Yellow sand filled the sky, and even the moonlight carried a sickly, pallid yellow hue, casting an even deeper silence over the already desolate village.
This was Huangshawo, the most barren part of Kushi County and the place where the copper poison had first begun to spread.
With consecutive outbreaks of the copper poison, there weren't many living people left.
Jiang Ziang stood at the village entrance, his brow furrowed.
He looked at the village before him, where almost no greenery was visible, his heart filled with doubt.
He had been ordered by his sect to descend the mountain and investigate the abnormal decrease in the number of resentful souls in Kushi County.
Over the last few days, three villages had clearly produced no volunteers to become resentful souls.
Even more bizarrely, the Pursuing Soul Envoys painstakingly refined by the sect had been mysteriously vanishing one after another while on duty.
While a Pursuing Soul Envoy was not top-tier combat power, they were comparable to a third-stage cultivator. Furthermore, they carried the sect's secret techniques; ordinary spirits and demons should not have been able to harm their essence.
Such large-scale losses had shaken the entire sect, prompting Sect Master Mo Yuan to order inner disciples like Jiang Ziang to accompany them—firstly to protect the remaining Pursuing Soul Envoys, and secondly to uncover the truth.
As the source of the copper poison, Huangshawo was the most heavily infected. Logically, every day there should be villagers dying from the poison and transforming into resentful souls available for collection.
Yet for several days, not a single person had died. The silence was heart-pounding.
'Strange...' Jiang Ziang whispered to himself.
As an inner disciple of the Corpse Soul Sect, the techniques he practiced were extremely sensitive to the aura of death and resentment.
He could clearly feel that beneath this land, the greedy and frenzied copper poison was still spreading, yet it was being forcibly suppressed by a much more powerful force, preventing it from fully erupting.
Beside him, the Pursuing Soul Envoy—a creature stitched together from dozens of corpse parts—made a rasping 'he-he' sound in its throat.
Its spiteful eyes turned toward the depths of the village, as if scenting an aura that made it both uneasy and hungry.
"Go," Jiang Ziang commanded with a wave of his hand.
The Pursuing Soul Envoy took stiff steps, following the faint trace of copper poison as it moved through the village.
It finally stopped at the very corner of the village, in front of a dilapidated mud hut that looked as if it might collapse under the wind and sand at any moment.
Jiang Ziang performed a quick divination with his fingers, his confusion deepening.
The hexagram indicated that an old woman on the verge of death should be living in this house. Her lifespan was nearly over, and burdened by the copper poison, she should have died three days ago.
Yet now, her life fire was like a candle in the wind—weak, but burning tenaciously, refusing to go out.
Something was definitely wrong.
Thud... Thud... Thud...
The Pursuing Soul Envoy raised a hand stitched together from various corpse arms and mechanically, heavily knocked on the door.
The knocking contained the secret techniques of the Corpse Soul Sect, designed to actively attract those suffering from the copper poison.
However, to Jiang Ziang's surprise, the door did not open after a long, dead silence as it usually did.
Screeeak—
Almost the instant the knocking stopped, the rickety wooden door was pulled open from the inside.
A woman stood within.
Jiang Ziang's pupils suddenly constricted.
The woman's aura was very powerful, yet she used only the crudest disguise technique. Even though Jiang Ziang was not as strong as she was, he could see through it easily.
She had a face unlike anything Jiang Ziang had ever seen, filled with extreme contradiction and eeriness.
One half was an exquisite celestial face, with eyebrows like distant mountains and eyes like autumn water, enough to sway the heart of any man in the world.
The other half was covered in hideous, dark insectoid carapace, with a cold, ruthless compound eye staring indifferently at the guest outside the door.
Just as Jiang Ziang was reeling from the shock of the woman's bizarre appearance, the Pursuing Soul Envoy beside him suddenly had an unprecedentedly violent reaction.
The stitched-together body of the Pursuing Soul Envoy trembled violently. The sound coming from its throat was no longer a 'he-he' rasp, but a sharp hiss filled with extreme hatred and terror.
An aura originating from the woman—one that felt as though it could devour everything in heaven and earth, representing the most primitive famine and greed—was acutely sensed by the Pursuing Soul Envoy.
This aura... was identical to the terrifying great fiend suppressed beneath the Soul-Suppressing Tower in the sect's forbidden grounds.
The Pursuing Soul Envoys were refined by the elders of the Corpse Soul Sect using the resentful aura of volunteers as a guide, supplemented by the corpses of inner disciples.
Their cores were inscribed with the deepest hatred and fear of that 'famine' source.
It was the unwilling resentment of being devoured as expendable materials for the suppression at the moment they transformed into resentful souls!
"ROAR!!!"
Hatred overcame fear.
The Pursuing Soul Envoy let out a roar that didn't sound like a ghost's. Black energy surged around it as its claws tore through the air, pouncing recklessly at Piao, who had opened the door!
Jiang Ziang was greatly alarmed and immediately pulled out a clay pot to summon a malevolent ghost.
Although he did not know the woman's origins, as a disciple of a righteous path—at least in his eyes—seeing such an evil entity, he couldn't just stand by.
However, his movement to chant the incantation was a step too slow. The malevolent ghost had not yet formed.
Or rather, Piao's movement was faster than he could have imagined.
Facing the fearless pounce of the Pursuing Soul Envoy, Piao simply raised her slender, fair hand from the side of her beautiful celestial face.
There were no fancy techniques, no surging spiritual power.
She simply and nonchalantly reached out toward the Pursuing Soul Envoy's claws.
Rip!
A sound like tearing cloth echoed.
The Pursuing Soul Envoy, capable of piercing gold and stone and possessing strength comparable to a third-stage cultivator's full strike, was as fragile as paper in Piao's hand.
The tough corpse skin, the stitched tendons, and even the hard bones within were easily torn in two by her!
Black corpse blood and shattered organs showered the ground. The Pursuing Soul Envoy couldn't even struggle before being completely destroyed, reduced to a heap of useless wreckage.
The collection of resentful souls inside the corpse slowly leaked out.
Jiang Ziang felt a chill rush from the soles of his feet to the top of his skull. The hand holding the clay pot trembled uncontrollably for the first time.
An instant kill!
That was a Pursuing Soul Envoy the sect had spent immense effort to refine, and it was just... torn apart by hand?
What kind of monster was this woman?!
Piao casually tossed aside the remains, as if brushing off a bit of dust.
Her mismatched eyes slowly turned toward Jiang Ziang, who was on guard, his face deathly pale.
She seemed to be analyzing this new target, but she didn't strike again, making the moment she had shredded the knocking ghost feel like an illusion.
Piao still remembered what her Ugly Hag mother had always taught her—to be a good person.
Good people, of course, were not allowed to kill people; only bad people did that.
She had only killed a knocking ghost, not a person. Ghosts didn't count as people, so it wouldn't make her mother sad.
Piao looked at Jiang Ziang for a long time, and seemingly having gained nothing from her study, she prepared to give up and return inside.
But at that moment, a figure appeared at the entrance of the alley not far away.
The newcomer wore simple paper clothes and carried a heavy greatsword on his back that was disproportionate to his frame. His face was pale and his gaze steady, but his entire being was surrounded by a sharp sword intent.
It was Jian Huaishuang.
When he arrived, he happened to witness this bloody and bizarre scene.
Piao stared at the new uninvited guest. On her face—half beautiful, half hideous—a programmed-like confusion appeared for the first time.
Her crimson lips on the celestial side of her face parted slightly, as if she wanted to say something.
But in the end, all words dissipated in her throat, leaving only a complex, hesitant silence.
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