Chapter Thirteen: Inheriting the Path of the Corpse

Three days later, Luo Longyu appeared in his hometown. It was deep into the night, and the small mountain village lay in utter silence; apart from the occasional barking of dogs and the calls of owls, not a sound disturbed the night. Luo Longyu had returned to this place—a place he had never wished to see again—solely because of a message his mother had left for him in the Corpse Dao Manuscript. In the place where she rests, she had left something for Luo Longyu to choose, something that would determine his path. He knew this was his mother’s way for him to inherit the path of the Corpse Dao. She had not forced him, only left him with a choice: to live as an ordinary man and watch the world sink into ruin, or to take up the Corpse Dao, and as the descendant of Xuanyuan, to give his all.

His mother’s words had been clear: the place where she slept was itself a ground for raising corpses.

Luo Longyu lingered nowhere in the village. He only paused briefly at the village chief’s house and at the door of his own home, casting a fleeting glance; everywhere else he ignored, heading straight through the village and into the woods behind. There, in the rear hills, the villagers buried their dead.

Among the clustered graves, Luo Longyu found his mother's tomb. The mountain at night was terrifying; mist swirled, the graves stretched in all directions, and even the air was cold and sinister.

Yet fear no longer held sway over Luo Longyu; he knew well what he must do.

With the shovel he’d taken from the village, Luo Longyu began to dig up his mother's grave. But after the first shovelful, he froze. The earth was far too soft—not the firmness of a grave that had stood for eighteen years, but rather… a new grave.

A dreadful suspicion took root in Luo Longyu’s heart. He threw down the shovel, seized a handful of earth, and felt its dampness. The soil had been recently disturbed from below; someone had already dug up his mother’s grave.

Rage surged within him, and Luo Longyu was seized by the urge to storm back to the village and drag everyone out for questioning. But just then, a mournful song drifted out from the dense woods—a haunting, sorrowful melody, now near, now far, rising and falling over the shadowed hills, making the already eerie place even more terrifying.

But Luo Longyu was burning with fury now, and he ran toward the voice. In the darkness, he glimpsed a flash of white, but when he chased after it, he found nothing unusual.

As Luo Longyu searched, a cold hand suddenly caressed his cheek from behind. He spun around in alarm, but once again, there was nothing—only a few strands of black hair dancing in the wind.

The singing never ceased. By the bank of a small river, Luo Longyu saw a woman in white, her back turned to him, the song flowing from her lips.

“Who are you?” Luo Longyu approached slowly, calling out.

The song stopped abruptly. The woman remained utterly still. Confused, Luo Longyu drew closer, stopping less than five meters away.

She did not move her body, but her head twisted all the way around—one hundred and eighty degrees—to reveal a face covered in bloody scars, a sight so ghastly it could not be human: this was indeed a ghost.

Terror gripped Luo Longyu, and he stumbled back several steps. The female ghost let out a shrill scream and lunged at him. But just as her claws were about to slash his face, she halted midair, reeling back in terror, and finally dropped to her knees, as if she had seen something unspeakably horrifying.

Now it was Luo Longyu’s turn to be dumbfounded. He did not know that, in the instant the ghost had charged, his eyes had turned silver, and within those silver depths, the reflection of a woman had appeared—it was his own mother, Xuanyuan Qianqian.

“Great Immortal, spare me! Great Immortal, spare me!” The female ghost kowtowed furiously, all her previous ferocity gone.

“Uh…” Luo Longyu, shaken from his fear, struggled to make sense of the situation. After a long while, he said, “I’m not an immortal. Besides… you don’t exactly have a life to spare, do you?”

Hearing his voice, the female ghost finally looked up. Her face had become indistinguishable from any normal person’s—a delicate, youthful countenance, no older than a woman in her early twenties at the time of her death.

“You… are you the son of Immortal Qianqian?” she asked timidly, as though terrified of angering him.

“Immortal Qianqian? You called my mother an immortal? Since you knew her, tell me—where is my mother’s body? What happened to it?” At this, Luo Longyu’s anger surged again, and an oppressive aura gathered around him.

Sensing the pressure of his aura—a suppression unique to the bloodline of Xuanyuan over evil spirits—the ghost’s expression changed at once. She hurried to explain, “I never really met Immortal Qianqian. I only knew that eighteen years ago, when she arrived at the village, even the air and earth changed. We wandering ghosts were all suppressed. Even after the Immortal’s passing, her sacred body was buried here, and we could not emerge, always held down, until now—the day her sacred body was taken away.”

“Who took it?” Luo Longyu’s first thought was the Xuan Yi Pavilion.

The ghost shook her head. “I don’t know. At the time, I was still under the Immortal’s power and could only watch from where I died. It was a group of Westerners, and two people looked like us. They put the Immortal’s body in an iron box and took it away. Where to, I don’t know.” The ghost poured out all she knew.

Rage overcame Luo Longyu, and he roared, silver light once again flashing in his eyes, striking such terror in the ghost that she dared not look up.

“Damn it! Damn those foreigners! Traitors!” Luo Longyu cursed furiously.

“Immortal… There should still be something in the grave. I can sense it—it’s something terrifying…” The ghost, trembling at his wrath, mustered the courage to speak.

Luo Longyu glanced at her, then turned back to the grave, quickly digging up his mother’s tomb. The coffin was badly rotted, its lid gone. In the damp earth, his shovel struck an object. He dug it out—it was a crystalline dagger, as if forged from water, tinged with a faint blood-red hue.

Staring at the bloody dagger, Luo Longyu was stunned for a moment, then gave a bitter smile. “I understand now. It’s you. It’s always been you…”

The ghost, frightened by the dagger, dared only to watch from afar as Luo Longyu sat alone in the mud, smiling bitterly—and as he wept while smiling.

Then, to the ghost’s horror, Luo Longyu did something unthinkable: he raised the dagger and plunged it fiercely into his own heart.

There was no spray of blood as one might expect. Luo Longyu remained seated, the veins bulging on his forehead from the pain, yet he pressed the dagger in until it was buried to the hilt.

“Aaah!” The agony tore a howl from his throat, startling flocks of birds into flight. His cry echoed through the woods, and lights flickered on in the village as people peered toward the hills, wondering what was happening.

Luo Longyu’s face twisted in torment. Blood-red light snaked over his body like a serpent, flaying his skin in layers to expose raw flesh. The flesh withered, shriveling onto his bones. Silver light shot from his eyes into the heavens. The blood-red glow from his chest illuminated the night sky, and the tremendous force decimated the woods around him, hurling the female ghost away.

The villagers, terrified, watched as blood and silver beams lit up the sky over the hills, none knowing what fate was unfolding there.

Soon, everything faded. In the soil sat a dried corpse, its features unrecognizable, hands pressed to its chest, jaws split wide in a silent snarl—a fiend risen from hell.

The female ghost, drifting from her daze, gazed at Luo Longyu’s desiccated remains in abject terror, unable to approach. As she finally steeled herself to go forward, a torrential rain broke suddenly from the heavens.

The rain lasted for days. A flash flood swept through; a mudslide nearly buried half the village. The government mounted emergency relief efforts, evacuating all the villagers. Soon after, the landslide buried the entire mountain village, erasing all traces from the earth.

The wild graves vanished, and Luo Longyu was buried deep underground, never to be seen again. A week later, the rain stopped, the skies cleared, and all returned to peace, as if nothing had ever happened. Only the female ghost knew what had truly transpired—no other living soul remembered.

Elsewhere, only a few knew that Luo Longyu had left the Xuan Yi Pavilion, as his safety was the top priority.

Long Shaoxian, tasked with protecting Luo Longyu from the shadows, naturally reported the events of the Corpse Dao inheritance to Elder Ge. After consulting with Elder Xuan, they decided to report to the central authorities, halt the village’s reconstruction, and relocate the disaster victims elsewhere. It seemed the matter had ended there—but not all things go as people wish.

Elder Ge’s team was not the only one watching Luo Longyu’s movements. The third team of Xuan Yi, led by Ju Feng, had already guessed that Luo Longyu had left the Pavilion; after all, he had been missing for several days, as had Long Shaoxian.

In a dimly lit room, Ju Feng paced back and forth. Yao Chihai and several others stood aside, their eyes following his movements.

“It seems… humans are still wary of our demon clan, hmph.” Ju Feng spoke slowly, letting out a cold laugh.

“Exactly. They talk of unity against foreign enemies, but now that the threat has appeared, the humans are quick to hide that zombie away, as if we’d devour him ourselves,” a seductive black-haired woman remarked languidly.

Ju Feng shook his head. “I find myself quite curious about this Luo Longyu. The bloodline of the ancient Xuanyuan clan—descendants of gods, if the legends are true. Chihai, I’m leaving it to you. I want a drop of Luo Longyu’s blood.”

“Understood. I’ve long wanted to spill his blood. Those zombies are the ones I hate most,” Yao Chihai said, licking his lips, a cruel glint in his eyes.

Ju Feng fixed him with a grave look. “Don’t be careless. We still don’t know his current condition. Ge Wangshan and his people are keeping all news about Luo Longyu tightly under wraps. Hmm…” Ju Feng frowned, lost in thought, then said, “In that case, Yao Chihai, go and notify the five great demon clans to search for Luo Longyu with all their might. If necessary, ask your uncle for help—he’s highly respected among the demons, and he loathes zombies as well. He should help us.”

“Alright, understood.” Yao Chihai nodded. Just as he was about to leave, Ju Feng called him back. After a moment’s silence, Ju Feng said, “Remember—do not underestimate your task, and watch out for the first team. Now that Long Shaoxian is missing, she’s likely protecting Luo Longyu. Do not engage her—you are no match for her.”

“Tch…” Yao Chihai seemed displeased with this last remark, but said nothing more, and led his group out of the room.