As I approached the fight where the Cultivators were battling the undead, the monsters turned, detecting danger from my presence. Each corpse belonged to a Spirit Realm Cultivator, most of them still quite fresh, though there were a few living animal corpses well past the expiration date.

All of them abandoned the fight and rushed at me in unison, relieving the pressure on the living.

[Go to sleep.] I said and waved my hand, my Soul power ripping the foreign Souls out of their new homes. The process was extremely barbaric, some of the more damaged Souls breaking as I tore them out, and so a wail of unimaginable pain escaped the otherwise quite silent undead army before they collapsed.

And I devoured it all. I was hungry, I had to eat. During my resurrection, copious amounts of energy were consumed to reform my body, and my Soul didn’t escape unscathed either. Luckily I had enough excess Soul Essence to repair the damage so I was back to my peak form. Even better in some cases.

“Healer! We need a healer over here!”

After the cavern returned to peace, a different kind of problem started. The zombies attacked so swiftly and with such force that many sustained life-threatening injuries as the monsters tried to pull them apart.

“What were those things?!” One of the younger Cultivators shouted, holding his hand where a chunk of flesh was missing, torn straight off the bone.

Nobody cared to answer him and instead, a few people took their green lanterns and spread them around the wounded in a sort of Formation.

“Help me stabilize them, over here!” I heard Astrid shout for help.

Many of her patients had grievous wounds, their bodies torn and mangled, sometimes crushed. The fact that they were still alive in that state without any regeneration ability just showed how high the vitality of Spirit Realm Cultivators was. But even then, there was a limit. I saw a guy whose Soul was just barely holding on. He did not last a minute.

“Please! Please help my brother! He’s dying!” The guy beside him pleaded, but his words fell on deaf ears. So many were wounded and there were only two healers in total, the elite team of General Orange having succumbed to the flying drone.

“Please!” The guy cried but had to be quickly restrained so the two healers could focus on the task of saving lives. Where every moment counted, they couldn’t get distracted. Fixing a Spirit Realm Cultivator was nothing like putting together a Mortal. A Cultivator had his own energy that had to be repaired as well as the physical body so that the Soul wouldn’t break off. And that was a complicated, focus-intensive process.

“No, no! Amran! Noooo!”

The Soul finally peeled off and the man died. His brother cried as the last flicker of Qi in the body stilled, signifying his passing.

I didn’t immediately absorb the Soul and instead observed it. And that’s when something in my mind clicked. The Qi in the Underdark was strange, but I could never figure out why. Not that I actively tried, but still…

What I noticed in that moment, was that the Soul of the guy just hung there in the air, not moving, not reacting. That was odd. Usually, the Souls of the dead would quickly begin to panic as they began to decay. The Soul breaking apart was unimaginably painful and the shock of death would quickly disperse as true death began to set in.

But his didn’t. His Soul just hung there, unconscious, not decaying. Not even a little bit. I knew that Spirit Realm Souls were stronger and could survive hours outside the body, but that was not it. The rate of decay, if we could call it that, was basically zero.

As I came closer and observed it some more, I realized. We were underground. Protected from all sides by kilometers of dense rock. Whatever made the Souls decay on the surface was not present in the Underdark.

No, actually, it was present, but it was nowhere near as intense. I looked at another dead body some distance away but noticed his Soul was decaying rapidly. The Soul was panicking, shaking, face contorted in suffering, a silent scream. Beside the body sat the green lantern.

[Oh… So that’s how it is!]

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I took the lantern and lifted it up towards the Soul. It practically began to melt as I brought it closer. The radiation from the Netherealm Jade was poison for the Soul, but not so much for the body! While the Soul was inside the meat suit, it was protected, but once outside it…

I returned to the first guy, leaving the lantern where I found it. I consumed the melting, dying Soul, sparing it from further torture. Even at the speed it was dissipating, it would take it at least half an hour to fully die.

“Amran…” The guy returned, kneeling beside the corpse of his kin.

[Hey.] I tapped the guy on the shoulder. [Let me try something.]

“It’s too late Brother.” The guy said, wiping away his tears. “He’s dead.”

[I know.]

I extended my hand and pushed the guy to the side with Qi and sat beside the body. I focused, placing my hands on his chest, and began to heal.

I could heal others, and I had knowledge and experience, but there was just never any situation where that was needed. I focused, repairing the guy’s organs, bones, and especially his Meridians and Dantian.

Those were tricky, but not impossible.

Satisfied with my work, I lifted my hand and pulled the floating Soul closer, holding it gently. I pushed it into the body, its original home, but it refused to take root. The connection was severed and that was that.

[Hmm…]

I took some of the fresh Soul Essence I just harvested from the other guy, and injected it into the body, binding the Soul to it. At first, nothing happened, so I added some more. Miraculously, the Soul suddenly began to awaken and absorb the Essence, binding to the body. The process was slow but was more complete than whatever the zombies were doing. They were possessing the corpses, not merging with them. That’s also one of the reasons it was so easy to pull them out. It was like taking a man out of his clothes, instead of ripping his skin off.

“Thank you.” The guy said after I was finished. “Now I can give him a proper burial.”

It seemed he misunderstood my intention. I was not repairing his body for the sake of it.

I lifted my hands. The binding was nearly complete.

[Arise.]

With a final push of Qi and Soul Essence, the man stirred and opened his eyes.

“What… happened?” He sat up, looked around in confusion, and then touched his body. His shattered core and broken Meridians were good as new, and even his Spirit Seed was there fully intact. Actually, it was even slightly stronger than before, the result of my meddling.

“Amran?! You are alive?!” The other guy exclaimed and threw himself at him in a hug.

I let the two celebrate and moved away. Most of the wounded were already stabilized by the time I was done and those who died had no chance of ever awakening again. The lanterns beside their bodies made sure of that.

I absorbed what was left of their Souls and slowly sorted through the memory fragments. Some of them knew about the undead while others just barely understood what was going on.

In the Underdark, Souls didn’t decay. Not as quickly at least. What at the surface would take hours could take years so deep underground. The pain would be just the same, whether it was quick or slow.

Some Souls remained awake even after separating from the original body and they would be subjected to that slow decay. Many became desperate, and if there was a fresh corpse nearby, they would jump at the opportunity to possess it.

The undead we encountered were the previous group that got buried in the mansion or died in the city around it. Same with the few beasts among them. They were creatures of the Underdark whose bodies were invaded by a foreign Soul.

The lanterns the warriors carried with them ensured that in case of their death, their Souls would be destroyed instead of becoming vengeful spirits after suffering for years or even decades. The quality of life for a possessed would be miserable anyway. By the time most found a new body, they would be so far gone, that only the most primitive, aggressive instincts remained. Not to mention that since the compatibility between body and Soul was bad, the corpse would continue to decay, as would the Soul, at an accelerated rate.

Cultivation also became impossible by that point, so any hope of repairing the damage was long gone. A quick death was best, and Netherealm Jade allowed that.

There was also another difference I finally noticed. It was small and not easily spotted, but it was there. On the surface, the Base Qi was fresh, reinvigorating, constantly purified by the sun, but down there in the depths, although I didn’t notice it at first, the Qi was… polluted, stale.

It carried the Intent of its owner long after it expended. Same as with the Souls. The Netherealm Jade helped with that too. Cultivating Qi tainted with foreign Intent posed many problems, the main of which was adding an extra step and thus slowing down natural regeneration and Cultivation.

Maybe that’s why the Abyss Terrors made their nests in a cavern full of that stuff. It was easier to Cultivate and grow there, and they didn’t have to worry about the dead resurrecting inside their nest.

[What a mess.]

I came near one of the former zombies and kicked it over. Part of its body was replaced by that dull yellow metal. Some kind of alloy most likely. Whatever was inside the mansion clearly repaired them and then possibly used them as a defense force. The artificial metallic look was also strange. I had never seen anything like it, though it did somewhat remind me of the Celestial Metal.

[Wait… Could it be?]

Before I could explore my conjectures further, a sound came from the broken entrance. A lone figure stood there, clad in similar golden yellow, just wearing way more than the rest of the undead. It also had a distinctive armor underneath. A dull color I had seen before.

[So that’s where you went…] I spoke to the moving corpse as it scanned the battlefield, a prism drone floating above its right shoulder there in silence.

[General Orange.]

The creature opened its mouth, revealing its teeth in a twisted kind of smile, and then did something that made me grimace.