Chapter 289: Corpse Revival

Standing in the middle of the room, Daoist Priest Xianqing felt it the most. Already injured by Ye Bing, he now had Yin energy invading his body; his complexion turned a sickly yellow-green, as if he had been bitten by a venomous snake.

"Daoist Priest!"

With the standing corpses blocking the way, my situation was no better. The weight on my shoulders was growing heavier. I glanced sideways; a pair of blackened arms gripped my shoulders, and a breathtakingly beautiful human head pressed down on my right shoulder. Her hair brushed my face, her nostrils twitching slightly, and her high-bridged nose scraped my cheek, raising the fine hairs on my skin.

My hands and feet turned freezing cold. I froze in place, eyes darting around, but my mind was completely blank. I had no idea what to do.

A biting chill seeped into my body through my shoulders. My internal organs felt like they were turning to ice, and breathing became a struggle. Every time I took a deep breath, I couldn't exhale properly; the air would catch halfway in my chest, suffocating me.

'What exactly is possessing Ye Bing? Why is she targeting me? Is it because of Ye Bing's memories? Or is she seeking revenge because I stopped her from escaping Bridge No. 3 Crematorium back then?'

My blood seemed to congeal. Slowly, my fingertips began to lose sensation, as if I were trudging through a desolate, snow-covered mountain in the dead of winter wearing nothing but a thin shirt.

In the inner room, Daoist Priest Xianqing was struck by the surging Yin energy. He swayed twice before collapsing to the ground. The nearby offerings were knocked over, scattering rabbit and fish meat everywhere. Surrounded by a horde of corpses, the fragrant meats looked all the more grotesque.

The Soul-Capturing Bell had just shattered when Yun Chuan let out a miserable shriek. White fur sprouted from his face, only to retract, shifting back and forth a few times. Then, Yun Chuan's eyes rolled up until three-quarters of his pupils were hidden and only the whites showed. He seemed to have lost his mind. Kicking aside the nearby bronze tripod, he reached out with both hands, his joints twisting backward at a sixty-degree angle to untie the silk cloth bound behind his back.

Between the plain white clothes and the red-trimmed black robes lay an embroidered rope binding the two of them together.

This was the Wangchuan Rope. One end tied the living and the other bound the dead, facilitating corpse driving while walking the boundary between Yin and Yang.

Every three cun and three fen along the rope, a Knot of the Other Shore was tied using Talisman Paper. The seal of the knot fell exactly in the middle of the embroidery, carrying the meaning: flowers bloom on the Other Shore where there is no shore; souls fall into the Wangchuan yet remain in the river.

Right now, this Wangchuan Rope was exactly what Yun Chuan was trying to untie. His hands moved completely out of his control; what started as sluggish movements grew increasingly nimble.

"Yun Chuan! Stop!" Daoist Priest Xianqing knew the purpose of the Wangchuan Rope perfectly well. Once the rope was untied, the fox immortal's soul would return, breaking through the Yin to enter the Yang, and the Fox Immortal Corpse would fall completely out of control.

Propping himself up with one hand, Daoist Priest Xianqing couldn't even spare the time to treat the wound on his palm. He grabbed a shell from a bamboo dustpan, scooped up some rice, and staggered over behind Yun Chuan.

He lifted the white cloth covering the fox immortal's face and pried open the corpse's mouth, attempting to pour the rice inside.

As the rice was stuffed in, Yun Chuan's hands slowed. Then, a bizarre shriek tore from his throat—a sound that didn't seem like it could ever come from a human being. Immediately after, his hands sped up again, as if sensing the threat.

The scene inside the room was utterly horrifying. Yun Chuan's arms reached backward, twisted at a sixty-degree angle as if he had no joints at all. Moving with unnatural dexterity, his fingertips flew across the knots. Talisman Paper was torn away, and the embroidered Knots of the Other Shore were undone in a matter of moments.

The exact moment the Wangchuan Rope hit the floor, Yin energy skyrocketed within the room, surging so fiercely that one had to wonder whether they were still in the Yang Realm or had fallen into a Yin Nether Ghost Domain.

"Oh no." Clutching the shell, Daoist Priest Xianqing stumbled backward in his disheveled robes. He didn't stop until his back bumped right into the standing corpses.

I looked over. The faces of the students who had been dead for years actually bore expressions now. They looked as though they were crying.

With the Wangchuan Rope untied, Yun Chuan fell to his knees. He pressed his forehead deep into the ashes on the floor, his body not daring to rise any higher than the white-robed silhouette behind him.

Standing by the door, I took in the entire sight. The figure wearing the plain white robes was that Fox Immortal Corpse. Astonishingly, even without Yun Chuan carrying it, it remained standing firmly in place.

Aside from the Yin energy, there were also black threads—barely visible to the naked eye—surging out of the student corpses and winding around the fox immortal.

"It's absorbing the corpse qi? Gao Jian, quickly take it away!" Daoist Priest Xianqing yelled at me. But I was completely powerless; my cheek felt as if it were being stroked by an animal's tongue. The sensation was indescribable and exceptionally terrifying.

The fox immortal's short, small body slowly turned around. With no one pulling it, it was truly moving all on its own.

'It revived?!'

The white cloth veil slipped off, revealing the fox face hidden behind it.

Its fur was crimson red, like burning flames. The tightly shut eyelids slowly opened, revealing a pair of blood-soaked eyes.

Devoid of emotion or reason, the depths of those eyes were filled with nothing but gore and cruelty.

Wrapped in the white burial shroud, the fox stood upright in the very center of the room like a human. It wasn't until it fully turned around that I realized this fox immortal's gaze was locked directly onto me.

'Has it been watching me this whole time?' I could understand Ye Bing being drawn to me, but for the fox immortal to also show such a special interest left me flattered by the attention. Since when had I become so popular?

The Fox Immortal Corpse pressed down onto Yun Chuan's back. With his eyes consumed by nothing but the whites, Yun Chuan stood up while carrying the dead fox. The moment he took a step forward, the surrounding student corpses emitted harsh, creaking sounds, like the turning of rusted gears. The Talisman Papers stuck to the backs of their necks peeled off. These corpses, dead for five years now, bent their spines, bowing their heads deeply and crossing their hands in front of them, all maintaining the exact same posture.

Respectful and humble, they automatically parted to form a clear path.

Completely unimpeded, Yun Chuan trampled across the charred corpse ashes and charged wildly at me.

'What is going on here?' I wanted to dodge, but there was still a beautiful woman's head resting on my shoulder. I had no control over my own body; even twitching a single muscle felt impossibly difficult.

The Fox Immortal Corpse closed in. Yun Chuan came to a halt three steps away from me, suddenly spun around, and leaned the Blood Fox corpse on his back directly toward me.

A fox's eyes are vastly different from a human's. The long, narrow corners curved slightly upward. As its gaze shifted, it made you unconsciously want to draw closer and melt into the flames within those eyes, only to be burned until not even ashes remained.

Making eye contact with the fox corpse, the more I looked, the more terrified I felt. The reflection in my pupils looked nothing like a dead body. 'It's come back to life. This fox has truly come back to life!'

I tried to shrink away, but the Fox Immortal Corpse pushed closer and closer. It seemed to have caught a familiar scent on me. It wanted to burrow straight into my head, raising its two razor-sharp claws. Coagulated, blood-red stains could still be vaguely seen between its toes.

'It wants to tear my head open?' Frightened by the thought, I watched the sharp claws close in. Just as they hovered right above my head, a dark, livid hand grabbed them.

The fox corpse's eyes rolled in their sockets, and only then did it notice the other person's head resting on my shoulder.

I don't know if anyone has ever seen a fox smile, but right at that moment, I witnessed exactly that. The Blood Fox's mouth cracked open into a slit, dropping a few grains of white rice from between its teeth.

The corpse qi and Yin energy clashed against each other, acting like invisible knives that sliced into my face with a stinging pain.

The Fox Immortal Corpse faced off against Ye Bing. They both wanted to obtain something from me, and with negotiation out of the question, the fiend and the corpse broke into an all-out brawl.

Swept aside by the ghostly wind, I forced my stiff body to crawl up and bolted toward the inner room.

"Daoist Priest, that fox has revived!" I completely ignored Jiang Chen, who had long since been scared silly. Squeezing through the student corpses, I pulled Daoist Priest Xianqing into my arms. His Daoist robes were splattered with blood, and his face had aged dramatically.

"There's nothing I can do, either." Smiling bitterly, Daoist Priest Xianqing lowered his head and coughed up another mouthful of blood. "I've wronged the boy, Yun Chuan. I regret everything. If I had known it would come to this, I never should have taken him as my disciple."

"Daoist Priest, there's still a chance!" Outside the room, the ghostly winds and corpse qi were howling and clashing. Shielding Daoist Priest Xianqing with my back, I pulled out a stack of Talisman Paper wrapped in a raincoat from my chest. "I have Upper Vehicle Talisman Papers right here, as well as a complete set of array Talisman Papers!"

The Random High-Tier Talisman and the Two Dragons Emerging from Water Array were my trump cards. Recalling the sheer power of the Heavenly Capital Thunder Talisman, hope flared up in my heart once more. "Daoist Priest, take a look at these Talisman Papers. How do we use them?"

A flash of surprise crossed his face, but after inspecting them, Daoist Priest Xianqing shook his head. "The Two Dragons Emerging from Water Array can only be laid out in a place where the Five Elements align with water. As for this Upper Vehicle Talisman, I have no idea how to use it either. The path of corpse driving doesn't study talisman arts as deeply as other Daoist lineages do."

Daoist Priest Xianqing casually taught me a few methods for setting up the Two Dragons Emerging from Water Array, but successfully laying the array was going to be incredibly difficult.

Silently taking the Talisman Papers back and wrapping them securely in the raincoat, I stared at the fierce battle between the fiend and the corpse raging outside. They were blocking our only path to survival. If we wanted to escape, our only choice was to lure them away.