"Four." Chen Song lowered his voice as he spoke to the corpses before them. "Fellow Daoist Liu takes the left, Brother Zhao the right. Fellow Daoist Lin and I will handle the two in the middle. End this quickly."
Liu Sanniang did not move, merely giving her right wrist a slight flick. The grayish-white stone bead tied there silently slipped into her palm. Her five fingers loosely curled around it, and an exceedingly faint icy-blue glimmer surfaced across its face. Then she released it. The bead cut a frigid arc through the air and shot straight for the left corpse's brow.
The instant the stone bead struck, a burst of bone-piercing cold exploded. Frost instantly coated the corpse's head, its movements stopping dead as the ghostfire in its eye sockets went out with a puff.
Zhao Tieshan let out a thunderous roar, his broad-backed saber slashing down through a scorching gust of air at the corpse on the right.
Chen Song formed a hand seal and condensed a fireball, hurling it at one of the corpses in the center. Flames flared up, reducing it to charred coal.
Li Tui dealt with the last one.
The corpse turned and spewed foul black vapor. Li Tui sidestepped it, shifted his footwork, and circled around to its rear flank. His dagger plunged into the back of its neck, and yin-baleful spiritual energy erupted. The corpse's skin blackened and shriveled, its ghostfire extinguishing.
The entire process took less than three breaths.
Chen Song shot Li Tui a surprised look and praised, "Fine technique, Fellow Daoist Lin." He did not ask further, and the four gathered their spoils before continuing onward.
Each of the four corpses had a thumb-sized dark-gray hard core in its chest cavity—a nascent corpse core. Their quality was poor, but they