With one quick slash, the person had been decapitated.
Langtian stared at the fallen body, eyes wide with disbelief.
The severed head lay face-up, half-buried in the dirt. Blood still oozed from the ragged stump of the neck, soaking into the soil. But what disturbed him most... was the expression frozen on the face.
It was a look of utter horror, with eyes bulging, mouth agape, lips twisted mid-scream. And even now, a thin stream of black mist coiled from the corners of his mouth, drifting into the air like smoke from a dying fire.
"Senior Sister..." Langtian whispered, stepping closer with cautious steps. "What... was that thing? It’s not a real living person, isn’t it?"
Yue Ling didn’t answer right away.
She knelt beside the corpse, her face calm but cold. With a swift flick of her twin blades, she rolled the body onto its back and pushed aside the bloodstained robe to expose the man’s chest.
Dark burn marks spread across the skin like claw marks. The veins beneath had turned pitch black, swollen like twisted ropes under the flesh. Strangely, the skin wasn’t dried out, but on the contrary, it was slightly swollen, while still retained a faint pink hue.
"As you can see..." Yue Ling said softly, "this is a living demonic corpse. Or rather... was. It’s properly dead now."
Langtian knelt beside her, grabbing a broken stick from the ground and carefully prodding the body. the tip of the stick sunk into the skin.
"Yeah, the muscles and flesh are still soft. The heart is still beating faintly, which is why the blood spurted so strongly from the arteries," Yue Ling continued. "And judging from the lack of rot or decay... this man must have transformed into a living corpse at the exact moment he was about to die."
"I-I see..." Langtian breathed.
"But wait!" he looked up sharply. "If there’s a living corpse here, then there must be a corpse master nearby!"
He immediately stood, hand reaching for his weapon again, eyes scanning the fog with growing urgency.
Normally, living corpses are undead puppets which are raised through forbidden techniques by practitioners of dark cultivation. They can’t act on their own. They always needed a corpse master, someone who would give them commands and direct their movements.
"No, don’t worry, junior brother," Yue Ling said gently, placing a calming hand on his arm. "There’s no corpse master."
"What?" Langtian frowned, brows furrowed in confusion.
"This transformation didn’t come from some dark spell or necromancer’s technique," Yue Ling explained quietly. "This man wasn’t controlled by anyone else. He turned into this because of demonic energy."
"Ahh... I see..." Langtian let out a long breath, a wave of relief washing over him.
’Right... demonic energy.’
That explained the black mist leaking from his mouth. It wasn’t some sorcery—it was simply the overflow of corrupted energy.
Before the man truly died, demonic energy must have flowed into him and taken over his body. No wonder he attacked so suddenly—he was driven purely by bloodlust.
And given how dense the demonic energy in this valley was, something wasn’t just possible...
It was horrifyingly likely.
Yue Ling rose to her feet, brushing the dust off her robes.
"You know what? Unlike you and me, our bodies were slightly sturdier because we managed to form a Seventh Grade Golden Core, most people die the moment they fall. Their bodies usually meet one of two fates."
She held up two fingers.
"One, they get eaten by demonic wolves.
"Two, they turn into a living corpse from demonic corruption."
"Damn... that’s... terrible"
A chill ran down Langtian’s spine.
Because now, he realized that if Senior Sister Shangguan hadn’t found him in time...
He would’ve ended up the same.
"T-thank you, Senior Sister..." he murmured.
"Hey, don’t mention it," Yue Ling said with a faint smile.
However, with that mystery solved, another question immediately surfaced in Langtian’s mind.
"But... why the heck are there demonic corpses of people from our sect here?" he asked, his brows knitting together tightly.
To that, Yue Ling gave a bitter smile and slowly shook her head.
"Junior Brother," she said softly, her voice heavy, "did you really think you and I were the only ones that scum ever threw down here...?"
Langtian’s eyes widened.
"Check his dantian," she said simply.
Without hesitation, Langtian dropped the stick and leaned in. He placed his bare hand over the corpse’s lower abdomen, the place where a cultivator’s dantian should reside.
What he sensed made his heart stop, made his skin crawl.
This man’s dantian was empty. Hollow.
The golden core was gone, completely ripped out.
_______________________
With that, what had happened to the man became painfully clear.
Langtian’s heart pounded.
"Yan Hao Yang... YOU BASTARD!"
He roared, clenched his fists so tightly his nails digged into his palms as fury surged through his veins like a flood breaking through a dam.
The very thought made his stomach churn.
That scum of a Sect Master had stolen another person’s core, another disciple from his own sect no less, and then tossed them into this hellhole to die, without mercy.
Just like he had done to him.
Just like he had done to Senior Sister Shangguan.
Langtian turned toward her, his voice shaking.
"Senior Sister... how many others? How many people have been thrown down here ?"
His whole body trembled.
A part of him was afraid to hear the real answer.
Yue Ling let out a cold, hollow chuckle.
"Once every three to five days," she said flatly.
Langtian blinked. His breath caught.
"What?!" he gasped. "Once every... three to five days?! For the last ten years?!"
"Haha, yes. Sometimes even more frequently, depending on how busy that bastard gets..."
Langtian staggered a step back.
"Heavens..." he whispered, his heart sinking. "Hao Yang... you monster..."
That meant, by now, there must have been thousands.
Thousands of innocent cultivators.
Their golden cores ripped out.
Their lives discarded like garbage, left to rot in this cursed valley.