They passed another two coffins. One had a shut lid, and the other laid open and empty, only the sticky remnants of a purple fluid clinging to its corners. Hui kept a healthy distance from both, in case something mysterious and ferocious dwelled in their depths, as well.

At last, Fa Chuyou diverted her course. A light appeared in her eyes, and she hummed to herself, skipping over to a coffin tucked into a nook by the wall. A half-dozen ghouls stood around it, stumbling around. Drawing closer, Hui caught sight of four iron spikes, outlining the shape of a square. The ghouls never left the area outlined by the square.

“Darlings, I’m back!” Fa Chuyou announced happily.

Hui investigated the ghouls as they passed by. One had the upper half of a human, but its lower half merged into some hideous demonic beast, clawed and furred, with a snake’s torso for a tail. Another sported huge legs, one with pale skin, another with dark, a slender woman’s arm on the left and a masculine, beefy arm on the right, and a face stitched together from a half-dozen other faces. Yet another appeared mostly human, except for their scaly, green skin. Sharp spines pushed out of gaping wounds in the back of a ghoul crouched in the corner, their jaw working, endless nonsense spilling out.

Hui sucked in a short breath. He pressed his lips together, eyes wide. I shouldn’t have trusted her!

Only one coffin stood in the space. Carved from white stone, it stretched two meters long and half a meter wide, big enough to hold any one of the ghouls in the space.

Humming to herself, Fa Chuyou hung his skin from a hook dangling from the stone wall. She slapped a bag of holding, and a stream of red liquid poured out, filling the coffin. Extracting shiny black gemstones from her bag, she added them to the fluid. The stones melted on contact with the liquid, melding into the red fluid. The black marbled in the red liquid, the two floating against one another. Her face twitched. She added a blackened stem and a dried, browned flower, then extracted a handful of fur and a silvery scale and added them to the mix as well.

Hovering her hands over the coffin, she rotated her qi through the fluid, mixing them all together. The liquid began to glow as it catalyzed and transformed, becoming something else entirely.

It’s pill cultivation! Pill cultivation, my only… one of my several weaknesses! Hui despaired, sighing. I still haven’t figured out how to turn on a pill furnace…

Ah! But it’s okay. I can let someone else handle making the liquid. As long as I know what corpse refinement fluid looks like, I can buy or steal it and use it to refine my ghoul skin later on my own time, with my own hands!

Fa Chuyou’s eyes flashed. She carefully lifted the skin off the hook and almost reverentially dipped it into the fluid. “There you go, darling. I’ll make sure you get big and strong.”

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“Wh…what?” Hui said. A shiver ran down his spine.

She gestured, and the coffin lid lifted off the ground. It hovered over to the coffin, and then Fa Chuyou paused. “Wait. I can’t lock him in there for too long. What if he wakes up and doesn’t know what’s happening? For the first refinement… yes. For the first refinement, I’ll have to do my best overnight! He surely can’t be expecting me to seal him away for months. Ohhh… I would love to, but—but for the first time, I’ll simply focus on what I can accomplish in one night!”

A fire burned in Fa Chuyou’s eyes. She placed her hands inches above the coffin and furrowed his brows. “I’ll show you! Just watch, Xie Hao! Under the hands of Fa Chuyou, superior corpse refiner of the Black Asp Sect, you’ll become the strongest ghoul you could possibly imagine!”

“Ah… thank you,” Hui said, embarrassed. Even though he knew she couldn’t see him, he still rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. A superior corpse refiner? How nice. Maybe I’ll just leave refining my ghoulskin to her.

Murmuring to herself, she continued, “I wonder if I could talk him into a modification next time. Maybe some stylish spikes from a Sky Piercing Iguana? Or a Cloud Seeking Panther’s ears? Too cute! Ohhh, or! I just got those scales in. I bet he’d look fantastic with a Blue Ice Wyvern’s belly scales on his stomach!”

Hui’s lips pressed together again, eyes wide as dinner plates. Never mind! Never mind! This small cultivator was far too presumptuous! How could I dare dream of asking a superior corpse refiner such as the mighty Fa Chuyou to refine my lowly ghoul skin? No, no! Not this small cultivator. Please, let me buy corpse refining fluid. I wouldn’t dream of wasting the time of someone as illustrious as yourself!

Fa Chuyou sighed, reluctant. “That’s for next time, though. For this time, I’ll impress him with my incredible skill alone! We can focus on the decorations next time.”

Yes, yes, please, Elder sister. Next time.

“Or… maybe just… one little…” She licked her lips and reached into her bag of holding thoughtfully.

“Elder sister! Please, resist!” Hui begged her.

She sighed. “No. First, I need to properly study his body composition. There’s that flint… if it’s stabilizing his body, it’s possible my modifications could destabilize the spell array that keeps him active. As a superior corpse refiner, I have to live up to my reputation! If I jump in thoughtlessly, I’ll only tarnish my reputation. And if I kill him… if I kill him…”

Her lip shivered. She sniffed.

“Ah, Elder Sister, it’s fine, it’s not actually my body…” Hui reassured her, unwilling to see a woman cry over him.

Fa Chuyou shook her head fiercely and clenched her fist. “No! Not until I study him thoroughly! A rare new type of undead, found in the wild? I’d hate myself if I killed him accidentally!”

Ah… no, I really have no idea how to handle this Fa Chuyou! Hui cried out silently.

A tug at his chest. Hui looked down, then pressed his hands to his chest. What…?

Another tug, this one more insistent. Hui backed away, confused. What’s going on? I…

My body! Is something happening to my body? I’ve never been away from it for so long, I almost forgot about it!

Terrified, Hui flew off, only to slam into an invisible wall inches in front of his nose. He bounced off and backed up, eyes wide. “Wh…what?”

His eyes dropped down to the iron spikes in the ground. He swallowed. “Those iron spikes contain the ghouls. Do they… maybe… contain all death qi?” His eyes flicked to Fa Chuyou.

She laughed and turned, looking directly at Hui. “Why don’t you tell me? Xie Hao.”