Chapter 638: Stealing the Bone

The Plague Ghosts, symbols of disaster and disease, appeared in the cavern. Five massive figures stood tall, reaching from floor to ceiling, like strongmen from an ancient battlefield.

"Open the coffin!"

Yin energy surged from my yin aperture, pouring into the bodies of the Five Ghosts. Pairs of ghostly hands reached out from the void and clamped down on the lid of the Suspended Coffin.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

After several loud bangs in succession, the five massive ghosts exerted their strength all at once.

The cavern trembled. The nine dragon poles, like flood dragons waking from a deep slumber, bit tightly into the stone walls to secure the Suspended Coffin.

The corpse qi roiled, forming five black vortexes around the Five Ghosts as if trying to swallow them whole.

"The corpse qi in the cavern is getting thicker." With my five senses constantly monitoring the cave for changes, my ears perked up, and I suddenly caught a soft noise.

Looking down, I saw that a narrow crack had actually been forced open in the dark cyan coffin lid!

"It's opening!"

Corpse qi as thick as black water poured from the crack, the lid rising bit by bit.

'Daoist master, it looks like I'm going to win.' The moment this thought crossed my mind, the sound of footsteps suddenly rang out beside my ears. I snapped my head up.

Stimulated by the corpse qi, the White Fur at the cave entrance was growing madly. The exit was steadily shrinking, leaving only a gap just large enough for an adult to squeeze through bent double.

And right in the middle of that gap, the girl ghost stumbled inside, shielding Gu Tongtong.

"Nonsense! What are you doing here?!" An undying Earth Corpse was buried in the depths of the underground palace, and a great terror was about to be born. I could barely protect myself; wasn't this child just running in to die?

"Get out!"

I shouted, but seeing how I looked in that moment, the little girl seemed stupefied, standing blankly at the entrance to the passage.

'Crap, I forgot she can see yin souls. This girl must have been scared stiff by the Five Plague Ghosts. But why did she run in? Was she worried about me? Impossible. And why did the girl ghost come in with her?' My mind raced, and my expression suddenly changed. 'Not good, something happened outside! I moved the Suspended Coffin, and the person behind the scenes must have noticed!'

Releasing the Uncorrupted Bone went against the will of heaven. Just as Daoist master Wan had said, accidents would occur frequently, as if an unseen force in the dark was hindering me.

'I can't just drive them out, either. My only option right now is to open the coffin as fast as possible and see exactly what clues are hidden inside.'

In the blink of an eye, the coffin lid rose another few millimeters. Corpse qi poured out like a geyser of black sand, shrouding the entire cavern.

I glanced at Gu Tongtong with some worry. Although she was protected by the girl ghost, she was still a living person. As the corpse qi invaded her fair skin, her vitality dissipated, and dark cyan-brown blotches slowly began to form.

'They would rather turn into living corpses than go outside? What did they see out there?' I focused on controlling the Five Plague Ghosts as the coffin lid rose bit by bit.

The corpse qi surged wildly. Just as the coffin lid was about to be completely removed, the White Fur at the cave entrance suddenly spread inward like mad, as if receiving a command.

The scene was truly terrifying, especially knowing that they were all White Worms.

It was impossible to count them. The wave of White Worms collided with the corpse qi gushing from the Suspended Coffin. It clearly wasn't their first clash; this black-and-white confrontation was fiercely brutal!

The White Worms were practically sacrificing their lives to push inward. Normally, the corpse qi wouldn't be able to resist for long before dissipating, but this time was different.

The Suspended Coffin was open! This corpse qi was not water without a source; an endless supply surged from within the coffin. As the two sides wore each other down, neither gained the upper hand. More and more White Fur drifted to the ground, but they seemed endless. The White Worms at the front were annihilated by the corpse qi, but even more crawled up from behind.

'The entire hospital is covered in white. If they are all parasitic White Worms, their numbers have probably reached an astounding level.' The mastermind had run Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital for twenty years and definitely had a thorough understanding of the Uncorrupted Bone. He wouldn't make obvious mistakes. In fact, it was safe to say he had long since prepared to prevent the Uncorrupted Bone from escaping the Suspended Coffin.

'Luring living people to refine corpses—such behavior is worse than beasts. If Heaven is blind and cannot distinguish the loyal from the wicked, then I will carry out the Way on behalf of Heaven.' Watching the White Fur gradually suppress the corpse qi and slowly close in, I saw it was about to touch Gu Tongtong, who was standing at the cave entrance.

I chanted the Yin-Yang Ghost Art and pointed a finger at my heart.

My nail sliced through flesh, digging out a drop of heart's blood, which I flicked into the bodies of the Five Ghosts.

Stimulating ghosts with one's own essence blood was a forbidden method. It was extremely dangerous and could easily lead to a backlash from the ghosts, but I couldn't care about that right now. I desperately commanded the Five Ghosts to lift the coffin.

"Come here!" I had Gu Tongtong and the girl ghost hide behind the Suspended Coffin.

The White Fur and corpse qi were still locked in a slaughter, yet to decide a victor, when other sounds echoed from outside the cavern.

It was the sound of dripping water, drawing near from a distance, like an army marching in the rain.

Hearing this familiar sound, I knew things were bad. In the span of a breath, an ugly face poked into the cave.

"A white fiend! And the monster from the water tank!"

A skinned head squeezed into the entrance. But this was just the beginning. As if receiving some sort of order, a horde of hideous monsters blocked the passage, completely sealing off the only exit.

'How are we supposed to run now? A wall of flesh and blood, sealed so tight not even a fly could escape!' My heart burned with anxiety. Worse still, the bloody fragrance I had smelled when entering the cave drifted through the corpse qi, seeming to harbor some kind of toxin. I could now feel pain spreading across my body, like ants gnawing between my skin and bones.

Sweeping my peripheral vision, I saw that Gu Tongtong was in a similar state. She slumped directly below the Suspended Coffin, her little face twisted and crimson, unable to even cry.

'The mastermind has already discovered the anomaly here. Very soon, more white fiends will swarm in to trap us. If this goes on, we're all going to die.' Summoning the Five Plague Ghosts took a massive toll. Even before the lid was fully open, a third of the yin energy in my yin aperture had been depleted. I had been forced into a dead end. Failing to open the coffin meant certain death; only by opening the Suspended Coffin would I have a fighting chance.

Moreover, I had made a wager with Daoist master Wan. If I won, when he arrived in Jiangcheng three days from now, I could finally settle matters with the sect cultivators.

'I'm going all out!' Having dug out my heart's blood, the wound tore open, and blood dyed the Blood Fox Tattoo on my chest red. My eyes turned fierce and savage as I frantically channeled the ghost art.

"Uncorrupted Bone! I open the coffin today to save you and help you leave this underground palace! If you can hear me, lend me a hand!" The Uncorrupted Bone seemed to be deep in slumber. No matter how loudly I yelled, there was no response from inside the coffin.

The White Fur outside the cave continued to spread inward. Forming a hand seal with one hand, I used my other to prop up the edge of the coffin lid.

As the White Fur expanded inward, the monsters drew closer and closer to where I stood.

The cavern wasn't large to begin with. Some of the white fiends seemed to smell the scent of the living on me and frantically tried to rush into the corpse qi. They reached out their slender arms, but to my surprise, even though they were also corpses, those monsters couldn't last half a second against this dark cyan corpse qi.

The arms they thrust into the corpse qi were devoured by the dark cyan miasma. By the time they pulled them back, all the flesh and skin were gone, leaving behind only snapped sections of bone.

The white fiends at the back pushed forward, constantly shoving monsters out of the White Fur's protective range. Once they fell into the corpse qi, they were immediately swallowed until only their bones remained, which in turn made the corpse qi even stronger.

The person hiding behind the scenes controlling the white fiends had clearly noticed this problem as well. He adjusted his strategy, ordering the white fiends and Earth Corpses to encircle but not attack, solely mobilizing the White Worms to assault the Suspended Coffin.

He was completely pushing forward with the lives of the White Worms. The ground was littered with insect corpses, like a layer of fallen snow.

Three meters, two meters, one meter!

With the hideous faces of the monsters right in front of my eyes, I couldn't stop. Staking everything on one final gamble, I poured all my yin energy into the Five Ghosts' bodies.

This was a desperate, do-or-die struggle; if I didn't succeed, I would die trying!

Tainted with the blood from my heart, the bodies of the Five Ghosts almost fully materialized, appearing entirely physical.

"Rise!"

Exerting force simultaneously, they violently hoisted the coffin lid up one cun!

Boundless corpse qi formed a massive wave that gushed out from beneath the coffin lid. As the huge wave crashed outward, the suppressive force descending from the heavens and the earth slowly weakened.

"Wake up, quickly!"

When the lid was lifted one point nine cun, a loud bang suddenly echoed from inside the Suspended Coffin, and dense cracks actually appeared all over its surface.

But when the lid was raised one chi high, something even more unexpected occurred.

The girl ghost, who had been playing dumb and hiding beside Gu Tongtong this whole time, showed an extremely human look in her eyes. She suddenly bit into the back of Gu Tongtong's neck! With her face covered in Gu Tongtong's blood, she leaped onto a dragon pole and flipped herself straight into the Suspended Coffin!

"She went in?!" This sudden change of events distracted me so much that I couldn't even bother controlling the Five Ghosts. I don't know where I found the courage, but I leaned forward and peeked inside the Suspended Coffin.

All the secrets were buried inside, and I desperately wanted to know exactly what the Uncorrupted Bone looked like.

The corpse qi was as dark as ink. Using my Judging Eye to look in, the scene before me left me utterly astounded.

Inside the Suspended Coffin, there was actually another Inner Coffin!

The endless corpse qi was coming from this Inner Coffin?!

'A coffin within a coffin? Impossible! Where did the girl ghost go? I clearly saw her jump in!' By now, no matter how stupid I was, I finally understood that I might have been used by her. This girl knew where the true body of the Uncorrupted Bone was located, so she must have countless ties to it. There was even a possibility that she herself was the Uncorrupted Bone.

On the surface, this livestream was a confrontation between the Live Show and the Two-Faced Buddha, but in truth, a third party had been hiding in the shadows all along—the Uncorrupted Bone itself.

'Why was everything inside the hospital white? Damn it, I should have realized earlier! These White Worms were specifically meant to deal with it!'

My eyes reddened. "It wants to cut off my chance of survival! I won't just let this go!"

Turning sideways, I flipped into the Suspended Coffin. My entire body pressed against the Inner Coffin, and as my Judging Eye swept over it, I quickly realized that its lid had not completely closed yet. "Get out here right now!"

Using yin energy to protect my palm, I reached the hand that had once been invaded by the affliction poison into the Inner Coffin. A piercing pain shot through me, and as I grabbed blindly, I seemed to touch something.

Right at the exact moment the Inner Coffin sealed shut, I yanked my hand back out.

"What is this?"

Resting quietly within my fingers was a piece of bone. As white and pristine as jade, it formed a stark contrast with the dark cyan corpse qi. Judging by its shape, it looked somewhat like a human vertebra.