"Looks like it's about to attack us!" Bai Qiuran replied. "But this is strange. A Corpse Mother generally wouldn't appear in a mortal kingdom unless there had been a large-scale loss of life. Only then might one of these monsters emerge. Why is there one in this uninhabited mountain forest?" "We should go take out the main body of this demon." Crack. Bai Qiuran smiled. Crack! Tang Wei breathed a sigh of relief. "I was just helping someone in need." "What in the world is that thing?!" "Just as I thought. The main body's below." "Lightning Seal." Bai Qiuran smiled as he spoke. "I see it." Bai Qiuran replied. "We can think about that later." A ball of light appeared at his fingertip, illuminating the darkness around them and revealing heaps of bones piled into little mountains across the ground. As the second Corpse Demon pounced at them again, Bai Qiuran raised his hand once more, but this time he didn't thrust out his palm. Instead, he joined two fingers together. Bai Qiuran nodded. After Tang Wei finished speaking, the Corpse Mother, sitting atop the mountain of corpses, suddenly began to swell grotesquely. A distinct human-shaped bulge traveled from its belly up along its esophagus, as if it were a python in danger, regurgitating the prey it had just swallowed whole. The Corpse Mother vomited out a human-sized corpse covered in some unknown slime. The corpse rolled down the mound, then suddenly struggled to its feet and transformed into a Corpse Demon, roaring at Bai Qiuran and Tang Wei. Though Bai Qiuran hadn't discovered her true identity because of this accident, why was she so furious? As he spoke, Bai Qiuran gestured with the ball of light and turned toward the depths of the darkness. "Will that do it?" Looking at the bones on the ground and scanning the darkness ahead with his Spiritual Sense, Bai Qiuran said, "Let's go, Brother Tang." "If you hadn't come here, I'm afraid I'd have died." He raised his hand and tossed the tiny ball of light resting on his fingertip into the air. It drifted upward, then released a radiant glow, like a miniature sun illuminating the pitch-black, bottomless cavern. "That should do it. With the Corpse Mother destroyed, no new Corpse Demons should appear for a while." Tang Wei covered his nose and retreated behind Bai Qiuran as he asked, "Do you really have to touch it?" Bai Qiuran frowned in distaste. "I don't want to touch it either." "No problem." "But just how high is your cultivation? I feel like this Corpse Mother must be beyond the level of a Martial Arts Grandmaster. Yet you killed it and the Corpse Demons it gave birth to in a single strike. And how do you know so much about a monster that isn't even mentioned in my family's records?" Treading over a carpet of white bones beneath the wavering light, Bai Qiuran led Tang Wei toward the source of the demonic aura. Perhaps those Corpse Demons they'd encountered earlier had been its entire fighting force. The atmosphere was eerie, and a foul stench lingered in the air, but no more Corpse Demons attacked them along the way. Tang Wei asked, "If we keep dragging this out, will you have enough True Qi?" Tang Wei watched as the monster writhed desperately amid the flames, its grotesque limbs twisting as it let out strange cries that turned his stomach. But moments later, the sea of fire mercilessly swallowed it, reducing it and the mountain of corpses to ashes. A shining silver thunder dragon burst from Bai Qiuran's fingertip with a rumble and a deafening crash. The pouncing Corpse Demon had no means of resisting; the streak of lightning pierced its chest, then continued on and struck the Corpse Mother seated atop the mound. "Does it have no limit?" Tang Wei watched him with a grave expression for several seconds, then suddenly burst out laughing. "You're lying. At most, you're a Qi Refining Stage cultivator. I can tell—you don't have the True Essence cultivators possess. To those cultivators, ordinary people like us who use True Qi don't even count as cultivators. How could you possibly be from the Azure Nether Sword Sect?" Tang Wei asked, his scalp prickling. This cavern was far larger than the one that had collapsed earlier. Tang Wei estimated it covered several thousand square meters. The floor was blanketed in dense white bones, with countless corpses piled on top of them. Tang Wei asked again, "Bai Qiuran, who are you, really? Where are you from?" "It's fine. We just need to destroy both the Corpse Demons and the Corpse Mother." A moment later, he sighed. "Forget it. If that's what you think, so be it... We shouldn't waste time. I'll take you out first. I don't want to spend another moment in this Corpse Bone Cave." Tang Wei clenched his teeth and fists, trembling all over. "What if I told you I was a cultivator from the Azure Nether Sword Sect?" After walking for two minutes, Bai Qiuran stopped. Tang Wei asked uneasily. Bai Qiuran clearly hadn't noticed her mood. The man rose unhurriedly, dusted himself off, then raised a finger. Tang Wei felt his stomach churn. Under the light, Tang Wei saw the enormous cavern in its entirety and couldn't help drawing in a sharp breath. Ahead of Bai Qiuran and Tang Wei sat a naked, hideous-looking, heavily pregnant female corpse atop a small mountain of corpses. Its lower body had completely merged with the heaps beneath it. It seemed to be drawing an endless stream of resentment and deathly energy from the piles through this connection. When it saw Bai Qiuran and Tang Wei, its mouth and throat began to twitch and bulge. The lightning's heat and power to ward off evil triggered a tremendous explosion. The resulting fireball ignited the entire mountain of corpses, engulfing it and the Corpse Mother in flames. "Generally, to protect itself, a Corpse Mother can turn every corpse in the area into a Corpse Demon. Bones alone don't count." "It's a monster born when a female corpse absorbs dense yin energy and resentment. We generally call it a Corpse Mother. It's a higher form of Corpse Demon." Realizing this wasn't the time to get angry, Tang Wei tamped down his fury, took a deep breath, then asked, "Where are we going?" Tang Wei hurried after him at a jog and asked, "What do you mean? Weren't those Corpse Demons monsters?" "There also seem to be two Corpse Demons buried in the soil outside the cave. That beast must have planned to use them to block the entrance from the other side. I'll deal with them when we leave." "Thank you so much, Bai Qiuran." But the Corpse Demon clearly wasn't listening to his complaint. The slime-covered corpse, reeking from head to toe, lunged at them at a speed beyond the limits of ordinary people. Bai Qiuran's expression darkened, but Tang Wei, who was giggling in an especially girlish pose, didn't notice. "Then what do we do?"
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