Necropolis Immortal

A hint of lucidity seemed to flash through the zombie’s eyes when it heard Haidong Lin’s voice, but raging violence swiftly drowned it out. It went berserk and brought forth the hand of a beast to slash at the man.

Haidong Lin jerked backward with shock. He’d correctly identified the zombie as mutated from Sea Lord Mayfly, but the two of them weren’t friends. Though they both served the Sea Emperor, they bore distinct hostility for each other. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to call them rivals, and the zombie continuing to attack after hearing him was proof of that.

Evading the latest swipe, Haidong Lin brought out his metal bident to meet tit for tat. He raised Myriad Sea and brought it crashing down on the enemy.

“Sea Lord Mayfly, since you’ve died and become a zombie, I will do right by the people and destroy this unholy evil of yours!” Haidong Lin’s weapon seemed to be bolstered by a hundred million tons of seawater and released immense force with every gesture and movement. He sent the green-furred flying with a single blow.

“ROAR!!” snarled the zombie as it turned around in the air, then came pouncing back with shrieks and snarls.

Haidong Lin’s eyes widened as an enormous vortex manifested over his head—the power of Ruina.

Having resided in Myriadsea World for countless eons, he’d become familiar with Ruina, studied it, and even incorporated it into his Myriad Sea combat art. A humongous vortex formed by a hundred million tons of seawater filled the void; Haidong Lin used his bident as a club and smashed it into the zombie’s head.

BOOM!

The zombie shattered with a muffled thud; rotten flesh and yellowish-gray corpse water sprayed in all directions.

“That easy?” Haidong Lin looked on incredulously. “Sea Lord Mayfly is just a touch weaker than me, he should be even stronger as a zombie. My Ruina Myriad Sea shouldn’t have been able to kill him…”

“That’s because something’s refined his corpse.” Lu Yun bent down and picked up a piece of rotten flesh to study it. “At least seventy percent of his strength had been refined away. If he’d been in peak condition, there would’ve been nothing for us to do but run.”

Haidong Lin wasn’t very receptive to the explanation, but he didn’t argue with the young man.

“...Corpse Refiners!” A sudden thought struck Lu Yun. Only the Corpse Refiners possessed these kinds of methods. The sect had been conquered on the world of immortals and their corpse refining dao become part of the immortal dao, but there were also rumors of Corpse Refiners in the fourth realm.

They were a horrifying sect from the unknown expanses that could refine and control zombies. Lu Yun hadn’t delved into the secondary worlds after traveling to the unknown, so he didn’t pay much attention to them. But now they’d come across traces of the Corpse Refiners in the Abyssal Hell!

“Did you say the Corpse Refiners?” Haidong Lin’s face snapped with shock. “They’re one of the three great unholies of the secondary realms! It would make sense if it is them, they do have the ability to refine that much of the zombie’s strength.”

“The three great unholies?” Lu Yun blinked.

“That’s right. At our cultivation levels, we don’t dare easily commit to karmic relationships. We understand there is no such thing as good or evil. The three great unholies are an exception. They collude with creatures of the darkness to prey upon the rest of us. They’re one of the few common enemies of all beings of order in the secondary worlds!” Haidong Lin’s face darkened. “The Corpse Refiners is one of them, and the strongest of them!”

“Who are the other two?” Lu Yun asked with surprise.

When it came to good and evil, it was simply a matter of perspective and morals. To creatures of order, those of the darkness were evil because they killed and ate those of order, attempting to turn the lands of light into dark. But to the endarkened, the same could be said for their enemies.

That was perspective.

Morality was the fundamental reason why intelligent life was called what it was. Whether it was denizens of order or darkness, either side adhered to their own principles and ethics, ones that determined their behavior and rules. To violate them was to be evil.

The stronger one’s cultivation level was, the closer one drew to the core essence of dao. Certain restrictions appeared at that time—karma, for instance. Thus, the strong were separated only by different positions on various matters. They would never violate morality to give rise to karmic repercussions.

But there were always exceptions, and the three unholies were one of them.

“The other two…” Haidong Lin scowled. “The second is Myriad Ghost Order and the third is the Celestial Dark. They used to be sects of the secondary worlds, but they’ve helped the endarkened swallowed countless major worlds. I thought they’d been razed out of existence, but it turns out they fled here instead!

“I even suspect that Sea Lord Mayfly didn’t become a zombie after death, but that he was refined alive!”

Haidong Lin had clearly captured the moment of lucidity in the green-furred zombie’s eyes. It’d been filled with desire and pleading; it begged Haidong Lin to kill him and free him from his eternal anguish.

“We leave, now!” Lu Yun barked and utilized abyssal hellfire to conceal their life force, then whisked them away.

“What is it?” Haidong Lin had been dragged away mid thought, so he was rather confused.

“The Abyssal Hell is where all the corpses of the dead used to be kept. Now that the layout’s changed into one of nurturing a world of sequence, it’s also perfect for raising zombies!” An extremely ugly expression was present on Lu Yun’s face. “Since the Corpse Refiners are here, they’ll turn this place into a massive zombie farm! If a herd of them attacked us, there wouldn’t even be bone dust left of us. We might even become zombies too!”

He would never forget the two great treasures the sect possessed in the world of immortals: the Bag of Corpse Refinement and their great Formation of Corpse Refinement. Both could turn the living straight into zombies.

Not only would the sect commit such an unthinkable deed, they could boost themselves with the zombie’s strength. Lu Yun highly suspected that they’d been standing in one such formation.

Color drained from Haidong Lin’s face.

“No, we need to eliminate the Corpse Refiners!” He set his jaw and screeched to a halt. “I can’t sleep easy with that massive threat on the loose!”

“Can you fight them?” Lu Yun sneered. “This is the Abyssal Hell. I might not be a match for them even if I borrow the hell’s power!”

“What if you count me in?” came the Curse King’s irritated voice before his bedraggled form stumbled out of the void.

etvolare's Thoughts

Good. glossaries. FTW, holy crap.