Chapter 148

Chapter 148: The Red-Robed Female Zombie

Everything happened too suddenly. Yu Qing Cheng and the others instinctively followed Yun Xi’s warning and jumped back. Once they retreated out of the swamp, Liu Hao Tian blurted out, “No! Yun Xi is trapped!”

The swamp had already been covered by a red barrier of light.

Yu Qing Cheng slashed out quickly. A fire sword light smashed into the blood-red barrier, but her attack was dissolved.

Xia You asked, “Fellow Daoist Liu, what’s going on?”

Liu Hao Tian did not answer. He was rapidly forming seals. Then he called, “Follow me. We have to strike the weak point of this formation. I hope Fellow Cultivator Wei can hold out until we break it.”

A cold light flashed in Yu Qing Cheng’s phoenix eyes. She flickered and followed, with Xia You right behind.

Inside the formation, Yun Xi was already swinging her staff and attacking. She could feel the spiritual energy in her body draining fast, but she did not dare pause even for a moment. She even chose to pour more spiritual power into her Doom Staff. She had to destroy the nine coffins buried underground.

This formation trapped her while constantly pulling spiritual energy from her body to feed the nine coffins below. It was clearly set by an evil cultivator on purpose, so that even if a cultivator found this place, they could not escape smoothly.

Yun Xi had reacted so quickly only because Dian Dian warned her. But her teammates got out, and she herself was trapped.

“Master, what do we do? Dian Dian’s spiritual energy is draining too,” Dian Dian said.

Dian Dian did not want to disturb her master, but the situation was getting bad, and it had to warn her.

Yun Xi could feel it. As time passed, the rate of spiritual energy loss inside her body was speeding up. The evil cultivator who set this formation was vicious. Anything with life that stepped in would become nourishment for the corpses in the coffins.

“Dian Dian, I’m sending you into the space first.”

“Master, what can I do to help you?”

Before Dian Dian could get an answer, Yun Xi sent it into the space.

She had been trapped in front of everyone. She could not vanish out of thin air, so she could only take it head-on. Still, she believed the other three would find a way. If they still could not destroy this corpse-nurturing ground, then she would consider entering the space to hide.

Ever since she gained the space chat group, Yun Xi had been avoiding overusing the space. It was too easy to become dependent on it.

She had seen content about spatial techniques in the library pavilion. If she ran into a high-level cultivator skilled in spatial laws, they could easily lock down the space around her. She would not even get a chance to enter the space.

If that happened, she would not even know how she died. So most of the time, as long as she could fight, she would not choose to flee easily.

Yun Xi gritted her teeth and swung again, putting everything into one blow. She burned half the spiritual power in her body, and the ground finally broke open into a pit. She saw a red coffin lid.

“There’s a way!”

Yun Xi swallowed a top-grade Second Rank Spirit-Replenishing Pill. Then she also took out the Purple Jade Coiling Dragon Cauldron, controlling it with her divine sense as she smashed it toward the exposed coffin lid. She had to destroy these coffins before she was drained dry.

The repeated banging filled Yun Xi’s ears, but she did not stop for even a second.

The Purple Jade Coiling Dragon Cauldron probably never imagined, from the day it was refined, that its master would use it to smash coffin lids.

But the effect was obvious. With the Purple Jade Coiling Dragon Cauldron and the Seven-Star Doom Staff working together, after three consecutive strikes, the formation patterns on the coffin lid shattered. The lid finally broke, revealing a woman’s face covered in white hair. She wore a red robe.

In that instant, Yun Xi’s memories surged. This woman had once appeared in the broken images she saw when she advanced to Foundation Establishment. There had been too many flashing scenes back then, but Yun Xi remembered this woman alone, because her gaze had been filled with sorrow, as if she had a thousand words to say, yet could not speak a single one.

“How can this be?”

The moment Yun Xi paused, the woman in the coffin suddenly opened her eyes. She sprang stiffly out of the coffin. A pair of glossy black eyes stared straight at Yun Xi.

Yun Xi quickly swallowed the pill she had been holding in her mouth. Then she gripped the Doom Staff with both hands, testing the waters as she prepared to attack.

The woman spoke. Her voice was rough, her tone strange, and her words came out broken and halting. “…Kill… me!… Don’t… let me… be… a… monster!”

Yun Xi tightened her grip on the Seven-Star Doom Staff. This time, she was truly startled. A low-level zombie with self-awareness was something she had never seen before.

The library pavilion’s records said zombies were divided into nine ranks. The lowest was the purple zombie. A white zombie was the woman’s current state. After that, from low to high, they were black zombie, green zombie, fur zombie, flying zombie, roaming corpse, lurking corpse, and unrottable bone.

Once a zombie cultivated to unrottable bone, it recovered its past-life memories, and its strength could match a Great Ascension cultivator. Even without ascending, it possessed an undying body. Of course, all of that was just what Yun Xi read on jade slips. She did not know the details of that cultivation system, only the rough outline.

But one thing she was sure of: a white zombie should not have the ability to express its own thoughts. It should only chase power by instinct, devour flesh and blood, and advance. Especially under deliberate cultivation by an evil cultivator, they would not allow an immature zombie to break free from their control.

“Kill… me!” the woman struggled to express again.

At that moment, Yun Xi felt the formation trapping her shake slightly. She knew Yu Qing Cheng and the others were attacking the formation. With Liu Hao Tian, who understood formations, they were surely striking the weak points.

Yun Xi gripped the Seven-Star Doom Staff and poured lightning spiritual power into it again. Then she kept attacking the ground. Only one coffin was exposed so far, and there were still eight more.

The red-robed white zombie stood in place as if struggling. Her eyes turned black for a moment, then white, making the sight chilling.

Yun Xi tried to steady herself. She kept swinging her staff and smashing the ground while watching that strange white zombie.

Another three-hit combo. Half of her spiritual power burned away again. She had to stop and swallow more pills.

After struggling, the black pupils seemed to gain the upper hand. When Yun Xi stopped attacking, the zombie stiffly walked back to her coffin and smashed the red coffin into pieces with her fists.

Then she began digging, violently yanking out a black coffin and tossing it at Yun Xi’s feet.

Yun Xi reflexively took a step back. The Seven-Star Doom Staff slammed down on the black coffin. This strike drained every last bit of spiritual power from her dantian. The coffin lid was smashed apart too, revealing another white zombie inside.

When Yun Xi saw that face-covered in white hair, yet still painfully familiar-she felt an MMP rise in her heart, not sure whether she should say it.

Lying inside was none other than Li Cang Yuan, the Young City Lord of Twin Mountain City. Even the robe on his body was the one he wore at the time of his execution. Yun Xi did not need to think to know who could do this. It was either evil cultivators or his father, City Lord Li.

Yun Xi leaned toward the latter. What kind of father would let outsiders defile his son’s corpse? But if he walked the evil path of corpse refining, it could barely make sense.

The red-robed female zombie continued, “…Kill… me… and… him… You… can’t… live…”

Yun Xi took a deep breath. The situation felt terrible. If City Lord Li was nearby, she was dead for sure.