Outside the chamber, in one of the rger tunnels.

  “What in the great soul’s name is happening today?” one of the necromancers, a sixth realm man that stroked his beard constantly, “Not only a bunch of strangers, but the reaper we’ve been chasing and Huang Su… what kind of lunacy is this?”

  “High Soulseer, what are your orders? With the other passages being shut, clearing them could take several minutes in the best of cases.”

  “They’re clearly attempting to restart the array, wasting time like that would be unwise.”

  “Would it… even be possible to reactivate it? The reaper is of a low realm, and Huang Su doesn’t use their accursed song.”

  “We hadn’t expected them to get in with such ease, nor to get this far, so it’s impossible to rule out anything just yet. We need to incapacitate their little group and rip their souls from their flesh. Having a Sect Master to wield as a puppet would help us recover our standing with the rest of them, just like the old days… ah, I recall hearing the Caller’s speech on the day we finally brought those sects and warlords to our side!”

  “High Soulseer, maybe not now…”

  “Ah, no, you’re correct. I’ll regale you with the tale some other time.”

  ‘My lord, you’ve done it a million times already… after you’d given up finding this pce, you started sharing it every few days…’ the other necromancers found his shoulders dropping, but couldn’t say anything without angering the leader, “So, what are your orders?”

  “Simple! Gather all of your minions at the open passages, and force your way through! Don’t hesitate to expend some of your higher realm creations, we’ll have more than enough resources to spare the instant Huang Su’s body is under my control!”

  That much was true – they had been experimenting with the bodies of the fallen from the battle ever since the Reaper’s Grave fell, even if they had given up on finding the array core long ago. With those experiments, their High Soulseer, Dao Shenzhen, has been able to innovate and pursue a whole new path for their Soul-Binding Monolith, but…

  As they flung their collected bodies at the chamber, they succeeded in building a barricade of corpses more so than breaking in deeper, leaving them with only higher-grade corpses to use. Therefore, the tides would have to shift, but would it be in time?

  “By the great soul, I think it is time. I shall employ the forbidden flesh,” the High Soulseer suddenly procimed, after their continued efforts struggled to push through, “Give way to it!”

  As soon as his subordinates realised what he meant, they didn’t hesitate to move – themselves and their numerous minions – out of the way of the man that proceeded down the hallway, a tall, muscur, rugged figure that seemed to be at the peak of his fitness. The aura of the fifth realm radiated from him, although it was obvious from his appearance that this wasn’t a living being.

  Besides the scars across his chest, digging in deep enough to reveal ribs, his eyes seemed empty, devoid of the spark of life and intelligence that was present in even the most drained people.

  “Long Mudan…” one of the necromancers muttered, only for Dao Shenzhen to guffaw.

  “Indeed, that body is the closest of my projects to success. I believe that I will have no issues with converting Huang Su to a useful puppet once we cim her – I even have a few theories on how to correct any injuries and imperfections the battle might cause,” he spoke proudly, still stroking his beard.

  “But, at the fifth realm-”

  “Numbers will still dominate, even against a sixth realm. Unless you think that Huang Su can suddenly leap to the seventh realm and overwhelm us that way, there’s nothing to fear.”

  The walking corpse suddenly raised its fists and stomped the ground just before the wall of bodies obstructing the way. All of a sudden, the stone itself shifted, seeming to be taken over by it, the part beneath the bodies descending as to lower them just enough to walk over comfortably. For a moment, it felt as though the endless battle within the central chamber stopped, as those outside of the fming curtain looked over their foe.

  Of course, the next moment, fming feathers surged towards it, the echo of a gigantic cleaver sought to slice the body in half, and a tainted rune lit up beneath its feet, only for the body to stomp again.

  The rune was disrupted as the stone cracked apart and was dispced. Then, with just its fist, the corpse met the cleaver and shattered it in one strike, with little more than a scratch remaining on its fist.

  “That strike… could the rumours about the Solitary Peak Sect be true?”

  “Hm? Oh, their mastery of a hidden Dao? I can’t be certain – even if it is true, this particur strike is only a fourth realm skill, it doesn’t contain more than a trace,” Dao Shenzhen stated.

  The fming feathers of the Phoenix Sect’s leader were thus the only threat left for the body to worry about. They had come a moment after the other attacks, leaving it with enough time to raise the other hand and perform a grabbing motion.

  At once, the phantom of a mountain appeared around it, much smaller than the realm thing, yet seemingly as unbreakable. The fmes collided with it, some of the more potent feathers cracking the pnar construct, but none could shatter it outright – and the moment the barrage was over, before Huang Su could muster another, the body charged forth.

  It headed straight for the curtain of fme, behind which the two attempting to take over the array resided. The High Soulseer reasoned that if they were taken out, it would give them as much time as needed to handle the rest, and it seemed he was right.

  The moment the body of Long Mudan made the effort to punch the fming veil, a far more potent nce of fme flew towards it, forcing a rapid retreat. Another dozen followed, but with a moment to prepare, the body was able to summon that mountain construct again, letting it bear the brunt of the attacks.

  It nearly broke from the more concentrated fmes, but it endured, with the body untouched.

  “That defensive skill is really something…” both a necromancer and the kitsune in the central chamber said at the same time.

  While the necromancer was stunned by the coincidence, the kitsune seemed to come up with something, as she abandoned her position by one of the open passageways and charged towards the corpse. Long Mudan didn’t stand still, turning and aiming a punch towards her, but Xue Yaling raised her arm as a shield manifested on it, numerous pieces coalescing into a single barrier that just barely managed to absorb the strike-

  “Wait, that artefact-”

  The realisation came a moment too te, as the shield exploded out in numerous shards, each piece cutting into the corpse’s flesh, leaving numerous marks upon it as the shards dissipated. However, blood didn’t drip from those cuts, nor did they seal – it was as though the kitsune merely scratched a statue.

  Dao Shenzhen chuckled, the pace at which he stroked his beard picking up, “Hah, fools, that will never be-”

  Yet again, before he was able to finish, a different artefact seemed to be activated, as he suddenly lost sight of what was happening around the kitsune. It was as though pnar energy around her disappeared, and in doing so, it briefly severed his ability to perceive the body he wielded, as well.

  In that brief moment, he frowned, feeling as though he had made the biggest mistake of his life. Surely that couldn’t be the case, he had merely lost track of this corpse puppet for a second, it would only cause a minor dey to his activities…

  Although Xue Yaling left it all unsaid, the others seemed to recognise the pn. Together, they each unleashed whatever strikes they had, seeking to injure the corpse as much as they could to incapacitate it before the necromancer commanding it could regain control. Without the mountain-like barrier in their way, Huang Su’s skills were able to finally injure the walking corpse, leaving burns and marks, but even then, the body refused to fall.

  Before the Sect Master could do much more, she suddenly dispersed the energy she had been concentrating into projectiles and rushed into the barrier of fmes, nearly stunning the kitsune for a moment.

  As realization came, however, she couldn’t afford to get distracted. Summoning what reserves of pnar energy she still had, she conjured a number of ghostfmes to surround the corpse in the remaining moment of freedom she had, before the foe began to move once more. She hardly had the time to ponder whether the Sect Mistress would succeed – she just had to believe they would.

  What other choice did she have?

  Her calcutions were exactly right, and the puppet corpse began to move right when she expected it. Without hesitation, she repeated her imitation of Soul Detonation, disregarding her own safety. The eruptions of the soul-like wisps was able to distract the corpse for a moment longer, but it quickly punched through the remaining pnar mists, stomping the ground beneath to get a number of stone chunks flying.

  Considering the array beneath them, there was only so much stone it could withdraw before the energy rushing beneath their feet would interfere. Still, these chunks were easily the size of its head, and it promptly punched each one toward the kitsune, aiming for different escape routes and parts of her body.

  Even with the Aegis and Anathema, she could barely avoid the full brunt of the attack, a rock chunk striking her in the gut and throwing her back against the wall, into one of the passages she had blocked off mere minutes ago.

  “Agh! Fuck, that hurt…”

  A rune attempted to detonate beneath the corpse’s feet, but the corpse evaded and arrived at Song Ming’s position in a fsh, a fist heading right for her face.

  Her eyes widened, and the others tried to do what they could, but rather than any recognisable force, the kitsune witnessed another saviour – a sudden eruption of energy from below, manifesting in a scythe-like ssh of power that burned with a ferocious crimson.

  It was a power that burned with energy akin to the seventh, almost eighth realm, as though limitless and overwhelming, slicing the corpse and more importantly, severing the threads that allowed some necromancer beyond to control it. This power didn’t stop there, more scythe-like glints appearing and slicing through the air in the passages beyond. Each skeleton, zombie, minion and necromancer visible was destroyed right before Xue Yaling’s eyes, and more beyond that.

  The veil of fme covering the centre of the chamber faded, and there she saw Huang Su standing behind both Shouge Zhe and Bianca, her hands on their shoulders, energy from her pouring into them.

  That energy was being influenced by the two, and through them, it filled the heart of the array beneath them. Not all of the numerous channels depicted at the heart of the chamber were alight with that tainted energy, but the parts that did burned with endless power.

  In the passages beyond, Dao Shenzhen seemed to lose the ability to speak. He couldn’t judge whether the array was activated in part or in full, whether it still had the power that it had in the prime of the Reaper’s Grave, but he couldn’t afford to waste time guessing.

  After each moment of hesitation, a dozen scythe-like glints appeared in the air and sliced through substitute bodies and actual necromancers alike. He thought he could stop one strike, if he went all out, but there was no sign to the attacks ceasing. If he waited to test it out, it would almost certainly spell his doom.

  ‘But… all of our work, all of the time fortifying our position, the corpses…’ even as regret and fury gripped his heart, he had no choice but to excim, “Withdraw, everyone! Right now!”

  He spread out the message with his energy and waited for the first necromancer to begin retreating to do the same, using his best movement skills to move between spare bodies, detonating each one in his wake. Quickly, he appeared outside of the mountain, and saw the light of the array growing in range and potence, seeming more than able to expand across the entire walled region.

  It wasn’t the conventional light he expected of the energy the reapers wielded, no… it was something different, tainted by a peculiar crimson, a crackling force that was too alien to risk investigating. Instead, he had to run.

  And run.

  And run. Run until the walls of the Reaper’s Grave were behind him, finally allowing him to turn and watch the others attempting to catch up. For a moment, the High Soulseer allowed himself the hope of believing that the array might fail, that it might be limited in reach, that they would only need to wait a little before reciming this great monument to the power of necromancers.

  That hope soon proved all too foolish. Some of them managed to escape, but others, even mere metres from the walls and the gaps within them, were still cut down by the ruthless phantom scythe sshes.

  The light of the array burned ever brightly, almost like it did the day the necromancers came to conquer the reapers once and for all.

  He lifted a hand, only to find it clenched in a fist, blood dripping down from his palm.

  “I… I will repay this humiliation tenfold! All of them will be puppets for our cause!” he procimed loudly, shouting with such intensity that it seemed audible even across the Heart Lake.

  By some stroke of fortune, not far from that pce, a grey-haired woman stood, her eyes wide.

  She had been travelling merely as her luck dictated, and yet here she was, seeing the necromancers say something that should, perhaps, have been left quiet.

  The puppetry of others, to be exploited like this, was no light subject – it was one of the reasons that cultivators disliked the necromancers in the first pce. After all, their archetype focused on commanding undead-like constructs and maniputing bone and flesh. If it was possible to take that one step further, to control the actual dead and to use them for their own cause, then…

  It was well known – to the extent that even she was all too familiar with the subject, despite her ck of academic interest – that on every occasion that a Sect Master approached the necromancers of the Soul-Binding Monolith with this subject, they were told with utmost certainty that it was impossible.

  Their archetype did not have such capabilities. And yet…

  She couldn’t help but think back to her test Flip of a Coin. Using it without a specific intent was always risky, and yet she received a promise of utmost fortune. For the past few days, as she had meandered about, she wondered what form that luck would take, and now, hearing that little secret, it seemed to become obvious.

  To the many sects of the Eastern Continent, especially of the Heartnds, all that was needed for the necromancers to come under attack was a proper enough cause.

  A good reason to endanger their disciples and wealth for a purpose they had long desired.

  If she came forward and let this information be spread out…

  ‘The Soul-Binding Monolith may suffer much the same fate as the Reaper’s Grave… although I hope it would never surge back to life, like the Grave has.’

  With her attention shifted, she couldn’t help but frown. Something about the light now rising from the mountainous nds was familiar, and after a moment, she recalled why – on one occasion, when she was endangered by a pnar beast, a stray crimson ray of crackling energy had struck it, dispatching it with ease.

  ‘… Have I been following the person that revived the Grave without knowing?’

  END OF ARC 10