A Pawn's Passage

Qi Xuansu agreed to join the weeding exercise.

The Innkeeper beamed and quickly explained some other things that needed further attention.

This piece of reclaimed land used to be where the first Earthly Preceptor used to cultivate zombies. After the Holy Xuan revived the Daoist Order, this place was under the jurisdiction of the Quanzhen Sect.

Later, it was placed under Huasheng Hall and heavily guarded because it became a large manufacturing plant. As such, many Daoist believers settled down in the area, which was as large as a county.

After the Cult of Fates learned about it, they infiltrated this place, taking advantage of the land’s natural resources to cultivate zombies. They successfully turned the place into a zombie town, which caused a huge stir at the time. The situation back then was far more sensational compared to the recent flying ship crash that Qi Xuansu experienced.

The Daoist Order had no choice but to resort to extreme measures by bombing the area. However, there were still many remnants. The Daoist Order carried out a preliminary cleaning operation afterward and brought back some classified artifacts. However, due to various reasons, there were still many secrets left behind.

After The Inn took over this piece of land through their connections, they were devoted to excavating Huasheng Hall’s and the first Earthly Preceptor’s legacies. They achieved small gains by selling these artifacts to the Eight Tribes and the Cult of Fates, who were both very interested in such things. This was the motivation behind The Inn’s willingness to spend so much money just to weed this place out every year.

The Innkeeper was honest and thoroughly explained the dangers involved.

Heavenly Beings and Guizhen-stage masters would have no problem carrying out this weeding exercise, but Yuxu-stage practitioners might face some difficulties. After all, they were weeding zombies, not plants. It would be better if the recruits were careful and aware of the entire situation.

Qi Xuansu believed it would not be much of a problem, as he considered himself on par with the entry-level Guizhen-stage practitioners in terms of fighting experience. That was why he agreed to join this weeding exercise.

This weeding exercise would start the next day when the personnel from The Inn’s headquarters arrived. Then they would proceed to the reclaimed land immediately after, hoping to finish weeding as soon as possible. After all, no one wanted to stay in the vast Gobi for an extended period of time and would much prefer the warmer Jiangnan.

After discussing the details, Qi Xuansu left the Innkeeper’s office and went to Qin Xiang’s room on the second floor.

Qin Xiang had lived in this room for two days before, so she was quite comfortable.

Seeing Qi Xuansu, Qin Xiang hurriedly asked, “Have you finished your work?”

“I’m afraid it will take a few more days.” Qi Xuansu said, “I came here to tell you that if I don’t make it back, you should tell the Innkeeper about your identity. Although I can’t say for sure what he’ll do, there’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll help you contact the Green Phoenix Guard.”

“Only a 50% chance?” Qin Xiang frowned.

Qi Xuansu scoffed. “Those are good enough odds. What do you think The Inn is? A charity house? The Inn is a secret society that has dealings with assassins. There’s a 50% chance of them helping you because they have some relationship with the Green Phoenix Guard. If it were other secret societies, you wouldn’t even get a 10% chance.”

“Did you just say secret society? You mean, this inn is a secret society too?!” Qin Xiang gasped softly.

That was when Qi Xuansu recalled that Qin Xiang had believed this inn to be a proper business.

He roughly told Qin Xiang about The Inn’s background and warned her. “Since The Inn is considered a secret society, please keep in mind that the people here are unscrupulous. It’s still best not to reveal your identity unless you have to. I’m not sure what will happen if you do reveal your identity. They may help to send you home, or they may take you as a hostage to earn a small fortune. It just depends on your luck. Do you understand?”

Having encountered members of the Eight Tribes, Qin Xiang was a little frightened. “Yes, I understand.”

“Alright, that’s all I have to say.” Qi Xuansu turned around and planned to leave.

Qin Xiang suddenly called out to him. “Wait a minute!”

“Is there anything else?” Qi Xuansu stopped and turned to face her.

Qin Xiang hesitated for a moment before she asked with anticipation, “Will you come back?”

Qi Xuansu knew that this District Princess was treating him as her lifesaver, so he said, “I will try my best.”

Qin Xiang was still worried. “You will definitely come back, right?”

“As long as I am still alive,” Qi Xuansu said helplessly.

Qin Xiang mumbled, “Alright, that’s all.”

Qi Xuansu turned and left Qin Xiang’s room.

As the Innkeeper mentioned earlier, there were many guest rooms on the second floor, which were reserved for those from the headquarters. However, since those people did not plan to stay for long, Qi Xuansu got to stay there for free.

Qi Xuansu walked into an empty room and meditated.

The next day, Qi Xuansu woke up from his trance. When he went downstairs, he noticed some new faces in the lobby of The Inn and figured that they were probably external hires, like him.

Some of these people were dozing at the table. Qi Xuansu was unsure if they had not slept all night or if they had not yet woken up. Some of them were eating breakfast consisting of steamed buns, porridge, and pickles; some were checking their weapons and bags with solemn expressions; some were drinking early in the morning, seemingly nonchalant about the upcoming expedition; and some were puffing away with a tobacco pipe.

It was certainly a strange mix of people. The Innkeeper had probably put in a lot of effort to gather all these people for this weeding exercise.

By late afternoon, the personnel from The Inn’s headquarters had arrived. However, they did not look like skilled fighters. Some were dressed as porters, and some were dressed as farmers’ wives. One of them was holding an abacus, looking like a businessman. Someone even had a little monkey crouched on his shoulders. This group of people represented people from all walks of life, which fit the demographic of those who would stay at an inn.

The Innkeeper came forward and exchanged some pleasantries with an old man, who was the leader of the group of nine. Then he introduced these nine people to the outsourced hires.

These nine Guizhen-stage masters from The Inn’s headquarters were certainly more powerful than the newly established Yaoguang Division of Tiangang Hall, indicating just how much The Inn valued this operation. None of the other hires caused trouble, as they were probably intimidated by the nine masters’ cultivation level and were afraid of offending The Inn.

Finally, the Innkeeper cupped his fists and saluted everyone. “I hope you all return safely.”

Under the leadership of the old man, everyone left The Inn and headed outside the city.

......

The West Gobi was located to the west of Cuowenbu, which was also known as the Green Sea.

The destroyed manufacturing plant of Huasheng Hall was located on the shore of Cuowenbu. It was originally a beautiful place surrounded by mountains and rivers, but after the bombing, it was more barren than the Gobi Desert.

The strange curse from the Cult of Fates, the Daoist Order’s Phoenix Eye Bomb, and the zombie cultivation grounds left by the first Earthly Preceptor made this piece of land extremely dangerous.

To begin with, this place had natural elements that facilitated zombie cultivation. Every piece of land had classifications based on Feng Shui. Zombie cultivation grounds were considered unlucky due to the excessive yin energy. If someone was buried in such a place, their corpse would be preserved. After a certain period, the corpse would turn into zombies, which would bite and kill everyone who was related to them by blood.

If someone unintentionally got infected by the evil spirit before turning into a zombie, that person would get black ulcers on their face. Ordinary zombies emerged because corpses were buried on such grounds. However, this natural phenomenon took a long time.

Hundreds of years ago, the Daoist Order accidentally figured out a way to control zombies during a zombie extermination exercise. However, the number of naturally formed zombies was small, and it took too long. That was why methods for zombie cultivation were developed.

To put it bluntly, the Daoist Order created zombie cultivation grounds by artificially gathering yin energy in one place and burying processed corpses there. Then they would stimulate the ground with a formation, like fertilizer on a field, to encourage the quicker development of zombies.

Some of the cultivation methods developed included hybridization and grafting. The result of these experiments was the king of zombies, also called the Bronze Armored Corpse. Bronze Armored Corpses died on the battlefield and were buried there. After more than a hundred years of gestation surrounded by the battlefield’s intense killing aura and resentment, the Bronze Armored Corpses were invulnerable to weapons and fire. Even the exorcism spells were ineffective on them.

The first Earthly Preceptor was a well-deserved expert in zombie cultivation. Back then, she captured a naturally-formed Bronze Armored Corpse and began to study it. She tried to create more of them, but Bronze Armored Corpses required precise timing, location, and human intervention. Manmade Bronze Armored Corpses were too costly, so they settled for the second-best option, which was to weaken some of the characteristics of the Bronze Armored Corpse and mass-produce them.

Based on past experiments from ancient recordings, the first Earthly Preceptor successfully accomplished this. She used the corpse of a Martial Arts Practitioner, processed it with various talismans, medicines, and spells, then dressed the corpse in a special iron armor before burying the corpse in the zombie cultivation grounds. The corpse and the armor combined, resulting in a weaker version of the Bronze Armored Corpse called the Iron Corpse.

Later, the first Earthly Preceptor used the methods of the Ancient Immortal to build upon the Iron Corpse, successively developing other types of zombies, including the Rakshasa, the Yaksha, the Asura, the Great Asura, the King Asura, and the Sakka.

According to legend, the Sakka was comparable to a drought demon. It once defeated a Ghostly Immortal in a head-on fight and was able to compete with Ancient Immortals and first-rank Tianzhen Daoist masters of the Daoist Order.

There were a few zombie cultivation grounds left behind by the first Earthly Preceptor in the process of developing the Sakka. These locations included Cuowenbu, Beimang Mountain in Zhongzhou, Baidi Mausoleum in Shuzhou, as well as Daxue Mountain and Loulan City in Xizhou. Later generations speculated that these places hid the secrets of achieving immortality.

These zombie cultivation grounds, also known as corpse raising grounds, were either destroyed or completely sealed off by the Daoist Order. That was why people were certain that there were secrets behind these places. As such, The Inn was willing to spend so much manpower and material resources to “weed” the area.

However, all of this had nothing to do with Qi Xuansu.