Chapter 407 - Secrets of the Corpse Refinery Sect (1/2)
The shrill cry from the guards startled Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue. A shade of white wiped across her face as she immediately reactivated her Voodoo Curse. The woman was about to scream “Intruder! Alert the High Chieftain!” but fortunately, the influence of the curse quickly took over her senses and instead, she said to the guards who saw her, “It’s me. Rest easy.”
The intruders braced at their wicked stroke of luck. They were nearly inches away from the brink of their doom. The guards at the cave entrance saw the woman in red and bowed their heads low. “The hour is late, my lady,” said their captain politely, “Is there anything we can help you with?”
Even under the influence of Su Lianyue’s enchantment, the woman in red remained the aloof and indifferent self she reserved especially for her inferiors. “I wish to speak to the previous High Chieftain,” she pronounced frostily just as Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue formed up beside her.
“These are…” The captain croaked hesitantly when he saw Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue.
“Ignorance is bliss, Captain,” the woman in red shot him a glare of intense loathing, “Sometimes, knowing too much won’t do you much good.”
Her words were enough to send the captain fearing for his own life. Stammering profusely, he begged with a quivering voice, “I understand, my lady! I have been intrusive when I should not have to! Please forgive me, my lady!”
“And you’d do well to make way!” The woman snapped, throwing her sleeves like the wings of a bat.
“B-but…” The face of the captain was a deathly pale; he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, not knowing how should he answer, although he did, albeit falteringly, “The Chamber of Repose is where all previous High Chieftains rest… and the present High Chieftain has decreed that absolutely no one is permitted entry…”
“AH?!” The mind-controlled woman barked and snarled at him, her nostrils flaring. The captain began sweating copiously with a troubled and bewildered look on his face. A shadowy figure shimmered and appeared just in front of the captain. It was Xiao Chen. His hand closed on the throat of the captain and he lifted him up. “IMPUDENCE!”
That was the last straw for the captain. He looked as if he was about to soil his pants as he whimpered like a beaten dog, “I, I’m sorry, my lady! Please, mercy, my lady!”
The rest of the troop were all mages of the Nascent Soul Realm, but none of them dared to utter a word. Xiao Chen gave a loud snort and tossed the captain down on the ground like a sack of manure. The captain scrambled to his feet, relieved that he was spared of any punishment, exclaiming at the top of his voice, “Take all the time you need, my lady! All the time you need!”
Deep within her, the consciousness of the woman in red could only watch helplessly as her body remained in control at Su Lianyue’s mercy. They walked deeper into the cave passage, passing through the rows of guards flanking them, all of whose heads were hanging over their shoulders in deference and fear.
The long, windy passage coursed deep through the mountains and the air only grew thicker with the decaying stench of corpses the deeper they traversed the route. Through the half-hour-long journey, Su Lianyue felt so cold that she had to rub her shoulders and both man and woman slowly drew closer and closer to each other for warmth.
A wide, cavernous stone room loomed at the end of the passage and there was a large hall, built completely of hewn rocks, standing lonesomely at some distance away from the exit of the tunnel they exited. There was another passage just at the other side of this large room and more stone halls awaited far behind.
But there were no guards in sight. Xiao Chen warily projected his Divine Sense and saw many balls of green flames—ghost fire—floating eerily around a single, lone sarcophagus sitting in the center of this granite hall like courtiers around a king. There was a corpse, shriveled and dead, inside which was not Yu Yangzi. He must be one of the ancient High Chieftains.
They passed through several more stone tunnels and just as many stone chambers with lonely granite halls housing more remains of the former leaders of the Sect. A strange thought occurred to Xiao Chen suddenly. “Was our suspicion true? That the animation of the Divine Corpse needed the sacrifice of the souls of all the ancient High Chieftains? Was that why the corpses were all completely devoid of their souls?”
The unusual frostiness and the fetid malodor of death only grew stronger and more suffocating that Xiao Chen could hardly shake the feeling of dread that seemed to cling on his back like an apparition. He took out from his Divine Vessel the Fire-heart Jade that Huangfu Xin’er gave him and offered it to a shivering Su Lianyue. “Here. Wear this. It will help you with the cold. But I’ll need this back after this.”
Su Lianyue did not respond except with a strange look at Xiao Chen. She wore the Jade over her neck, comforted with the warmth seeping into her. The search went on for another half hour and they chanced upon more stone halls that looked no different to the ones they had encountered before and Xiao Chen understood something suddenly that greatly unsettled him.
“They have seen more than ten sarcophaguses containing the remains of the ancient High Chieftains… With three hundred years of reign between each of them, that would mean that this Divine Corpse would have absorbed at least three thousand years’ worth of hatred and malicious aura… Oh, Gods in Heaven,” Xiao Chen brooded, “A corpse with such capacious worth of evil intent would be as powerful as an Immortal King! Would there be anyone here in the Human Realm able to defeat it? Even the most powerful warriors and mages would be soundly defeated in mere seconds!”
The mere thought of it was enough to fill Xiao Chen with dread. Su Lianyue noticed him shuddering. “Are you cold too?”
“No… No, I’m not,” Xiao Chen muttered, shaking his head. Nauseating dizziness assailed his mind as he struggled to keep up with the conversation until they reached another stone hall and the woman in red stopped suddenly.
“We should be here. Yu Yangzi should be kept here,” Su Lianyue uttered softly, her head looking up to behold the tall facade of the hall’s front.
“Hmmm,” Xiao Chen returned. He put a hand over the head of the woman and cast a spell that completely dulled her senses. Then he walked to the stone structure. A piercing voice cackled vilely all of a sudden, “Heh heh heh… Here again, are you? And what other punishments does my student has in store for me now?”
Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue traded quick looks and they nodded in unison as the same thought flashed through their minds, “It really is Yu Yangzi in there.”
The intruders worked together to push open the massive granite doors that tried to remain unresponsive. Green fire swirled about in the air and a single man was at the center of this stone building. A scrawny figure, bloodied and swathed in tattered rags; iron pegs run through all four limbs of his with two more iron hooks grotesquely protruding through his shoulder blades, suspending the poor man in mid-air. Unkempt locks of hair hang down his face, veiling the eyeless sockets still slick with blood.
“Ah!”
Not even Su Lianyue could resist a scream when she laid eyes on such ensanguined monstrosity. They had found him—Yu Yangzi, the High Chieftain of the Corpse Refinery Sect three centuries ago. He was still very much alive, writhing and wincing with pain in his own flesh and blood. The rotting corpse that Xiao Chen had seen at the Changyin Mountain Range was the Corpse Puppet that merely contained a sliver of his consciousness and it had since been restored and used as a personal bodyguard of Ye Wuxin himself.
Yu Yangzi looked nowhere near the strength he once possessed when he was in his Corpse Puppet, more so, with his eyes completely dug out. But his soul was still as robust as ever and he quickly sensed Xiao Chen’s presence. “You! I know you! The young friend I met at the Changyin Mountain Range! Do you remember me?”