Gumi! Gumi!
In the stillness of the night, the hooting of owls rang out, adding a touch of eeriness and terror to the night in the mountains and wilderness.
In a mountain hollow, an owl perched on a branch stares into the dark night, its eyes reflecting a ghostly green light, appearing especially terrifying in the darkness.
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from a bush not far away. The owl watched silently as a person covered in dry leaves and grass clippings emerged from the bush in a disheveled state.
Gumi!
The owl let out a sinister cry, then turned its head away in disappointment; it wasn't the food it could hunt.
At this moment, the young man emerged from the bushes, looked up at the bright moon hanging in the sky, and under the moonlight, he revealed a face covered with bloodstains and so pale that it was almost bloodless.
"We should get rid of those guys!"
The young man muttered to himself, but there was little confidence in his tone. Even in this deep mountain forest, he couldn't help but look around, as if some ferocious beast was about to catch up with him.
"What's wrong with those guys? Why are they acting like madmen? Have all the graves I dug up been discovered? I clearly restored them all."
The young man muttered to himself, then took a dark copper bell from his waist and shook it gently.
Ring ring!
The clear sound of the copper bell echoed through the mountains and forests. A faint stench of decay, carried by the drifting wind, permeated the air. The night owl, which had been searching for prey, looked at the young man holding the copper bell, let out a strange cry, and flapped its wings and flew away as if fleeing.
"one two three……"
The young man ignored the owl that had been frightened away by the corpse aura, and instead turned his head to carefully count the "people" that emerged from the bushes behind him.
"Only six left!"
The suppressed anger echoed in the night as the young man stared at the six stiff, motionless zombies before him, each exuding a nauseating stench of decay.
Seemingly enraged, flames actually ignited in his eyes, though they were green, like two will-o'-the-wisps burning.
"Damn that old Taoist priest, and that bunch of ignorant bastards, I'll turn you all into blood corpses sooner or later to vent my hatred!"
Seeing that all his hard work and travel had yielded less than half of what he had gained, the young man was filled with rage and couldn't help but swear an oath.
However, he couldn't help but wonder. Although he was doing the despicable thing of digging up people's ancestral graves, he had scouted the locations beforehand. Those were abandoned, desolate graves.
Logically speaking, what he did shouldn't have been discovered. But just two days ago, he was harassed and chased by a group of all sorts of people.
The young man tried hard to recall what he had done in the past few days. Two days ago, he took a few funerary objects that he had casually brought from the cemetery and went to a ghost market to sell them. However, the person he was trading with turned out to be an old ghost.
The old ghost, whoever possessed some kind of strange skill, leaned close to him, took a breath, and loudly proclaimed that he had dug up an old grave in the past two days.
Then the young man noticed that the gazes of everyone around him had changed. It was a gaze that still sends chills down his spine when he thinks about it now.
Fortunately, his cautious nature saved his life. Since he only dealt in gold and silver artifacts, he chose an obscure ghost market where only a very small number of people were abnormal, and the vast majority were still human.
Unfortunately for him, the person he wanted to trade with happened to be an old ghost, who still managed to detect his presence despite his best efforts to conceal it.
Realizing something was wrong, he took out the Soul-Capturing Bell that had led him onto the path of cultivation, shattered the old ghost that had brought him disaster, and turned to run away.
He was cautious and timid, but that didn't mean he was weak. He knew he was practicing evil magic, but he had no other choice. So he usually just wandered around sparsely populated areas, specifically venturing into cemeteries and ancient tombs.
It was precisely because of this that he accumulated quite a few zombies qualified to transform into zombies, which allowed him to escape successfully after two days and two nights of pursuit, although he paid a heavy price for it.
"What's going on with those guys?"
After thinking for a moment, the young man still couldn't figure out the reason. It couldn't be that all those guys were chivalrous people who wanted to teach him a lesson after hearing about the bad things he had done.
Just kidding. If you can't survive in the Ghost Market, how many good items can you find? He hadn't forgotten that two nights ago, among the guys who attacked him were spirits and demons. When some non-human beings heard that human graves had been dug up, they wouldn't feel any resentment.
Quack! Quack!
At that moment, several mournful cries of crows rang out. Under the youth's suddenly solemn gaze, an old crow with feathers that blended almost perfectly with the darkness flew across the sky and spoke in human language.
"Found him! Jiang Yang is here! Jiang Yang is here! Come quick! This kid's trying to get away!"
"Shoot that crow down!"
Jiang Yang's pale, bloodless face darkened. He gently shook the Soul-Capturing Bell in his hand, and a burly, robust walking corpse, even wearing rusty iron armor, emerged from behind him. Its stiff body bent with difficulty, picked up a large stone from the ground, and threw it into the air.
Whew~
"Caw! Killing a bird! Help! Someone's going to kill a bird here! Help!"
A sharp, hoarse, and irritating raspy voice echoed in the night sky. Jiang Yang looked at the black crow that was incredibly agile in the sky, even making all sorts of fancy movements, with a gloomy expression. All sorts of bad premonitions were already rising in his heart.
Among the various shady characters and some mountain spirits of unknown origin who chased him down two days ago, there was no such black crow. Clearly, this was a newcomer, and it was also here for Jiang Yang.
"Whose ancestral grave did I desecrate that has attracted so many people to kill me!"
The young man couldn't help but feel a little frustrated. He guessed that he had probably offended a very important person unintentionally, but it shouldn't have caused such a commotion.
"Hahaha, Jiang Yang, let's see where you can run now!"
A rather boisterous, aged laugh rang out along with the cawing of crows, but before the laugh could even finish, a golden light streaked through the air, piercing towards Jiang Yang.
"It's haunting me!"
Jiang Yang's face darkened, and he smashed the copper bell in his hand against the golden light.
Clang!
The copper bell rang crisply, and the golden light was also smashed and sent flying backward, revealing its true form in mid-air. It turned out to be a demon-slaying sword made of dozens of polished copper coins. However, at this moment, the red thread on this rare demon-slaying sword was broken, and dozens of copper coins were scattered all over the ground, clearly indicating that it had been destroyed.
"Quack! Baby, I see a baby!"
The black crow circling in the night sky witnessed this scene, and its raspy, lousy voice couldn't help but cackle loudly, causing Jiang Yang below to look up and glare at it hatefully, his eyes filled with murderous intent.
"What a waste! You're using an ancient artifact that carries ancient heritage like this."
A whooshing sound suddenly came, and before the owner of the copper coin sword could appear, a burly man wearing half-body armor came stepping on the grass.
Judging from the size of this big man and the armor he was wearing, he must have weighed at least several hundred pounds. However, he could glide through the air for more than ten feet with just a light touch of his foot on the tip of the grass, as light as a feather.
"Fly across the void, innate warrior!"
When Jiang Yang saw the burly man, despair appeared on his face. He was not afraid of ordinary martial artists, but a martial arts barbarian whose body had already undergone a transformation was equivalent to a ferocious beast in human skin. The walking corpses he raised were no match for him and would be torn to shreds at the first sight.
“Amitabha! County Magistrate Liu, there’s always a proper order to things! This old Taoist has been chasing this kid for two days now.”
As a Taoist chant sounded, a figure that instilled fear in the young man appeared: a white-bearded Taoist priest holding a peach wood sword in one hand and a compass in the other.
"Master Qingxu, you must act according to your ability. This kid is someone from Qingshan County who specifically wanted him. It's impossible for you to take him down by yourself. Don't dream about it!"
"Hey, I don't have such delusions. I just want to show my face in front of that person. I hope he doesn't take him down and leave me out."
The old Taoist priest laughed.
"Both of you have legitimate paths to follow, which is truly a hardship for us unorthodox cultivators. Could you two give us some time to ask this kid about the inheritance he received?"
A cold wind howled in from the sky, revealing a hunched and emaciated figure, almost unrecognizable, dressed in an animal skin Taoist robe and holding a skull staff.
However, this cultivator, who seemed to have nothing to do with the orthodox path, was clearly a heretical practitioner who used unorthodox methods to cultivate, judging from the skull on his staff. Although it resembled a human, the single horn on the withered bone revealed his origin.
Although these unorthodox cultivators are not recognized by the Taoist sects, they are not ostracized or suppressed, since their cultivation materials are all non-human and alien.
"Barbarian Bone Daoist! Jiang Yang is someone that person specifically requested. If you want his inheritance, go ask that person for it! There is no way you can have him."
Are you kidding me? Handing someone over to a heretical cultivator for interrogation and inheritance—what will that person look like after he's finished? How are we supposed to hand them over to that person then?
"Your Excellency, please don't joke around. I wouldn't want to get involved with someone like that using unorthodox methods, lest I be struck by lightning."
"Sir, you have quite the airs of an official! This person hasn't even been caught yet, and you've already decided on his fate?"
"I think Fellow Daoist Mangu is right. Before handing him over, we should ask him what kind of inheritance he received!"
"Do you want to die?"
The burly man, clad in armor as if wearing only thin clothing, revealed a furious expression, and the moonlight falling upon him began to distort.
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