CHAPTER 36: CHAPTER 36 BLESSING

Zhang Laoxi’s eyes widened as he watched Wen Yan’s actions, his mindset instantly collapsing.

That’s a hopping corpse!

You’re injecting such a vast amount of Yang energy into it? What the hell are you trying to do?

First of all, let’s rule out killing the hopping corpse.

Wen Yan just said he wanted to make use of the hopping corpse to deal with matters to come—the main goal, naturally, is to handle that Fake Mo Zhicheng first, so maybe the hopping corpse is going to seek out Fake Mo Zhicheng.

That kind of mysterious resonance is currently the best method.

It’s just that, when I told you to do as you please earlier, I didn’t mean this kind of thing!

His eyelids twitched furiously; instinctively he wanted to stop it, but he didn’t dare to act rashly, afraid of triggering uncontrollable changes. All he could do was pace back and forth anxiously nearby, helping to protect the ritual, ensuring no one disturbed them, and guarding against any possible mishaps.

Wen Yan was utterly focused, the Yang energy he summoned was being continuously channeled into the hopping corpse.

The corpse’s mouth twitched slightly, it still struggled to mutter, but with a coffin nail stuck in its throat, its words were mumbled beyond recognition.

Wen Yan knew what it was saying—still that sentence: "I want to help my son..."

He gazed into the corpse’s hollow eyes and spoke softly.

"Uncle, I know you want to help your son.

But you were deceived—your son died long ago.

Left to your own devices, you can’t do anything.

I can help you. I give you Scorching Sun, give you my blessing.

I can go with you, help you... avenge your son."

In the corpse’s empty eyes, the Yang energy transformed by Scorching Sun became a golden thread, slowly linking to its pupils. The voice stumbling from its mouth paused briefly, then began to mutter again.

"I want to help my son... get revenge."

"Listen to my instructions, don’t act rashly. Don’t show yourself unless I call you. Hide well, don’t let yourself be discovered. If you’re found, the enemy will surely escape. If you’re willing, stop talking now. I will keep the Scorching Sun sustaining you, and I’ll bring you with me, to help you avenge your son."

Wen Yan placed a finger at the hopping corpse’s brow, making a solemn promise.

In the lifeless eyes of the corpse, the golden thread grew, and in the murky pupils, a tiny glow, lit by Yang energy, shimmered—bringing a trace of vitality to the empty stare.

At this moment, it seemed to hear Wen Yan’s words, slowly closed its mouth, and stopped its muttering.

Standing not far away, Zhang Laoxi dumbly watched this scene unfold.

In his imagination, with Yang energy amassed to the point that it was visible to the naked eye—a faint glow even without crossing eyes—all that energy pumped into the corpse should have sparked violent conflict with the internal force of the hopping corpse.

And the corpse, under total control, should have been burned to death by such overwhelming Yang energy.

And yet, as the Yang energy poured in, there was not the slightest hint of violent conflict. Instead, new gold glimmers appeared in its empty stare, like flecks of golden flame flickering in its eye sockets.

The hopping corpse looked as if it had been granted a trace of spiritual intelligence.

Zhang Laoxi’s face was blank, and a certain passage rose unbidden in his mind.

"Scorching Sun bestowed, Ba gains wisdom of heart, after three years returns, heads west, three months, Demon Kingdom destroyed, desert stretches eight hundred li, Ba falls."

This passage, he had read in the ancient records on Fuyu Mountain, when he was researching notes about obsession-driven zombies. No one knew who had penned it.

Lie—which was the personal name of an ancestor from Fuyu Mountain. Why the record used the ancestor’s personal name directly, or for what reason, was not stated.

The story went that an ancestor named Lie, with a divine skill called Scorching Sun, granted a Big Executor Corpse—one consumed with immense obsession—complete spiritual intelligence. That zombie waited in hiding for three years, then marched westward.

Counting travel time, it took only three months to wipe out a place referred to as the Demon Kingdom, and then razed everything to the ground—turning eight hundred li into a desert. The zombie perished there as well.

Back then, when Zhang Laoxi read these records, he treated them as myth—because nowhere else in any records was there mention of a Demon Kingdom.

Besides, the ancient records on Fuyu Mountain had a pattern of exaggeration. When you saw numbers like eight hundred or three thousand, it was almost always in the style of "a waterfall dropping three thousand feet"—not meant to be taken literally.

But now, seeing Wen Yan’s face bathed in a faint glow, his finger pressed solemnly against the corpse’s brow, Zhang Laoxi’s mind was left dazed and shaken.

This is absolutely Scorching Sun!

No way could it be anything else!

How could Wen Yan possibly have Scorching Sun?

Before, he had almost lost his Yang energy, beset by yin and cold, shivering like a naked man running in the snow in the dead of winter.

Zhang Laoxi’s mind felt like it was blowing apart. Is Scorching Sun really real? Weren’t we always told that, aside from the sections about kinds of evil objects, every other part of the records is ’artistically embellished’?

That’s what his master and his master’s master had always told him.

Plenty of people outside knew this about their lineage too. The most classic thing was, they would hype up the records’ exploits—everyone would spectate the show, join in with a couple of curses, and when they went back, it’d get written down as if there’d been an epic battle of eight hundred rounds.

Watching Wen Yan lower his hand, the outpouring of Yang energy fading away, the hopping corpse closed its eyes at last.

Zhang Laoxi couldn’t wait anymore. He stepped up, forcibly suppressing his shock, and tried to sound casual as he asked,

"Wen Yan, what you just used—is that Scorching Sun?"

Wen Yan hesitated. So Scorching Sun is actually common? Even Zhang Laoxi could spot it at a glance?

Thinking carefully, just stimulating Yang energy, channeling Yang energy—isn’t really an especially mighty ability.

He remembered Zhang Laoxi once saying that Tuoba Martial God of Yu State, whenever he stimulated Yang energy, people even thirty li away could feel it clearly.

But on reflection, Wen Yan felt that blessing a zombie with Yang energy was likely unique to his divine skill.

"Yeah, but my Yang energy is too weak—I need some other object to help."

Wen Yan opened his left hand, revealing the Warm Jade inside. The glow from the Warm Jade was noticeably dimmer than before.

"The curator gave me this as a protective charm, but it looks like I can’t use it too many times. I happened to want to ask, do you have anything similar? I can pay for it.

After all, we can’t let too many people know about what we’re doing with this guy. If someone else in the Scorching Sun Department is brainwashed, and Fake Mo Zhicheng learns about it, we’d be in a tight spot.

No way to expense it for now, probably."

"Warm Jade is easy—just probably not as good as this one." Zhang Laoxi clenched his fist, trying to suppress his excitement. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to go home and pore over the records again, dig deeper.

"So..."

"Don’t even mention money. As for jade, the price difference between mediocre and top-quality is several orders of magnitude."

"The cheap stuff is fine, as long as it works. Using a good one would be a waste."

"Alright, leave this to me."

"Also, I always hear you all talking about martial training and cultivation, and some people being incredibly strong. Today I saw you, and you’re definitely powerful. Is there anything suitable for me to learn? Like a martial arts school or something?"

"That’s easy. It’s modern times, after all. I’ll find you something later. Learning is simple—it’s sticking with it and getting good that’s hard."

Zhang Laoxi agreed offhand, then immediately took out his phone and, right in front of Wen Yan, called one of his disciples.

"Little Six, go to my room. There’s a box under the bed. Pick out all the Warm Jade in there and set it aside. I’ll need them when I get back."

Once he hung up, Zhang Laoxi was full of questions, unsure how to voice them. Digging into someone else’s background is seriously taboo.

If Wen Yan hadn’t used that skill right in front of him and asked him to help with the protection ritual, he’d have held back even asking if it was Scorching Sun.

But that’s Scorching Sun! The very Scorching Sun that the Fuyu Mountain records boast about endlessly.