Please, Stop Talking...

"Burp."

To shut the two of them up, Qi Dian had ordered an extra-large serving of fried chicken and cola. The meal had left Old Mr. Huang so stuffed that he kept burping.

Only as the night deepened did the old man leave the little hut. "I'm off. You boys get on with your work. Little Qi, there's some yellow-"

"Sir, just get going. Your electric scooter will get impatient." Yue Wen quickly gave him a push, cutting his chant short.

After seeing the old man off, Yue Wen turned back to Qi Dian. "Then I'll take the Lantern Monsters here. Thanks for letting me have them, Brother Qi."

"No problem." Qi Dian remained as aloof as ever.

Fog had settled over the eastern outskirts that night. A thin layer of white mist lingered in the cemetery, making it all the more eerie.

Half the cemetery had already been cleared the previous night, and new yin creatures wouldn't spawn that quickly. Yue Wen headed straight for the other half behind the hillside. Clusters of ghostly flames had already sprung up again.

These days, finding evil spirits within the city that he could freely hack away at wasn't easy. The wastelands outside were teeming with demons and monsters, but he wasn't strong enough to venture out there yet.

That made Yue Wen treasure these Lantern Monsters, which he had fought so hard to secure. He darted forward and cut them down with one sword strike each, wasting no time at all.

In an instant, the flailing Lantern Monsters became two smoking heaps of remains.

He did a rough calculation. Clearing all the Lantern Monsters from the cemetery would net him over thirty pieces of Evil-Suppressing Money-a considerable haul.

In terms of returns for his effort, cutting down Lantern Monsters might be a better deal than fighting bigger demons and evil spirits. After all, these things posed no risk, came in large numbers, and could keep regenerating endlessly.

Easy kills, no strain, excellent value.

Yue Wen was already thinking about contacting the city's other cemeteries once he got back and taking on more Lantern Monster farming jobs.

It was only just midnight, and Yue Wen, working at full speed, was already close to clearing the entire cemetery.

The few remaining Lantern Monsters were scattered far apart. He needed to put on the Demon-Detecting Mirror and carefully track their yin energy to make sure he didn't miss a single one.

The moment Yue Wen put on the Demon-Detecting Mirror, he noticed something wrong.

No demonic energy had appeared that night, but the surrounding yin energy was far denser than it had been the night before. Waves of gray mist filled the area in every direction!

Whenever the gray mist stirred, gusts of chilly wind followed.

This didn't make sense.

Yin energy was normal in a cemetery, but it mingled with spiritual energy and nightmare creatures, and would dissipate as those creatures were eliminated. With Yue Wen having cleared most of the Lantern Monsters, the place should have stayed clear for a while.

Yet the yin energy was growing denser. There could only be one reason.

Something carrying powerful yin energy had arrived.

"This cemetery sure is lively..." Yue Wen muttered, scanning his surroundings for the direction where the yin energy was strongest.

If he had really come here just to earn money clearing evil spirits, he would probably have been annoyed... Working overtime every day for a couple of lousy coins-what a joke.

But right now, Yue Wen felt nothing but excitement.

As he assessed the situation, the yin energy grew thicker and the cold winds in the cemetery gradually began to howl. Suddenly, a ripple of spiritual power spread through the unseen air.

Pff-

A withered, shriveled hand thrust out of the ground in front of Yue Wen!

"Hm?" Yue Wen's expression sharpened. "A corpse turning undead? No, someone's using a spell to summon the bodies buried underground!"

Amid the cracking and grinding of the earth, corpses-some broken, others intact-burst out of the soil one after another!

The dead had risen!

They let out piercing whimpers and howls, their heads hanging low. They didn't attack Yue Wen nearby and seemed to possess no awareness at all.

They simply moved in strange postures, all heading in the same direction.

Yue Wen looked that way. After a moment's thought, he twisted his body to imitate the corpses, lowering his head and contorting his limbs as he joined their ranks. He shuffled along with them, mimicking their garbled cries. "Wibby babbo, shibal, shibal..."

Whoever had caused such a commotion...

He wanted to see exactly who they were!

On the western side of the cemetery, a figure in black stood at the edge of a wooded slope.

It was a tall, thin man wearing an unmarked black tracksuit. His face was hidden beneath a roomy hood, with only the faint outline of a hooked nose showing.

A tall banner stood beside him. As he formed hand seals to activate it, the banner snapped and billowed, releasing waves of yin energy like an ocean swell. Wave after wave spread through the entire cemetery, awakening the bodies underground that had not been resting there long.

Intricate formation markings spread beneath his feet like a spiderweb.

After death, people would retain some residual mental energy, more or less. Even for ordinary people with weak souls, that last trace of mental energy would take around seven days to disappear completely.

The spell he was casting clearly manipulated all the fresh corpses in the cemetery that still retained mental energy, turning them into puppet-like beings capable of simple movements.

The Corpse-Calling Art.

At a single command, a hundred corpses marched through the night!

In less than five minutes, the recently buried corpses had gathered in the clearing below the slope. The densely packed crowd was enough to make anyone's hair stand on end.

Yue Wen had mingled among them. Just as he had expected, the overwhelming waves of yin energy completely concealed his living aura.

Seeing the great mass of corpses lined up, the black-clad man on the slope gave a sinister chuckle. Then he flipped his hand and pulled out... a phone.

He opened a messaging app and started recording a video. Panning across the corpses from left to right, he said, "Boss, take a look. The job's going smoothly. Everyone recently buried in the eastern cemetery is here, and there are plenty of them. A lot of the bodies are mangled, so it's hard to identify them from a photo. Just give me the target's name. All I need to do is call it, and he'll step out."

After he sent the video, the other party instantly replied with a name.

The black-clad man read it and put away his phone. Looking down over the corpses from his vantage point, he chanted in a low voice, "From impermanence comes my art; my command rules yin and yang! He whose name I call, step forward... Zhang Wei!"

As he invoked his power, the corpses began swaying their heads, stirring with an eerie restlessness. The moment he called the name, over a dozen corpses suddenly shuddered as though receiving an order, then stepped forward together!

Thud.

Their perfectly synchronized steps produced a dull impact.

"..." The black-clad man seemed momentarily speechless. Then he took out his phone again and sent a voice message. "Boss, do you have any more information? There are over a dozen named Zhang Wei here... I can't haul them all back to you, can I? Try to give me information related to things that happened before his death. Otherwise, his residual mind might not respond."

Only a few seconds later, the other party sent another message.

"Heh heh." The black-clad man chuckled sinisterly twice, then issued another command. "From impermanence comes my art; my command rules yin and yang! He who matches my words, step forward... Zhang Wei, who had just worked unpaid overtime at his company before he died!"

At his shout, a brief stir passed through the corpses. Then half of the dozen-plus Zhang Weis who had stepped out earlier took another step forward!

"..." Looking at the six or seven corpses standing before him, the black-clad man frowned deeply and muttered, "Capitalists these days really deserve to die."

He sent another voice message. "There are several who worked overtime before they died, too. Do you have anything else? Some lifelong obsession of the deceased, for instance?"

A little while later, another reply finally arrived.

"This should do it, right?" The black-clad man raised his head and spoke again. "He who matches my words, step forward... Zhang Wei, the forever-single loser who worked overtime all day and never had a girlfriend in his entire life!"

"Wibby babbo, boo-hoo!"

At his command, four corpses came forward, howling tearfully!

If anyone listened closely, the tone of their garbled babbling clearly said: please, stop talking...

"Fuck, will you give it a rest?" The black-clad man finally lost it. "What kind of world is this? There's more than one guy this miserable?"

Hidden among the ranks, Yue Wen noticed that one of the corpses wore overalls and had center-parted hair. Suddenly, he remembered what Black Meow had said yesterday.

The black-clad man's employer was looking for the same person as the three cat demons from yesterday!

Just as the black-clad man, seemingly on the verge of a breakdown, was about to message the other party again, a sharp shout suddenly rang out in the distance.

"You brazen evil cultivator-"