Chapter 126 - 119 The Death of Wuzuo

Chapter 126: Chapter 119 The Death of Wuzuo"How do we handle this?" Zhou Xuan asked Lv Mingkun. "Eat him! Together," Lv Mingkun said decisively. "How do we eat?" *Steam, fry, stew, or eat raw? It sounded a bit perverse?!* "Just eat him directly." Lv Mingkun further explained that consuming a Black Zombie nurtured by Yin Sha Qi was very beneficial for a ghost to accumulate incense. Such a chance was quite rare. "Still eager to eat zombies?" *I often feel out of place with you because I’m not twisted enough, Fifth Brother.* Zhou Xuan gestured as if to say "please"—encouraging his senior brother to go first. *You go first, set an example!?* "Alright, alright, I’ll go first." Lv Mingkun propped up the Black Zombie, Boss Zhao. The corpse was too dry, its limbs stiff, like a specimen that could be manipulated however one pleased. After positioning the body in a "cross-legged" posture, the Black Zombie emitted a faint low growl from its throat, seemingly displeased with Fifth Brother’s random handling. "A little Black Zombie, still daring to bare its fangs?" Lv Mingkun swiftly pierced the Black Zombie’s throat with his Bamboo Leaf Blade. Instantly, the Black Zombie settled down. Then, Lv Mingkun used a small knife to cut his middle finger, letting his blood drip on the zombie’s head. Instantly, numerous streaks of black gas emerged from the zombie’s skin due to the presence of blood. Human blood lured jiang qi. Lv Mingkun sat cross-legged in front of the Black Zombie and began breathing rhythmically. With each breath, the thick jiang qi merged with the air, funneling into Lv Mingkun’s chest. As the jiang qi continuously emerged, the Black Zombie’s fingers started to "melt," like ice exposed to sunlight, leaving only a thick, ink-like liquid—a residue after the food was consumed. *So this is eating?* Zhou Xuan sat cross-legged, imitating Lv Kunming’s manner, and began to breathe. The jiang qi formed into two streams, with one flowing into Zhou Xuan’s chest. A faint smoky aroma spread through Zhou Xuan’s body. "Sizzle!" The tip of Zhou Xuan’s second incense suddenly grew brighter and then began to burn downward... very slowly, but it indeed showed a downward burning trend. "So, a zombie to a ghost is quite like Buddha nature to a divine person." During Zhou Xuan’s first incense, half of the incense was sourced from Buddha nature, including the sacrifice of the Alien Ghost and Lady Lianhua’s Buddha Tumor. The excessively dense Yin Sha Qi within the zombie’s body could surprisingly support the incense burning in the Yin People Hall. "But this zombie is hard to find. It can’t be relied upon for daily incense accumulation." Zhou Xuan had just heard from Lv Mingkun that a zombie nurtured in the Yin Sha land was optimal for accumulating incense. *Does raising zombies in the Yin Sha land require time too?* "*Think about it, see if this shop can be used to raise some zombies... if it can be done quickly, my incense will burn more rapidly.*" Zhou Xuan closed his eyes, absorbing the black jiang qi, while Lv Mingkun opened his eyes. Seeing Zhou Xuan’s meditative state, he realized that the jiang qi was helpful for Zhou Xuan’s incense burning, so he stood up and stopped absorbing it. For him, the method of accumulating incense was quite stable. He had places to accumulate it without relying on zombies, albeit slower. But Zhou Xuan was different. During those days with the Zhou Family’s Troupe, there had been no progress in incense accumulation, and now that there was a method to burn incense, how could a senior brother compete? Lv Mingkun leaned against the counter, lit a cigarette, and glanced at Zhou Xuan. Something seemed wrong... why was his junior brother absorbing jiang qi so quickly? In just a short moment, the Black Zombie’s hands, feet, and abdomen had already "melted," leaving only puddles of thick liquid, and the chest was visibly melting. "Too fast!" Lv Kunming thought that if he "ate" the zombie himself, it would take at least three to four hours. He was a ghost with four incense and had quite a few insights about the Magic Skill of "food energy," but Zhou Xuan, like a wild man, with just a few chomps, had "eaten" more than half of the zombie. "People can’t be compared," Lv Kunming said with a wry smile, exhaling a puff of smoke. ... Zhou Xuan’s "food energy" speed wasn’t quick from the beginning. When he first started absorbing jiang qi, his pace was much slower than Lv Mingkun’s. But as the jiang qi was absorbed, his Secret Realm underwent a transformation. First, the Fei Yue within the Divine Revelation Secret Realm—the embodiment of the Blood Well—seemed to step out of the Secret Realm, hovering before Zhou Xuan’s eyes. Soon, a woman’s figure appeared on the full moon, veiled, the Lantern Bride within the Secret Realm. The bride was performing strange motions, first crouching like a deer drinking water, her head lightly nodding. Then, with limbs on the ground, her left arm was slightly forward compared to the right, her delicate frame exuding an imposing aura reminiscent of a Fierce Tiger Descending the Mountain... After a series of two movements, the bride vanished, leaving only the empty Blood Moon suspended before him. Zhou Xuan felt something in his heart and began mimicking the bride’s actions in the Secret Realm—like a Little Deer Drinking Water, and as soon as he made the motion, he suddenly felt that the Black Zombie’s jiang qi was insufficient, his breathing naturally quickened. Then came the Fierce Tiger Descending the Mountain. When Zhou Xuan performed the motion, a sense of boldness, like a roaring tiger in the mountain wind, surged within him. He couldn’t help but let out a roar... ... "Can it go faster?" With only half a cigarette left, Zhou Xuan let out a low howl. The Black Zombie, now reduced to merely a head and neck, rapidly melted like an ice cube thrown directly into red-hot molten iron, turning to liquid nearly instantaneously. Lv Kunming, so stunned that he even forgot to flick away the ash, only snapped back when he smelled something burning, hastily tossing the smoldering cigarette to the ground and stomping it out... ... After his tiger’s roar, Zhou Xuan devoured the remaining jiang qi, and the incense burning almost stalled, only embers lingered, a Black Zombie was consumed entirely, yet the incense barely burned half a fifth of an inch. The progress was slow, but at least it allowed Zhou Xuan some time to find the right tattoo techniques for accumulating incense. Furthermore, although a zombie in a Yin Sha land was hard to find, the shop was steeped with heavy Yin Sha Qi, and daily absorption could at least keep the incense from extinguishing. As long as the incense didn’t die out, the Nuo God wouldn’t trouble Zhou Xuan. The Black Zombie completely melted, the food energy session ended, and Zhou Xuan opened his eyes. Suddenly, a white flash appeared, and an image unfolded before him. He glanced a few times, realizing it was a scene from the life of the Black Zombie, Zhao Mazi, before he died. ... [In the scene within the shop] It was already nighttime, outside the storm roared, while inside, the shop was lit by an electric lamp. In the center, a cleaning corpse bed was set up. On the bed lay a woman whose organs had been removed. "What a delicate girl, too bad she fell to kidnappers." Zhao Mazi held a sharp scalpel, scrutinizing the woman’s body. He pondered where to make the incision to most effectively peel the human skin whole. Though attentive, Zhao Mazi failed to notice a mass of black Yin energy on the ceiling, rapidly shrinking and coalescing. Until it became a drop of ink-like liquid. "Drip!" The ink fell from the ceiling, landing precisely on the woman’s forehead. "Where should I start cutting?" Zhao Mazi muttered to himself. "Mr. Coroner, do you think the dead feel pain?" A mournful woman’s voice gently echoed within the room, but in Zhao Mazi’s ear, it sounded like a thunderclap. "Ah!" In panic, Zhao Mazi’s hands trembled, nearly dropping the knife. Suddenly, the woman sat up and asked Zhao Mazi, "Mr. Coroner, did you ever consider that the dead might feel pain while you were thinking about skinning me?" "I... I... it’s not my fault... you were killed by the kidnappers, your heart wasn’t taken by me, it was another coroner, you should go after them... go after them?" Zhao Mazi was so frightened that he lost his wits, failing to even think of escaping. After begging for a few moments, he finally remembered he could run. He turned to dash out the door but found his feet rooted, unable to move. "Heh heh, Mr. Coroner, I want to tell you that the dead feel pain just like the living..." The moment the woman finished speaking, Zhao Mazi felt a blow to the back of his head, and everything went black. When he came to again... or more accurately, when his "corpse opened its eyes," he realized his abdomen had been opened, an intense pain spreading through his body. He also saw, standing before the cleaning corpse bed where he should have been peeling skin, the woman, scalpel in hand, was dissecting him. "Poof!" Zhao Mazi’s face involuntarily convulsed in pain as his chest felt like it had been hammered countless times. As the pain subsided a bit, he felt his gastric tract being severed. "Please stop torturing me, I beg you, stop the torture..." Zhao Mazi, being dead, naturally couldn’t speak, but Zhou Xuan heard his voice clearly in the memory scene. "I am merely a small coroner, dealing with leftovers from the kidnappers. I truly haven’t done too much evil, just trying to make a living, please spare me..." The woman remained calm, continuing to disassemble Zhao Mazi’s organs. As the parts were removed one by one from his abdomen, Zhao Mazi’s pain gradually diminished, but a suffocating feeling rose intensely within him. His head was turned sideways on the bed, allowing him to see his organs laid out along its side, like a row of exquisite works of art. "Those are mine... those are mine... give them back to me." Zhao Mazi wished to replace them, piece by piece, back into his own belly. But instead of achieving his desire, he watched as the woman placed those organs into her own body, one by one. "Give them back, give them back to me." The woman ignored him, donned Zhao Mazi’s long coat, trousers, and hat, and opened the shop door. She took the oil-paper umbrella, picked up the wind lamp hanging on the wall, and walked into the stormy night. The wind gusted into the room, swirling around before swinging the door shut heavily. A chilling, greedy laugh echoed within, the ceiling crack widening... widening... widening... Two hands formed of black Yin Sha Qi extended from the ceiling, reaching down to the Jingyi Bed, seizing Zhao Mazi before swiftly pulling him into the ceiling. Then, the ceiling gap narrowed... narrowed... until it completely vanished! ... The memory scene ended, Zhou Xuan opened his eyes, instinctively glancing up into the ceiling’s holes, yet still saw nothing. "Little junior brother, how did you do it?" "Do what?" "Food energy, you consumed the Black Zombie at such an alarming speed, I hadn’t even finished a cigarette, and the zombie was completely consumed," Lv Mingkun marvelled at Zhou Xuan’s speed. The speed of food energy was directly connected to the rate at which a ghost accumulated incense. Zhou Xuan, however, wasn’t in the mood to discuss "food energy" speed. He gestured to Lv Mingkun, saying, "Fifth Brother, this shop’s ceiling can eat people! And, the previous store owner who died—Zhao Mazi—was a coroner." Lv Mingkun’s hall was precisely the coroner, and his greatest wish was—to use the coroner’s methods to annihilate the coroner’s hall.