On the other side, Xing Yue had awakened.
He opened his eyes to see a strange stone ceiling and a vague white-robed figure standing not far away.
The whispers of the Evil God had ceased, but those voices still seemed to echo in the deepest recesses of his mind, leaving him chilled to the bone.
He felt as if he had been turned inside out; every memory, secret, and even his deepest fears had been hollowed out without reservation.
Before such irresistible, grand power, his prideful willpower was as fragile as thin paper.
Chen Zhou looked at him with a calm expression.
From Xing Yue's memories, he had already obtained all the information he wanted.
A strange and lethal substance known as "copper poison" had begun to break out several months ago in several counties under the jurisdiction of Thousand Isles County.
Cangdao County, Yuandao County, Muyu County...
The toxicity was bizarre and highly infectious.
It did not just infect living beings; even non-living things like mountain rocks, rivers, and the soil itself had shown signs of poisonous assimilation.
Many great demons that originally occupied various counties had vanished as a result, going into hiding to avoid the world.
The Blackwater Guard had been scurrying about lately precisely because of this matter.
They possessed a special compass artifact capable of tracking the source of the copper poison.
After sacrificing a large number of personnel to infection, they finally traced the source to the Dead Man’s Forest.
The Dead Man’s Forest...
Chen Zhou’s expression darkened.
That vast forest was now his territory.
The location he had chosen to build his city was merely on the outskirts of the Dead Man’s Forest.
He had once scanned the entire forest roughly with his divine sense and indeed had not found anything particularly special.
Aside from trees and boulders, there were very few living creatures.
However, he had already seen what happened in Kushi County clearly through the eyes of Jian Huaishuang.
And now, this damn thing actually had the audacity to target the city he had worked so hard to establish?
How could he let his painstakingly managed territory be destroyed by this ghost of unknown origin just as it was getting on the right track?
Just then, a hurried set of footsteps came from outside the hall.
Hong Ling rushed in like a whirlwind, her face filled with unprecedented gravity.
"Lord! Something has happened!"
She quickly reported everything that had happened at the village entrance, as well as the bizarre outbreak of copper poison, to Chen Zhou in full detail.
Behind her, several Netherflame Ghost Servants entered, carrying a corpse that had completely transformed into a bronze statue.
Chen Zhou only needed one look.
That humanoid form, as if cast in yellow brass, that sweet yet sickly scent of decay, and the greed and hatred for all life contained within it...
Indeed, it was copper poison.
"Where are the infected villagers?" Chen Zhou’s voice betrayed no emotion.
"According to your instructions, they have been temporarily placed in the quarantine zone outside the city," Hong Ling replied.
Chen Zhou nodded. With a wave of his hand, an invisible force swept up the villagers confirmed to be infected, directly moving them into his Ghost Domain.
That place was a self-contained space, which could minimize the risk of secondary spreading.
"Have Shitou handle the placement of any villagers arriving later. Likewise, quarantine them all first and observe them closely."
"Yes!" Hong Ling took her orders, though her face remained worried. "Lord, is there anything Hong Ling needs to do regarding this?"
"I have my own ways."
After Chen Zhou spoke, he ignored the crowd. His figure, along with the bronze corpse, vanished from the Bone Altar.
...
Inside the Ghost Domain.
Chen Zhou stood before the cold bronze corpse and extended a bone finger, lightly tapping it.
A clanging sound of metal and stone rang out; it was incredibly hard.
He closed his eyes, carefully sensing the power within the bronze corpse.
It was a peculiar power that existed somewhere between life and death. It fed on flesh and blood, using the human body as a nursery, eventually assimilating everything into a part of itself.
"Erosion... assimilation..."
Chen Zhou pondered. This feeling was remarkably similar to an evil spirit.
Yet, he truly could not sense the death qi of the copper poison. The properties were similar, but they were not the same species.
With a thought, a wisp of pure death qi seeped from Chen Zhou's fingertip, like a fine gray thread, slowly injecting into the bronze corpse's brow.
Sizzle...
Like boiling water poured on snow, the change happened instantly.
Wherever the death qi touched, that hard brass color receded rapidly, like pencil marks being rubbed away by an eraser.
The flesh and blood assimilated by the copper poison, having lost the support of the toxin, could no longer maintain its form and turned into a handful of fine, grayish-white powder that rustled as it fell.
Death qi was effective against copper poison.
This feeling...
Chen Zhou's movement paused.
He remembered.
Not long ago, when he was controlling a Bone Ghost Servant to step through the light curtain and was then given a grand burial by the villagers of Shikan Village, he had experienced a similar sensation.
At the time, perhaps due to the distance, he had only vaguely sensed some abnormal energy permeating the soil. It was extremely subtle, but it had been dispersed by the residual death qi in his skeleton.
So that was copper poison.
They seemed naturally countered by his death qi.
Chen Zhou increased the output of death qi. Very soon, the entire bronze corpse completely disintegrated under the erosion of the death qi, turning into a pile of harmless dust.
The experiment was a success.
However, the expression on his face grew increasingly solemn.
Death qi could kill copper poison, but it could also kill living people.
Using death qi to purify those infected villagers would yield no different result; they would be assimilated by the death qi and eventually turn into a pile of bones.
Drinking poison to quench thirst—this could not be considered a rescue at all.
He could throw all the infected into the Ghost Domain and purify them with death qi, but that only treated the symptoms, not the cause.
As long as the source remained, the copper poison would continue to appear incessantly.
One can guard against a thief for a day, but not for a thousand days.
Passive defense would never solve the problem. The only way was to take the initiative and strangle the threat in its cradle!
Chen Zhou looked up, his gaze seemingly piercing through the barriers of the Ghost Domain and the walls of the City of the Wrongfully Dead, casting toward that vast, peril-filled Dead Man’s Forest.
In the next moment, he spread his arms. His vast will surged into the sky, directly communicating with all the ghost servants in the Living Dead Secret Realm.
"Come forth."
He issued the command.
Rumble—!!!
In the central plaza of the City of the Wrongfully Dead, the ground began to vibrate violently.
A massive Bone Gate slowly rose from beneath the earth.
The newly gathered villagers were terrified, while the citizens who had lived there for a while were filled with adoration. Even the black snakes plowing the fields cried out that the Lord was magnificent.
Inside the gate was endless darkness.
Then, one, two, ten, a hundred...
Countless Bone Ghost Servants swarmed out of the gate with uniform steps!
Each of them held a bone weapon, soul fire burning in their eye sockets, their bodies emitting a cold aura of death.
Lately, they had been frantically grinding for materials in the secret realm and were rarely seen in public. Even Chen Zhou’s closest confidants had never seen such a massive scale.
To most residents in the city, the servants of the god only existed in the stories told by Widow Li and the first batch of followers.
They knew it was these bone skeletons that had saved them from the maws of the snake demons.
Now seeing this legendary scene with their own eyes, many were moved to tears, kneeling on the ground to kowtow devoutly.
They carefully cleared a path for the skeleton army, their eyes filled with fanatical reverence, not daring to make a sound for fear of disturbing the god’s procession.
The power of a god truly exceeded mortal understanding.
Even though many among them had been nourished by the halo of the General-Summoning Platform during their labor, their bodies growing stronger by the day—some even faintly touching the threshold of cultivation and becoming first-stage cultivators—they still felt as small as dust before this majestic divine power.
In an instant, witnessing such a miracle caused the faith of the city’s residents to become even more devout. The number and quality of believers were skyrocketing.
Hundreds and thousands of Bone Ghost Servants gathered in the plaza like a white torrent. They were silent, yet they radiated a terrifying aura sufficient to make heaven and earth change color.
Chen Zhou looked at his loyal servants. He casually tossed the dull-eyed Xing Yue to a skeleton and, with a cold voice devoid of any emotion, issued the most murderous command since becoming an Evil God.
"Scour the Dead Man’s Forest."
"Leave not a single blade of grass."
"Plow the earth once over, and find me the source."
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