CHAPTER 541: CHAPTER 539: REFINING THE FORM

Two enormous skulls rolled on the table, only stopping when they knocked over a porcelain teacup.

Chuyin suddenly startled, and Shi Qi’s eyelid twitched. Scholar Zhu, however, was not flustered at all. He took out a toolbox from his backpack, sat down calmly, and put on a mask and rubber gloves.

He fiddled with the two severed heads with metal tweezers, examining them carefully.

The slightly smaller head bore the face of an old man. His skin was a sickly pallid color, and his eyes were lifeless. He had no hair or eyebrows; not even a trace of hair could be found in his skin’s pores. Eight pairs of long, narrow fangs protruding from his lips proved his non-human status.

The slightly larger skull resembled the head of an ordinary mantis. It was translucent green, shaped like an inverted triangle, and had two antennae, two large transparent compound eyes, and a bizarrely shaped mandibulate mouthpart.

Green fluid still oozed from the severed neck.

Chuyin approached the table and, suppressing her disgust, asked curiously, "Are these the other two items?"

"They should be."

Xun Zian nodded. "I used the Dragon Seeking Ruler, searching slowly, place by place. I only made a move after confirming there was no mistake."

According to the previous divination, Scholar Zhu believed that the three elements needed to unlock the third layer of the Shengnan King’s Dream were located in Lvzhou, Fengzhou, and Qizhou. Therefore, he created the Dragon Seeking Ruler and had Xun Zian take it to Fengzhou and Qizhou to search for anomalous elements.

"These two monsters are quite strange. Their strength clearly isn’t that great, but they always gave me an eerie feeling," Xun Zian explained to his companions with a frown.

"Months ago, one night in Fengzhou, the young son of a rural estate owner couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning, feeling that there was something in the darkness outside. In the dead of night, he got out of bed to look through a crack in the window, only to see an old man in white in the courtyard. The man’s face was expressionless and motionless as he stared intently into the house.

"Being just a child, he was so terrified he couldn’t speak. He watched as the old man in white ’glided’ on tiptoe toward the house and quietly opened the door. The old man reached for the neck of the servant girl, who usually took care of the child and was now asleep. He bit off her head, ripped open her belly, and devoured her completely before turning to look at the child.

"The child finally screamed. The adults in the courtyard hurried over, only to find a bloody mess in the room and the child sitting petrified in a pool of blood.

"The cavalry of the Wude Guards arrived later but found no traces of any Demonic Qi. After a fruitless search, they could only seal off the estate and have the family move away.

"Using the Dragon Seeking Ruler, Xun Zian found the estate. After hearing the story from others, he sneaked into the estate alone at night. He took a dead pig’s corpse from his backpack, processed it with a prop from the Special Affairs Bureau to resemble a living human, and placed it in another room. Sure enough, the old man in white appeared again in the courtyard. He failed to notice Xun Zian hiding in the wardrobe and floated straight to the dead pig, clasping the corpse and wildly devouring it. Xun Zian then ambushed him from behind, cut off his limbs, applied talisman papers to him, and prepared to take him back to Chenzhou City for Scholar Zhu to examine.

"But to his surprise, as soon as he stepped out of the courtyard, the old man in white’s neck broke on its own, and he died."

"The mantis monster in Qizhou was the same," Xun Zian whispered. "In a certain village, the Fan family’s daughter-in-law was giving birth. She had a difficult labor that lasted three days and nights, draining her strength. Her family, also exhausted and helpless, had no choice but to ask their neighbors—a woman and her sister-in-law—to watch over for a night.

"The neighboring women readily agreed. However, one of them, Mrs. Sun, whose husband was away, had a young child. Uneasy about leaving him alone, she had her son stay in the outer room during the vigil. The boy loved reading and had brought a scroll with him to pass the long night.

"Unexpectedly, the next morning when Grandma Fan went to check on the delivery room, she found it eerily silent. The six neighboring women, along with the woman in labor, were all dead, with no wounds on their bodies. Meanwhile, the small child sat in the outer room, a book in his right hand, the entire left side of his body charred to ash."

He paused for a moment, then slowly continued, "When I arrived in Qizhou, I heard that in a nearby village, another woman was giving birth and had also been in hard labor for two days and nights. So, I went to that village and kept watch outside. That’s when I found this man-sized mantis. It, too, possessed no Demonic Qi. And similarly, when I tried to take it away from the village, it inexplicably severed its own neck."

...

Scholar Zhu listened quietly to Xun Zian’s account. He exhaled a long breath and said indifferently, "I’ve never seen documentation of these two types of creatures in the records of the Heterodox Academy. They are not recorded in any collected materials of this world, either. Furthermore, according to the results from Spiritual Sense, they are not demons."

"Not demons?" Chuyin exclaimed in shock. "Then what are they?"

"Cultivators," Scholar Zhu said dispassionately. "Or, to be more precise, parts of what once were cultivators."

Seeing the astonishment on his companions’ faces, Scholar Zhu solemnly said, "When a person dies but their form remains as if alive—the skin of the feet not turning blue or decaying, the eyes intact, and all hair fallen out—this is known as Corpse Dissolution. Dying in daylight is called Upper Dissolution; dying at midnight is Lower Dissolution. Those who die at dawn or dusk are termed Underground Commanders. If Taiyi guards the corpse, the three souls manage the bones, the seven spirits protect the flesh, and the Embryonic Spirit absorbs Spiritual Energy—this is what is called Taiyin Body Refinement.

"This verse roughly means that after death, the body appears as if it still wants to live: the skin on the feet doesn’t rot or turn blue, the eyes don’t spoil, and the hair falls out. This is called Corpse Dissolution. Passing away during the day is Upper Dissolution; dying at midnight is Lower Dissolution; and departing at dawn or dusk makes one an Underground Commander. And if Taiyi guards the corpse, the three souls nurture the bones, the seven spirits secure the flesh, and the Embryonic Spirit absorbs Spiritual Energy, this is known as Taiyin Body Refinement.

"In Taoism, abandoning the flesh after attaining the Dao and ascending to heaven, or not leaving a body behind but instead transposing onto an object like clothing or a sword, is called Corpse Dissolution. Taiyin Body Refinement is similar in principle to a Corpse Dissolve Immortal. It is a method used by aging cultivators with waning lifespans. They bury their bodies underground, allowing Taiyi to guard the corpse and the three souls to nurture the bones, so that the body continues to grow even as it decays. This continues until the internal organs are completely renewed and the body is reborn from its old husk, rejuvenated. Then, the Primordial Spirit returns, and the cultivator resurrects from the polluted earth.

"Although the method of Taiyin Body Refinement can allow a cultivator to be broken down and then rebuilt, offering a glimpse into the Immortal’s realm, its requirements are extremely demanding. Throughout the process, the cultivator is oblivious to the outside world and utterly defenseless. Any disturbance could lead to irreversible downfall. Only those cultivators who are aging and weakened, with their lifespans coming to an end and no hope for ascension, would risk attempting Taiyin Body Refinement."

Scholar Zhu pursed his lips and said in a low voice, "Of course, ’aging and weakened’ here is relative. Those qualified and capable of performing Taiyin Body Refinement are already just a few steps from transcending tribulations and ascending. In the mundane world, they are powerful beings who can sit alone above the clouds, looking down on the minuscule multitude—such a cultivator might only appear once every few hundred years. The last recorded practitioner of Taiyin Body Refinement was an elder from Longhu Mountain, three hundred years ago."