Chapter 97 - The Living Dead (Patreon)

I am back. I hope you guys had a wonderful Holiday! (Will continue the twice-weekly upload again). If you have any feedback or comments, I would love it if you could comment below. They make me feel validated nyahaha.

[Table of Contents]

Ziyou Ling was vomiting in a corner, hidden by three rocks and one large stalagmite.

“I-Ah, Ugh…” Her breakfast came pouring out with her tears and snot. The dark, tall tomboyish beauty looked nothing like her usual, fun self.

Not too long ago, the same breakfast, partially digested, had leaked through the holes in her stomach from eight different spear stabs.

Whatever Nanya did might as well have been turning back time. It even put back the food biomass in her belly.

Yung touched his neck, a thin glow in the shape of a serrated line slowly faded away, as if his head had never been beheaded.

“Deliver them!” came harried shouts from the group of remaining cultists, half of them trying to escape by battering the cave-in walls with all their qi, and the other half having given up all hope and attacking the delve group led by a furious Ziyou Maque and equally angry Youjin Tenghou with a fanatic zeal.

Right, delivered, not beheaded. Correct terminology is important. Yung nodded to himself, then paled. What if the motion of nodding made his head fall off?

His stomach rumbled in horror, and he joined Ziyou Ling behind the three rocks.

“Dare you cheat in bright cavern-light!?” Nanya’s aggrieved screech sounded like scratching nails and Yung felt even more nauseous.

“Blergh.” The madlander teen threw up hard. It felt as if his lungs were being forcefully shoved out of his windpipes and his diaphragm was being turned inside out. That one time Jung had eaten rotten sushi when he was fifteen came to mind.

No, not rotten. The sushi had a parasite. His parents had thought it was appendicitis when the pain had started after his eldest sister had Googled the symptoms. Bad idea. They took him to a hospital in a panic. Fortunately, the docs diagnosed the parasite early, because according to the clinician, that certain parasite released a toxin which, if present in the body for a long time, could cause impotence and cancer.

He could have died.

He did die, from another disease though.

And then. Then.

Ugh, fish, sushi! Yung saw the crushed head of a squid-faced cultist in the corner of his teary vision.

“Blaaaarrrgh.”

“Kyeye?” Silky chirped on top of his head. The cute rascal had been in on Nanya’s plot! Of course, he was, this ungrateful piece of—“Uuurghhhh.”

“We had cooked that meal, oh unrefined boyfriend! Must you purge it so cruelly?” Nanya whined.

No, you, didn’t! You made Miss Maid cook for the love of all that is—

“Hooorrrk.”

Youjin Chun joined them behind the rocks too.

“A-A threesome! H-How utterly—” Nanya gasped.

Youjin Linbi came running. She still had a dagger stuck inside her eye. She opened her mouth to say something.

“Vurp!!” Only semi-solid foodstuff hurled out.

“A F-Foursome. M-Mother, he scorns us so—he waaaaaaaaaaaa!” Nanya’s whining turned into long, betrayed yelps.

Yung stood up, trying to take a breath.

Truly, the feeling of having his neck separated from his body was not a desirable one.

It hurt, yes. It was indeed painful, but the pain only lasted a second. What felt far worse was being alive in that headless state, feeling the damp, misted air of the cavern and the sunless icy wind flow through and touch the insides of his then exposed cross-section of neck.

Like ants under his skin, worms in his veins.

Yung shuddered.

He had felt violated. As if an unhygienic gatcha-gamer had touched his palm after eating french fries. With unwashed hands, fingers thoroughly suckled on.

Yung was about to vomit again. He could not even imagine the absolute horror of those whose death had been slower.

“Get us down from here. Ingrates of no honour, foul beasts of torn virtues! We command you to release these bindings rather that indulging in such infidelity. Oafs! Morons!” Nanya’s nagging was turning really annoying.

How can she be so absolutely… Yung was at a loss. Spoiled!

He ran to his girlfriend.

“You kept your promise,” Yung said.

“We did indeed. Now—”

“Fuck you!” Yung shouted.

“N-Not here. W-We, oh dear, blankets of mine—” Nanya blushed, scandalised.

The sound of fighting seemed to stop for a mere second, before it continued again with Ziyou Maque’s insane scream.

“You…You… You!” Yung pointed a trembling finger at the bratty old girl.

“Us. Us. Us yes, it always is, is it not?” Nanya rhymed along.

“We’re gonna have a talk. I am so not letting you off the hook. Ouch—stop kicking—okay, I shouldn’t have cursed at you. But unless you want the silent treatment, we will need to discuss proper boundaries.” Yung bristled as he tried to cut the silken bindings with the broken edge of his spear, more so because the vixen was rudely kicking him with her dangling legs.

“… must we?” said the rude vixen, sounding vaguely annoyed as she stopped her flails.

“Yes. Or what? Do you expect me to be all happy and ignore—” Yung stopped. “It’s… not just about this stupid stunt you pulled. That,” He tried to come up with a word to describe but could only say, “thing. With that white, six-tailed fox in the middle. And—”

Nanya’s eyes widened, her lips curving up into a beatific smile.

“—And that moonlight blue world.”

The fox's smile dimmed just for a moment before she started acting coy again. “Shan’t you at least grace us with a kiss—” She tried to reach down with her head, her lips sticking out, her breasts pressed against the bindings like squeezed balloons, and her thighs softly pushing against the pillar with cute grunts of effort.

“No,” Yung pulled back. His feelings about this narcissistic girl were very complicated right now. No amount of angry make-out would be enough to process them.

They had to talk. Or else.

“Elder Tiantian!” Someone shouted from the fight. Yung looked and saw the small Youjin elder being flung out like a rag as a particularly burly looking cultist finished the arc of his hit with his spiked club.

Nanya tutted. Her crown pulsed green.

And even as Elder Tiantian’s corpse spun in midair, it seemed like her crushed body straightened up, as if someone were pulling and smoothing out crumpled paper. Unlike paper though, the recovery was perfect.

She landed with three quick steps backward, looking at her arms and touching her chest in amazement.

The burly cultist roared like a mad beast, “Begone to the lord’s side, heretic!”

“Nanya, you’re amazing,” Yung let it slip.

The vixen raised her chin high and snorted, “Are we not?”

“I think I understand why the Su Fox clan can be so… audacious! You guys really don’t care one bit about what other folks think, do you?” Yung said. He poured his heart qi into his spear, and when it was charged up fully, struck against the bindings with all his might.

In his Link Sight, the transparent aura of the bindings seemed to weaken, just a little. The strange purplish-green link was no longer connected to the pillar. Right now, Yung guessed that the binding was fuelled by only the remaining ‘qi’ left in the pillar’s void qi reservoir, with no chances of restocking.

Nanya kicked him again playfully, and her tail seemed to elongate to brush against his cheeks.

“Ziyou Yung,” Youjin Chun said as she came stumbling, followed by a disgruntled Ziyou Ling and a pale Youjin Linbi.

All three of them had seen better days.

But they would rather be covered in grime than be dead.

“W-We cut the silk?” Asked the Dim Gold heiress.

Yung nodded.

Ling took out her spear. Her body moved from one stance of martial arts to another, and with a last thrust, the edge of her spear artefact hit one of the binding silk threads between Nanya’s legs with pinpoint precision.

It tore a part of her see-through shawls.

“Careful, barbarian maiden! Must you try to smear our fair skin with your madlander qi—”

Youjin Chun mouthed a quiet, “Dim Gold Severance,” and brandished her sword. The silk wires emerging from her sword criss-crossed against the ones chaining the soft vixen up. They sparked, like metal on metal, with screeching noise, the loudest of which sounded out right beside Nanya’s ears.

“Insolent farmstead girl of no maidenly charms—”

“It’s working!” Yung said excitedly. In his Link Sight, the bindings continued to lose their power.

Youjin Linbi formed her slender fingers into a specific mudra. Dim gold projectiles in the shape of throwing knives flew out. They pinned around the vixen as though she was a tavern wench tied to a dartboard by a bunch of rough bandits.

“Surnamed Ziyou! How dare you take the side of these interloping femmes when they seethe in such unsightly jealousy,” Nanya sounded wronged.

“Don’t worry babe, we’ll get you out soon!” Yung cheered.

“My honoured revived grace, let me, this unworthy Youjin heiress, lend you a hand,” Youjin Chun said, the instinctive fear of the mighty Su fox clan foregone to the dogs.

Ling and Linbi chose not to speak. But their qi moved without stopping.

They each struck against the bindings in their own ways, taking absolute caution not to harm the spoiled vixen who definitely needed a good spanking on the butt.

***

The native cultivators had been murdered quite a few times during the final fight, but after half an hour of berserk battling, more than a quarter of the remaining cultists had been killed, with the other three-fourths escaping.

The cave-ins must not have been deep.

The cultists had thrown caution to the wind and literally exploded their true qi against the blocked exits with blood in their eyes.

The one tunnel Youjin Fuqiang had escaped into cleared the fastest, and the survivors ran away screaming heresy and payback.

No one chased them down. Everyone needed time to process. And it seems as though the Vixen did not care.

“Cursed fish faces,” Ziyou Maque spat a phlegm-filled glob of spit onto one corpse.

Maybe the strange immortality had made him complacent, or perhaps he had over-estimated his strength after breaking through to the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realm, but this particular cultist had managed to get one long needle directly into Maque’s brain through his left ear.

The cultist was an Imperfect 1st realmer.

It was humiliating.

A sound akin to a crystal jar shattering echoed from the centre of the cavern.

“Oh finally, how long you have made us wait,” Su Nanya’s seductive voice danced in the chilly air.

The bindings on the vixen had finally been rent apart. The person in question now floated down like a willow leaf onto Ziyou Yung’s outstretched arms.

For a few seconds, they simply hugged.

Then the madlander boy dropped her, and the vixen fell on her bottom with a yelp.

Ziyou Maque was no barbarian, but he felt vindicated.

Youjin Tenghou sheathed his sabre and stood beside him, looking at the squabbling couple.

Maque had no idea how long Yung’s seduction would go on, but it seemed like the vixen did care about the boy’s opinions.

“Congratulations, Leader Free Sparrow. Our Patriarch is going to have headaches now,” he asked. The mean-spoken man looked unperturbed, but Maque’s enhanced eyesight as a newly minted 3rd realmer showed him the minute shivers and trembles on the tough man’s face.

They weren’t of fear, but of wonder.

And ambition.

For he had broken through too.

The Su Princess had shown them a path forward with her cruel designs.

With cultivation, anything was possible.

Even coming back from the dead with a repaired cultivation base despite having spent their True qi like it was cooking oil.

“He won’t. Ain’t we a pal now?” Ziyou Maque laughed. He would give the native ren headaches alright. But he’d have to be civil about it.

The gang leader’s eyes then looked at the Vixen again. She certainly was a heaven shattering empire felling temptress. And with her powers, every person who had died here had seen the grand dao. It was dim; it was cloudy, his memories were naught but the glimmers of knowledge within a dark room.

But he knew it in his guts.

He had been near the essence of the grand dao, a privilege only enjoyed by immortals.

Even though it had hurt like hell. Even though he’d seen his only pearl Ling’er get killed without mercy. His very soul ached to see the dao again.

The vixen said something in her offended, sultry voice. Ziyou Yung could not be bothered and turned away. She jumped up to hug him from behind, and he ducked, making her fall flat.

Ziyou Maque smiled.

There was justice in the world.

“It was as though the bottleneck that had stopped me for decades was simply not... there,” Youjin Yetu said. “Such inconceivable might. Such—”

“Come on, old fool. The 9th stage of Foundation Building Realm is not that strong.” Youjin Tiantian had her hand clasped behind her back. Prim and proper as always, the old woman.

“I speak of whatever power the Su Clan possesses,” Youjin Yetu said, “Revival. It makes sense now. The Revival Fox Clan with their Revival Sword Tower and the mysterious Revival Crown,” Youjin Yetu muttered in wonder.

“Perhaps they never meant to hide it. Perhaps our Youjin Clan is living too much in the boonies,” Youjin Tenghou offered with an indifferent shrug. He looked at Youjin Linbi. The poor lass was looking like a drunk barmaid.

It was to be expected. An Imperfect Heaven 1st Realmer daring to even glance at the grand dao was more than sinful.

It was literally defying the heaven.

“We give chase? Or shall we leave?” Maque walked to Ziyou Yung and the Vixen and asked.

The boy looked up, then at the Foxmoth Yaoguai. The little critter chirped, and Yung looked up to reply, “There must be another cavern here where the foxmoth’s mate and nest.” He stopped, his pants tugged by a sulking vixen. The boy sighed. “And Youjin Fuqiang still has one of Nanya’s foxballs.”