A hundred and twenty years ago, a brutal factional struggle broke out in the Shuntian Dynasty. Hundreds of officials, scholars, and alchemists who had fallen from power were forced to flee overseas; one group ran into a storm at sea and drifted to the islands of Nanyang. They were taken in by the local tribes, and over time intermarried and blended with them.
Among these exiles was a gu sorceress from the Miao frontier named Lan Po, who had carried off the Miao frontier's sacred relic, the "Golden Silkworm Gu Mother," when she fled. In the jungles of Nanyang, Lan Po combined Miao gu sorcery with the local hex-casting and witchcraft, creating an entirely new "Mountain and Sea Gu Art." She adopted seven orphans and taught them gu sorcery, and these seven later became the seven founding patriarchs of the Mountain and Sea Society.
Decades later, the Changfeng Republic was founded, and immigrants from Shuntian poured in. Lan Po's descendants seized the opportunity: under cover of an herbal medicine business, they spread the Society's power across the entire island. Deep in the Central Mountain Range they built Miasma Cloud Valley, turning the valley's poisonous mists into a natural barrier, and through gu sorcery they came to control most of the island's medicinal herb trade.
Today the Mountain and Sea Society is no mere sect, but a vast underground organization spanning medicine, trade, assassination, and political manipulation. Its current Grand Boss, Jin Qiye, is Lan Po's great-great-great-grandson, and under him the Society has reached the height of its power.
🏔️ Geography and Key Locations
Miasma Cloud Valley: A rift valley in the deepest part of the Changfeng Republic's Central Mountain Range, surrounded by sheer cliffs and filled with poisonous mist all year round. The valley is thick with vegetation, growing countless rare medicinal herbs long extinct in the outside world. Its entrance is hidden behind a waterfall; one can enter only when led by a Society guide, after taking a specially prepared antidote.
Mountain and Sea Main Hall: A complex of buildings in the deepest part of Miasma Cloud Valley, built into the mountainside and stacked layer upon layer like a hive. The architecture blends the palaces of the Central Plains with the stilt houses of Nanyang, and its timber frames are carved all over with dense totems of insects and beasts.
Python Ferry: A small fishing village on the southwest coast of the Changfeng Republic. On the surface it is an ordinary village, but in truth it is the Society's base at sea. Every fisherman in the village is a Society member, and hidden compartments beneath their fishing boats carry smuggled medicinal herbs and weapons.
⚔️ Martial Arts of the Mountain and Sea Society
The Society's core tactic is "gu as soldiers, poison as blades" — disciples feed a life-bound gu with their own blood and essence, and in battle they release gu insects to attack, scout, or spread toxins. Masters can control hundreds or even thousands of gu at once, forming insect clouds that blot out the sun.
📖 Inner Method
Ten Thousand Gu Return to Origin (Gu Return)
The Society's foundational inner method, which makes one's own body a "gu nest" — the life-bound gu is kept inside the body and fed with blood and essence, forming a symbiotic bond with the insects. The higher one's cultivation, the more gu one can control at once, and from farther away. The very best can spread their gu across several li, every insect their eyes, their ears, their blades.
Those who train this art carry gu venom in their blood, and ordinary people fall ill at their touch; but in exchange they gain a body immune to all poisons, one that no toxin in the world can harm in the slightest.
🐛 Gu Sorcery
The Society's gu sorcery is divided into three kinds: "Raising Gu," "Commanding Gu," and "Fusing with Gu."
Raising Gu (Gu Breed)
The basic skill of cultivating a life-bound gu. Different gu must be fed in different ways — golden silkworm gu eat herbs, centipede gu drink fresh blood, spider gu devour rotting flesh. The gu raiser must use their own blood and essence as the catalyst, feeding drops of blood every day, and it takes three years for the gu to take shape. The stronger the gu, the more it drains its host.
Commanding Gu (Gu Command)
Combat techniques for controlling gu with the mind. Low-level practitioners can only release gu for simple attacks; intermediate practitioners can direct gu to track targets, spread toxins, or explode to harm the enemy; high-level practitioners can control hundreds of gu at once, forming insect clouds that block vision, seal off roads, and eat away at enemies.
Common Tactics:
Gu Needle: A gu insect turned into a poison needle almost invisible to the naked eye, shot from the sleeve; its victim is poisoned and dies without ever realizing it.
Gu Armor: Gu insects covering the whole body to form living armor that can withstand blades and turn back on attackers.
Gu Cloud: Releasing a mass of gu to form an insect cloud that blocks the enemy's sight and spreads poisonous mist.
Fusing with Gu (Gu Fusion)
An advanced technique that fuses the life-bound gu with one's own body. Those who fuse can transform in part — arms becoming gu limbs, eyes gaining the senses of gu insects, insect wings sprouting from the back for brief flight. The price is one year of life lost with every fusion. Those who fuse completely lose their human form forever, becoming half-human, half-insect monsters.
☠️ Poison Arts
The Society's poison arts and gu sorcery complement each other, using gu insects as carriers to spread toxins.
Making Poison (Poison Craft)
Extracting toxins from venomous snakes, scorpions, and poisonous plants to make all kinds of poisons. The Society's poisons are many and varied — deadly venoms that kill the moment they touch blood, paralytic poisons that numb the whole body, hallucinogenic poisons that derange the mind, and slow poisons that lie dormant for months before taking effect.
Administering Poison (Poison Use)
Mixing poison into food and drink, coating blades with it, or having gu carry it. Advanced practitioners can turn poison into a colorless, odorless gas that poisons enemies within several zhang without their noticing.
Antidotes (Antidote)
The skill of preparing antidotes. The Society doesn't only make poisons, it cures them too — this is the core competitive edge of its herbal medicine business. Only the Mountain and Sea Society can cure certain rare poisons, which gives it absolute leverage in negotiations.
🦗 Footwork
Gu Shadow Step (Gu Step)
The Society's footwork combined with gu sorcery — disciples release tiny scout gu to explore ahead, and follow the insects' guidance as they advance. When the gu sense danger they give a warning, letting their master avoid traps and ambushes in advance.
In battle, the Gu Shadow Step makes the user's path move like a crawling insect — now left, now right, now fast, now slow — so the enemy cannot predict the next step. Advanced practitioners can attach gu to the soles of their feet and walk on walls and ceilings as if on flat ground.
🗡️ Martial Arts
Weapons
Society disciples mostly use short blades and hidden weapons, easy to carry and conceal, their edges coated with deadly poison.
Snake Fang Dagger (Snake Fang)
A short dagger curved like a snake's fang, its blade tempered in snake venom; once it breaks the skin it paralyzes the nerves, and within a few breaths the victim cannot move.
Thousand Needle Pouch (Thousand Needle)
A leather pouch hung at the waist, holding hundreds of poisoned silver needles. Driven by gu sorcery, a dozen or more can be fired at once, every needle striking an acupoint.
Grand Boss | Jin Qiye
The current Grand Boss of the Mountain and Sea Society, about sixty, short and stout, with a kindly face and an ever-present smile, like a wealthy old gentleman. But those who know him understand that beneath Jin Qiye's smile lies a heart cold to the extreme.
Life-Bound Gu: Soul-Devouring Gu — able to devour an enemy's memories and soul, turning them into a puppet like a walking corpse.
Personal Gear: A pair of collectible walnuts that in truth hide gu eggs; when he meets an enemy, he can crush them to release the gu.
Jin Qiye's greatest wish is to bring the Mountain and Sea Society out from the underground and onto the stage, truly controlling the government of the Changfeng Republic. To that end he will even work with secret envoys of the Shuntian Dynasty.
Adopted Daughter | Jin Lingzhi
Jin Qiye's adopted daughter, only eighteen, with a pure and otherworldly beauty. She has never studied gu sorcery; Jin Qiye forbids anyone to teach her.
Jin Lingzhi does not know her true origins — she is a descendant of the union, a century ago, between a Miao grandmaster of gu sorcery and the Shuntian imperial family, and her blood is the antidote to all gu, able to break every gu sorcery and hex in the world. During an assassination attempt, she discovered by accident that her blood made the Society's most powerful Golden Silkworm Gu Mother shrink back in fear. The secret reached the ears of Shuntian Dynasty spies, and every faction has begun to turn its gaze toward this seemingly fragile girl.
Gu Grandmaster | Granny Lan
The oldest living member of the Mountain and Sea Society, said to be a hundred and twenty years old, and a direct descendant of the founding patriarch Lan Po. She is withered as a dead tree and dozes all day in a corner of the Golden Silkworm Hall, looking as though she might breathe her last at any moment. Yet her gu sorcery is still the strongest in the Society.
Life-Bound Gu: Ageless Gu — able to keep its host young forever, but she gave the gu to her daughter, who died young, and let the years wear her own body away.
Granny Lan disapproves of Jin Qiye's ambitions and has warned him many times that "the Mountain and Sea Society is a healer, not a warlord."
Outside-Clan Steward | Chen Gangsheng
A steward of the Mountain and Sea Society from outside the founding clans, in charge of trade at Python Ferry, about forty, dark-skinned, a descendant of mixed Nanyang Chinese and local indigenous blood. He is hearty and loves drink more than life, and looks like a coarse fisherman — but in truth he is the shrewdest intelligence chief in the Society.
Life-Bound Gu: Leech Gu — lets him breathe freely underwater, and steal an enemy's memories the way a leech draws blood.
He treats Jin Lingzhi as his own daughter, and since learning the secret of her origins he has become her most steadfast protector.
Changfeng Republic Government: Mutual use. Many legislators are controlled by the Mountain and Sea Society through money or gu sorcery. Jin Qiye once said: "They think they're running the country. Really, they're just stamping papers for us."
Fist Gang: A delicate balance. Each side holds its own territory in the Changfeng Republic's underworld; they clash now and then but have never gone to all-out war. Jin Qiye and Jin Quan are wary of each other.
Thunderbolt Hall: Occasional cooperation. Thunderbolt Hall needs the Society's herbs and intelligence, and the Society needs Thunderbolt Hall to keep the Fist Gang in check. The two sides keep a tacit understanding of "not making trouble for each other."
Storm Thunder Sect: Friendly. The Mountain and Sea Society was one of the Storm Thunder Sect's patrons in its early days, and the two still do business today.
Commercial Republic: Close trade. The Society's herbs are sold to every nation through Commercial Republic merchants, and the two sides have a fixed trading post at Python Ferry.
Shuntian Dynasty: Complicated. Most of the Society's core members are descendants of Shuntian immigrants, bound to Shuntian by countless ties. Jin Qiye's cooperation with Shuntian's secret envoys has stirred enormous controversy within the Society.