Not long after, more than a dozen gravediggers were taken overnight to the Night Patrol Division's prison. Wang Nian rushed over upon hearing the commotion, trying to intervene. However, Li Ye and his companion carried the Night Patrol officer's command token, leaving him with no authority to interfere. Once the gravediggers were locked up, Li Ye and his companion immediately conducted an overnight interrogation. Initially, they planned to extract confessions through torture, but Wang Nian arrived just in time to stop them.
"Li Ye, if you dare to use torture, I'll take this straight to the elders of the Night Patrol Division! Then you can handle burying the bodies in the Land of Mangled Corpses yourself!"
Left with no choice, Li Ye had to give up on the idea.
"Brother Chen, let's use the Illusion Pill instead."
The Illusion Pill—a low-grade, first-tier elixir—was specifically designed to cloud a prisoner's mind and coax them into revealing the truth. Since they couldn't use force, this was the best alternative.
Manager Chen sighed. "One Illusion Pill costs a low-grade spirit stone each, Li Ye. You're really willing to spend that much?"
"I refuse to believe they didn't hear anything unusual that night," Li Ye said, gritting his teeth as he paid for the dozen or so pills.
However, despite the questioning, they learned very little. The only information they could gather was that those living near Fang Zheng had heard sounds of a struggle for just a few seconds before everything went silent. Other than that, there was nothing unusual.
As for those living near Wen Jiu, they did hear him leaving his residence, but that was nothing out of the ordinary—Wen Jiu went out every night to tend to corpses. It was common knowledge. Even Wang Nian was aware of this. There were only a few rare nights when he didn't go.
Manager Chen shook his head, clearly troubled. "Even if he did go out at night, that's hardly a reason to interrogate him. There's no way to explain this to Officer Mu. Besides, corpse nurturing and ghost arts contradict each other. The only corpse-nurturing method he's ever learned is the Yin Province Corpse-Nurturing Technique from the Law Transmission Hall… Brother Li, maybe we should just drop this."
At this point, Manager Chen was starting to believe that finding and killing spies was more reliable than trying to prove Wen Jiu had murdered Fang Zheng's group.
Although he didn't believe it was just a coincidence that Fang Zheng and his men had targeted Wen Jiu one day, only to die the next, he couldn't deny that, despite his suspicions, the facts seemed to line up that way.
Li Ye remained silent, lost in deep thought.
At that moment, a disciple of the Night Patrol Division rushed into the prison, looking flustered.
"Manager Li, Manager Chen—Officer Sikong has come out of seclusion. He's very dissatisfied with the progress on the spy investigation, so he's decided to personally perform a soul-search on the spy we captured that night!"
As soon as they heard this, both men's expressions changed.
They had spent so much time trying to connect Wen Jiu to Fang Zheng's death that they had neglected the primary mission—hunting down spies. Now, they had drawn Officer Sikong's ire.
"Release the gravediggers immediately!" Manager Chen ordered the nearby Night Patrol disciples.
Though unwilling, Li Ye didn't dare to hesitate. Right now, eliminating spies was the top priority.
In recent days, the number of Night Patrol Division disciples killed by these spies had reached nearly thirty.
—
The next day, Wen Jiu learned of what had happened the previous night from Wang Nian. He also found out that Li Ye had taken the gravediggers who lived near him.
But he remained unfazed.
Ghost arts and corpse nurturing were fundamentally incompatible—this was simply a fact. Li Ye was the only one who would even think to suspect him.
Yet no matter how much Li Ye tried to connect the dots or how much he targeted him, Wen Jiu knew he wouldn't dare to take direct action. After all, he now had someone backing him.
He was no longer just a gravedigger that could be easily controlled.
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Shaking off those thoughts, Wen Jiu stepped into the Land of Mangled Corpses. Today, he planned to venture deeper into its core.
That was the true battlefield.
The cultivators who had perished there had been of much higher realms, meaning the lingering Yin energy and blood essence were purer.
It was also where vengeful spirits were more likely to manifest.
As he stepped into the core of the Land of Mangled Corpses, accompanied by the black ghoul, the surrounding Yin energy thickened, growing colder with every step. Though it was broad daylight, the air was as frigid as the dead of winter. A pale, eerie whiteness stretched as far as the eye could see.
Corpses littered the ground in all directions.
Unlike the outskirts, where bodies were shredded beyond recognition, here, there were occasional corpses that were mostly intact—some missing only an arm or a leg.
But Wen Jiu didn't go any further. After advancing about a hundred meters, he stopped and activated his corpse eye, beginning to absorb the blood essence.
As soon as the corpse eye opened, an immense surge of blood energy erupted from the ground beneath him, rushing toward the eye like a tidal wave.
The sheer volume of it was three to four times greater than what he had found on the outskirts.
Its purity was several times higher than that of the surrounding area. As the blood energy surged in, the originally faint crimson blood essence rapidly took shape at a speed visible to the naked eye. In less than an hour, it condensed into a small blood droplet, about the size of a fingernail.
Even so, the moment the blood droplet formed, the aura of the Corpse Eye changed drastically. The originally solemn-looking eye became laced with sinister blood veins, and as they spread, the speed at which it absorbed blood energy increased exponentially.
At this moment, the Corpse Eye resembled a ravenous ghoul, endlessly devouring blood energy as if it wished to consume everything around it.
The Black Ghoul stood to the side, feeling the surging blood energy and growing restless, but Wen Jiu firmly suppressed it.
A single feast was better than sporadic meals—Wen Jiu understood that well.
If he let the Black Ghoul snatch the blood energy now and later found himself short on it, leading to a failure in condensing blood essence, the loss would be immense.
After all, cultivating the Blood Transformation Body required an enormous amount of blood.
But he couldn't exactly go out and slaughter cultivators or mortals for it.
Time passed quickly.
Several hours later, after completely absorbing all the blood energy within a two-to-three-hundred-zhang radius underground, the blood droplet increased by nearly a third in size and became even purer.
Wen Jiu wasn't sure if this counted as true blood essence or just highly purified blood, but regardless, he could clearly sense that its presence had elevated both the quality and abilities of the Corpse Eye to an entirely new level.
Just then, the condensed blood essence suddenly released a massive surge of blood energy, which Wen Jiu had no control over. The energy rushed straight into the Black Ghoul's body.
The aura of the Black Ghoul's Blood Transformation Body began to rise rapidly!
For a full fifteen minutes, Wen Jiu could do nothing but stand by and watch as the transformation unfolded.
When the process finally settled, the aura of the Black Ghoul's Blood Transformation Body had reached an unprecedented peak.
It was as if it had spent dozens of days absorbing blood energy in a land of corpses.
In fact—
Wen Jiu could sense the clear signs of an impending breakthrough in the Black Ghoul's Blood Transformation Body.
"What the…"
His eyes immediately turned to the Corpse Eye, only breathing a sigh of relief when he confirmed that the blood essence within it had not disappeared.
As long as the blood essence remained, all was well.
But what exactly had just happened?
"Looks like I'll have to wait for the daily settlement to fully understand this."
After burying the Black Ghoul underground, Wen Jiu swiftly departed.
When midnight arrived, the answer finally became clear.
A new entry had appeared in the daily settlement log:
[A large amount of blood energy has been absorbed to replenish the Corpse Eye. The blood essence within the Corpse Eye has been fully restored and is currently fusing with the Corpse Eye's vessel. In ten days, it will return to first-tier mid-grade quality.]
[Corpse Eye's restoration has provided feedback: Cultivator Blood Essence +1375, Black Ghoul's Blood Transformation Body EXP +300 (daily absorption limit reached).]
[Black Ghoul Skill: Blood Transformation Body – Second Stage (828/1000).]
"So it worked!"
The surprise came so suddenly that Wen Jiu was caught off guard.
It was a stroke of luck that this happened in the land of corpses.
Had it been anywhere else, who knew how long the restoration would have taken?
"So the strange phenomenon earlier was due to the feedback process…"
Another wave of excitement washed over Wen Jiu.
It seemed that restoring the Corpse Eye only required replenishing its blood essence rather than absorbing an entire supply of fresh blood.
"828 EXP... If I don't tap into the reserved Cultivator Blood Essence, I'll only need seven more days to reach the third stage of the Blood Transformation Body."
Wen Jiu fell into thought.
Should he wait seven days?
Or use the Cultivator Blood Essence reserve to accelerate the process?
After considering for a moment, Wen Jiu decided not to use it.
The Cultivator Blood Essence should be saved whenever possible—he would need it later to cultivate the Yin Fiend Blood Curse Body.
Corpse blood was definitely useless for that particular cultivation method.
With this in mind, Wen Jiu checked his blood essence reserves.
[Cultivator Blood Essence Reserve: 2368.]
"I'll keep storing it."
Once the situation calms down, I'll start using this blood essence to cultivate the Yin Fiend Blood Curse Body.
With his plan set, Wen Jiu closed his personal status panel.
Time passed quickly.
Seven days later, the Blood Transformation Body successfully advanced to the third stage.
[Black Ghoul Skill: Blood Transformation Body – Third Stage (0/2000).]
But what Wen Jiu hadn't expected was that upon reaching the third stage, the Blood Transformation Body had actually developed a new skill.
[Black Ghoul Skill: Blood Corpse Escape.]