Chapter 67: Muddy
Leaving the sisters to their wrestling and Feimei to her questionable tea experiments, Kian slipped out of the courtyard and back into the humid morning air of Mulberry Gate City.
He wore his new black silverthread martial robe, the dark fabric feeling nice to his skin as he navigated the narrow alleys toward the city’s western periphery.
Today, he had a plan for going out.
Under his breath, he hummed a low, rhythmic tune, his footsteps barely making a sound on the cobblestones.
It was almost as if he were walking on air, but it was not unnatural enough to be noticed by others.
After about ten minutes of walking, Kian stopped.
There was a big wall infront of him.
For the past him, this wall would have been troublesome and he would have had to go through guarding people. But for the current him, that was no issue.
He walked up the walls until he looked down at his destination.
’Here you are.’
His destination was the western outskirts, past the bustling market square where the previous night’s drama had unfolded.
’The Cold Hill Ossuary,’ he thought.
This was a sprawling, damp plot where the city’s high class dead bodies were buried.
It wasn’t until he reached the rusted iron gates of the cemetery that his thoughts crystallized on his actual target.
Yesterday, Fatty Zhang—the inner disciple of the Jinguan Sect—had been decapitated by Su Chen in front of a crowd of witnesses.
By now, a day had passed, which meant the local authorities and the sect would have already processed the incident, held whatever brief funeral rites were deemed necessary for a disgraced traitor, and dumped the remains.
Kian slid through the vines in the rotting wall, keeping his Qi signature tightly wrapped inside his Juhuan Meridian to avoid attracting the attention of any low-level grave-keepers.
The air here was heavy with the smell of wet earth, pine needles, and the faint, sweet rot of shallow graves.
He navigated the rows of crooked stone markers with a focused intensity, his red eyes—briefly activated with a flicker of his bloodline—tracking the residual Qi signatures lingering in the soil.
A recent inner disciple’s corpse, even one drained of life, would still radiate a unique, dense spiritual heat compared to the surrounding remains.
And indeed, Kian found it.
It didn’t take long to find the fresh earth.
Near the back wall, under the dripping boughs of a weeping willow, a mound of dark, loose clay lay completely unadorned.
There was no headstone, only a wooden stake marked with the character for ’Disgrace’ in smeared black ink.
They did indeed name him a traitor!
Kian crouched beside the mound, a focus spreading slowly across his face.
He extended his right hand, and a shovel flew from the side into his hand.
With the strength of his current body, it only took a few minutes before he dug the mud up.
There, lying in a crude wooden box with the lid barely nailed shut, was the headless body of Fatty Zhang, his fat neck still stained with dried, dark crimson.
Kian, currently dirty with mud, looked down at the corpse.
"Hey, Zhang. I lacked a fat friend in my story, so would you mind being that?"
He extended his hand, activating his exotic martial art.
A small wound appeared across his five fingers.
Out of the wounds, small droplets of blood leaked down his fingers and slowly dripped onto the decapitated corpse’s head.
Kian stared intently at it.
The blood did not slide down the man’s skin, instead seeping into him and becoming one with him.
With Kian’s senses, he noticed that Zhang’s blood was slowly starting to move.
’No.’
It was not Zhang’s blood. It was Kian’s blood, slowly taking over Zhang’s.
’I only dropped such a little amount of blood. How is it doing this?’
Soon, the blood in his hand stopped falling and the finger wounds automatically stitched back up.
Kian stretched his hands, feeling no pain.
Suddenly, he heard a heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.
The blood inside the fatty had corrupted all the blood in its body by now.
Kian backed up a little.
The fatty slowly stood up, its head held in its hand. Then, without any prior sign, the body suddenly shrank.
It was so immediate that it surprised even Kian.
The body shrunk like meat being grinded and crumbled into itself.
As Kian frowned in distaste, the corpse completely shrank.
It was no longer a corpse.
It did not even look human.
What floated infront of Kian now was a large droplet of blood.
It was about the size of his hand.
Feeling a strange connection to it, Kian extended his hand and the drop of blood fell on his palm.
The droplet then transformed again, now looking like a miniature fatty made of blood.
Now, its head was no longer decapitated.
[Art of the Blood Beasts succesful]
[You have gained a Blood Beast]
[The system has discovered some flaws in the technique. Would you like to fix the flaws? (Cost: 100 Low Grade Spirit Stones]
Kian was surprised.
With a thought, he nodded.
[Ding]
[The system has removed the flaws from the technique. Now, you can store your Blood Beasts in your Bloodstream.]
Kian looked at the blood fatty and as he was staring, the blood beast vanished.
Closing his eyes, Kian sensed that it was now part of his bloodstream. One of the many bloodcells in his eyes.
It didn’t even feel like it existed, but Kian knew that he could summon it to fight on his behalf with a thought.
’Good, good, good!’
Kian left the burial hole and quickly put it back into place.
Then, without stopping, he left the way he came.
Standing on the top of the wall, Kian turned to look back for one last time before he vanished like the wind.
One moment, dreaming of immortality.
Another moment, dying.
That was how the cultivation world was.
There was no lack of ambitious people.
But only a few stood a chance to succeed.
Even fewer actually succeeded.
Blood in the wind, dust in the cosmos.
’I need a bath.’