Yin wind howled around Corpse City as several thousand zombies began recultivating the Corpse Refinement Method, and the atmosphere was no longer as deathly silent as before.
As long as the Hairy Zombies imprisoned within coffins could enter the Corpse Refinement Method, they could avoid flesh collapse and awaken from their long slumber.
However, their intelligence was clearly affected, causing them to become rigid.
Of course, Ren Qing felt that zombies having simple temperaments was not necessarily a bad thing. At the very least, it allowed them to focus on cultivation of the Corpse Refinement Method.
As for the Year-Year Technique, the zombies' progress was somewhat slow.
Ren Qing could not possibly provide resources to help them for free, so for the time being, the zombies still showed no tendency toward reaching the Martial Practitioner realm.
He had no particularly good solution for this.
Only after the zombies were incorporated into the giant Corpse Buddha could they obtain enough resources to cultivate the Year-Year Technique through various tasks.
Fortunately, the zombies had not lived hundreds or thousands of years in vain. At least their accumulation in artifact refinement was fairly good, as could be seen from coffin making.
With the supplementation of more than ten thousand zombies, the Restraint Officers' Hall should be sufficient to control the giant Corpse Buddha.
Moreover, zombies were not affected by the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone and did not need life force to maintain their bodies, which could greatly reduce the pressure on Rebirth Yellow Springs.
At present, already more than a hundred cultivators had attempted to master the Year-Year Technique. In addition, the bladder within the giant Corpse Buddha could maintain the life force of some people, allowing Rebirth Yellow Springs to barely achieve a balance between income and expenditure.
Some alchemists instead saw business opportunities and began refining large quantities of pills that increased life force, using this to earn blood crystals.
The creed of the Restraint Officers' Hall was the pursuit of resources, mainly originating from Ren Qing's stimulation of the market. Even the Cishi people could not avoid this.
Ren Qing instead chose to remain in Melting Furnace, watching his own lifespan continuously approach five thousand years, allowing his mental state to gradually calm down.
The Yang God realm No-Birth Immortal involved the mutual fusion between strange objects. Even with the existence of the information flow, that did not mean there was no danger whatsoever.
Moreover, once he consumed five thousand years of lifespan, the Corpse Refinement Method would definitely advance simultaneously.
Ren Qing had to make sufficient preparations to avoid sudden changes in the two spells, thereby causing unpredictable accidents.
It was as if he had been forgotten by all the zombies, secretly rejoicing that he had not chosen to expose his identity.
Only Tian Fang would occasionally come to Melting Furnace, in order to check whether Ren Qing had developed intelligence, yet discovered that the latter had become increasingly rigid.
He was very disappointed by this and thought about finding methods of enlightenment from the Immortal's Dream.
Ren Qing ignored Tian Fang. All his energy was focused on sensing the strange objects, and even his safety was protected by Ghost Shadow.
The White Bone Mountain Mounds on the surface.
Scattered scavengers wandered among the mountain-like piles of skeletons, attempting to search for fresh corpses to use for cultivating zombies to send to Corpse City.
However, ever since the problem of Hairy Zombie flesh collapse had been solved, the number of corpse raisers gradually decreased, let alone scavengers.
The corpse raisers successively headed toward Corpse City, where Lü Liang taught the contents of the Corpse Refinement Method.
Of course, there were also corpse raisers heading toward the surface.
Under the impatient instructions of the gatekeeper, Zhu Dashuang stepped into the White Bone Mountain Mounds, his swollen pale body continuously dripping corpse water.
He muttered incoherently under his breath as his footsteps hesitantly moved into the distance.
Li Yiliang had served as gatekeeper for a full five hundred years. Watching Zhu Dashuang's retreating figure, he immediately used the boulder to block the entrance and exit position once again.
He knew that Zhu Dashuang had already become accustomed to the identity of a corpse raiser. Was he himself not the same?
But ever since the zombies in the city found a way to solve the drawbacks of the Corpse Refinement Method, they had begun gradually shrinking their grazing territory.
Zhu Dashuang had brought back three batches of pseudo-zombies during the recent dozen or so days. Once there were no more scavengers outside, they would have to head to Corpse City.
Li Yiliang had heard a certain rumor.
Tian Fang had discovered the inheritance of the "Corpse Immortal." They no longer needed to endure the pain of flesh collapse and had furthermore obtained immortal methods cultivated by immortals.
Now they mainly focused on cultivation, waiting at any moment for the Corpse Immortal to guide them away.
Li Yiliang could not help becoming filled with countless thoughts. His face revealed an almost imperceptible longing, as if even the heart in his chest had begun beating.
Not long ago, he had received notice of evacuation. He only needed to wait for the corpse raisers to bring back all the pseudo-zombies before he could seek the Great Dao of the Corpse Immortal.
However, upon thinking this, Li Yiliang's eyes instead became filled with worry.
The underground indeed remained calm, but that did not mean the surface was the same. At the very least, he could occasionally hear rustling strange noises.
Especially at night, it was even mixed with earth-shaking tremors.
Li Yiliang had served as gatekeeper for hundreds of years and had nearly forgotten when the last time he encountered such circumstances was, so naturally he could not avoid developing apprehension.
Fortunately, the city's position was deep enough that the outside world could not affect them.
Li Yiliang leaned against the bottom of the boulder at an angle, his aura slowly converging. Very quickly, he became just like a corpse, quietly waiting with closed eyes.
He could hear the sound of the Corpse Summoning Bell shaking outside, gradually moving farther away bit by bit.
That was a magical artifact unique to corpse raisers.
Zhu Dashuang turned his head to glance at the sealed entrance and exit before quickly moving away from the area.
Relying on the Corpse Summoning Bell's attraction toward pseudo-zombies, in merely a short moment, he gathered more than ten ragged scavengers.
Zhu Dashuang sighed in relief. Presumably it would not take long to complete the task.
Of course, his efficiency being so fast also had to be credited to the newly refined Corpse Summoning Bell, which could attract wandering pseudo-zombies within ten li.
This magical artifact was specially refined by Hairy Zombies within the Immortal's Dream through seeking powerful cultivators.
Thinking about how he would soon come into contact with the Immortal's Dream, the confusion in Zhu Dashuang's heart immediately dispersed completely, and his footsteps unconsciously quickened as his right hand vigorously shook the bell.
The range he was responsible for was twenty li nearby, far from counting as burdensome.
After continuously going out for several days, there were already not many pseudo-zombies remaining within the White Bone Mountain Mounds.
"Souls return, souls return..."
As long as scavengers detected the sound of the Corpse Summoning Bell, they would immediately rise and head toward the source, only their traveling speed was relatively slow.
Immediately afterward, Zhu Dashuang noticed that within the scavenger procession behind him, there were unexpectedly more than ten fresh corpses placed upon pushcarts.
Zhu Dashuang's heart became filled with confusion.
Under normal circumstances, finding one corpse within thirty days already counted as extremely lucky. In fact, even going several months without any harvest was not surprising.
But now, how could so many corpses suddenly appear?
Zhu Dashuang's intelligence was unable to understand this abnormal phenomenon, so he simply stopped thinking about it and continued using the bell to gather scavengers.
The result that surprised him was that the number of corpses continued increasing, quickly exceeding a hundred corpses, until even the pushcarts were already filled.
Because of this, Zhu Dashuang also noticed that the corpses were not the common cocoon people and Zhe People, but rather a type he had never encountered before.
The lower halves of the corpses had withered, while their upper halves were covered by a thick layer of insect armor, with the flesh in the gaps displaying an orange-yellow color.
Zhu Dashuang could only pile the corpses into the pushcarts.
He did not know that the corpses were not naturally generated underground, but rather came from parasitic creatures within the bodies of gigantic beings.
The appearance of large numbers of corpses without warning only had one possibility.
That was that a gigantic being had already approached the hinterlands of the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone, and while moving, corpses were accidentally brought out from within its body.
Zhu Dashuang hurriedly circled around once, and the number of pseudo-zombies had also reached several dozen, so he planned to immediately return underground.
Right at this moment.
Crack...
One of the pushcarts collided with white bone corpses, causing damage to appear, and several corpses inside immediately scattered all over the ground.
Zhu Dashuang helplessly shook his head and could only signal for the pseudo-zombies to carry the corpses forward.
But this way, because of the heavy corpses, the pseudo-zombies' walking speed would be affected.
If it were cultivators from the Restraint Officers' Hall, they definitely would have made a decision immediately. After all, no matter how many corpses there were, they were merely accidental gains.
Losing several was inconsequential. The most important thing was one's own safety.
But after experiencing hundreds of years as a corpse raiser, Zhu Dashuang's thinking had already become inflexible. He only thought about bringing them all back to the yamen to report completion.
From this, the rigidity of zombies could be seen. So when they encountered troubles they could not solve, for several thousand years they had remained in a state of indirectly waiting for death.
Even though an anomaly appeared that noticed the defects of the Corpse Refinement Method, the result was still that they forcibly buried him underground, fearing disruption of the balance.
Zhu Dashuang led the corpse group toward the entrance and exit.
From time to time, he turned his head to monitor the pseudo-zombies behind him in case any fell behind.
But what surprised Zhu Dashuang was that those few pseudo-zombies not only did not slow down because of the corpses, but instead walked faster and faster.
They even moved from the rear ranks of the corpse group to positions side by side at the front.
No matter how stupid Zhu Dashuang was, he still sensed something wrong. Yin qi immediately spread throughout his body as he raised his eyes toward the abnormal pseudo-zombies.
He saw that the slender lower halves of the corpses had actually pierced into the pseudo-zombies' spinal bones, parasitizing them in an alternative manner.
The shells of the corpses covered the skin around the pseudo-zombies' necks, while the faces grew on the backs of their heads.
It could truly be called "one body, two faces."
Zhu Dashuang's pupils dilated. The corpses' parasitism upon the pseudo-zombies had indirectly strengthened their constitutions, and their movements were still controlled by the Corpse Summoning Bell.
But that extra face on the back of the head was muttering incessantly to itself.
"It's coming... it's coming... it's coming..."
"It's coming... it's coming... it's coming..."
The voice emitted by the face grew increasingly louder, as if warning of approaching danger, causing Zhu Dashuang's entire body to become soaked in corpse water.
"What's coming, what kind of ghost is this."
Dense ominousness arose in his heart as he urged the corpse group to increase their speed as much as possible.
Zhu Dashuang immediately discovered that the other corpse raisers in the distance had likewise encountered similar situations and were charging toward the entrance and exit in panic.
Boom boom boom...
White bones cascaded toward both sides as a several-hundred-meter fissure gradually revealed itself.
Dense corpse qi assaulted their faces. The carrion-eating insects flying through the air scrambled to flee, yet many still transformed into pus.
Bang!!!
A giant claw over a hundred meters long stretched out from underground, smashing into the ground and causing white bones to scatter apart.
When had Zhu Dashuang ever seen such a terrifying aura?
He could not bother with the corpse group that had fallen into chaos. Whether he could survive next depended on fate.
No matter how desperately Zhu Dashuang exerted himself, he still seemed to remain within the giant creature's range, showing just how enormous the other party's body was.
Bang!!
Another giant claw stretched out from underground.
The black-purple shell was covered in barnacles, and within the barnacles were eyeballs that continuously rolled around as the giant claw opened and closed.
The gigantic creature arduously crawled out from the fissure, appearing externally like a crab nearly a thousand meters large.
Its protruding eyes displayed brilliantly multicolored hues, while the limbs supporting its body were replaced by countless rotten tentacles.
The Corpse Crab spat out thick yellow foam from its mouth, mixed with large quantities of corpses.
Zhu Dashuang reacted. The gigantic creature had been attracted by the strange corpses, and he immediately drew the copper coin sword from his waist.
He killed the parasitized pseudo-zombies and then spat corrosive corpse water onto the white bone pushcarts, completely severing the life force of the corpses.
Zhu Dashuang agilely rushed into the side path leading toward the entrance and exit.
The Corpse Crab crawled as if traversing flat ground, lifting corpses with its giant claws and stuffing them into its mouth, then chewing them into fragments and sending them into its stomach.
In the blink of an eye, it could cross several hundred meters, while the struggling zombies resembled headless flies.
Taking advantage of the interval while the Corpse Crab feasted heartily, Zhu Dashuang quickly arrived at the entrance and continuously pounded the sealed boulder with both arms.
"Li Yiliang, open up quickly, Li Yiliang..."
Li Yiliang could hear the despair within Zhu Dashuang's voice. After hesitating for several breaths, he hurriedly moved the boulder away from its original position.
Zhu Dashuang frantically rushed into the cave tunnel.
Li Yiliang saw that giant crab whose size reached the heavens and could not help standing frozen in place. It was Zhu Dashuang who pushed the boulder back into place.
After Zhu Dashuang completed all this, he collapsed onto the ground gasping for breath.
"This place is no longer safe, we need to go quickly."
Li Yiliang regained his senses. The disturbance caused by the Corpse Crab intensified increasingly, as if its appetite had no limit, even stuffing white bone corpses into its mouth.
The two zombies did not dare remain long and hurried toward Corpse City.
On the way, they also encountered several Hairy Zombies intending to investigate the situation. After Zhu Dashuang informed them of the specifics, bronze bells immediately rang throughout Corpse City.
The bronze bells were placed atop the city walls and had become mere decorations over several thousand years. Unexpectedly, today they were struck repeatedly several times, deafeningly loud.
Before the Corpse Crab, zombies were like ants fleeing natural predators, becoming incomparably chaotic.
Within Melting Furnace, Ren Qing sat cross-legged beside the furnace. His outward appearance looked ordinary, but his flesh and bones had transformed into demonic dark red.
After hearing the bell sounds, he could not help opening his eyes and looking toward the surface.
The aura emitted by the Corpse Crab was too abrupt, so naturally he could sense it.
There was only so much Ren Qing could do. Before death, the Corpse Crab had at least been at the Yang God realm, and after death, because of the Forbidden Zone, it instead became even more powerful.
He did want to do something, but once the information flow was activated, it already could no longer be stopped.
However, this was also good. At least after breaking through to No-Birth Immortal, his strength could obtain enormous enhancement, and then he could advance or retreat freely.
What Ren Qing chose to advance for No-Birth Immortal was not the Shadowless Ghost, but the No-Eye Method.
After all, the No-Eye Method could help him better control the giant Corpse Buddha, thereby allowing him to display strength far surpassing the Yang God realm.
Among the five spells of the No-Eye Method, only the Nightmare Art remained at the Yin Difference realm, so for this he consumed an additional five hundred years of lifespan.
After the Nightmare Art advanced to the Yang God realm, it was named "Nightmare Demon Emperor Lord." Its abilities were mainly reflected in completely controlling the body's Nightmare Demon transformation.
Had it not been forcibly suppressed by the No-Eye Method, Ren Qing would already have completely transformed into a Nightmare Demon.
Nightmare Demons ignored physical attacks and could arbitrarily travel through dreams, and could even rely on nightmares to achieve long-term possession of others.
After spending several days becoming familiar with the Nightmare Demon Emperor Lord, Ren Qing immediately threw himself into breaking through No-Birth Immortal.
Will you advance to No-Birth Immortal, consuming five thousand years of lifespan
He had only just reduced his lifespan to slightly over ten years, yet unexpected trouble appeared in the outside world. Wanting to pause again was clearly unrealistic.
Ren Qing restrained his aura as much as possible. No-Birth Immortal itself was still manageable with the information flow controlling it, but the trouble instead lay in the Corpse Refinement Method breaking through to Corpse Fiend.
At present there's no way to post chapter comments, but I can still see them.
This chapter is four thousand characters, there's one more chapter.