After a bout of fighting, Li Chen, Shen Longcheng, and Pan Ning disposed of King Qinggu and the Demon Soldiers and Demon Generals he had brought with him, without any suspense.
These Demon Cultivators were elites of the Demon God Palace, with excellent physiques-precisely the sort of fine Corpse Puppet materials prized by the traditional Puppet Dao.
King Qinggu's fleshly body, in particular, embodied a Dao Fruit focused on vitality and physical strength. Supplemented with supreme-grade treasured materials of sufficient quality, it could certainly be transformed into a fine Seven-Star Puppet or avatar. Thus, Shen Longcheng and Pan Ning divided it between them, preparing to turn it into combat strength of their own.
Li Chen had little interest in these things, preferring to exchange them for useful treasured materials, so he took the initiative to propose a trade.
"Li Chen, do you really not want them? These Demon Cultivators are all of foreign races. As humans, it is only natural for us to eat the meat and wear the hides of wild beasts we hunt. Why leave such things, born of heaven and nurtured by earth, unused?" Shen Longcheng asked as he cleaned up the scene. He did not mind exchanging some specified treasured materials with Li Chen, but he seemed rather puzzled by the decision.
Li Chen said, "My objection originally stemmed from my revulsion toward harvesting living victims and cutting them apart. I oppose harvesting our own kind and exploiting their corpses, but I don't extend that principle indiscriminately to protecting other races. Even the Hu Ze's Avatar I currently use was refined from a Demon Cultivator. Of course I wouldn't be so exacting as to refuse to use even a Demon King's corpse."
"But because I have long worked with materials and sought ways to use resources