Half a minute later, Chen Miao looked at the dark red talisman on the corpse's belly and shook his head.
He had failed, just as expected.
Still, this failure gave Chen Miao a feeling that he might successfully draw the Corpse-Substitution Curse in fewer than ten attempts. That confidence came from his mastery-level Talisman Drawing skill.
Chen Miao wiped the talisman off the corpse's abdomen, packed up his things, and went to the door.
"Zhong, let's try another house. The talisman failed. I need a fresh corpse."
Zhong Cai understood and asked no questions.
He was even more familiar with this sort of thing than Chen Miao, and he had never expected Chen Miao to succeed on his first try.
Still, if one failure rendered the corpse unusable, Chen Miao's talisman must have been rather special.
With an ordinary talisman, he could simply wipe it away and redraw it.
But Zhong Cai kept his thoughts to himself.
The two left the house and headed elsewhere.
Without the ghosts in those empty houses, walking through Sealed Gate Village no longer felt as unsettling as before.
Soon, Chen Miao and Zhong Cai reached another occupied house.
The first thing Zhong Cai did after entering was go upstairs and signal Qi Ning at the village entrance, letting him know their location.
Then they repeated the same procedure.
From eight until nine thirty, over the course of an hour and a half, Chen Miao and Zhong Cai moved eight times. On the ninth corpse, Chen Miao finally succeeded.
Chen Miao breathed a sigh of relief when he sensed the talisman at the corpse's navel absorb all the yin energy gathered in his hand.
Next, he had to draw the talisman on himself.
Chen Miao glanced at the ink remaining in the inkstone. There was