Chapter 61 - 60: Weird

In the dead of night, a figure sprinted rapidly through the woods, leaving a dark blur across the night sky.

The Yellow Heaven Sect was a religious organization with a remarkably strict hierarchy. It was led by Zhang Qing, who styled himself as the Yellow Heaven Great Mage. Under his command were the Thirty-Six Canon Seats, and beneath them served various leaders such as Hall Masters, Incense Masters, and Altar Masters.

Based on Xu Guang’s observations, the groups attacking the camps were generally led by Incense Masters. He wondered why the Yellow Heaven Sect would attack the territory of Feiyun City’s Three Guards. Was it just for harassment and probing? But that seemed to treat human lives far too cheaply.

However, as he searched around the various camps, his expression grew incredibly grim.

There were no corpses!

Even the bodies of those killed right after they first landed, which Xu Sanduo and the others had casually tossed into a pit, had disappeared without a trace. It was clearly impossible for so many corpses to vanish overnight. A terrible premonition rose in Xu Guang’s heart. His expression changed drastically when he recalled Ma Wu’s previous condition.

"Could it be?" he wondered.

He dared not imagine the possibilities. He had never liked taking risks, but this matter concerned the entirety of Feiyun City and directly affected his family. Biting the bullet, he found one of the Yellow Heaven Sect’s satellite cities and snuck inside.

Every day, the Yellow Heaven Sect would organize its followers to parade through the satellite city. This served both to recruit refugees into their congregation and to flaunt their strength, forcing any Martial Artists hidden among the refugees to abandon any rebellious thoughts. Under the cover of night, Xu Guang hid silently within a stack of firewood.

"The azure heavens are heartless, all things return to the Ruins.

"The Yellow Heaven is reborn, it shall establish the sun and moon.

"Souls have their destination, spirits have their belonging.

"The masses of the Yellow Heaven stand united as a fortress."

As the slogans of the Yellow Heaven Sect echoed, the rustling of footsteps soon followed. It was a procession of people with dull, lifeless expressions, looking more like the dead than the living. They chanted mechanically, scattering strange yellow paper along the way. They walked with an abnormal resolve, as if they knew no fatigue.

Occasionally, someone would collapse. The people around them would immediately fill the gap, leaving one person behind to stand over the fallen. This person would chant some bizarre words, take out a bamboo tube from their robes, and sprinkle a liquid-like substance over the body. Soon enough, the corpse would stand back up! However, the resurrected individual would appear even more wooden, their movements increasingly robotic.

In their chants, they referred to this collapsing as souls returning to the Yellow Heaven.

A chill crept into Xu Guang’s heart. This eerie sight completely shattered one’s worldview. As they drew closer, he could even smell a hint of rot. It was a smell he was no stranger to. It was the stench of corpses!

Pressing against the firewood stack, Xu Guang carefully trailed behind. He waited for the procession to slowly pass by him. From the shadows, he suddenly reached out and dragged a sect member who appeared to hold some status into the dark night. The man’s eyes were hollow and lifeless, like an automaton.

Xu Guang interrogated him in a low voice, "Where did the corpses from the distant woods go?"

The man’s condition was very strange, as if he had been dosed with a Sedative. Surprisingly, he actually answered Xu Guang’s question.

"Eaten, all eaten! I want to eat too, I want to be a Hall Master!"

Xu Guang frowned. He then heard the man muttering again, sounding like a wild beast growling, making it difficult to make out the words.

"Eaten? Eating corpses makes you a Hall Master?" Xu Guang asked.

"Eat!" A strange red light suddenly flashed in the petty leader’s eyes. "Eat! I want to eat you!"

Frowning, Xu Guang directly reached out and crushed the man’s throat, simultaneously delivering a palm strike to his temple. The man didn’t make a single sound before his body went limp and collapsed to the ground. Xu Guang stood aside and quietly observed, his eyes filled with solemnity.

Sure enough, a moment later, the corpse began to tremble. Its limbs twitched wildly as it slowly stood up from the ground. Seeing this, Xu Guang understood. The worms that controlled human corpses were connected to the Yellow Heaven Sect.

BANG!

He shattered the man’s head with a palm strike and activated his Stone Skin, causing black spots to emerge on his hands. Pinching the worm, Xu Guang observed it carefully and vigilantly.

The worm wriggled around in his palm, its head constantly extending and retracting as if searching for a passageway. As time passed, the worm grew increasingly frantic. At a certain point, it suddenly stopped moving entirely.

Xu Guang let out a long sigh of relief. It seemed this kind of worm parasitized the host’s central nervous system, enabling it to control the body. However, if the head was destroyed and it couldn’t find a new host within a short period, it would die naturally. He just didn’t know how this worm managed to infect people in the first place.

After a moment’s hesitation, he crouched down. Suppressing the discomfort in his heart, he attempted the Refinement of the blood from the sect member’s corpse. During the Refinement process, he kept his third eye fixed intently on the changes in his palm. Under the deep observation of Introspection, he confirmed that he hadn’t been parasitized.

With a hesitant expression, Xu Guang decided to give up at this point. He stopped following them and carefully retreated from the area.

There were quite a few Refining Viscera Power Masters in the Yellow Heaven Sect. Although he currently felt he could resist a Refining Viscera expert to a certain extent, that was only in a one-on-one situation. As he sprinted away, Xu Guang’s expression grew uglier. Just what was the origin of the Yellow Heaven Sect? How did they possess such bizarre, almost surreal worms? The dead could not return to life, yet this worm could defy the natural order and revive the deceased. It was simply heaven-defying.

The night grew even gloomier. Xu Guang darted continuously through the forest. At a certain point, he suddenly spotted a large group of people walking through the woods in the dark.

On their backs, they were carrying corpses!

He had found the corpse thieves! This was undoubtedly a sudden breakthrough. Xu Guang’s face lit up with excitement, and a surge of pleasant surprise flashed through his heart. He abruptly shifted his steps and quietly followed them.

He didn’t want to make enemies of them, but Martial Dao Cultivation was inherently a struggle. In order to become stronger, he had no choice but to fight for resources. Moreover, those people gathering human corpses were definitely planning to practice some Evil Technique. Thinking of it this way, he felt completely justified.

It clearly wasn’t the first time the people ahead were transporting corpses. Their operation was meticulous: some acted as lookouts, some carried the bodies, and others led the way. Xu Guang trailed closely behind them. They headed north all the way, eventually entering the Two Arm Mountains, though he didn’t know the specific name of this peak.

The group’s footsteps noticeably slowed down. There were many people in the valley, including several corpse-transporting teams. Even the leader of the team Xu Guang was following seemed a bit surprised.

"Xing the Second, there are this many tonight?" the leader asked.

"I heard that kid named Lin Shan snatched the Secret Manual. The guy has a strong background. We’ve been hunting him for days but still haven’t caught him, and so many of our people have died," the Corpse Guardian named Xing the Second replied in a low voice.

"Alright, hurry up and go inside."

Xu Guang narrowed his eyes. Taking advantage of the darkness, he blended into the crowd and entered the valley. Upon entering, his gaze instantly turned burning hot. Before him were incredibly massive mass graves!

Countless corpses lay haphazardly in the pits, densely packed and stacked in layers. They even seemed to have been systematically categorized. One pit was filled entirely with robust, able-bodied individuals, while the others were separated by men, women, the elderly, children, the frail, and the sick. There were six corpse pits in total, excavated in a bizarrely regular pattern.

The Corpse Guardian, Xing the Second, saw off the last batch of corpse transporters. Stretching his back, he said to the people beside him, "Alright, everyone tidy up. No one else should be coming today. We’ll leave a few people to keep watch, and the rest of the brothers can go back to sleep."

Once these people left, Xu Guang stepped out of the Black Shadow with a feverish look on his face. Even though it was summer, he wrapped himself in multiple layers of linen. Many of the corpses had already begun to stink. Even Xu Guang had to fully arm himself before daring to step inside.

Of course, the pit he entered was the one filled with Martial Artists. The other pits looked as though they had been there for a long time; the degree of decomposition was far too high, and he genuinely had no desire to set foot in them.

Covering his mouth and nose, Xu Guang wielded his Curved Saber, slicing open wounds on corpse after corpse and beginning his Blood Refining. There were simply too many bodies. It took him all the way until dawn to complete the Refinement of the blood from all the corpses in the Martial Artist pit.

Standing atop the pile of bodies, Xu Guang’s face was pale. He felt as if his mouth was filled with the stench of rot, and his mental state was somewhat sluggish.

However, feeling the dense, almost countless drops of Essence Blood in his Blood Eye, a look of exhilaration and joy appeared on Xu Guang’s face. He felt like an old farmer who had just brought in a bumper harvest.

It was truly wonderful.

Xu Guang cast a rather regretful glance at the remaining large pits. That was so much blood. But the mere thought of wading into those other pits made his stomach churn.

"Q-Quick, look... what is that?"

"A corpse came back to life?!"

"Who are you?!" Someone suddenly spoke, interrupting Xu Guang’s joy.

It was the few Corpse Guardians on watch. During the night, they hadn’t been able to see Xu Guang enter the pit. But now that day had broken and Xu Guang had stood up, they spotted him immediately. Their voices trembled as if they had witnessed some terrifying entity. As religious devotees, they firmly believed in tales of ghosts and gods. Xu Guang was entirely shrouded in black cloth that fluttered in the wind. Having just climbed out of a pile of corpses, he looked utterly horrifying.

Seeing the men, Xu Guang had no choice but to attack to prevent his whereabouts from being exposed. His speed was incredible. Like a gust of wind, he surged out of the pit, his legs kicking continuously in mid-air. In an instant, the bodies of the guards were sent flying.

Xu Guang turned around and looked at the corpse pits. He took a flint from his robes and tossed it in. Although he didn’t know what the Yellow Heaven Sect was plotting, he figured it couldn’t be anything good; it was better to nip it in the bud.

Right before leaving, an idea suddenly struck him. He left behind some insignia belonging to the Han family on the ground. Framing them like this was a bit crude, but who knew? It might just prove useful.

That day, Xu Guang returned to the camp, occasionally glancing toward the distant territory of the Yellow Heaven Sect.

At night, Zhao Yue came to find him, mentioning that some massive chaos seemed to have broken out at the Yellow Heaven Sect, though it had already been suppressed. Xu Guang figured this was related to him, so he kept a low profile.

A few days later, important figures from Feiyun City arrived. They led a group to the Yellow Heaven Sect to meet with Zhang Qing, and once again, some form of harmony was established.

The turmoil in Hedong was completely quelled. Xu Guang and the other Mercenaries were also preparing to follow the Feiyun Guard back to Feiyun City.

Xu Guang slowly let out a breath of relief, but he also felt somewhat disappointed. The Yellow Heaven Sect hadn’t gone after the Han family. As expected, clumsy tricks were ultimately useless; in the end, reason could only be enforced with fists.

It wasn’t until he returned home that he finally managed to completely suppress the unrest in his heart. Ever since discovering those bizarre worms in the Yellow Heaven Sect a few days ago, Xu Guang had been plunged into a state of nervous anxiety. He had no idea how the worms parasitized human bodies, and his biggest fear was that they might have already spread throughout the city.

Forcing himself to calm down, Xu Guang began his Cultivation of the fifth Cultivation Technique—the Blood Coagulation Skill.