Chapter Seventy-Nine: Undying, Part One

A chorus of shrieks and howls rose and fell.

At that moment I could hear countless ghosts wailing in agony. From those severed heads, one grieving spirit after another burst forth. They had all been wronged. Only moments ago they had been living people, and in the blink of an eye they had become corpses; even after death, their bodies had been split apart, severed from head to torso.

Their souls had been forcibly ripped out and, by some secret art, driven into their own heads, condemned to dwell forever within them, never to be reborn. Tell me—was that not a grievance? Even a lump of clay has a temper, much less a person. To be murdered cruelly even after becoming a ghost, of course they would turn into vengeful specters.

But now it was all right. I had taken them into the Sword of All Beings. Within that sword, countless beams of Buddhist light bathed them, washing away their resentment until, little by little, they became ordinary wandering souls. Only after becoming ordinary souls could they safely pass along the road of the dead, enter Ghost City, and be reborn through the cycle of reincarnation.

"You!"

He seemed not to have expected my Sword of All Beings to possess such terrifying power. For a moment he stood there, almost too stunned to react. I gave the sword a sweep, and instantly the innumerable souls that had already been fully refined into its formation rose up one after another, condensing into a pitch-black blade.

"Today is the day you die!"

Zhao Wen, standing nearby, had also clearly sensed the horror of the scene, but he did not object to me. Instead, he suddenly roared, stepped forward, and swung the dreadful great blade in his hand with wild force at the corpse-burier before us.

Though the skull helm on the corpse-burier's body had been smashed apart, and the vengeful spirits within it had all been taken by me, the corpse-burier himself was an exceedingly troublesome foe from the start. And at this point he had somehow even found the body of an aged corpse. He was now terrifying beyond measure; at the very least, we still had no idea what his true strength actually was.

The instant Zhao Wen struck, I also lunged forward, whirling the Sword of All Beings in my hand and bringing it down straight at the corpse-burier's head.

With a deep hum, the corpse-burier faced Zhao Wen's savage blow without the slightest attempt to dodge. Instead, he raised a hand and seized the blade bare-handed. Then came a harsh sizzling sound, and waves of black vapor rose up. It was dense corpse qi.

Before my own sword could fall, Zhao Wen was kicked flying. He slammed straight into me and drove me hard into the wall of the corridor behind us. In that instant, a wave of frustration and piercing pain shot through me, so sharp I could scarcely breathe.

The corpse-burier before us gave a low laugh, then extended his other hand, caught the great blade, and with force snapped it in two.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle...

Black vapor poured out in torrents, yet the corpse-burier did not fear it in the least. He simply gripped the enchanted blade and broke it apart, destroying it.

"Impossible! That was the Demon-Slaying Blade, a weapon capable of cutting down evil resentment. It had no effect on him!"

My heart tightened with a surge of alarm.

"Teacher Zhao, let's strike again. We cannot let him escape!"

For once the corpse-burier, after destroying Zhao Wen's magical weapon, seemed ready to leave. Though black vapor was streaming all over his body, I could clearly feel that it had caused no harm at all to his soul.

He had hidden his remaining soul inside the body of this aged corpse. No matter how much damage the outside world inflicted, it could not truly harm him. Even if we destroyed this corpse, so long as we did not utterly annihilate his remnant soul, he would continue to exist forever, merely changing hosts again and again. Worse still, with each new possession his soul would grow stronger, because every time he took over a body he would devour the soul of its original owner. In that way his soul would become ever more powerful, and slowly his own strength would rise with it. By then it would be even harder for us to deal with him.

"Fine. This time I'll use the remnant soul of the ancient character to attack his soul. I refuse to believe this!" Zhao Wen bit open his own middle finger and drew a yin-yang taiji diagram on his palm. Then he stepped forward.

"Break!"

Zhao Wen cried out, and the yin-yang pattern in his palm instantly trembled, bursting with dazzling red light. A single ancient character shot forth from his hand and flew straight toward the corpse-burier.

At the same moment Zhao Wen made his move, I also forced myself to stand. Ignoring the pain in my body, I took several steps forward until I was directly in front of the corpse-burier. Under the radiance of that ancient character's "Break," I could feel even my own body trembling continuously. Yet in my hand was the Sword of All Beings, wreathed in strand after strand of Buddhist light.

Nie Xiao Ke was guarding the heart of the formation, and I wasted no time. I thrust my sword straight at the corpse-burier's body. Though that body could not be pierced at all, the Sword of All Beings was itself a broken sword. More than half of its blade was formed from gathered souls. The moment those souls touched the corpse-burier's body, they began to tremble violently, and in the end they transformed wholly into a pitch-black formation. Within it, strands of Buddhist light interwove and coiled in every direction.

"You want to trap me? Boy, you're still too green for that!"

As he spoke, torrents of blood-colored light suddenly erupted around the corpse-burier's body. His corpse qi even凝聚出了 a towering figure that rammed repeatedly against the formation released from the Sword of All Beings, causing it to shake incessantly. I felt it even more clearly, because I could sense my own soul trembling along with it.

I stepped forward, snorted coldly, and endured the pain while biting open my middle finger and pressing it directly onto the Sword of All Beings.

"Bind!"

Pointing at the pitch-black formation before me, I watched as the previously listless souls around us opened their eyes once more, revealing strands of chilling binding power.

"Teacher Zhao, hurry. Drive that remnant soul of the ancient character straight into his brow and smash his consciousness space apart. Leave his remnant soul nowhere to hide!"

Zhao Wen nodded and pressed his still-bleeding middle finger against his own brow.

In an instant, the ancient broken character, which had been held back by corpse qi, shot upward and flew directly above the corpse-burier's head. At once I could clearly feel the corpse-burier, trapped within my formation, twisting his face into a ferocious snarl. The force of his struggle grew even more terrifying.