Perfected Walking Corpse

Beneath the curtain of rain, Liu Feng stood outside the door.

The oil lamp inside had been knocked over and extinguished. In the darkness, Shen Yushu's face turned sinister, no longer bearing the slightest trace of a scholar's air.

Tendril after tendril pierced into the ground. The vines tensed, then yanked upward with wild force.

Cracks spread across the floorboards. From below came the sound of weeping, and it sounded uncannily like a woman.

Shen Yushu didn't care whether it was a man or a woman. His eyes gleamed with excitement as he sneered, "Just how many people's life force have you consumed? Why not hand it all over to me?"

The vines pierced into the creature's body. The Vine Wood Spirit instead treated it as nourishment, and a steady stream of life force flowed back along the Green Vines.

"Creak, creak..."

With such potent nourishment, not only was the Vine Wood Spirit's main body replenished, but in the blink of an eye, it also produced a great many new Green Vine offshoots.

"Catch these two useless fools. We still need them to drive the carriage."

The unconscious Old Huang and Little Fuzi were scooped up by the offshoots controlled by Shen Yushu, then casually tossed out.

Liu Feng carried the grandfather and grandson to the eaves of a side room to shelter them from the rain. When he looked at Shen Yushu, his expression was grave. The Shen Yushu before him was like an entirely different person from the one he'd seen before.

"So this is his true face!"

As Shen Yushu laughed cruelly, half of the "woman" underground emerged. She was swollen and blackened, wrapped in a mass of viscous black fluid.

Just as Liu Feng was about to see what Shen Yushu was dragging out, he abruptly turned to face the left.

Thirty paces away, the figure of an old man had appeared without a sound.

It was the Old Hunter. His manner and bearing were unchanged, but his eyes had grown much sharper.

"This old man was waiting here for prey to come to him. Imagine my surprise to find a Gu Master instead!"

"How about we end this here? These are two highly nourishing pills. They can wake the grandfather and grandson."

As the Old Hunter walked, he tossed out an oil-paper packet and met Liu Feng's gaze, the nine eyes on his face plainly visible.

"You'll have to ask my senior brother." Liu Feng caught it casually and moved away from the doorway of the side room.

"Thank you, young brother. As for the one inside, please spare this old man's daughter-in-law..."

Shen Yushu wasn't surprised by the newcomer's appearance. Cutting him off before he could finish, he retorted, "You wanted our lives, and now you think you can call it quits by offering a few lousy pills? Where in the world is there such a bargain?"

"You buried your fat daughter-in-law here, and she's become an Evil Specter! I'm putting her to rest today."

"Arrogant." A cold snort rang out from the doorway. The Old Hunter was enraged.

The moment his foot touched down, two floor tiles shattered with a crack. His sluggish figure suddenly burst into motion.

His aged body charged at Shen Yushu like a man of iron, each footfall breaking a floor tile into pieces.

Countless vines stabbed at him, yet not one could pierce his flesh.

"Creak, creak..."

Shen Yushu reacted with lightning speed, flicking his hand and sending dozens of Green Vines sweeping across in a net.

The instant the Old Hunter fell into the vine net, all the vines tightened together, straining to wrench his head and limbs in opposite directions.

But this net could easily snap a water buffalo's neck, yet it couldn't budge the old man.

"Break!" With a furious roar, the vines snapped one by one.

Liu Feng's gaze darkened. Looking with the Zen Eye Technique, he saw vast amounts of vital blood surging from inside the old bastard's heart.

In an instant, the vital blood spread into his limbs, granting him terrifying strength.

At the next glance, Liu Feng no longer needed the Zen Eye Technique. The Old Hunter's skin had turned black, his fangs were bared, and in the blink of an eye he looked like a corpse cast in black iron.

"Hmm?" Liu Feng froze.

It was his first time seeing anything like this. There was no need to think twice: it had to be an Evil Specter.

A stifling aura, deeply unsettling to the living, radiated from the black iron body before him.

Liu Feng charged into the room. While the Old Hunter was still struggling to break free of the vine net, he hacked and slashed with the Soldier Gu Split-Tooth.

One strike at the back of the head, another sweeping across the neck. Yet both cuts only broke through the surface flesh, like a dull knife slicing into tough oxhide.

"No wonder the Vine Wood Spirit couldn't pierce his flesh, and couldn't snap his bones even by strangling him!"

Liu Feng didn't pause. He thrust out his palm and pressed it against the Old Hunter's head. Dense swarms of Gu worms poured down over him.

In just a few blinks, who knew how many Gu worms had burrowed into his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

"Get off!" A furious roar rang out, followed by the crisp snap of vines being torn apart.

The wind howled. The Compound Eyes on Liu Feng's arms spotted the black iron arm sweeping toward him first.

But at such close range, he couldn't dodge the blow. He simply channeled Buddhist power into his elbow and raised it to block.

With a muffled thud, Liu Feng crashed through the doorway and flew backward into the rain.

Seeing Liu Feng knocked flying and most of the Green Vines he'd grown torn apart, Shen Yushu sneered, "Your cultivation's reached the perfected stage. You're a perfected Walking Corpse, almost ready to become a Corpse Refiner, aren't you? I've got a half-dead thing here too. Let's see which of you is stronger!"

As he spoke, a pitch-black Gu worm appeared in his palm. It was a Nightmare Gu Larva.

In the corner, the dazed figure vanished from where he stood in an instant, moving so fast that no one present could react.

Even with Shen Yushu's keen eyesight, he only caught a blur. When he looked again, Li Si's fist had already smashed into the Walking Corpse's temple.

Liu Feng hadn't yet gotten to his feet outside when he saw the black monster fly out after him.

Right behind it, a figure charged this way like a boulder, smashing through half the wall.

"It's Li Si! Was he a martial artist before?" Liu Feng looked with the Mind Eye Technique, and the scene before him slowed in an instant.

In the slowed image, every stride Li Si took covered an enormous distance. Before he had even fully closed in, he reached out and grabbed at the air.

The black monster—the Old Hunter, who was a Walking Corpse—was suddenly seized by an invisible force.

There was only the briefest pause. Li Si darted forward.

"Crack, crack, crack..." The sound of bones snapping rang out one after another.

In the blink of an eye, every joint in the perfected Walking Corpse's body had been bent backward, and even his head had been twisted around several times!

"Li Si, keep him under control. Don't smash him to pieces." Shen Yushu's figure dropped from midair.

The mass of vines supporting him fell away on its own. Without a fresh supply of life force, the newly grown vines slowly turned yellow and withered.

In the midst of the coiled vines, a plump figure covered from head to toe in black hair was bound fast. If not for the wailing voice being that of a woman, it would have been hard to believe she'd once been a woman.

When Shen Yushu came over, Medicine Slave Li Si's eyes remained dazed.

But with one foot planted on it, he pinned the perfected Walking Corpse to the ground, leaving it unable to move.

"This thing has copper skin and iron bones. We have to go after its internal organs. Gu worms won't do much either. We'll have to hollow him out."

As he spoke, Shen Yushu tossed out the Vine Wood Spirit's main body. A vine, emerald green with streaks of blood running through it, shot out and plunged into the black monster through its mouth.

Liu Feng's eye twitched. He could clearly see the vine pulsing, as if it were feeding.

"The father was a Walking Corpse, so the son probably is too. Junior Brother Liu, take Li Si and help Third Junior Brother. There's quite a commotion over there."

Shen Yushu didn't need to tell him. Liu Feng could already hear the tremendous crashing sounds coming from the stables.

Walking Corpses had copper skin and iron bones, and astonishing strength; Third Senior Brother Zhu Li became a humanoid Spirit Monster after using his Gu art, and he was just as ferocious.

It was only natural that their head-on clash was making such a racket.