Grudge corpses were intelligent!
That was the one thing the grandmaster had emphasized before turning into a zombie himself.
The air was thick with unbearable tension. Utmost yin energy weighed down heavily on Lu Yun and Qing Han, making it difficult to breathe. The grudge corpse’s empty gaze swept over them every once in a while, but its attention was always fleeting, as if it hadn’t noticed them.
“What do we do now?” Qing Han transmitted carefully.
“Don’t alarm it. Let’s go.” Lu Yun kept his eyes fixed on the grudge corpse as he retreated gingerly. I still don’t know how to deal with it.
Releasing the nine bloodcorpses was out of the question. If the body in this tomb had already become a grudge corpse, then the body in the central, most powerful tomb would also be the same monster, or something even more terrifying.
If he let the bloodcorpses out, he risked attracting all five of the zombies in the tombs. They’d be in real trouble then.
Retreat was the course for now, until they could come up with a solution. He knew how to destroy a Skandha Extinction Tomb, but not these zombie variants. Although the creature’s existence wasn’t a surprise, he’d thought they wouldn’t run into one until they entered the central tomb.
And yet, here it was.
“It’s following us!” Qing Han suddenly transmitted quietly.
“What?” Lu Yun started. In his eyes, the grudge corpse was still sitting on the netherwood coffin, settling its empty gaze on the two of them without doing anything.
Whoosh.
A scroll expanded from Qing Han’s hands, allowing the emergence of a giant black dragon.
Bam!!
The dragon collided with something with a great bang.
Qing Han quickly gathered Lu Yun in his arms and flew in another direction, protecting the two of them with a soft white hue. Meanwhile, an epic battle had broken out between the black dragon and something invisible. Dragon howls and raspy growls reverberated through the darkness.
“The black dragon is a peerless immortal, but the grudge corpse manages to rival it! No, it’s winning!” Color drained from Qing Han’s face.
Like the rimesnake king, the black dragon had lost its internal energy. Nevertheless, that hadn’t weakened its close combat abilities, and it was still physically powerful. Though it was a scaled wyrm, it knew many draconic fighting styles.
Yet the thing in the dark was not only matching the dragon’s might, but gaining the upper hand.
“Let’s go!” Taking advantage of the space created by the dragonguard, Lu Yun activated a dozen short-range teleportation talismans in quick succession to avoid the terrible shockwaves. He then pressed a formation disk into the ground.
Hum.
A barrier of five elements enveloped them.
Bam!
Crack crack crack!
Collision forces from the battle between the peerless immortals slammed into the Feinie-crafted formation disk, fracturing it with a crack. Tapping into his reserve of energy, Lu Yun quickly pressed a dozen more formation disks on the ground and barely blocked the aftershocks.
How did the grandmaster escape the grudge corpse?! His brain went into overdrive as he analyzed the situation. He rapidly flipped through the sect records in his memories, scanning everything related to Skandha Extinction Tombs and grudge corpses.
Grudge corpses on Earth wouldn’t be this powerful, but the grandmaster was only a mortal and wouldn’t have any treasures of the immortal world on him. The gap between the grandmaster and the grudge corpse should be similar to the gap between Lu Yun and this creature. Ergo, Lu Yun, like his grandmaster before him, was up against an insurmountable force.
However, the grandmaster had not only explored all five tombs, but also escaped the grudge corpse. Lu Yun must be missing a critical element he’d overlooked.
Bam!
A dramatic explosion ricocheted through the darkness. Something crashed into a wall with a loud thud, shaking the entire underground cavern. Agonized dragon howls rang out, followed by the sound of teeth tearing into flesh.
Qing Han’s face fell. “The grudge corpse defeated the dragonguard!”
“Recall the dragon!” Lu Yun panicked.
No matter the kind of zombie, they became more vicious and powerful after consuming flesh and blood. Feasting on the dragon would only make the grudge corpse that much stronger. Lu Yun wouldn’t even have a chance to retreat back to the Gates of the Abyss then.
Qing Han hurriedly collected the dragon’s bitten form with the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals.
ROARRRRR.
A furious growl snaked out of the darkness. Having its food snatched away from its mouth had enraged the grudge corpse, and it immediately came for Lu Yun and Qing Han.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Feinie’s defensive formations broke like eggs.
“Die...” muttered the grudge corpse.
A zombie that could talk! Lu Yun and Qing Han barely had any time to react before a glowing, black claw appeared in front of them.
Hum.
In the split second before the attack landed, violet sword energy exploded from Lu Yun.
A white figure abruptly appeared out of nowhere and knocked the grudge corpse away with a careless fling. At the same time, a violet coffin seemed to inch open, permitting the energy of the ninth-rank sword to gradually form a world. To Lu Yun’s shock, it teemed with tombs.
“Violetgrave… so this is what the name refers to!” murmured Lu Yun.
A collection of tombs forming a collective whole was called a mausoleum, while the tombs of singular kings and emperors were later on also referred to as mausoleums due to their grand scale. Regular tomb raiders might be able to break into an emperor’s mausoleum, but not a collection of tombs.
The feng shui of different tombs synergized to create a feng shui influence in a mausoleum, and all of the tombs within that mausoleum combined to form a single entity. Attacking one tomb was akin to attacking the entire collection. In order to break the mausoleum, one had to destroy all of the tombs in it at the same time.
Lu Yun didn’t know if there was an emperor’s tomb among the collection within Violetgrave, but the grand influence of the mausoleum had already formed.
The white figure padded out of the projection, pointing Violetgrave at the grudge corpse.
The grudge corpse stood atop the netherwood coffin, its originally empty gaze shining with bloodlust as it stared down the man in white.
Lu Yun vaguely recalled the same figure cutting Li Xing down when Qing Han pushed the sword to the fullest to save him.
“How did you two end up in a place like this, you imps?” sighed the white figure, his soft tone troubled. “This zombie is fueled by grudges and is almost invincible. How am I to deal with it?”
“Cousin?” Qing Han blinked at the figure in incomprehension.