A frightened scream from one of the female disciples after an hour"s trek confirmed Xiao Chen"s suspicion: one of the girls had found sc.r.a.ps of bones and teeth under her feet; the company"s journey in the tunnel was filled with reverberating noises of bones being crush under their feet.
The company could hardly believe that they had trodden upon a path literally laid out with the remains of countless dead people that even as pract.i.tioners trained in arcane skills, some of them, especially the female disciples, began to vomit with disgust.
Xiao Chen was the only one unperturbed by the horrific epiphany; it was not his first time encountering such a spectacle, although he did not expect that the master of the Wuw.a.n.g Wind Cloud City, like the leader of the Skygale Sect before him, was trying to set up the Blood Soul Formation to resurrect a dead person.
Activating the Blood Soul Formation would require a price of countless human souls in addition to a vast amount of spirit energy. That would explain the reason the Wuw.a.n.g Wind Cloud City had seized control of an Earth Spiritual Meridian.
"Amitabha..." Xu Gu muttered mournfully, his palms still clasped before him as his head shook sideways. "I cannot believe that the Wuw.a.n.g Wind Cloud City had committed such an abomination..." He sighed with a slight note of defeat.
"So it is true then; they are one of the Devil"s Practice..." Xiaoyue muttered in a frigid voice.
But a sudden tremor in the tunnel cut her off; rocks and boulders shook above them, threatening to crash down on them. "We must leave. NOW." Xiao Chen said, his hands swiftly performed several seals and his hands were immediately shrouded with a faint white radiance. He slammed his palms upward, helping Luo Shangyan keep away from the falling rocks..
There was no more time to think what else was under the feet; the company sped on as quickly as they could. There was no way they would survive the collapse of the tunnel, Core Forming Realm cultivators or not.
Everyone jostled against one another, shoving and nudging off others for their own survival as the shaking grew stronger. At last, they made it out of the tunnel. The company found themselves in a subterranean hall, filled with hundreds of neatly-arranged stone sarcophaguses.
Deafening crashes boomed from over their shoulders; the tunnel had caved in and the earthquake had stopped. Looking back the now-collapsed tunnel where they came from, the company could not help shedding cold sweat with their close shave with Death. A few more paces slower, and they might have already been dead.
But when Xu Gu began to make another headcount, they found only sixteen people remaining: Liu Chengfeng was missing.
At the mention of Liu Chengfeng, strange stares fell almost simultaneously upon Xiaoyue. Everyone had heard Liu Chengfeng"s argument with her earlier about Lu Jianxing"s disappearance.
Xu Gu breathed heavily. But before he could barely say anything, the same disembodied voice boomed over the air again, "Interesting. I suppose it"s Heaven"s will that you were able to make it this far. I"d thought that the Primordial Phantasm was enough to ensnare you all; it seems I was mistaken.
"Devious evil! What are you; man or ghost! Show yourself if you dare!" Ye Wuhen, being the most ill-tempered of the company, was the one to yell.
"Nay, I am neither man nor ghost. But n.o.body enters the Chamber of Cadavers and walks out alive. Feel free to inspect the contents of the sarcophaguses yourselves; you might find some occupants that you knew before..."
After these words, the voice vanished like it was never there. The eyes of everyone in the company shifted slowly to the rows of sarcophaguses before them. n.o.body could verify the claims that the voice made, but there had been no less of disappearances of warriors, swordsmen, as well as other pract.i.tioners of the arcane arts through the years. Were they all here, lying dead and disheveled in these coffins?
But Xiao Chen felt a tug in his gut somehow. Not only did he noticed the hundreds of stone sarcophaguses arranged on the ground, but his eyes were also looking with an unspeakable dread at another three which was hovering up high in mid-air in the middle of the hall.
Just only last year, his grandfather, Perfected Immortal Zixu, and Master Lingjue had embarked on an ill-fated journey to investigate the situation of the Soul-consuming Evil Flowers and no word was heard from them since and no one had ever seen them. The sight of the three sarcophaguses hanging in mid-air only strengthened the feeling of foreboding welling up inside him.
Instinctively, he turned to look at Luo Shangyan. She too, was staring hard at the three stone coffins looming over them, her eyes were wide open, held fixed in expectant horror. "Senior Sister Luo," he whispered to her, "Perfected Immortal Zixu is a powerful person himself. Moreover, he has my grandfather and Master Lingjue with him. With their powers and abilities, I cannot imagine them being trapped here."
Luo Shangyan only nodded silently, while a few curious but confused stares looked at Xiao Chen, not knowing what he was talking about.
"There must be means of egress from this great hall. We should not approach the stone coffins lest we awaken something undesired. Just concentrate on looking for an exit," Xiao Chen said to everyone. Despite his throbbing curiosity to find out the ident.i.ty of the people that could be lying within the three stone coffins, Xiao Chen could not bring himself to do so; Luo Shangyan would instantly crumble if his fears indeed come true.
These were stones best left unturned, he mused; at least Senior Sister Luo would continue her life with hopes that the person she sought might still be around. Luo Shangyan might even lose the sheer will to continue living if news of her beloved teacher"s death were to come now.
It was a sentiment Xiao Chen could not have known better: he himself furtively harbored hopes and wishes that his teacher, Ling Yin still lived. It was a hope that had fueled him until now. He sometimes wondered if he would plunge into darkness and despair if he were to discover his teacher"s death. Maybe he would also lose any hope of living.
The company came to a unanimous agreement, leaving safely was the paramount decision for now. There was no need to disturb the coffins and invite more trouble. But just when the company was about to begin searching, a huge bang shook the chamber; a stone lid was tossed into the air and a figure began to emerge from one of the stone coffins.
An air of chilly deathliness accompanied the climb of the figure out of the sarcophagus as he stared only in the direction of his front with his blank and lifeless eyes. This was a corpse of a person long dead for many years. No, Xiao Chen realized, this was not even an ordinary corpse. It was a Corpse Puppet; akin to the one he had encountered at Falling-jade Glow.
Yi Tong had once told him before when he visited Falling-jade Glow that a Corpse Puppet with a grudge of more than a decade alone was already very powerful. The one before him, he pondered, would at least carry a two-decade grudge for it to emanate such aura.
"Careful," he cautioned the others, "Cadavers like this feel no pain at all, and ordinary weapons are utterly useless against it." But it was as if the corpse had heard him; without allowing him to finish, the Corpse Puppet had leaped into the air, lunging at the company with lightning speed!
Standing at the forefront of the company, Ye Wuhen, undaunted by the advancing enemy, cast forth a stroke from his palm. The Corpse Puppet slammed his palms into Ye Wuhen"s and with its unholy strength, Ye Wuhen, despite having the powers of the Core Forming Realm, was forced a few steps backward from the force of the clash.
Everyone was surprised; they could not believe that a mere cadaver that looked like a simple corpse could possess such strength. They put forth everything they could, all their skills and strength, emptying their bags of tricks, but nothing they did could either lay a scratch or dent on it. The Corpse Puppet was as st.u.r.dy as the strongest of steel or diamond.
Xu Gu"s magical artifact appeared in his grasp; the Mace of Exorcism. The mace flew out of his hands, turning into a bolt of golden flash and smote upon the reanimated corpse with fury. But the powerful Buddhist artifact merely bounced off the corpse"s body with a huge clang as if the mace had struck on a bell. "Brother Xiao," Xu Gu turned to Xiao Chen and said, frowning at his failure, "You seem to know this thing. Do you know of any way to deal with it?"
Xiao Chen remembered one of Yi Tong"s advice to him: the weak spot of most Corpse Puppets was mostly at their hearts. However, this Puppet was very much stronger than the ones he had seen in Falling-jade Glow; this Puppet might have greater endurance than the ones he had seen before. "I think..." he began to speak hesitantly, "I think we should try aiming for its chest; a blow to its center chest."
Everybody cast everything they could, aiming for the center of the Corpse Puppet"s chest. It was as Xiao Chen had suspected, the weak spot of the corpse was also as strong as he expected. But with everyone"s help, a hole was finally blasted open for Ye Wuhen to finally kill the corpse for good with a stroke to its heart.
Still panting hard from the fight, the company reflected upon the extraordinary endurance of the corpse despite its low offensive capabilities. It was not a fight that a single Core Forming Realm cultivator could win, they realized.
"What is that thing, Brother Xiao?" Xu Gu asked him, "What makes it so strong?"
Xiao Chen could now feel the stares of everyone on him. "You don"t say, Brother Xu Gu," he muttered, "What we"d just killed, was a Corpse Puppet; the strongest of all puppets that could be animated. It is an abomination of extreme evil, being constructed by a still-living person. That very Puppet carried at least two decades of grudge in it, hence its unimaginable st.u.r.diness."
He heard astonished gasps and hushed murmurs rising from within the company now peering at him. But he was hardly surprised by their reactions; most, if not all, of the company were young elites of the present world. It was only understandable that they had not heard of such a diabolical contrivance from the mouths of their elders. "Amitabha... Very well... Never have I ever imagined that anyone could be capable of such monstrosity..."
But the company"s relief was only short-lived. More than ten stone sarcophaguses began to tremble violently. The company began stepping backward with wary apprehension as if a trap could be triggered if there were any sudden or quick movements. It had taken the company great effort to put down a single Corpse Puppet; another dozen of the h.e.l.lish miscreation would be nothing but disaster for them! "Back together, everyone," Xu Gu ordered sharply and he immediately invoked the Golden Bell Shield enchantment upon every member of the company.
A cascade of explosions erupted over the lineups of stone coffins as more than ten heavy stone lids were flung into the air. Like the single Puppet before them, figures of a group of Corpse Puppets sat up from within the stone caskets and stood up before they lunged as one at the company.
"Allow me to purify you!" Xu Gu bellowed bravely. He aimed a finger at his advancing foes, and three golden bolts of rays spewed from his fingers like arrows that smashed into the chest of three Puppets. One of the Wuyin Monastery"s most carefully guarded techniques, the One-Fingered Rumination!
Armed with their earlier success, the rest of the company now knew where to strike, focusing their attacks on the chests of the attacking undead. Within minutes, the company managed to obliterate every one of the Puppets. But there were only brief moments for the company to breathe a respite: dozens of Puppets sprang out of their coffins to avenge their fallen comrades.
"Hmph! There are at most a little more than a hundred of these rotting filth! I"ll take a leaf out of the monk"s book to purge all of you!" Ye Wuhen snarled with a steely voice; he began weaving in the midst the charging legion of undead, gyrating around the decaying cadavers with the deadly strokes of the swordsmanship of the Penglai Island as his blade, like a silvery serpent eager to sink its fangs into its prey, punched deeply into every chest it found.
Xiao Chen remained on guard, clutching the Unsullied tightly in his grip as he defended Luo Shangyan from any Corpse Puppet that might come his way. His focus was not on the ordinary Corpse Puppets now being handled by the rest of the company, but the three stone sarcophaguses that were still in mid-air.
The strange feeling that he perceived about the three hovering stone coffins reminded him of the hundred-year-old Corpse Puppet that could have killed him and Muxue if not for the timely intervention of Bai Susu.
And yet, a voice within him was screaming to him, warning him that the bodies that laid within the three stone coffins were the very bane of my existence: three hundred-year-old Corpse Puppets.
It took less than an hour that a hundred or so Corpse Puppets finally all crumbled and disintegrated. The company was exhausted from their exertions, despite their crushing triumph. But like a death-bell tolling in a funeral, the middle of the three sarcophaguses still suspended in mid-air began to shake.
A ripple of a wholesomely evil Qi swept forth; filling with everyone within the entire subterranean chamber with shivering apprehension and forlorn hopelessness. Even before the lid of the stone box began to shift, the whole company could already sense the awful and terrifying aura from its occupant. Everyone began to retreat, huddling together for support.
Xiao Chen"s forehead was drenched with cold sweat by now. The greatest of his nightmares since stepping foot into this chamber was about to come true. It was as good as certain that the Corpse Champion now waiting to emerge possessed a grudge of more than a century.
A cadaver with the grudge of more than six decades was already an immensely invincible monster, more so for one with a century"s worth of hatred. The Corpse Champion now preparing to emerge possessed enough strength to best perhaps a warrior close to the Nascent Soul Realm, Xiao Chen reckoned.
"Make no mistake, that..." he said, gesturing towards the shuddering stone coffin, "... is at least a Corpse Champion with a century-old grudge. Its power is beyond my ability to measure."
That was the best that he could do, in addition to producing the two strings of the f.u.xi Zither as the silhouette of a phantom zither, an illusory f.u.xi Zither came into view before him.
The trembling of the stone coffin hardly reduce; instead, it only increased, shaking so violently that its lid was propelled with the force of a sonic boom. A figure stepped out of the coffin, standing in the midst of the eddying dust a young and handsome man that floated in mid-air.
However, unlike the rest of the corpses earlier, the young man"s complexion had not the dead-like ghost-white paleness that the rest of his lifeless counterparts held. He looked exactly like a living person, although none of the company would doubt that he was already dead. He was not only a Corpse Puppet, but a Corpse Champion.
Beads of sweat began to rain down the faces of everyone in the company as they held their breaths in the tense silence; a silence before a storm. The mere aura of the Corpse Champion alone was sufficient to make everyone cower; the company slowly shuffled backward, save for one person, who slowly moved towards the front, approaching the Corpse Champion with scuffling paces.
She gazed up dazed and bewildered at the dead man. Slowly, Mu Chengxue opened her mouth, and she softly called, "Brother..."