Necropolis Immortal

Although the vicious spirits possessed the strength of combination cultivators, they lacked corresponding attack methods. They couldn’t bring the full strength of real combination cultivators to bear—some soul separation experts were able to beat them back at the first encounter.

What was terrifying about them was their undying body, inexhaustible strength, incomparable speed, and reckless fighting style. They could exhaust a cultivator to death through sheer attrition.

Once a vicious spirit broke through a cultivator’s defenses and injected their bloody light into the cultivator, that changed the human into another vicious spirit. That was the most horrifying of all.

Lu Yun’s group had run into just the lowest level of their kind.

Pfft pfft pfft!

Shi Jian promptly obliterated the eight vicious spirits, but they recombined with a flash of bloody light. However, that gave him enough breathing space to bisect the head of a spirit that was yet to regain movement after coming back together.

When the nearby Song Yi registered his friend’s actions, he brightened and flicked his thin sword around, forming a net of sword light and churning the three spirits in front of him to pieces. As they recombined, he took careful aim and slashed through three heads at nearly the same time.

“Finally got them all.” Ling Ling breathed out in relief after killing the last spirit.

“Thank goodness these things aren’t intelligent or we’d be in real trouble.” A smile appeared on Ling Chu’s face. Lacking intelligence made them the same as walking corpses, which meant they wouldn’t hide or dodge. The group could easily take out a spirit once they connected with a vital point.

“These are just the lowest specimens of their kind,” Lu Yun shook his head. “For some of the higher level ones, they live even when you connect with their blood rune.”

“Ah…” Ling Chu and Ling Ling looked at each other, not sure of what to say.

“What we’re facing are just newly infected cultivators, they’re not true vicious spirits.” Lu Yun simply wanted to remind them that if these spirits were so easy to manage, he wouldn’t need to be so wary of Immortal Burial Valley. The attitude they bore now would very likely lead to their demise.

“Old brother Lu, have you met these things before?” Shi Jian finally gave in to his inner curiosity.

“Yes,” Lu Yun nodded without further word. He’d met them in the world of immortals and there were even greater horrors in his sealed memories.

As inexperienced as Ling Chu and the others were, they were no fools. Everyone had their own secrets, they wouldn’t press for more.

“I finally understand why His Majesty sealed off this area with formations… It’s because of these guys,” Song Yi swallowed hard.

“There might be even stronger vicious spirits the deeper in we go, dare you go?” A smile appeared on Lu Yun’s face. After spending three days together and viewing these four through the lens of his three thousand lifetimes, he knew that they were worth befriending.

“What don’t we dare?” Ling Ling was the first to jump out and puff up her sizable chest. She’d grown much stronger over the trials of the past three days and was no longer a frantic mess when vicious spirits drew close.

“Didn’t we come here to temper ourselves?” Ling Chu smiled faintly. All three of them had benefited enormously from the three days of battle. While their cultivation hadn’t advanced, their battle experience was so much more than what they possessed before.

“Of course we must go,” answered the fiery Shi Jian. “Those three bastards may have already entered the valley. If I see them, I’m going to twist their heads off!”

Song Yi said nothing, merely continued to polish the thin sword in his hand.

“Alright then,” Lu Yun stood up and stretched.

They traveled much faster than before, encountering a denser concentration of vicious spirits the closer they drew to Immortal Burial Valley. Lu Yun discovered a massive group of more than five hundred at one point and quickly led the group around it.

Five hundred would drown them in a second and leave not even bone fragments behind.

……

The five finally reached the heart of the valley seven days after entering the formation array. It was as if a volcano—the ground protruded to form a small mountain three hundred meters tall. Dense clusters of innumerable vicious spirits gathered on the landmass, all glowing with a bloody hue.

They differed from the ones that the quintet met before in that the flesh beneath the bloody light was blood-red and exuded the pungent scent of decay. Blood-red eyes occupied two thirds of their faces. Hunched over, hands that’d turned into sharp claws dug into the cliff face while unblinking scarlet eyes scanned the premises.

“Ah…” Hidden in a corner, Ling Chu swallowed hard.

“That’s a real vicious spirit,” Lu Yun whispered with a quirk of his lips. Thank goodness they’re just vicious spirits and not ghost zombies… or it would be the start of real despair then.

Whoosh!

A vicious spirit on the cliff face suddenly streaked into a ray of body light and elicited a pained scream from the sky. A figure in gray fell to the ground—a cultivator in long gray robes. Bloody light quickly shimmered over him and covered his entire body. The dead cultivator then swayed to his feet and shuffled aimlessly around.

Ling Ling was pale with fright—though she’d heard Lu Yun say that vicious spirits were transformed from cultivators, it was another thing entirely to see it with her own eyes.

“Vicious spirits don’t have consciousnesses, but their senses are exceptionally keen and won’t be fooled by ordinary Invisibility Talismans.” Lu Yun narrowed his eyes. There were more than one thousand vicious spirits sprawled on the mountain less than three hundred meters tall. They wouldn’t be able to pass with their individual strength.

“That spirit had the strength of latter combination, but it killed a tribulation cultivator in a split second,” Song Yi swallowed hard.

“It was the tribulation cultivator who was careless. He was confident he couldn’t be detected—he wouldn’t have died in one pass otherwise.” Ling Chu pursed his lips and smiled ruefully. “But it’s not like we can handle these vicious spirits either.”

“Let’s go back!” Lu Yun waved them into a quiet retreat.

“Countless treasures litter Immortal Burial Valley. Many of the cultivators who entered first obtained heaven-defying treasures,” Song Yi raised. “I’m not willing to give up just like this.”

Those who entered first did obtain some treasures, but the subsequent appearance of vicious spirits in quick succession and unbridled slaughter turned some of the cultivators into them.

The Human Emperor had reacted quickly and directed the formation array over the spirits almost as soon as they appeared. It sealed off an area five thousand kilometers around the valley so that most cultivators didn’t know what’d happened inside.

The only news that made it out was that there was treasure to be had, which caused cultivators around the world to flock to the valley. All of the vicious spirits that the quintet had met along the way were formerly of those cultivators.

Lu Yun looked at Song Yi, reading urgency in the young man’s eyes.

“Don’t worry, we’ll help you!” Shi Jian patted his friend’s shoulder.

“Lu Yun, you always have a ton of ideas. Think of something.” Ling Ling ran over to Lu Yun and pulled on his arm.

Lu Yun smiled ruefully. The female cultivators of Darklake couldn’t run fast enough when they saw him. A young woman tugging on his arm was a first.

“Ling Ling!” Ling Chu hastily pulled the girl back when he saw. Although the four accepted Lu Yun as one of them, her actions overstepped the bounds of propriety.

Ling Ling shrank in on herself and quietly stuck out her tongue.

“We should disseminate the method to kill vicious spirits and collect everyone to destroy these ones together,” Lu Yun declared.

“Huh?” Shi Jian couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “But the method to kill vicious spirits…”

“Ole brother Lu is right!” Ling Chu nodded. “These spirits are too dangerous and will be a cataclysm upon Jade Ruins Realm and even Great Xia if they were to break out of here. It will be much safer once cultivators know how to kill them.”

Lu Yun nodded. He was no saint, but he had a clear sense of priorities. Knowledge like this could not be kept to oneself. The world of immortals had been devastated by these spirits back in the day—such scenes of horror were still fresh in Lu Yun’s mind.

If a single one of them ran out and wasn’t killed in time, the entire world would become their paradise.

I wonder if the others will call me a saint if they learn of this.

“We can share the method, but it can’t come from us,” he said after consideration.

“Why not?” Ling Ling didn’t understand.

“Because of the human heart,” he responded. Unbidden, the four thought of the three combination cultivators they’d encountered earlier.

Lu Yun hadn’t forgotten either what ultimately happened to the dao immortal who deduced how to kill the vicious spirits in the world of immortals. Far from becoming a hero, his nascent soul was refined alive, his memories stripped, and his soul scattered to the wind.

No one believed that he’d discovered the secret by accident and even if they did, they pretended not to. Human desire was endless and everyone wanted to know if there were any other secrets on the immortal.

Not even the immortal emperor had discovered it, so how had a dao immortal achieved it? To do so was not his good fortune, but his greatest disaster.

Lu Yun’s original goal in accompanying the four was to observe them. If any of them displayed anything out of the ordinary, he would kill them without hesitation. He was not a good guy, and with his experience and instincts, he knew that these four were worthy of being roped in.