Half a month passed in the blink of an eye.
During this time, more changes occurred within the City of the Wrongfully Dead.
The first batch of purifying world blood bodhi had ripened, hanging bright red on the branches like little lanterns.
Chen Zhou was generous. After setting aside a portion for Plague Rat and Piao, he distributed the rest as rewards to Hong Ling, Shitou, and the other core members.
While it didn't allow them to break through to the sixth-stage directly, the bottleneck of the fifth-stage peak had become as thin as rice paper, requiring only one final step.
As for the sacrifice cooldown, he had finally timed it perfectly.
His Evil God Points had reached a new height, hitting the one-million mark—enough for Chen Zhou to squander on several tough battles.
On this day, at the gates of the City of the Wrongfully Dead.
Hong Ling led all the remaining personnel to see Chen Zhou off.
"My Lord, may you have a smooth journey." Hong Ling bowed slightly. Though there was worry in her eyes, there was even more trust.
"Watch the house," Chen Zhou said succinctly.
"Rest assured, My Lord. As long as I live, the city shall stand," Shitou promised, patting his chest while shouldering his great blade.
Su Xue, Jian Huaishuang, and Zen Master Wu Hai followed closely behind.
"Move out!"
Poison-Wing let out a loud eagle cry and beat his wings, whipping up a gale as he carried everyone into the clouds, racing toward the north.
The Northern Region.
A world blanketed in ice and snow.
The freezing wind howled, and water froze the moment it dripped. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but vast white snow and dark, heavy mountains.
Chen Zhou and his group walked across the snowy plains.
Zen Master Wu Hai walked on the left, leaning on his staff, his skeletal frame clattering in the cold wind.
Su Xue was wrapped in a thick white fur cloak. Although she had long since been immune to the effects of temperature, as a former plant demon king, she instinctively disliked this chilling, desolate cold.
Poison-Wing had it the worst. By the time they reached the border of the Northern Region, he was already at his limit.
Poison-Wing was born on Poison Flame Mountain in the Southern Region. His cultivation was closely tied to poison-fire; he thrived in dry heat and was most terrified of the cold.
Furthermore, his newly grown feathers weren't very good at insulating him yet. He was shivering so hard he curled himself into a ball, looking like a giant quail.
Poison-Wing's mouth hadn't stopped grumbling for a second, complaining that this godforsaken place was simply not fit for demons.
Chen Zhou let him off the hook and chose to sit on a sedan chair condensed from white bone, summoned and carried by four strong skeleton ghost servants.
"Ancestor, this Northern Region... is a bit strange."
Zen Master Wu Hai extended a finger bone to poke a snowflake that had landed on his shoulder.
The snowflake didn't melt; it just sat there quietly on the bone like a weightless decoration.
"There is no resentment here, though there is some killing intent, albeit very faint," Wu Hai said with an odd tone. "It's too clean. So clean it's sickening."
Chen Zhou leaned back leisurely on the sedan chair, his fingertips lightly tapping the armrest.
Indeed.
As an evil spirit who had fused with the divinity of resentment, he was extremely sensitive to negative emotions.
Logically, in this harsh, bitter land where the great demon king Moon-Swallowing Wolf Saint resided, the lives of mortals should be filled with suffering, and the air should be thick with resentment.
Yet, along this journey, what Chen Zhou felt was actually an eerie sense of tranquility.
"Someone is ahead," Jian Huaishuang's cold voice drifted over.
Everyone looked up.
Amidst the wind and snow, a stooped woodcutter was carrying a bundle of firewood, trudging forward with difficulty.
He was dressed very thinly. His exposed skin had already turned a bruised purple from the frost, and his eyebrows and beard were covered in icicles.
But he was smiling.
The corners of his mouth were turned up, and his eyes were glazed yet filled with happiness, as if he weren't walking across a snowy plain at dozens of degrees below zero, but strolling through a garden where spring flowers bloomed.
Thud.
Perhaps having finally reached his limit, the woodcutter's frozen foot slipped, and he fell face-first into the snow.
He just lay there, motionless.
In the perception of the group, the last spark of life within the woodcutter's body vanished instantly upon his fall.
His purple-blue body grew stiff, truly becoming a frozen corpse. The smile on his face remained frozen, making him look even more grotesque.
"Dead?" Poison-Wing shrunk his neck and peeked over. "His constitution was way too weak. He's dead just like that?"
"He's not even as tough as me."
Before Poison-Wing could say more, a faint layer of golden light suddenly lit up on the woodcutter's deceased body.
Nourished by this Buddhist light, the purple-blue frostbite on the woodcutter's body quickly faded. His heart, which had stopped, began to beat once more—thump, thump.
The ice cracked.
The woodcutter, who had clearly been dead, slowly opened his eyes as if nothing had happened.
He stretched his stiff neck and then nonchalantly brushed the snow off his clothes.
"Oh my, that was quite a deep sleep."
"Finally finished today's cultivation."
The woodcutter rubbed his eyes, the smile on his face not fading in the slightest, as if that moment of death had been nothing more than an inconsequential nap.
"A walking corpse?" Zen Master Wu Hai got excited, raising his staff to charge. "So it's a dead person! I'm familiar with this line of work. Let this humble monk deliver him to the afterlife!"
"Wait."
Chen Zhou raised his hand to stop Wu Hai and turned to Su Xue. "Su Xue, go take a look."
Su Xue nodded and walked forward.
As a Heavenly Doctor, her perception of life force was the most acute.
"Old man, are you alright?" A soft green light glowed in Su Xue's palm—pure vegetation essence—as she tried to inject it into the woodcutter's body to help him ward off the cold.
But the moment this life energy touched the woodcutter's body...
"Aaaah!!"
The woodcutter's happy face instantly contorted, and he let out a shrill scream.
The golden Buddhist light within him seemed to have a violent rejection reaction toward Su Xue's life energy.
Bang!
The woodcutter exploded.
Flesh and blood sprayed everywhere, staining the snow red.
Su Xue was stunned, looking at her blood-stained hands in utter confusion.
In her nearly thousand-year career as a doctor, this was the first time she had ever killed someone while trying to save them.
"It's not your fault," Chen Zhou's calm voice came. "The essence of his life has been rewritten. To him, your life energy is a lethal poison."
Before he finished speaking, the chunks of flesh on the ground began to squirm again.
The golden light lit up once more.
As if time were reversing, bones restructured and flesh healed.
A moment later, the perfectly intact woodcutter stood before them once again.
He seemed to have no memory of being blown apart just moments ago. His smile remained, and he even enthusiastically approached them.
"You all must be from out of town, right? I was wondering why the magpies were chirping so much today; turns out some distinguished guests have arrived."
The woodcutter spoke cheerfully, his voice resonant as he greeted them warmly, his eyes clear and sincere.
He seemed completely blind to the strangeness of the group before him.
Wu Hai was a talking skeleton, Su Xue had long rabbit ears, Poison-Wing was a monster with a bird's head, and Jian Huaishuang was clad in paper armor, exuding an aura of ghosts.
In the eyes of any normal person, this was practically a Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts.
But in the woodcutter's eyes, they appeared to be nothing more than ordinary traveling merchants.
Rate on N.U.
