Chapter 397 - Corpse-refining

It was not until the woman in red left that the atmosphere in the hall gradually turned relaxing. Elder Xu looked pale and was sweaty all over. His legs went weak that he slumped down on the ground. Seeing that, Yan Liang stepped forward hurriedly to support him and said, “Elder!”

Elder Xu raised and waved his trembling wrinkled hand. At this moment, Xiao Chen stepped forward as well and said with his hands folded, “The Lady Ambassador was just so angry to say that. I have been trained by you for three years, elder, so, I dare not…”

Elder Xu shook his head and said, “Han Yun, this has nothing to do with you. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you…” After saying that, he looked out of the hall again, thinking that since the Lady Ambassador had come to such a small place herself, the seniors of the sect must be anxious to get more Grudge Furnaces, and that Furnaces Collection must not be delayed and he could no longer keep the Grudge Furnaces privately.

“Han Liang… Yan Liang.” Elder Xu seemed really frightened this time that he miscalled his disciple. Yan Liang heard him saying, “Bring the Grudge Furnaces to the Corps Cave behind right now, and Rancorous Qi must be extracted within three days.”

“Yes!”

Yan Liang glanced down at the dozens of disciples below, who immediately went outside the cave house in an orderly manner. After they left, Elder Xu walked staggering back to the seat high in the hall. Yan Liang frowned as he said, “Elder, why did the Lady Ambassador come here? Could it be that the Divine Corpse…”

Before the words were finished, Elder Xu glanced at him and said, “Yan Liang, you have followed me for a long time, right?”

Yan Liang replied with his hands folded, “It has been ten years since I came to follow you, elder.” Elder Xu said, “After these ten years, you should know that it is beyond our power to ask about the affairs about the seniors. It is best not to mention them.”

Yan Liang was startled into cold sweats and quickly said, “I was being careless just now. I dare not do it again.” Elder Xu waved his hand and said, “Alright, you go back to work.”

“Then, I’ll excuse myself, elder,” Yan Liang cupped his hand as he said and turned to leave. But when he just took a few steps away, he turned around suddenly. Elder Xu looked at him and asked, “What’s wrong? Is there anything else?”

Yan Liang frowned, shook his head, and said, “Nothing, just that I think Han Yun and his brother were a little strange today…”

…

A while later, the disciples saw Yan Liang come out with a pale face, and one of them stepped forward carefully and asked, “What happened to you, Senior Brother Yan?”

Yan Liang shook his hand and seemed to inadvertently glance at Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue, who had changed their faces into Han’s brothers, and finally whispered, “In recent days, we must speed up the furnace collection. The seniors of the sect are anxious to get them. Let’s go now so as not to delay it.”

The disciples bypassed the Elder Xu’s cave house and walked to the back mountain. After walking for an hour, Xiao Chen saw some simple houses and courtyards, which probably were the disciples’ dormitories. After walking for a while, Xiao Chen felt an increasingly strong death aura. Presumably, he was not far from the corpse-refining cave.

Finally, the disciples reached outside a cave house surrounded by chilling air in the back mountain. It could be seen that some plants nearby were withered, and ice was condensed on the stone wall of the entrance to the cave. Su Lianyue felt so cold that she shivered.

Yan Liang walked to the entrance of the cave house, opened the door of a secret stone room, took out some black robes, and distributed them to the disciples. Xiao Chen took two robes and handed one to Su Lianyue. After putting on the robe, Su Lianyue felt warmer. Of course, these black robes were not for the disciples to keep warm but to defend themselves from Corpse Qi. The disciples of the External Sect did not have a stable foundation; as a result, they should not be exposed to too much Corpse Qi.

After entering the cave house, the disciples felt even colder. After passing through a dark martyrdom, Xiao Chen felt a little shocked by what he saw—it was much more spacious and the light was not too dark inside the cave house, where nearly a hundred altars were neatly placed. On each altar was a corpse, beside which a Corpse Refinery Sect’s disciple was extracting Rancorous Qi.

To prevent sudden corpse changes, a yellow seal was affixed to the forehead of each corpse. With the corpses’ mouths wide open, traces of black gas were slowly drawn out from their mouths to the small black cauldrons that floated in the air next to them.

Su Lianyue frowned slightly. The scene seemed to make her feel a little uncomfortable. The nearly 100 Corpse Refinery Sect’s disciples were expressionless when they did the same action repeatedly as the walking dead. There was a man in red among them. Holding a whip in his hand, he went back and forth to supervise the disciples. Anyone who loafed on the job would be whipped by him.

The man in red saw Yan Liang and the other disciples come in, and immediately came to them and said, “Senior Brother Yan Liang.”

Yan Liang nodded slightly and replied, “Junior Brother Qi Yan.” He added, “This morning, we collected more than 700 Grudge Furnaces, and the elder urged us to speed up the work. Plus the furnaces we collected before, all the furnaces must be extracted in three days.”

“No problem.” Qi Yan answered and turned to shout loudly at other disciples, “Have you heard it? Don’t slack off!”

The disciples were silent, and Yan Liang turned to the disciples that came with him and said, “All of you, join them now.” The disciples didn’t say much, and each of them went to an altar and started to work.

Xiao Chen naturally went to join them as well, and with Han Yun’s partial memory, he naturally knew something about these simple operations, but he felt that the Class D disciples of the sect were like servants.

It was not difficult to extract the Rancorous Qi from the corpses. Most of the Rancorous Qi in corpses was gathered in their throats, and the Qi was commonly known as the last breath that one failed to breathe in before dying. The difficult part about the job was to extract all the Rancorous Qi from the corpses. One could do it only little by little so as not to waste the Qi. Therefore, it basically took more than an hour to extract all the Rancorous Qi in each corpse, and it would take more time to do so if one met a corpse with strong Rancorous Qi.

Seeing that everyone was working seriously, Yan Liang exclaimed, “Please work harder these three days, and when it’s finished, I will find you some beautiful girls from the brothel in the town.”

The words made the atmosphere in the cold cave a litter livelier. However, Su Lianyue frowned harder at the words and cursed to herself that it was disgusting.

After saying that, Yan Liang looked at Qi Yan and said, “Junior Brother Qi Yan, come out with me.”

After Yan Liang and Qi Yan left, the atmosphere in the cave turned more relaxing, and many people began to whisper about what Yan Liang had said just now.

While extracting the Rancorous Qi in a corpse, Xiao Chen whispered to a disciple next to him, “Do you know why the seniors of the sect wanted the Rancorous Qi so urgently?”

The man looked around and whispered, “Han Yun, are you crazy? Do more and talk less!”

Su Lianyue standing aside frowned hard. Even though she had killed many people, she still felt disgusted when touching these corpses. In addition, because she was unskillful in the operation, the cauldron which carried the Rancorous Qi kept wavering under her control. In frustration, she waved her sleeves and knocked the cauldron down on the ground. Traces of black gas spread out from inside the cauldron.

Everyone inside the cave was startled by her action. They turned around and looked at her, with some doubts and more fear in their eyes. Xiao Chen frowned, and at this moment, a cold voice came from behind, “What’s going on?”

More than a hundred disciples came to their minds, and immediately began to do their own work absorbedly as if they hadn’t seen anything. It could be heard that footsteps were approaching gradually in the cave. It turned out to be from Qi Yan, the man in red. He looked at the mini cauldron on the ground, from which black gas floated out, and then looked at Su Lianyue, who disguised as Han Yu, and said coldly, “Pick it up.”

His voice was so cold that it seemed to freeze the air. Everyone shivered and immersed themselves in the work. They didn’t even dare to breathe heavily. Xiao Chen frowned. He knew from Han Yun’s memory that the man in front of him was named Qi Yan, who was in the middle stage of the Core Forming Realm. Because of his disagreement with Shen Qing in his early years, he had been targeting the Han brothers. Last month, he even found some excuses to bully the two brothers.

“I told you to pick it up, didn’t you hear me?” Qi Yan said coldly again, and the disciples trembled again, but a cold killing intention flashed in Su Lianyue’s eyes.

Xiao Chen frowned, and bent down to pick up the cauldron, but just when he held the cauldron, Qi Yan stepped on it and said, “I told him to pick it up, not you!”

Many people in the cave looked aside at them carefully. Xiao Chen took a deep breath, slowly stood up, and smiled, saying, “My brother just accidentally knocked it over on the ground. Senior Brother Qi, please don’t be angry.”

Su Lianyue squeezed her fingers and finally walked over to pick up the cauldron. Qi Yan snorted, stared at them and then walked forward, saying coldly, “Get to do your job, hurry up! Whoever doesn’t want to live can say it out now!”

None of the disciples dared to say a word, and they continued working until 11 pm. It was colder and colder in the cave as if the air were to freeze the disciples in the cave. Su Lianyue was shivering with cold and her hands were trembling, while others were a little sleepy, too.

Qi Yan was also a little tired. He yawned and said, “Okay, this is all for today. Come early tomorrow.” After saying this, he looked at Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue and said, “This time, Senior Brother Yan Liang asked the two of you to send the Grudge Cauldron to Tai Yin Cavity. There must be no mistake about it. Do you understand?”

There were many External Sects like Chang Yin Cavity in the Corpse Refinery Sect. The collected Grudge Cauldrons had to be sent to Tai Yin Cavity first before the sect handed them over to the Internal Sect. No mistake should appear along the way; otherwise, the people involved in this would be killed. As a result, most of the disciples did not want to do such a troublesome job.

Xiao Chen noticed a glimmer of murdering intention from Qi Yan’s eyes. It seemed that because of what the woman in red said during the day, Elder Xu really had thought about killing him and Su Lianyue. Xiao Chen smiled and answered, “Don’t worry; there won’t be any problem about it.”

The disciples left the cave in an orderly manner and went outside. Although it was still a bit cold outside the cave, it was much better than in the cave. Su Lianyue was still trembling with cold. Xiao Chen looked at her and said, “Are you cold?”

Su Lianyue put her hands over her shoulders, shook her head and did not speak. After leaving the back mountain, the disciples returned to their rooms to rest, and according to Han Yun’s memory, Xiao Chen found a humble hut with two small wooden beds, as well as some dilapidated tables and chairs. Nevertheless, the room was clean and tidy and was exactly where the two Han brothers lived.

When Xiao Chen and Su Lianyue entered the room, Xiao Chen immediately closed the doors and windows and set up a Soundproof Barrier that people inside the room could hear the noise of the outside while the people outside the room could not hear the voices of the inside. After she lit up a candle, Su Lianyue immediately changed into her original appearance because her disguise skill could not last long. Xiao Chen also peeled off the leather mask on his face to get some fresh air.

The two looked at each other, and Xiao Chen habitually made a hush gesture, and then whispered, “We can’t act tonight. Three days later, as Qi Yan has said, we would go to send the Grudge Cauldron. That will be our best opportunity.”

Su Lianyue nodded and said, “Did you find anything strange with the woman in red today? I’ve never heard of it before that there are female disciples in Corpse Refinery Sect.”

Xiao Chen frowned and pondered for a long time. The woman in red they met today did not have high cultivation, but Elder Xu was extremely afraid of her. Besides, Ye Wuxin seemed very cautious last night when he acted. It appeared that he was in fear of something. The Corpse Refinery Sect appeared more and more unusual…

“I suddenly thought of something!” Su Lianyue suddenly looked serious as if she had been frightened by something. Xiao Chen frowned and asked, “What is it?”

“Yu Yangzi, the leader of Corpse Refinery Sect who disappeared three hundred years ago!”