completely oblivious to what was happening in the world, as if everyone else was lucid while he alone was being kept in the dark.

"Have you forgotten our encounter on Silent Mountain? We can use them against those zombies!" Old He blinked, looking slightly perplexed by Xiao Shu's exaggerated expression.