chsdbacks Chapter 16: Collecting Corpses, Rapid Expansion!
Chapter 16: Collecting Corpses, Rapid Expansion!
This is much better than rotting in the soil.
Mingfei walked down from the mountaintop and headed towards the border plain.
As dusk settled, the twilight spread from the east, like a gray blanket gradually covering the earth.
The wind was strong on the plain, making his clothes flutter loudly.
The wind carried a faint, fishy smell—not the smell of river water, but the smell of blood.
He walked for about an hour and stopped about ten miles from the river.
It wasn't because he was tired, but because he smelled fresh blood.
It's very strong.
Very fresh.
Mingfei squatted down, placed his palms on the ground, and closed his eyes.
The spiritual energy extended forward along the ground, sixty meters, seventy meters, eighty meters.
His mental perception radius expanded further after absorbing the Dark Serpent's soul ring, and it has now reached about eighty meters.
There is a body 80 meters away.
More than one.
Mingfei's spiritual power clearly perceived the objects scattered on the ground that had lost their body temperature.
There were human bodies and horse bodies. There were about twenty bodies scattered in an area of about fifty meters in diameter.
battlefield.
A small battlefield.
Mingfei stood up and walked in that direction.
His footsteps were very light, making almost no sound.
The Hades Sword felt slightly cool in his palm, the underworld trembled deep within his consciousness, and gray mist surged, like a starving beast smelling the scent of flesh and blood.
He walked to the edge of the corpse.
That was a patrol team from the Heavenly Dou Empire.
Approximately twenty soldiers were killed in action.
The bodies were hacked to pieces; some were headless, some were missing arms, and some had been disemboweled.
The ground was covered in blood, a dark red that had seeped into the soil.
Judging from the wounds, they were not attacked by humans.
It is a soul beast.
No, it's not a soul beast.
Mingfei crouched down and carefully examined the wounds on the most intact corpse.
Those weren't claw marks, nor were they teeth marks.
It was the mark left by some kind of sharp, curved weapon, like a scimitar or a sickle.
Human weapons.
But human weapons do not leave this faint, dark purple residue on corpses.
Ming Fei narrowed his eyes.
He recognized the scent.
Dark Demon Tiger.
No, it's not the Dark Demon Tiger. The Dark Demon Tiger is a ten-thousand-year-old being. If it were to make a move, these twenty people wouldn't be left with intact corpses.
This is a weaker soul beast, but one that shares the same origin as the Dark Demon Tiger—the Dark Demon Leopard.
The Dark Demon Leopard, a millennium-level creature, is extremely fast, and its claws are coated with the corrosive power of darkness.
They occasionally roam out of the Starry Sky Forest and attack border patrols and villages.
The Dark Demon Leopard should still be nearby.
Ming Fei stood up and spread his mental energy around, carefully searching every corner.
No findings were found.
The Dark Demon Panther is not here.
But its corpse is here.
Mingfei no longer hesitated.
He sank his consciousness into the underworld, and gray mist poured out from the cracks, swirling towards the corpses scattered on the ground.
One, two, three... twenty corpses of the Heavenly Warriors, along with their weapons, armor, and the bodies of their horses, were all swept into the underworld by the gray mist.
Mingfei could sense that the underworld was celebrating.
The deathly aura and resentment emanating from these human corpses were far more intense than those from the spirit beasts in Sunset Forest.
Their deaths were violent, sudden, and filled with resentment.
They didn't want to die; they had families, unfinished missions, and unspoken words.
All these resentments and obsessions were transformed into nourishment for the underworld.
The area of the underworld is expanding.
It's not the faint, almost imperceptible expansion of before, but a visible and definite expansion.
The gray fog surged outwards for about ten meters, and several new cracks appeared on the scorched earth. Dark red light seeped out from the cracks, illuminating an area.
Transformation.
The remnants of souls on those corpses are being absorbed by the underworld and transformed into new spirits.
Mingfei could sense the fragments of consciousness within those remnant souls.
Vague, chaotic, fragmented, but it does exist.
They will slowly recover and coalesce in the underworld, eventually becoming true spirits of the dead.
By then, he will no longer have only twenty-odd subordinates.
Forty.
Fifty.
One hundred.
Mingfei took a deep breath and pulled his attention back from the underworld.
He looked into the depths of the border plain.
The Dark Demon Panther is still there.
It killed a squad of Sky Warriors and is now probably somewhere digesting its food or looking for its next target.
Mingfei had no intention of letting it go.
A thousand-year-old Dark Demon Leopard—its soul ring can be given to the Hades Sword, and its corpse can be given to the Underworld—killing two birds with one stone.
But he wasn't in a hurry.
There was too much deathly atmosphere on the border plains.
He needs to collect these readily available resources first before chasing after the Dark Demon Leopard.
Mingfei strode forward, heading deeper into the plains.
Behind him, the gray fog slowly dissipated along the path he had walked, leaving behind a dry, clean ground devoid of any corpses.
......
Mingfei wandered the border plains for an entire night.
He walked slowly, but very carefully.
The mental energy was like an invisible net, covering an area of eighty meters around it, leaving no corner untouched.
Whenever he senses the presence of a corpse, he stops, takes the corpse into the underworld, and then continues on his way.
Overnight, he collected more than thirty more corpses.
There were soldiers, civilians, horses, and livestock affected by the war.
The corpses were scattered across the plain; some were already mostly decomposed, some still retained their death posture, and some were gnawed beyond recognition by wild dogs.
Mingfei didn't care about the integrity of the corpse.
As long as there are remnants of souls remaining, and as long as the death energy has not dissipated, the underworld can draw nourishment from them.
The energy from rotten, mutilated, and gnawed corpses is indeed less than that from fresh corpses, but little by little, it's better than nothing.
The area of the underworld is continuously expanding.
When I emerged from Sunset Forest, the Underworld was approximately fifty times larger than it had been in its initial state.
After a night of collecting data, the number increased fifty-fivefold.
The swirling gray fog expanded, the cracks in the scorched earth multiplied, and the dark red light grew brighter.
More importantly, the newly acquired human corpses are slowly turning into undead.
Mingfei could sense their presence.
Those blurry, fragmented pieces of consciousness are re-coalescing in the underworld, like shattered puzzle pieces slowly being pieced together with the help of the gray mist.
This process takes time, possibly days or even weeks, to fully transform them into fighting undead.
But Mingfei wasn't in a hurry.
Time is on his side.
At daybreak, Mingfei stopped in an abandoned village.
The village was small, with about thirty or forty mud-brick houses, all of which were burned down.
The charred wooden beams lay scattered on the ground, the walls bore the marks of smoke and fire, and broken pottery jars and burnt cloth were strewn on the ground.
nobody.
There were no living people, nor were there any dead people.
The body has already been taken away.
It's unclear whether it was collected by its companions or dragged away by a soul beast.
.....