Zhu Dashuang drove the corpse group to the entrance of the nameless city, immediately drawing the attention of the zombie yamen runners, over a dozen pairs of eyes looking toward them.
The zombie yamen runners all possessed White Zombie cultivation, but the Wind-Chill disease seeds inside their bodies were even more numerous, causing their body temperatures to be far lower than normal.
Most of them had been Zhe People before death, showing that Shattered Stone Ascension was comparatively easier.
Ren Qing mixed among Zhu Dashuang's corpse group, restraining his own aura as much as possible.
The situation inside the city was too complicated, and in addition he needed a large number of zombies to cooperate, so he prepared to disguise himself as a zombie and sneak in.
Ren Qing raised his vitality to around fifty percent, his shriveled withered flesh becoming lively, while revealing just the right amount of rot.
His current appearance was almost no different from a Purple Zombie. With the assistance of the Mirror Immortal illusion, his body had not the slightest flaw.
As for the corpse qi unique to Purple Zombies, it was replaced by the Yin Qi Dreamflower.
It could be said that Ren Qing looked exactly like a real Purple Zombie from beginning to end, only possessing the appearance without the substance. The moment he acted, he would immediately be exposed.
The yamen runners did not care about Zhu Dashuang at all, asking questions as though conducting a routine inspection.
The leader was a White Zombie elder called Lu Liang. The blood vessels beneath his semi-transparent flesh appeared pale green, indicating that he was not far from becoming a Hairy Zombie.
Ren Qing had originally thought that Zhu Dashuang bringing over a dozen Purple Zombies would cause quite a stir, but unexpectedly the yamen runners remained completely unmoved.
Lu Liang sized up Zhu Dashuang and asked in a hoarse voice, "Zhu Dashuang?"
"This humble one is here..."
Zhu Dashuang was pulled aside while the yamen runners registered the newly born Purple Zombies.
Ren Qing slightly furrowed his brows. From Zhu Dashuang's memories, under normal circumstances, only one Purple Zombie would be born every two or three years.
Now over a dozen had appeared at once. Normally this should have attracted great attention, right?
Ren Qing rubbed his temples with a headache.
He knew that after zombies gave birth to souls, they would retain a trace of memories from before death.
Among these dozen or so Purple Zombies, some had methods for refining magical artifacts, and should have learned from the tribes of the Rotten Blood Plain while alive.
It also explained why the zombies had constructed a city carrying an official government system. After all, cultivators accidentally entering the forbidden zone through the generations was unavoidable.
Ren Qing wanted to use the characteristics of zombies to establish himself within this nameless city.
He had made subtle improvements to the Yin Gathering Formation of the Corpse Refinement Method, and added false memories to Zhu Dashuang, making the latter reveal his extraordinary "talent" to the yamen runners.
This way, Ren Qing would be able to mix into the government office with ease.
Any place possessing a yamen, having an official identity would always make acting more convenient, perhaps even allowing him to find different kinds of gains.
But unfortunately Ren Qing's plan failed. For some unknown reason, the yamen runners were deathly listless and did not care in the slightest about the origin of the Purple Zombies.
As a result, just after Zhu Dashuang completed the procedures for the Purple Zombies entering the city, he was driven away from the area by Lu Liang, showing that corpse raisers truly held low status.
"All of you follow me."
Lu Liang swept his gaze over the many dazed Purple Zombies. While speaking, he emitted dense corpse qi, then turned around and quickly walked toward the inside of the city gate.
Ren Qing raised his brows in confusion. If he had not seen wrongly, the White Zombie elder seemed to possess an inexplicable fear toward the city.
It was not fear toward some existence, but rather a desire to stay away from the city.
While he was thinking, another group of zombies arrived at the city gate from the south. There were not many Purple Zombies mixed among them, showing that this was the normal situation.
Who knew how many corpse raisers the government office of the "Corpse City" had pastured.
Ren Qing bent over and followed the White Zombie elder into the city gate. The moment he stepped into the passageway, he felt a chill assault his face.
After corpse transformation, reactions to any abnormalities became very sluggish, showing just how cold it was.
Of course, the cold definitely was not the reason the zombies had contracted Wind-Chill.
On both sides of the walls hung lanterns lit with corpse oil. Frost covered the green bricks, and the temperature difference between inside and outside was at least thirty to forty degrees.
Ren Qing suddenly realized that there might truly be a connection between the city and Meat and Wine Taoist.
Back then, the temperature difference between day and night in the marshlands had also been this bizarre. The source had naturally been environmental corruption caused by the corpse of a Heavenly Aberration realm powerhouse after death.
Could it be that the lower half of Meat and Wine Taoist's body was in the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone?
Ren Qing could not make sense of it, but his steps did not stop as he walked through the passageway. The blood within the surrounding Purple Zombies had already almost completely solidified.
Fortunately, so long as the zombies' joints had not frozen stiff, their movements would not be affected.
The Corpse City was filled with oppression. Tearing sounds continuously came from beneath the Purple Zombies' feet. That was flesh sticking to the floor tiles due to the cold.
The instant they lifted their feet, flesh peeled away from the soles, while the ground had long since become covered in flesh.
The ghostly green flames burning from corpse oil, flesh fragments spread across the ground. what Ren Qing was heading toward seemed not to be a city, but the underworld.
The underworld was empty, the dead were in the mortal world.
After continuing for several minutes, the exit of the distant passageway came into view.
Though the Corpse City was wrapped by towering city walls, there was not even a single building inside. Only hillocks resembling burial mounds were scattered throughout.
From Ren Qing's perspective, the Corpse City was a mass grave sealed within city walls.
Countless zombies sat crouched atop the burial mounds. All possessed White Zombie cultivation, their eyes hollowly watching the arrival of the Purple Zombies.
The atmosphere was strangely eerie, devoid of all vitality, containing only despair.
"It's here..."
Lu Liang's hoarse voice sounded. Beneath the semi-transparent skin of the Zhe People, his deathly still heart actually began beating at a low frequency.
But the beating heart did not relax him in the slightest. Instead, he became extremely nervous.
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes and used the perspective of the Double Pupils to inspect the other party's condition, only to see that the heart was filled with an enormous quantity of Wind-Chill germs.
As the heart beat, all the heat throughout his body was absorbed by the Wind-Chill germs.
"Quick... quickly go..."
Lu Liang opened a doorway in the corner and hurriedly walked into the passageway within the city wall.
The Purple Zombies instead showed no abnormalities, at most their movements became stiff from the cold as they slowly followed into the passageway.
Lu Liang leaned against the wall, covering his chest with his right hand as he gasped heavily.
Ren Qing noticed that the muscles of the White Zombie elder's limbs had all dissolved to varying degrees, as though ice cubes were gradually liquefying after encountering high temperatures.
Lu Liang's expression twisted as he swept a gloomy gaze across the Purple Zombies.
He immediately locked onto one, his arms trembling as he quickly stepped forward and directly dug out the Purple Zombie's heart, exchanging it with his own.
The Purple Zombie instantly collapsed to the ground. Since it was not a Zhe Person, lacking a heart affected it greatly, and it quickly lost all life.
The White Zombie elder made no attempt to conceal it, grabbing the Purple Zombie by the right leg and dragging it toward the depths.
Ren Qing was somewhat surprised. Even if the Wind-Chill germs had mutated, how could they become this terrifying? It looked as though they could easily take the life of a White Zombie.
Without turning his head, Lu Liang headed deeper inward. This place resembled a sealed air-raid shelter even more, miscellaneous objects piled everywhere in corners.
Many details revealed traces of Buddhism and Daoism, though all possessed considerable age.
Ren Qing surveyed the surroundings. The feeling the Corpse City gave him was very strange. Despairing zombies were everywhere, yet they maintained a peculiar order.
The Ghost Shadow detached from beneath his feet, searching along the shadows for clues.
Ren Qing quickly found Purple Zombies one after another inside some vacant rooms.
The Purple Zombies were all sealed inside coffins, absorbing the Yin Qi drifting through the air, slowly strengthening their cultivation and transforming toward White Zombies.
At this moment, Lu Liang stopped walking. Before him appeared a dilapidated gate, barely recognizable as a crude yamen.
"Old Lu..."
An old Hairy Zombie woman of the Yin Difference realm stood motionless at the yamen entrance, suddenly opening her eyes to look at the corpse group. The yamen runner clothing she wore should correspond to a steward of Ren Qing's Corpse Burner.
The Ghost Shadow touched both parties.
[Age: 1326]
[Lifespan: None]
[Technique: Corpse Refinement Method]
The old Hairy Zombie woman was called "Chen Chuan." Her Information Flow was slightly different.
[Age: 2135]
[Lifespan: None]
[Techniques: Corpse Refinement Method, Food-Consuming Immortal Technique]
Even Ren Qing had not expected that the first Yin Difference realm Hairy Zombie he encountered would actually possess the Food-Consuming Immortal Technique. From this, it showed that the Corpse Refinement Method and the Restraint Officer Method truly could coexist.
Furthermore, the Corpse City definitely contained secrets related to Meat and Wine Taoist.
Ren Qing's interest in Meat and Wine Taoist's secrets was not great. After all, the primary and secondary techniques of the stomach world had already advanced to the Yang Spirit realm.
He considered that the four secondary techniques paired with the Taotie Method, along with the self-selected bizarre transformation branch, were incomparable even to Meat and Wine Taoist.
"Kekekekekeke..."
As a Hairy Zombie, the old woman's flesh resembled rotten mud, constantly decaying and healing, making it impossible to see what she had looked like before death.
Ren Qing could not help sizing up Chen Chuan. Regarding realms above White Zombie, he had actually only seen records of them in the Corpse Refinement Method.
He had thought that as zombies advanced, the condition of their bodies would become increasingly stable. This had been true from Pseudo-Zombie to White Zombie. Unexpectedly, Hairy Zombies possessed a tendency toward imminent flesh collapse.
Or had Chen Chuan cultivated incorrectly?
Chen Chuan opened her mouth and asked, "Why are there so many Purple Zombies this time?"
"Don't know. Maybe an Extreme Yin Land was found."
Chen Chuan did not care about Lu Liang's explanation. She immediately reached out and slapped the gate. More than a dozen White Zombie yamen runners immediately walked out from the yamen.
After lighting flames with petroleum, they cut off portions of flesh from the many Purple Zombies.
Ren Qing was no exception, though he felt somewhat guilty, prepared at any moment to use techniques to influence Chen Chuan's cognition of souls.
The White Zombie yamen runners did not possess high intelligence, so Lu Liang was responsible for the more complicated matters.
They rigidly placed the Purple Zombie flesh atop the fire. Their actions left Ren Qing somewhat unable to understand what they were doing.
Could they be testing aptitude for cultivating the Corpse Refinement Method?
The moment this thought appeared in Ren Qing's mind, he saw several chunks of Purple Zombie flesh crackling noisily, after which the yamen runners placed them aside.
The corners of his mouth twitched.
So they were merely checking the combustibility of Purple Zombie flesh. In that case...
Lu Chuan selected over half the Purple Zombies. Seeing that Ren Qing's flesh would not ignite despite prolonged burning, she said with surprise, "Take them all to the Melting Furnace."
The Purple Zombies whose flesh burned easily were led by Lu Liang toward the center of the Corpse City, and Ren Qing was among them.
However, Lu Liang's attitude toward Ren Qing was clearly much gentler, even carrying a trace of ingratiation, as though some kind of benefit was involved.
Ren Qing silently recorded all kinds of strange details in his mind while the Ghost Shadow had already spread throughout the Corpse City.
Right now he only wanted to find a secluded place, determine where that Yang Spirit realm zombie was located, then research the peculiarities of the Corpse Refinement Method.
This alternative form of immortality possessed by zombies had already made Ren Qing itch with anticipation for a long time.