After he gently closed his eyes, his spiritual sense began following an invisible thread, trying to sense the talisman seal buried underground.
In an instant.
A dense wave of baleful, yin energy suddenly rushed toward him along the connection to the Blood Talisman.
"...What is this?"
He felt as if He Ping's vision had pierced through the soil and the coffin.
At that very moment, he saw Cheng Yujiao lying inside the coffin.
A glowing red mark sat between the female corpse's brows. It was the talisman seal formed by the Eight Element Bone Locking Method.
But then he couldn't help clicking his tongue.
Because of her transformation into a corpse, strange white fuzz had sprouted across Cheng Yujiao's face, arms, and skin.
She had been buried only a short while, yet the female corpse's appearance had already changed dramatically.
"What is this?"
She must have absorbed a great deal of yin energy, for Cheng Yujiao's chest rose and fell faintly. After some time, the white fuzz on her body began to recede, turning into a layer of black fur tinged with red.
Even stranger, two small bulges had appeared on either side of her forehead, near her temples. They looked like a pair of horns trying to push through her flesh.
"Black fur tinged with red, and a pair of horns growing from her head... This is the Red Sheep Aspect. Why did this female corpse change like this after being buried here?"
In that instant, He Ping recalled a rumor from an ancient text in the He Family's library...
It was said that in ancient times, some emperors and powerful nobles who sought immortality and wished to become transcendent beings would send geomancers to search for famous mountains and investigate the earth's veins.
People back then believed that if they were buried in a dragon vein, scales and feathers would grow on their corpses, bringing them back to life and transforming them into flying immortals.
"Could the 'flying immortals' in those legends actually have been a kind of zombie? Like the flying zombies I heard about in my previous life...?"
He Ping frowned.
Beneath his feet, the female corpse in the coffin continued to draw in the baleful energy of the earth at the same rate. At this pace, she might well transform from a Black Baleful Corpse into a Red Baleful Demon Corpse.
A Red Baleful Demon Corpse was somewhat stronger than an ordinary Black Baleful Corpse. This sort of corpse fiend could already be called a "demon corpse," a malevolent creature that had grown into a genuine threat.
This savage corpse had grown powerful. Its bones and sinews were hard as iron, and the red hairs growing from its body could turn aside arrows and blades. It was even harder to deal with than a Green-Sucking Corpse Ghost. It should also yield a considerable increase in yin lifespan if refined into Death Longevity Incense.
"That chapter on the Incense Burner Spirit Nourishing Method in the black umbrella also mentioned that pure blood and qi are best for nourishing a Red Baleful Demon Corpse, especially the blood of its relatives..."
He Ping murmured thoughtfully to himself.
"But I wonder if absorbing the baleful energy from this Red Sheep Land has made Cheng Yujiao's corpse strange in some other way, too?"
He wondered whether, if he stayed here long enough, Cheng Yujiao might one day become a Red Baleful Demon Corpse, half sheep and half human.
A breeze brushed his face, and its chill made him uncomfortable.
Just then, the night sky rang with the sound of beating wings. A Ghost-Faced Owl swooped down from above.
Steward He Fusheng raised his right hand, clad in a sheepskin glove. The Ghost-Faced Owl descended from the sky and perched on his hand.
He Fusheng took a slip of paper from the copper tube tied to the Ghost-Faced Owl's talon. After opening it and taking a glance, he lowered his voice and said to He Ping, "Young master, it seems the job's done. Cheng Zhi is quite capable. He got Sheng Qinghong and that He Xiping, too."
"Oh."
He Ping nodded slightly.
"Good. Cheng Zhi seems to have his uses after all."
He had tossed a piece onto the board on a whim, never expecting such good results.
In truth, Cheng Zhi's appearance at Linjiang Immortal had been arranged at his behest. Sheng Qinghong was a showy fellow, and it was no hard thing to learn he was hosting a banquet at the restaurant, with He Xiping among the guests. All that remained was to find a clever way to slip Cheng Zhi among the restaurant's staff.
His plan had two aims. First, to kill He Xiping, who was at odds with him; He Jin and his father had also become a threat to the He Family and had to be eliminated. The other was to use Sheng Qinghong's death to "cast a stone and sound the way."
"What reaction has Prefect Sheng shown?"
He Ping asked.
"Nothing clear yet."
He Fusheng lit the slip of paper with a lantern flame and said gravely, "After Cheng Zhi got the job done, he jumped from a building and escaped into the river. The prefectural office has already sent people to search for him along both banks, but our contact says he has left Suian City and is fleeing in the direction of Four Peaks Mountain..."
At the end, the steward said with some unease, "Young master, there's something suspicious about Cheng Zhi's background. If we let him leave just like that without sending anyone after him, and the prefect won't let him go either, what if he gets caught? Wouldn't that..."
"It's fine."
He was satisfied with the result. In this game, he had taken the part of an Immortal Puppet Sect disciple, not the public face of the He Family's eldest young master. Cheng Zhi couldn't possibly know who he really was, so there was no question of him giving anything away.
He answered He Fusheng's doubts calmly. "That fellow is no simpleton. He won't be caught so easily. He's clever, too, and knows he has to stay alive. Four Peaks Mountain may be the best place for him..."
Behind Cheng Zhi stood Chixinzi of the Immortal Puppet Sect. He Ping believed Chixinzi would not let Cheng Zhi die easily, because the Cheng Family possessed a secret method for tracking down the Bone Bowl. If Cheng Zhi died, finding it would become much harder.
Cheng Zhi and Cheng Yujiao only knew that the Bone Bowl was still in Sheng Qingzhi's hands; they had no idea where it was hidden.
Besides, He Ping was also somewhat suspicious. Sheng Qingzhi was merely a prefect, and probably wasn't a cultivator. An ordinary person would have little use for the Bone Bowl.
On the other hand, if that man named Sheng truly was a cultivator, his identity would be hard to fathom.
The Great You Dynasty's authorities should know the cultivation world existed. Their deliberate suppression of knowledge related to cultivation, religion, and history seemed to reveal some sort of intent.
In fact, over the years, He Ping had never tried too hard to gather information from the authorities, precisely because he was wary of their intentions...
"Also, unless something unexpected happens, Chixinzi will make a move this time, won't he?"
He Ping had many calculations behind his attempt to "cast a stone and sound the way." He needed to force Chixinzi, concealed behind Cheng Zhi, to show himself.
And he needed to draw the prefect of Suian City into his calculations, too.
But unlike He Jin and He Xiping, He Ping didn't think much of the prefect.
The father and son feared Sheng Qingzhi's power as though he were a tiger or leopard. Faced with the prefect, they knew only how to fawn and flatter him, hoping to win him over. But as a disciple of the Immortal Puppet Sect, He Ping thought nothing of that.
On the surface, the He Family was merely a merchant household. But under He Ping's management, they had made friends among the heroes of the martial world and secretly kept retainers, all to build up their strength.
If Sheng Qingzhi really dared to move against the He Family, He Ping wouldn't mind making the whole affair "a fit of rage, blood splashing three feet," or staging a scene like "a comet striking the moon, a white rainbow piercing the sun, an eagle attacking in the palace."
He Ping's trump card was his hidden mastery of the Dao. After all, there was a great advantage to cultivating Daoist arts: unless one's spiritual sense left the body, it was difficult to detect. As a disciple of the Immortal Puppet Sect, he knew all manner of strange and uncanny arts. Unless he came up against a powerful expert who had entered the Dao, he could rely on what he had learned to fight back.
"Next, I'll have to see how things develop. If my guess is right, the situation in Suian City will turn to my advantage..."
He quietly ran through his calculations, wondering how he could steer this game toward the outcome most favorable to him.