Most of these houses were very small, with simple, even rudimentary designs. It was clear at a glance that they had been built in a hurry. Some had been burned down to their frames, while others had collapsed. Even the best-preserved houses were half destroyed. After being subjected to the elements for more than a decade with nobody to look after them, they were on their last legs. They looked like wraiths in tattered rags, silently watching the visitors coming up from the foot of the mountain.
Ever since they had ascended the mountain, Wen Ning’s footsteps had been particularly heavy. Now he stopped in front of one of the houses, unable to move his feet at all.
This was a house he’d built with his own hands. Before he’d left, this house had been perfectly intact. Although it was simple and rudimentary, it had been a perfect shelter from storms and a home to people he knew and cherished.
As the saying went, “things remain, but people change.” While the things remained, there was nothing left here to remind him of the people that were long gone.
“Don’t look,” Wei Wuxian told him.
“…I knew long ago that it would be like this,” Wen Ning said. “I just wanted to see if there was anything left…”
Before he could finish, a human figure rose unsteadily to its feet inside one of the dilapidated houses.
It lumbered outside, exposing its partially decayed face to the faint daylight. Wei Wuxian clapped his hands. The walking corpse remained oblivious and continued to lumber towards them.
Wei Wuxian calmly took two steps back. “It’s being controlled by the Yin Tiger Tally.”
Corpse puppets that had previously submitted to him would not be subject to the control of the Yin Tiger Tally. Similarly, corpse puppets that were currently being manipulated by the Yin Tiger Tally would not heed his command.
The rule was simple and crude: first come, first served.
Wen Ning lunged forward. He ripped the corpse’s head off with a snarl. Immediately afterward, a low noise rumbled all around them. Forty or fifty animated corpses slowly lumbered out of the black forest. Most of these corpses—male and female, young and old—were still fresh and dressed in burial clothes. They were likely the corpses that had recently gone missing from various regions.
Lan Wangji flipped out his guqin and strummed. The sound rippled outward and all around, and the advancing horde of corpses that had surrounded them instantly kneeled. Wen Ning lifted an extraordinarily burly male corpse with both hands and flung it several meters away, impaling it through the chest on a sharp branch. It struggled incessantly, stuck in place.
“Don’t bother with them,” Wei Wuxian ordered. “Head straight up the mountain!”
He had no idea how many walking corpses Jin Guangyao had managed to frenetically summon with the Yin Tiger Tally over the last few days. Wave after wave kept coming, and the trio beat back the hordes as they withdrew up the mountain. The closer they came to the top of the Burial Mounds, the denser the hordes of corpses grew. The music of the guqin reverberated through the sky above the towering black forest, and crows took flight from the trees at the sound.
It was nearly four hours before that they were finally able to rest.
Wei Wuxian sat atop a destroyed stone beast statue and heaved a weary breath. “I used to be the one using that thing against everyone, but now it’s finally someone else’s turn to use it against me,” he mocked himself. “I know now just how abominable the Yin Tiger Tally is. If I’d been on the receiving end back in the day, I’d have wanted to kill whoever made the damn thing too.”
Lan Wangji put away his guqin, then pulled out a longsword from his sleeve and handed it to Wei Wuxian. “For defense.”
It was Suibian. Wei Wuxian had idly tossed the sword aside after using it to cut up the melon earlier, and it seemed Lan Wangji had tucked it away again. Wei Wuxian took it from him now. He unsheathed the sword and gazed at its snow-white blade for a while before decisively pressing it back into its sheath.
With a smile, he said, “Thanks.”
He secured it at his waist, although he had no intention of using it. Seeing Lan Wangji looking expectantly at him, he scratched his head.
“It’s been too many years since I last used that sword. I’m out of practice.” Then he sighed. “All right, the real reason is that my new body’s spiritual power is weak. Even if I’m armed to the teeth with a top-grade spiritual weapon, I won’t be able to use its power to the fullest. So this frail, delicate man must still rely on Hanguang-jun to protect him.”
Lan Wangji had no reply. “…”
The frail, delicate man sat for a while before he finally braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself upright. The trio continued to ascend the mountain for a while longer. At the end of the path, they reached a cave.
The pitch-black mouth of the cave was over sixteen meters tall and wide. Before they even got close, they were assaulted by gust after gust of chilly wind. They could almost hear faint, indiscernible human moans.
This was rumored to be the Yiling Patriarch’s infamous lair, where he’d committed atrocities most unspeakable and slain humans to conscript them into the ranks of his army of the dead. The Demon-Quelling Cave.
The domed ceiling of the Demon-Quelling Cave was high and broad. The three held their breath as they crept into the cave. Not one of them made a single sound, but the human voices coming from deep within the cave only grew louder and noisier.
Wei Wuxian knew this cave’s terrain like the back of his hand. He walked at the front, leading them, and when they came to a particular spot, he gestured for the other two to stop.
They were separated from the main area of the cave by a stone wall. Through the holes in the wall, they could see a cavern big enough to accommodate a thousand people. Over a hundred currently sat in the center with their limbs securely bound by Immortal-Binding Ropes. From the looks of it, the captives were all extremely young. Judging by their swords and the colors of their attire, they were either scions or high-ranking sect disciples from various clans.