“What’s going on..” Lu Shimming slowly got back onto his feets as the world around him began to fade until it was him, and the ancient stone tablet left in the dark world.

“Whoosh!”

A white flame suddenly seemed to light up the tablet as letters began to appear on it.

[Nirvana Tablet]

Owner: Lu Shimming (4th Generation)

Status: ???

Summons: 0

Souls:2

[Authority]

Eyes of the Reaper: Allows you to see the Dead.

Soul Collector: Automatically collects the soul of a deceased within a radius of 10 meters.

Reanimation: Call up the dead to rise. {Requires Soul}

Corpse Collector: Allows you to store the Dead.

“What is this?” Lu Shimming couldn’t help but frown as he read the tablet.

Calling upon the dead? Collecting Souls?

Whose soul did he even collect?

There were two of them, and from what he understood, he should have collected Jin Ho’s soul. As for the other, he had no idea.

“Whoosh!”

Suddenly, two wisps appeared in front of him as he was thinking about the souls.

One was almost translucent white, and he could feel a hint of familiarity with it. He could tell it was Jin Ho.

The moment he realized it, it sent a shiver down his spine.

Wasn’t this evil?

He wasn’t some kind of heretic.

As for the other wisp, it had a deep blood red shade to it, and he could feel an intense aura of resentment surging forth from it. Even Jin Ho’s soul seem to shiver and tried to back away from it.

“Who is this?” Lu Shimming couldn’t really tell who it belonged down, but something felt odd as he looked at it.

“Ahh..I will go mad if I keep looking at them. I can’t become a heretic.” He waved his hand, and with a single thought, the two wisps disappeared.

“I thought that the dreamland would give me an opportunity..but this..”

Corpse Cultivators weren’t uncommon. And, it wasn’t the only kind of evil art around. But such things were looked down upon collectively by the whole cultivation world. After all, whether it was the Orthodox, the Unorthodox or the Demon clan, they all had their own pride and way of leaving. And, it surely didn’t give places to heretics.

‘What am I supposed to make out of this..” As Lu Shimming was trying to understand his situation, the world around suddenly started to dim down.

“The Next trial will begin within a year.”

“If you fail, you will be stripped down from the position of Inheritor.”

The Ancient voice once again rang out before everything turned pitch black.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

…

“Where is this?”

Lu Shimming felt his world slowly turn bright. An unfamiliar ceiling with a lamp hanging down from it, greeted him.

“I can really see..” A surge of happiness welled up in him, as he slowly reached out to the source of light with his hand. But, the happiness was short-lived.

“Aaahhh!!”

A terrified scream escaped his mouth as he realized that his hand was nothing but bones with pieces of flesh and skin attached here, and there.

“What is this?” He panicked a bit, as he scanned his body, only to find that it was half rotten with bones peeking out from several places all over. He wasn’t a human anymore.

At this moment, the [Nirvana Tablet] in his Spirit Sea let out a wisp of white flames as his status, which was nothing but a bunch of question marks, finally updated.

Status: Skeleton Soldier

“Are you kidding me?” Lu Shimming couldn’t believe what had happened, “I really died..”

As he was busy lamenting, he suddenly realized that he wasn’t the only one there.

“Holy Crap!”

There were a bunch of bodies all around the room, some lying on the table like him, some thrown in the corner. Some had strange symbols and ritual circles drawn around them.

“A Corpse Cultivator..” Lu Shimming’s face turned dark, though not literally. His face was only seventy percent intact, and the other remaining had rotten away showing a hollow eye with no light in it.

“So, someone raised me as a corpse?” He muttered to himself while scanning the place around. From what he had heard, a corpse couldn’t retain its memory from previous life, and would always be in a berserk state of suffering, while being a puppet of the caster.

But, it seemed his case was somehow different.

“I should get out of here first, before that person comes..”

He tried to look all around for an exit, but the place seemed to be really tightly sealed from all around. There was a weird dampening smell around, not to mention that of rotting corpses.

‘Seems like some kind of dungeon..’

It was obvious that the exit was hidden under some kind of mechanism, no one would want to be discovered if they were involved in some kind of heretical stuff.

“Tap!”

“Tap!”

Suddenly, a bunch of footsteps entered Lu Shimming’s ear.

“Grr!”

The wall on the eastern side of the room suddenly caved in a little, as a door appeared from within it, and two people walked inside.

It was a gentle, amicable looking guy in his 20s, with a soft smile on his face. Behind him, stood a figure covered in dark cloak, and an eerily aura crept out from him.

“This is my lab..” The guy spoke to the hooded figure with a proud look on his face, as if showcasing some piece of art.

He slowly led the man, passing by the table not realizing that the dead boy seemed to move a little.

‘Phew! That was close..’ Lu Shimming muttered inwardly, as he carefully used his hollow eye to spy on them. That sure was convenient in this situation.

As the guy showed all his collection of the corpses around, he finally reached one segment, where a coffin lay.

“Hahaha!! This is my recent finding..” He let out a laugh as he opened the lid, and an intense amount of Yin Qi suddenly flooded the room.

The man in the cloak finally seemed to react as his shoulders moved up in surprise.

Inside the coffin lay a well preserved corpse. It had pale skin which stuck to its bone, and a strong amount of Yin Qi could be felt coming from it.

“This is intriguing..” The man in the black hood spoke as he looked at the corpse, “Someone seemed to have drown out all the blood essence from this person before killing him. “Don’t tell me you snatched someone else’s ingredient?”

There were several ways for one to Reanimate a corpse with higher potential, and one way was draining their blood essence before killing them, and placing the corpse under a strong Yin Qi source to nourish it.

But such methods were not available to everyone, and needed fair skill to achieve. Yet here he was seeing one such corpse.

“Hahaha! How would I dare to do something like that?! It was all luck. I don’t know how he died, but I was lucky enough to get his body from the Red River.”

“Hmmn..” The man in hood suddenly turned his head to look at the corpse lying on the table.

“What's wrong?” The guy asked.

The man in cloak shook his head before slowly returning his gaze back at the coffin.

‘That was close!!’ Lu Shimming thought inwardly. He had almost given out himself when he realized that the corpse in the coffin seemed familiar .

It was Jin Ho!!

‘I can’t let this b*stard to mess with Jin Ho’s body. Giving him a proper burial is the least I could do.’ Lu Shimming made the resolve internally.