Immortality Through Array Formations (The Quest for Immortality)

Chapter 1142: Strange Corpses

After half a month of traveling low-key, enduring the wind and sleeping under the stars, Mo Hua finally arrived at Gale Crossing.

Gale Crossing was a ferry port on the edge of the Desert Sea—originally a remote and crude little outpost.

But because the crossing led directly into the desert, and across the Desert Sea lay the fourth-grade Great Wasteland City, the traffic gradually turned the place into a not-quite-official "miniature immortal city."

Many cultivators who made their living as merchants, ferrymen, or traveling tradespeople had settled here.

Mo Hua stood at the edge of the crossing, gazing into the distance. Yellow sands billowed across the land, dust clouds surged skyward, blotting out the sun.

This… was the Desert Sea.

And across the Desert Sea lay the Great Wilderness. Heat radiated from within the swirling sand, carrying with it the aura of war, flowing fire, agony, and slaughter. It stirred the blood like a war drum, making one's heart race uncontrollably.

Mo Hua exhaled softly, calmed his inner restlessness, and stepped into Gale Crossing.

At this time, the town was chaotic—a mess of all kinds.

There were local poor cultivators, foreign cultivators of all sorts, family clans, sect disciples, and even some eccentric rogue cultivators.

Many among them exuded killing intent—clearly, they were no strangers to bloodshed.

Some were cloaked in black robes, concealing their aura entirely.

But Mo Hua could clearly tell—they were demonic cultivators.

The situation in the Great Wilderness was becoming more chaotic by the day.

Only those with real skill dared enter the Great Wilderness now, and each had their own motives. The mix of people was incredibly complex.

Mo Hua had no desire to get involved in any conflict. One careless step could force his hand into killing again.

Right now, he only wanted to reach the Great Wilderness.

But between him and the Great Wilderness lay the vast Desert Sea. Cultivators below the Nascent Soul Realm (Feather Transformation) couldn't fly over it.

To cross the Desert Sea, one had to take a sand boat.

And to ride a sand boat, one needed a "Boat Token."

Mo Hua wandered through Gale Crossing, spent a few spirit stones, and asked a local cultivator how to get one.

He then visited several local ferry guilds and tried negotiating.

All failed.

Due to the rebellion in the Great Wilderness and the increasingly dangerous roads, boat tokens had become a rare and sought-after commodity.

Worse yet, recently a group of demonic cultivators boarded a sand boat and slaughtered everyone aboard midway through the journey, stealing the boat for themselves.

Now, local ferry guilds had tightened restrictions on boat token issuance.

Without connections—or the endorsement of a local influential elder or clan leader—mere spirit stones weren't enough to buy one.

Mo Hua suddenly found himself missing Elder Ji.

That man was full of bad habits—drinking, gambling, womanizing—but he was amazing at networking.

If he were still alive, he'd probably be out drinking a few nights, chatting up some elders, and boom—he'd land a boat token just like that.

Unfortunately, Elder Ji was already dead.

Drained to death through dual cultivation, in a truly miserable end.

A faint melancholy crept over Mo Hua.

He shook his head. Seeing that night had fallen, he found a local inn in Gale Crossing and checked in, deciding to try again tomorrow.

...

Night fell, the air turned cold, and the wind howled, rattling the windows and doors.

Mo Hua sealed the room with array formations, adding soundproofing and spiritual isolation, then sat at the desk and took out a book.

It was an old tome, made of hide parchment, with four characters on the cover:

"Strange Corpse Compendium."

This was a rare corpse-path manual from Elder Xu of Yin Corpse Valley, found in his storage bag after his death.

During the journey here, Mo Hua had been too busy worrying about vengeful spirits and his Martial Uncle's schemes to even glance through the storage bag.

Now, finally at rest in Gale Crossing, he had the time to study Elder Xu's "legacy."

And among those items, this Strange Corpse Compendium was clearly the most unusual.

It contained many bizarre and arcane methods for refining "strange corpses."

Mo Hua actually knew a fair bit about corpse refinement already.

Years ago, while traveling with his master and senior disciples, they had passed through Southern Yue City and encountered a corpse disaster. He was captured by the Lu Clan and thrown into a corpse mine, spending time among corpse cultivators, witnessing many corpse-refining techniques firsthand.

He'd even studied some of the theory.

Thanks to that foundation, reading this Strange Corpse Compendium now gave him even greater clarity into the art of corpse refinement.

Demonic corpse cultivators gained strength mostly not through their own cultivation, but through the zombies they refined and raised.

The stronger the zombies they controlled, the stronger they themselves were.

Zombies had grades and types.

Grades followed the cultivation realms of the corpse used as the "base material," known as raw corpses.

For example:

A Qi Refining corpse produced a 1st-grade zombie.

Foundation Establishment yielded a 2nd-grade.

Golden Core became 3rd-grade... and so on.

On top of grades, there were types:

Common types included Walking Corpses, Iron Corpses, Bronze Corpses, and Gold Corpses.

While grade and type were related, they were separate concepts.

The type of zombie depended not only on the grade of the corpse but also the refinement method, blood used, and certain sinister materials.

Luck also played a part.

1st-grade zombies were almost always Walking Corpses.

2nd-grade zombies were mostly Walking Corpses, rarely Iron Corpses, and only a tiny chance of becoming Bronze Corpses.

3rd-grade zombies had higher chances for Iron or Bronze, with minuscule odds of producing a Silver Corpse, and in the rarest cases, a Gold Corpse.

The rarer the type, the tougher the body and the greater the power—some could even fight across realms.

Of course, nurturing such zombies required massive resources, effort… and luck.

To a corpse cultivator, successfully raising a Gold Corpse—or even a Silver Corpse—could be the goal of a lifetime.

Most corpse cultivators below Golden Core would consider it a miracle just to produce a Bronze Corpse.

Mo Hua recalled:

The terrifying corpse he saw during the Blood Sacrifice Array was likely a Gold Corpse.

Young Master Shi had a gilded Bronze Corpse—technically still a Bronze Corpse.

The four Golden Core Elders from Yin Corpse Valley each had only Bronze Corpses.

Everyone else? Mostly Walking or Iron Corpses.

Even Bronze was rare—let alone Silver or Gold.

Clearly, corpse refinement was difficult. Crafting a rare zombie was even harder.

Without a supreme corpse refinement method, the only option was: kill more people and try your luck.

The more corpses you had, the better your odds of crafting a rare type.

Beyond the common types, however, existed even rarer, more exotic "Strange Corpses."

The world was vast, and fate unpredictable—even zombies had their quirks.

Strange Corpses were those bizarre, almost mythological variants.

This Strange Corpse Compendium described many zombies even veteran corpse cultivators had never seen in their lives.

Names Mo Hua had never heard of:

Earth Treasury Corpse (Dìzàng Corpse)

Beauty Corpse

Drought Demon

Flying Zombie...

The Earth Treasury Corpse was said to contain the Dao of Earth Treasury. It could "hear the truth," discern falsehoods, track traces, and know what ordinary people could not.

Mo Hua suspected Elder Xu had used one to track him.

But with Elder Xu dead, who knew where that zombie had ended up...

The Beauty Corpse involved killing a beautiful woman without harming her body, sealing her appearance at the peak of her beauty, and turning her into a refined corpse—a type of "puppet corpse."

The Drought Demon was formed when large numbers of cultivators were burned alive in a massive blaze. From those ashes, a corpse infused with heaven's fate and the world's resentment could be born.

Wherever it walked, the land turned scorched and barren—a true natural disaster among zombies.

The Flying Zombie was said to be a zombie of the Nascent Soul Realm (Feather Transformation)—able to fly through the skies, travel underground, and transcend the Three Realms, outside the Five Elements.

...

These various Strange Corpses, whether eerie, savage, mysterious, or powerful, left Mo Hua genuinely shaken after reading through them.

However, most of them in the Compendium were only briefly mentioned—only outlining their origins or how they came to be, without any concrete corpse refinement methods.

Mo Hua found this strange at first. Then, after thinking about it, it made sense.

These were Strange Corpses, after all—most were the products of rare transformations under unique cosmic circumstances. How could something like that be refined by mere human effort?

Of course, another possibility was that the refinement methods for these corpses were top-tier secrets of Yin Corpse Valley—on par with forbidden techniques—and even Elder Xu himself wasn't qualified to know them.

The fact that Elder Xu's copy of the Strange Corpse Compendium could even list these names was already an incredibly valuable legacy.

And it had indeed broadened Mo Hua's horizons—he had learned a great deal.

Unable to help himself, he flipped through a few more pages. When he reached the third-to-last page, he suddenly paused.

This page… had been deliberately smeared out.

The text and ink had been blended into one large blot—nothing was legible.

Mo Hua rested his chin on his hand, his brows furrowed.

"What does this mean? Someone didn't want others to read it… so they just wiped out the whole page?"

Curious, Mo Hua decided to try and restore it—to see what had originally been recorded there.

He tried several methods, but none worked.

The ink used to smear it was special—a mixture of blood from a certain beast, and the blood of a person with a special spiritual root. It had fused with the hide parchment—completely inseparable.

Clearly, someone had gone to great lengths to erase whatever had been on this page.

Was it Elder Xu? Or someone else?

Mo Hua couldn't say, but he felt an urge to find out.

If this involved someone like his Martial Uncle, he'd absolutely play dead and wouldn't dare pry.

But if it only concerned an elder of Yin Corpse Valley, then using causal divination should be fine.

And besides, he wasn't going to probe too deeply—just enough to learn what was written on that page.

Mo Hua once again activated his spiritual sense, reinforced the room's defense with arrays, and then used the Great Wilderness Demon Bone Divination technique to divine the karma of the erased page in the Strange Corpse Compendium.

In karmic divination, the more specific and focused the question, the more accurate the result, with less mental strain and lower risk of backlash.

Mo Hua was becoming more skilled at using these divinations.

As his divine sense was consumed and the technique activated, phosphorescent fire flared to life. Karma reversed itself, and images began to surface.

The third-to-last page, originally smeared in blood-ink, began to change.

The bloodstains deepened, then turned bright red… and gradually faded.

Bit by bit, the erased characters began to reappear...

"Little…"

Little?

Mo Hua blinked and continued watching. The karmic reversal revealed two more characters:

"Flying Heaven…"

At this point, the karma began to resist. It seemed to involve something secretive, something difficult to peek into.

Mo Hua pushed forward, burning more of his divine sense.

The Demon Bone Divination spun faster. The phosphorescence flared even brighter, and cracks began to appear on the demon bone.

Finally, another character emerged:

"Spirit…"

Spirit?

Mo Hua's eyes widened.

To think a demonic corpse-path manual would contain the word "Spirit"?

The last character—unsurprisingly—was:

"Corpse."

At that, the demon bone shattered completely, and the ghost fire gradually went out.

Mo Hua's divine sense was almost depleted, so he ended the divination.

In his heart, he quietly pieced together the four words he'd just seen:

"Little… Flying Heaven… Spirit… Corpse."

→ Little Flying Spirit Corpse

Mo Hua's expression turned serious.

Little Flying Spirit Corpse?

What kind of thing was that?

It wasn't a Blood Corpse. Not an Evil Corpse. Not an Yin Corpse.

But a… Spirit Corpse?

And it had the phrase "Flying Heaven" in its name—which meant it was likely a subspecies of the Flying Zombie, capable of flying through the sky, possibly even reaching the Nascent Soul Realm (Feather Transformation)?

But then… why the word "Little"?

Mo Hua felt something was off. This "Little Flying Spirit Corpse" in Yin Corpse Valley's Strange Corpse Compendium, being so deliberately erased, gave off a strange, almost unsettling feeling.

And what's more—there was a faint sense of familiarity.

Mo Hua began to think deeply, but the more he tried to recall, the more he realized there were gaps in his memory.

A large portion of his mind had become patchy and fragmented.

His past memories had begun to fade. Many people… many events… had grown fuzzy in his mind.

Especially the finer details—he could no longer recall them clearly.

A chill ran through his heart.

This was one of the aftereffects of the "Fierce Spirit, Malevolent Ghost" fate.

Once it took hold, there were only two outcomes:

Either he would lose his mind, turning into a bloodthirsty madman, slaughtering without restraint.

Or he would lose his memories, turning into a mere puppet.

Then the curse would descend—and he would fall under his Martial Uncle's control…

Mo Hua let out a long sigh. After a moment of silent thought, he put away the Strange Corpse Compendium.

Zombies… it was enough to just understand them. Delving too deep into that field wasn't of much use to him.

He was a righteous-path cultivator. In this lifetime, he would never refine or raise corpses. It wasn't worth wasting too much thought on it.

What mattered most now was solving his fate problem—and forming his Golden Core.

The problem of his fate required him to find a way to establish "anchor points" to preserve his memories and stabilize his humanity.

As for core formation, the plan was to first enter the Great Wilderness and then adapt as opportunities arose.

But there was a problem— The Great Wilderness was now consumed by rebellion and war.

To cross into it meant facing endless conflict and bloodshed.

Traveling alone during such chaos gave him freedom of movement, sure—but it also meant conflict was hard to avoid.

Worse yet, in order to avoid triggering the backlash of his fate, he couldn't kill indiscriminately.

In this kind of situation, the best move—traditionally speaking—was to find a "companion guard" to travel with.

If that "Big Tiger" was still around, he might've actually made a decent partner...

Beyond that, there was still the issue of enhancing his spiritual sense.

To form a Golden Core, the first and most important step was to raise his spiritual sense to Second Grade, 24 Runes.

And after fighting Elder Xu of Yin Corpse Valley, Mo Hua had become certain of one thing:

With Second Grade, 21 Runes, his Divine Dread Sword truly had the power to kill Golden Core cultivators.

And not just "kill"—it could instant kill.

There's a difference between killing someone… and instantly erasing them.

Mo Hua's gaze grew deep.

In other words, as long as his divine sense was strong enough, once the God-Slaying Sword left his mind, it could instant-kill any cultivator whose divine sense was lower than his.

His current divine sense level was his "kill threshold."

He could bypass flesh, ignore spiritual energy, and instantly erase cultivators in a flash.

This was the true power of divine sense as a means of Dao.

Which meant—he needed to do everything in his power to raise his divine sense.

Not just for core formation, but to raise the instant-kill threshold of the Divine Dread Sword. Only then would he have real confidence to survive the dangers of the Great Wilderness.

Even if killing risked violating the "killing fate" curse— The choice to kill or not kill had to remain in his hands.

And if one day he could master even greater karmic arts, enough to suppress the "Fierce Spirit, Malevolent Ghost" scheme set by his Martial Uncle…

Or even one day gain the power to stand against him—

To no longer be suppressed by this cursed fate—

Then the Divine Dread Sword could finally be unleashed without restriction. It could truly leave the mind, and slay without hesitation.

Spiritual sense refined into sword intent, ignoring all flesh and defense— an instant-kill strike.

Regardless of status or background, strength of body or cultivation— Below the threshold of his divine sense, all living beings were equal.

If he looked at you— you die.

That was truly terrifying killing power.

Mo Hua's heart surged with emotion. A moment later, he calmed down and sighed softly.

"Still…"

Fighting his Martial Uncle was like reaching for the heavens…

And raising his divine sense further was no easy task either.

He was already at Second Grade, 21 Runes, stronger than many early Golden Core cultivators. Every rune beyond this point would be a grueling climb.

Second Grade, 24 Runes—That was like a canyon between worlds.

Mo Hua calculated silently with his fingers for a while, then looked up toward the south, and thought to himself: "I just hope… the war in the Great Wilderness holds the opportunities I need."

...

The next day, Mo Hua headed out once again, searching for a boat token.

But after looking around for half the day, he was still empty-handed.

As an outsider with no connections or background, trying to obtain a boat token without exposing his identity was nearly impossible for a lone rogue cultivator like him.

Even offering a high price—no one would sell it to him.

They say there's nothing in this world money (or spirit stones) can't buy. But if there is… it's because you don't have enough.

Mo Hua now wasn't the same poor cultivator he once was—he had plenty of spirit stones on him. But still, he didn't dare spend too much openly just to buy a boat token.

First, it would easily draw suspicion.

Second, flashing wealth could attract unwanted attention.

He might not even make it onto the ship before some desperate cultivator tried to rob and kill him for his spirit stones.

Heaven favors life—Mo Hua truly didn't want to start killing again.

After wandering around and hitting wall after wall, he finally had no choice but to temporarily give up.

But on his way back to the inn, something caught the corner of his eye.

At the side of the street, he caught sight of a posted notice.

The notice said that a large ship convoy was currently recruiting guards for the desert crossing.

Mo Hua's eyes lit up slightly.

As for what exactly this "guard" job entailed, what duties it involved, or how dangerous it was—he didn't know yet.

But judging by his current self— The first-place champion of the Qianxue Sword Debate Grand Assembly, a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, and a powerful spiritual cultivator well-versed in all kinds of Five Element spells— Surely taking on a little "guard duty" would be more than doable…

With that thought settled, Mo Hua followed the instructions on the notice and made his way to a nearby shipping company.

(End of this Chapter)