Chen Zhou focused his gaze.
The hundred corpse patchworks stood in place as if in a daze. After less than fifteen minutes, they all turned their heads in unison to look in the same direction.
Chen Zhou followed their gaze, but it was just a remote corner with nothing special about it.
Frowning, Chen Zhou watched as the hundred corpse patchworks began walking toward that direction step by step.
They passed through collapsed walls, crossed shattered stone steps, and walked through dried-up ponds.
As they walked, Chen Zhou noticed something was wrong.
The bodies of the hundred corpse patchworks were shrinking. With every step, they withered as if something were sucking them dry, draining them bit by bit.
Flesh was dissolving, bones were softening, and pus was oozing out.
Yet the hundred corpse patchworks did not react and continued to walk forward.
With every step, they grew smaller. Another step, and they shrank even more.
By the time they reached the corner, several hundred corpse patchworks had shrunk to the size of a fist.
Then they vanished, melting into puddles of corpse water that seeped into the earth.
Chen Zhou walked over quickly to examine the ground.
The ground was ordinary, just the same gray-green soil as everywhere else. There were some human-face sores nearby, but they were all withered and dead.
In the spot where the hundred corpse patchworks had vanished, not even a human-shaped markings remained.
Chen Zhou frowned. This was the first time he had encountered such a situation.
He knelt down and touched the ground. It was icy cold, but there was nothing unusual about it.
Chen Zhou stood up and, after a moment of thought, contacted Jian Huaishuang through his sea of consciousness.
"Have all the paper people drive the hundred corpse patchworks toward me."
Soon, Jian Huaishuang's voice came through. "Understood."
A short while later, noisy sounds drifted from the distance.
"Quick, quick, go that way."
"The Lord said to drive them all over there."
"Run faster, don't dawdle!"
A vast number of hundred corpse patchworks swarmed from all directions. They flooded into the Palace of Filth's End and walked toward the corner where Chen Zhou stood.
Then, just as Chen Zhou had seen before, they began to wither, shrink, and finally vanish.
One by one, group after group.
Countless hundred corpse patchworks walked into that corner and disappeared.
Corpse water oozed from their bodies and seeped into the ground, and a thick scent of flesh and blood rose from beneath the earth.
On the surface, the withered human-face sores nearby suddenly acted like plants being watered, beginning to come back to life.
They opened their eyes and mouths, greedily inhaling the flesh-and-blood energy permeating the air.
Chen Zhou sensed it; it was indeed flesh-and-blood energy, and it was very concentrated.
But even with all of them combined, the amount was only equivalent to a single sixth-stage Flesh-Reconstitution Pill.
Chen Zhou frowned.
With so many hundred corpse patchworks, it was impossible for them to produce only this much energy.
Clearly, there was an even more powerful existence deep underground absorbing the essence.
He looked at the increasingly active human-face sores and then at the corner that continued to devour the hundred corpse patchworks, lost in thought.
Was this why the Plague-Eating Stove had nested in the Royal Capital? As long as there was a large-scale riot of hundred corpse patchworks, it was equivalent to getting a sixth-stage Flesh-Reconstitution Pill for free.
So what could have caused it to prefer discarding its physical body to flee Tianchi Province?
As he was thinking, Jian Huaishuang walked over from a distance, followed by a group of chattering paper people.
Jian Huaishuang performed a hand seal, preparing to recall the paper people.
Although the paper people hadn't had enough fun yet, they obediently flew back and landed on Jian Huaishuang, turning back into sheets of white paper.
Jian Huaishuang looked at Chen Zhou's contemplative expression and asked, "Lord, did you find something?"
Chen Zhou pointed to the corner. "There is a problem there."
Jian Huaishuang nodded and placed his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Do you want me to go in and take a look?"
Chen Zhou shook his head. "No rush."
He paused and said, "Split this place open first."
Jian Huaishuang was startled for a moment but immediately understood. He drew his giant sword and slashed down.
Boom!
The sword qi was like a rainbow, and the earth immediately split apart.
A bottomless rift appeared before the two of them. At the edges of the rift, the human-face sores that had just come to life let out shrill screams before exploding one by one.
Chen Zhou walked to the edge of the rift and looked down.
It was pitch black; nothing could be seen.
But he could sense that there was something down there, a very dense scent of flesh and blood.
"Let's go."
Chen Zhou was the first to jump down, and Jian Huaishuang quickly sheathed his sword and followed closely behind.
The rift was very deep.
As Chen Zhou descended, his surroundings were completely dark, with only the whistling wind in his ears.
He activated his Ghost Domain, forming a protective layer around his body while sensing the surrounding environment.
After about ten minutes, his feet finally touched solid ground.
Chen Zhou stood firm and looked up.
Above was the rift, narrow and deep like a scar carved into the sky. Faint light seeped down from the crack, illuminating the outlines of the surroundings.
It was a massive underground space.
All around were hard rocks, their surfaces covered in fine patterns that resembled some kind of ancient script.
The characters glowed faintly, casting a ghostly light throughout the space.
The air was thick with a heavy smell of blood and rot, so dense it seemed impossible to disperse.
After walking several hundred paces, Chen Zhou's gaze fell ahead.
There was a stone door.
The stone door was massive, thirty feet high and twenty feet wide. The doors were tightly shut, and the surface was covered in complex characters that shimmered with a faint blue light, clearly some kind of powerful restriction.
Next to the stone door was something that looked like a giant withered vine.
Chen Zhou walked a few steps closer to take a better look under the dim light.
It turned out to be a tail shaped like a withered vine, as thick as a water vat, and covered in scales of deep green.
But the scales were dried out and had lost their luster. The tail was coiled into a circle next to the stone door, surrounding the entire entrance.
The front half of the tail was buried deep in the ground. It was impossible to tell what kind of creature it belonged to, but it had long since lost all signs of life.
On the ground, the corpse water from countless hundred corpse patchworks was flowing along the patterns on the floor, converging toward that tail.
The corpse water seeped into the tail, causing small human-shaped markings to grow on it.
It turned out that the thing absorbing the hundred corpse patchworks was this tail.
Had Wan Xiu created so many hundred corpse patchworks just to use them as fodder?
Chen Zhou withdrew his gaze and looked next to the stone door.
There sat a skeleton.
The skeleton sat cross-legged, dressed in fine clothes. Although countless years had passed, the clothes were still intact, merely covered in dust.
In front of the skeleton was a rusted longsword thrust into the ground.
The blade was rusted beyond recognition, but it still stood straight.
Pressed under the sword was a jade slip.
Chen Zhou sensed the surroundings.
There was still no sign of a living person.
But he could feel a terrifying aura permeating the air, one far higher than his own strength at the seventh-stage third symbiosis contract.
Chen Zhou did not act rashly and continued to look at the withered tail.
The human-shaped markings on the tail were still increasing. Every time one was added, the tail would tremble slightly—a tremor so faint that it would be impossible to detect without careful observation.
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