Mutate Corpse

Back in the house.

After repeatedly opening and closing the Daily Settlement Panel for a quarter of an hour, Wen Jiu's excitement finally ebbed like the tide.

Sleepiness swept over him again, carrying him back into the land of dreams.

Early the next morning, before dawn, Wen Jiu jolted awake on the wooden bed. The first thing he did was open the Daily Settlement Panel. Seeing that it really existed, he let out a long breath of relief.

"Good thing it wasn't a dream."

He lifted his gaze. A pale hint of dawn had appeared beyond the window, and with it came a fierce surge of hunger.

He was just about to gulp down some water to settle his empty stomach, then go find something to eat, when a knock sounded at the door at the same time as a woman's voice.

"You little brat, get up already."

"Open the door for me."

Her voice was gentle, but with a hint of boldness.

And very familiar.

Wen Jiu hurried to open the door. A woman in a plain, blue-green cloth dress stood before him.

Her clothes were simple, but she was strikingly pretty, with arched brows, almond-shaped eyes, and skin as white as snow.

Yet the instant he saw her, memories of her came flooding back.

Wen Ya.

His older sister!

"How are you feeling after a night's rest? Is your body any better?" After entering, Wen Ya set a large bowl covered with a lotus leaf on the wooden table. As she lifted the leaf, she asked him.

Wen Jiu knew what she meant. He answered as he looked at the fragrant bowl. "I'm all right. I think I can eat now... Sis, what is this? It smells so good."

When the lotus leaf came away,

there was a bowl of rice underneath.

He must have been starving. Even a bowl of plain white rice smelled so good that his mouth flooded with saliva.

"Smells good, doesn't it? It's Spirit Rice. It's low-grade, but it's still something those Immortals eat!"

As she spoke, Wen Ya handed him the bowl and chopsticks.

Wen Jiu didn't take them. His face was full of doubt. "Sis, how did you get Spirit Rice?"

From his memories,

he had signed a contract of servitude and become a corpse burier.

His older sister, meanwhile, had become a laborer on Corpse Peak.

A laborer earned three to five taels more than a corpse burier, but even so, she could never afford low-grade Spirit Rice.

Wen Ya forced a smile. "An Immortal Official who oversees the corpse buriers liked how cleanly and efficiently I worked, so he asked me to be his maid... Hurry up and eat. This low-grade Spirit Rice can clear impurities from your body and protect your organs from Blood Qi, corpse aura, Death Qi, and Yin Qi."

"Sis, you didn't agree just to get this rice, did you?" Having lived two lives and spent seven or eight years in the workplace, how could he fail to see Wen Ya's strained smile? There was more to this than she was letting on!

Wen Ya hurriedly shook her head. "No, no. Why are you asking so many questions? Hurry up and eat, or we'll have to gather and bury corpses again before long. If you don't eat your fill, where will you get the strength to bury them?"

With that,

Wen Ya gave Wen Jiu no chance to speak. She rose to leave, offering one last reminder as she went. "Work hard, and remember... We're able to stay on this Immortal Mountain because our parents gave their lives for it."

Bang!

The wooden door slammed shut.

Wen Jiu stood frozen for a few breaths. He didn't chase after her. Instead, he picked up the bowl and ate in great, hungry mouthfuls.

Things had come to this.

There was nothing he could do.

Nothing he could change.

All he could do was eat his fill, then grow stronger step by step with the help of the Daily Settlement Panel.

Soon,

Wen Jiu returned to that Dead Corpse Land.

Compared with yesterday, the Dead Corpse Land felt even colder today. As soon as he came within a hundred zhang of it, the chill pierced his bones. The corpse buriers around him huddled deeper into their clothes, but even that couldn't keep the cold at bay.

Yet compared with yesterday, Wen Jiu felt more at home today, surrounded by corpses strewn across the Dead Corpse Land.

The chill.

The Death Qi and corpse aura.

He relished it all.

If he weren't trying to avoid drawing attention, he would have taken off his outer robe and mask and greedily gulped down the Death Qi and corpse aura.

"Get a move on! We need to finish early today. Anyone who dares take a break can expect a lash from me." After the middle-aged foreman's warning, Wen Jiu picked up a shovel and began turning the bloody earth, hauling Corpse Remnants onto a cart.

Everywhere he looked,

the broken limbs and Corpse Remnants no longer seemed so terrifying.

Instead, he found himself wanting to mutate them all and make them his own.

But for now, he could only mutate one. Considering the information about the level-one Corpse Nurturer on the panel, Wen Jiu decided to take his time and look for a mostly intact corpse. An intact corpse would be stronger than Corpse Remnants after mutation.

However,

even after half a day, Wen Jiu still hadn't found a single intact corpse.

The other corpse buriers were in the same boat.

The most intact corpse Wen Jiu had seen all morning belonged to a middle-aged male cultivator who had nothing below the waist.

Though he hadn't found a complete corpse, the conversations he overheard gave him a deep understanding of just how cruel the world of cultivators was. It turned out that everyone who died here was one of those lofty Immortals.

Not a single one was a mortal!

Wen Jiu had no idea how many cultivators' Corpse Remnants littered this Dead Corpse Land, but he guessed there had to be at least ten thousand.

Ten thousand cultivators, left exposed in the wilderness like this.

After death, all they got was a nameless burial on a green hill from the corpse buriers.

It was truly pitiful.

"Every mortal dreams of becoming an immortal. My parents even gave their lives serving cultivators so their children could stay on the Immortal Mountain... But who among them knows how brutal the cultivation world really is?"

Wen Jiu couldn't help but sigh to himself.

Just then, a male cultivator's corpse came into view. It knelt on the ground, its clear features etched with resentment and fury, its chest seemingly hollowed out by some kind of strange beast. As Wen Jiu approached, he sensed the Yin Qi around it was three times heavier than the surrounding air. Those three parts were not to be underestimated. Had he not already become a Corpse Nurturer, Yin Qi of this density entering his body would have left him bedridden for two days at least.

"You'll do!"

Wen Jiu slowly approached it.

The corpse's basic information gradually appeared before his eyes.

[Nameless Male Corpse]

[Bone age: thirty-five; Body Refining First Layer in life]

[Mutate?]

Wen Jiu glanced around. Seeing no fully intact corpses, he immediately chose yes.

As soon as he made his choice, Wen Jiu secretly bit his finger and dripped three drops of his blood onto the corpse's head and both shoulders. In the space of an instant, the corpse sucked all three drops into its body.

As the blood flowed in, the Yin Qi around the corpse swelled several times over. Fortunately, he was far enough from the middle-aged foreman that the man didn't notice. Wen Jiu knew that the mutation had begun.

All he had to do now was leave the corpse near the Dead Corpse Land and wait quietly as it devoured the Yin Qi and Death Qi.

After some time,

it would become a White Zombie!

Unlike traditional corpse-nurturing methods, there was no need to select, park, bathe, or refine the corpse.

He only needed to choose a Corpse Nurturing Ground.

So what did it mean to select, park, bathe, and refine a corpse?

As the name suggested, selecting a corpse meant choosing a suitable one. It had to have a Yin fate, and it must have died on a broken day and during a Yin hour.

Parking the corpse was also part of the selection process. The corpse had to be placed at the chosen site for five to seven days. If it didn't decompose, and its Yin Qi grew heavier and heavier like that of this male cultivator, it passed.

As for bathing and refining the corpse,

the former meant washing the corpse, cleansing it of its past and stripping away every trace of worldly life. Refining the corpse was more complicated. For at least forty-nine days, livestock blood had to be poured over the corpse three times a day, morning, noon, and night, with the Corpse Nurturing Incantation as an aid.

But with the secret art of Mutate Corpse, all he had to do was leave the corpse near the Dead Corpse Land, drip his blood onto the place where it was buried each day, and let it absorb Yin Qi and Death Qi on its own.

Once it had absorbed its fill, it would transform by itself into a White Zombie, covered in hair from head to toe. But White Zombies feared sunlight, fire, and water; they also feared chickens, dogs, and people. So he couldn't take it out yet.

He had to keep nurturing it.

Only when it shed all its white hair and became a Black Zombie would the process be complete!

Then, the Black Zombie would be at the Corpse Nurturer's command, ready to serve as a weapon.

At that point,

he would be a true Corpse Nurturer.

A true cultivator.

Before long, Wen Jiu dragged the corpse with difficulty to the green hill where the others were buried and buried it alone, three feet beneath the yellow soil.

After all that, Wen Jiu returned to the Dead Corpse Land to keep hauling corpses and build up corpse aura and Death Qi within his body by breathing them in.

Corpse aura could be imparted to corpses.

Death Qi could be used for cultivation.

He hadn't begun cultivating yet, but there was no harm in stockpiling Death Qi first.

At the hour of the Monkey,

before sunset, the middle-aged foreman called a halt to everyone's work.

He seemed to have some urgent business and quickly led everyone back. But once they were back, he didn't let them return to their wooden huts.

Instead, he brought all one hundred of them to the marketplace where the cultivators lived, three li from the corpse buriers' quarters.