Chapter 2: Necromancy
We have been traveling for a day. Yesterday, when I said goodbye to Xuan, I cried my heart out. Although I had only spent less than ten days with her, our bond was truly like that of brother and sister. This time, we are parting ways. She is in the Chu-Huai Kingdom, and I am in the Empire of the Sun Never Sets. We will never meet again! It’s all that damned Prince’s fault. Next time I see him, I will definitely give him a good scolding.
Just as I was thinking about how to fix the prince, my sister Suizi said, “Young master, I’m afraid there really isn’t anywhere to stay within a hundred li of here.”
“I have to hurry back, my parents haven’t seen me for a few days, they’ll be worried,” I said.
“But we can’t travel all night, look, there are a few broken down houses over there, we can stay there for the night,”
“Okay,“ I said indifferently. It had been so many days already, and it wouldn’t make a difference for a few more hours. But when I looked at those few houses, I immediately perked up: ‘We’ll stay there tonight.’
A hundred paces from the house, Sister Suizi’s face changed and she stopped in her tracks. ‘Young master, let’s find another place. There’s something strange about this place.’
”We’ll stay here tonight,” I said decisively, my tone leaving no room for doubt.
Sister Suizi frowned. She knew I already understood that there was something strange about this place, but she still insisted on staying here, so she must have another purpose. So she had no choice but to lead me further inside.
Inside the house, there was only one thing that caught my eye: the skeletons all over the floor. I had an expression of surprise on my face. These skeletons had all been summoned, and their bones had been specially treated to increase their resistance to physical impact. I wasn’t unfamiliar with this technique, but it was quite difficult. I didn’t have a lot of medicine or equipment, so I couldn’t help but become even more curious about the owner of this place.
In the middle of the night, there was a sound of wailing and howling outside the house, and Suizi’s face paled.
“Sister Suizi, you might as well hide in the dark.“
”No, I have to protect you.“
”Don’t worry.” I casually summoned two Minotaurs (an upgrade of the Minotaur) and three Windriders (which can fly): ”You can see that I have monsters protecting me. If someone really comes to kill me, they can hold them off for a while. Then you can sneak out from the dark and the effect will be much better.”
Sister Sui nodded silently, took a few steps back, and slowly disappeared into the darkness.
A skeleton in the room slowly got up and walked towards me, making strange noises. I looked at it curiously. How could this person summon a skeleton? It couldn’t be that this was all the strength he had, it didn’t seem like it. I sent out a pillar of fire, which immediately scattered the skeleton. After a while, the bones gathered together, and the skeleton stood up shakily and walked towards me again. I took out the water pistol and aimed it at its leg. With a crackling sound, the skeleton’s leg was immediately corroded, and the skeleton fell to the ground, but it even used its hands to support itself as it crawled towards me. I was intrigued and sprayed again, corroding its two hands. I thought to myself, “Now see how you can move.”
The skeleton was unable to crawl towards me and could only struggle on the ground, its head still staring at me. I got angry and corroded its head as well, to show it that I was in charge.
At this point, all the skeletons in the room stood up and pounced on me. Two minotaurs blocked my way, while the wind beast swooped down from time to time, grabbed the skeletons’ heads, and threw them out of the room.
The weak point of the skeleton is the head. Once the head is cut off, within a minute the entire skeleton will fall apart. If the head is destroyed, the skeleton can never be summoned again unless another head is added. Skeletons are extremely hard, especially skulls, and it is not easy to smash them. Hitting a skull with great force will usually only knock it off, without damaging it (note that even with only half a skull, the skeleton can still move). One way to deal with skeletons is to beat them into pieces. The farther the bones are scattered, the more mana the necromancer will spend when re-summoning them, and the more time it will take. Therefore, as long as the skeleton is beaten into pieces, you can escape while the necromancer is re-assembling the skeleton.
Skeletons began to pour in through the door, and the two Minotaurs could still block them. I frowned and used a small sea of fire in front of me, infusing it with samadhi fire, which scattered the skeletons. The bones were completely deformed and turned black, and the organic matter was completely destroyed, so they could no longer be summoned.
Suddenly, three bangs came from outside the door. Without thinking, I used the two-layer thick earth wall in front of me. Three arrows were shot at the wall, but they did not penetrate. I clenched my hands in cold sweat. I was surprised that there were still people who knew how to shoot a bow and arrow. Fortunately, it was shot by a skeleton, so the force was not strong and the speed was not fast (the skeleton did not have enough strength to fully draw the bow), otherwise I would have been shot through without being able to react. I hurriedly instructed the three wind monsters to pounce on the skeleton archers and destroy them, throwing their heads into the sea of flames. I summoned four iron bulls to completely block me, and then ten gargoyles. As soon as the gargoyles appeared, they petrified a large area of skeletons. This saved me a lot of trouble. The minotaur went up and smashed the skeletons with an axe, really slaughtering them. The skeletons, which had no way to defend themselves, were smashed into pieces in large pieces.
Suddenly, a large black ball flew in through the door. My face changed, and the wall of thick earth once again blocked my way. The black ball exploded, and the two Minotaurs in the front immediately turned into skeletons. There was not a trace of flesh on the iron bull to my left. This black ball is the Bloodsucking Orb of Dark Magic.
Another Bloodsucking Orb flew in from outside, so I quickly dispatched the two Minotaur skeletons. The two great axes struck the Orb without missing, and it exploded once again, but it was unable to impact my Earth Wall.
Someone outside let out a surprised gasp, followed by a shout of “Stop!” and the silence of the house. I was curious, so I drove the Minotaur Skeleton and Iron Bull and the others outside.
Outside, there were skeletons, zombies, bloodsucking monsters, and even headless horsemen standing in groups. There were also a few hooded people in the open space, about a dozen of them. After I walked out, all ten people looked at me, their eyes full of confusion. No matter how you look at it, this kid in front of you shouldn’t be able to summon these monsters and skeletons.
“This is a misunderstanding. If we knew that you were also a necromancer, we would not have attacked you,” said a gray-robed man in the middle.
“Why?“ I asked curiously. What does a necromancer have to do with this?
”Don’t you know?“ The other party sounded a little strange. ‘Necromancy is a forbidden art that is not allowed in any country. We did it to keep our secret.’
”I don’t know,“ I answered honestly.
”More than a thousand years ago, the Lord of the Dead once swept across half the continent with his army, bringing a deep disaster to all countries. After the war, necromancy was banned in all countries.”
“So how was the Undead King finally destroyed?” I asked an unrelated question out of curiosity.
But the man still satisfied my curiosity: “When the army of the undead entered the heartland of the Empire of the Sun Never Sets, hundreds of high priests from the Xiezhen Temple and the Jiansheng Chengkong Temple arrived and joined forces to chant the great compassionate Zen chant of Buddhism. All the spirits within a hundred miles were liberated, and the million-strong army of the Lord of the Undead was reduced to nothing overnight. The army of the Empire of the Sun Never Sets then killed its way out and beheaded the Lord of the Undead on the Slope of the Dead.”
I nodded excitedly. So it was our country that eliminated this scourge.
“Although the Lord of the Dead was wrong, it was extreme to ban necromancy like that,” I said with a bit of sympathy.
“Yes, necromancy is a very wonderful kind of magic. It uses death to understand the will of heaven, and there are many wonders to it. It’s a pity to just exterminate it like that, and that’s why over the past thousand years, countless extraordinary people have joined our ranks of necromancers.”
“What about them,“ I pointed at the people in black robes, ‘they should be dark mages, right?’
”The Necromancer’s brother and the first general of the Necromancer Army is the Dark Mage,“ a dark-robed mage said stiffly.
I nodded in understanding.
”Since we are all on the same side, let’s take a look at our laboratory,“ the gray-robed man in the center said.
”Sure, show me. I’m very interested in what you’ve done with those skeletons,”
“You can tell that too? Great, that’s exactly my masterpiece, let’s go.“
”Wait a minute,” a dark mage stepped forward, looking suspiciously at the darkness around him, ”it seems that someone is still hiding here.”
I can’t help but admire this person. Sister Sui’s skill at hiding is such that even Sister Xuan didn’t notice, but this person was able to sense it. In fact, this person was able to sense it because he practices dark magic and is particularly sensitive to fluctuations in dark power. And the last time Sister Xuan didn’t sense Sui in time, there was an important reason for this: her full attention was on the four-handed monster.
“That’s my bodyguard,“ I told them, ‘her name is Suizi.’
”Then let’s go,” the gray-robed man said, looking a little anxious.
So I gathered most of the monsters and followed him into a tunnel (it seems I have a connection with tunnels these days). The underground guardians were all high-level undead, including dark swordsmen, nether shooters, bone snakes, and more.
After entering the cave, many dark mages and necromancers left us, and only two followed me, one a necromancer and the other a dark mage. “We’re almost there. Look at this door. Yalic has added magic to it. If an ignorant person touches it, their hands will immediately rot. Only by entering the correct magic can the door be opened.”
Of course I could see that powerful dark magic had been added to the door, but I still asked, “What if someone just blasts the door?”
“There is a composite magic (that is, magic performed by a group of people working together) sealed on the door inside that is comparable in power to a ninth-level magic spell. As long as the door is broken, it will detonate immediately, and nothing will remain here.”
“Then you guys have it pretty easy. As long as someone sneaks in here, they just have to smash the door open, right?”
“This place is guarded by undead (undead are very sensitive to human breath), and there are also some powerful magical traps. No one can sneak in without being noticed. If your companions hadn’t been stopped by me when they entered, they would have attacked long ago.”
I nodded to show that I understood.
The gray-robed man opened the door and entered the room, and we followed suit. The room was very large, with a hundred or so stone coffins, which were clearly meant to contain undead. There was even an operating table in the room, and I wondered what they used it for. However, my eyes were immediately drawn to something else: a pool of water, surrounded by a misty haze, with a round hole in the ceiling. Moonlight streamed down into the pool, as if it had a will of its own.
“What is this?” I gazed at the pool.
“Little brother is truly a genius, able to see the most precious thing at a glance,“ the gray-robed man praised, ‘that is the Moon Chill Spirit Pool that has been passed down among our necromancers for generations.’
”I didn’t think you guys actually had something like this here,” I said with a fake sigh, actually I had no idea what it was for, I just asked because I saw that it was an extraordinary object. I glanced back at the gray-robed man and was shocked. The gray-robed man and the black-robed man had already taken off their masks, and those two faces were truly terrifying. The grey-robed man’s face looked like a skeleton’s; it seemed as if there was no flesh at all under the skin, just the bones. The black-robed man’s face was extremely strange-looking, as if he were a demon. His muscles were stiff and twisted into a ball, and there was a layer of black mist around him.
I sighed inwardly. These people obviously don’t know how to regulate yin and yang, which is why they have these faces.
Seeing my surprise, the grey-robed man laughed: “Don’t be afraid, you’ll look like this too in the future.”
I tilted my head and ignored him, I would never do that.
The grey-robed man pointed at the Moon-Cold Spirit Pool and said, “With this kind of help, you can improve the combat effectiveness of the undead.” The grey-robed man sighed again and said, “However, so far only three powerful Dark Swordsmen have been able to enter the pool for a short while, and the rest of them have never been able to get up again once they enter the pool. However, the strength of those three Dark Swordsmen has increased threefold.” There was sadness in the grey-robed man’s tone, but more excitement.
“Is it that strong?” I tilted my head and looked at the Moon Cold Spirit Pool, ‘You, go take a look.’ I pointed at a Minotaur skeleton.
The Minotaur skeleton walked towards the Moon Cold Spirit Pool, and the grey-robed man smiled and did not stop him.
The Minotaur skeleton walked into the pool. As soon as it entered, it trembled all over. I knew something was wrong and quickly ordered it to come out. The Minotaur skeleton struggled to climb out of the Moon Cold Spirit Pool, but after taking two steps, it collapsed to the ground and could no longer get up. The entire skeleton appeared an icy blue color. My face changed, and I went up to carefully observe the Bullhead Demon Skeleton lying on the ground. It turned out that the extreme cold had damaged the organic matter in the skeleton, causing it to mutate, so that the skeleton could no longer move. When the cold invaded the skull, the skeleton would lose its sensing ability and could no longer be summoned. Once you know the cause, you naturally know how to solve it. I took a talisman out of my bag and pasted it on the head of the other Bullhead Demon Skeleton. After a while, I once again ordered this Bullhead Demon Skeleton to enter the Moon Cold Spirit Pool. The gray-robed man watched the Bullhead Demon Skeleton with some curiosity and excitement.
The bull-headed demon skull trembled a little when it entered the Moon Spirit Cold Pool, but instead of withdrawing from the pool, it gradually dived into the water. However, the talisman on its head did not submerge in the water. After a while, the bull-headed demon skull quickly climbed out of the pool and stood on the ground, shaking constantly, but it did not fall to the ground.
The grey-robed man watched all this with disbelief. This child had only been here for a short while and had solved a problem that he had been unable to solve for decades. Of course he couldn’t have, that was the Qi-attracting talisman from another world. I channeled wood Qi into the skeleton of the skeleton. Wood has the effect of solidifying, and water gives birth to wood, so entering the Moon Cold Spirit Pool, the Bullhead Demon Skull was able to support it for so long. After spending so much time in this pool, the Bullhead Demon’s skeleton has become one-sixth stronger, and it has also been imbued with ice damage. The axe has also temporarily been imbued with ice damage. But what about the head? I used the Transmogrification Technique to protect its soul, then pasted a talisman on its back, and then ordered it to stick its head into the pool. After a while, the Bull-headed Demon Skeleton climbed out again. After carefully examining its head, I smiled with satisfaction.
“How is it?” the gray-robed man asked excitedly, anxiously.
“It’s done, a complete success,” I said, also very excited.
“How did you do it?”
“I channeled wood qi into its skeleton, so that it can protect it,“ I said proudly.
”I have used this method before, but with wood qi, the moon-cold aura cannot transform the undead,“ the grey-robed man frowned (if that could be called a frown).
”You probably protected the wood qi on the outside, while I channeled the qi directly into the skeleton.“
”You can channel it into the skeleton? That’s impossible!”
“It’s possible, absolutely possible,“ I said, holding up the talisman in my hand. ‘As long as you use this talisman, it will work.’
”Can I see it?“ the grey-robed man said excitedly.
”Of course,“ I said, handing the talisman to him.
The grey-robed man looked at it from all sides, but couldn’t see anything.
”My name is Qiu Lei, what’s your name?“ I asked a little rudely.
”I’m Kaiqiang.”
“And him?“ I pointed my mouth towards the black-robed man.
”My name is Yalic,“ the black-robed man said a little coldly.
I didn’t expect this person to be Yalic.
”I want to take it to discuss with others, I wonder if it’s okay?” Kaiqiang, who really couldn’t see the point, said.
“No problem.” I have quite a good impression of this old man Kaiqiang. In fact, even if they look at it, they won’t be able to tell anything. They use magic, which is a different approach from Taoism. Even if they have dabbled in Taoism, they will definitely not be proficient.
Kaiqiang rushed out the door without even saying thank you. And the Yalici followed him out. After seeing the two go out, I rolled my eyes and immediately summoned my three skeletons, then ordered the four cornered monsters to guard the door, and sent three vampire bats to monitor the area from a distance (there were no undead patrolling here). I spent three or four days using solidification magic and the Divine Qi Invocation technique to transform the three skeletons, and they already had a lot of wood energy inside. I attached three Divine Qi Invocation talismans (not made of paper, but made of bamboo) to the backs of the three skeletons, and put them into the Moon Cold Spirit Pool to soak. I estimated that the three skeletons could soak for at least an hour.
I had nothing to do, so I wandered around the room. The room was full of medicinal herbs, many of which I didn’t recognize and weren’t listed in the imperial pharmacopoeia. Naturally, the sarcophagus contained a zombie, soaking in a potion that looked like it was meant to enhance the zombie’s abilities. Judging by the green color of the zombie’s claws, it must have been soaked in poison. Since I had nothing better to do, I used my psychic power to sneak into the zombie’s brain and take a look around. I only found a trace of spiritual fluctuations. This level of undead is only slightly stronger than a skeleton. I increased the frequency of my psychic power and cut into the zombie’s spiritual essence, but I found nothing. There was too little spiritual essence, and all the memories from its former life were lost. On a whim, I split a trace of my spiritual energy and combined it with its primordial spirit. Then, using the mysterious “Cultivating the Pearl” method passed down from the ancient masters, I completely fused my spiritual energy with its primordial spirit. “Cultivating the Pearl” is a mysterious method for improving spiritual energy, which can increase a person’s spiritual energy by one or two times in a short period of time. However, the drawback is also obvious: after cultivating the pearl, the growth of spiritual energy becomes extremely difficult, and basically it stops growing.
After the fusion, the zombie’s spiritual power increased forty times (that’s because it’s not a living thing and can tolerate a sudden increase in spiritual power, and also because its primordial spirit is really weak, so I only gave it a trace and it could still increase forty times). I’m addicted to playing, so I stimulated the zombie energy inside the corpse to run along a special route. This is the heart method of the zombie’s supernatural powers. After running it once, I let the zombie’s primordial spirit take over and continue running.
I then got up, thinking that it was about time. I commanded the three skeletons to come out of the pool, and then released them back into the monster world, along with the vampire bat and the horned monster. I placed my hand next to the Moon Spirit Cold Pool and felt it. “This is still a good place to practice cold martial arts and magic,” I thought to myself.
“What are you thinking?” An old voice asked from the doorway.
I turned around and saw that it was Kaiqiang and Yaliki who had returned. “I was thinking that this is also a good place to practice,” I said.
“Really?” Kaiqiang said casually.
“Don’t you usually practice here?” I asked.
“I usually collect dead energy on the ground. Is there something wrong with that?”
“You collect too much dead energy, which is why your face is so lifeless. You can collect yin energy by the pool in the future. Over time, it will be good for your face, and the power of your spells will increase greatly. This is much more cost-effective than just collecting dead energy.“
”Really?“ Kaiqiang couldn’t believe it
”Not only is it useful for you necromancers, it has the same effect on dark mages. You can try it.”
This time even Nayaliqi was tempted.
“By the way, where did these zombies come from?” It’s not that they killed passers-by and made them, is it?
“Don’t get me wrong,” Kaiqiang shook his head and said, “Northeast is in chaos, and many people die every day. We send people out to collect bodies, but there are fewer intact ones, so there are quite a few restrictions on current research.”
“Little brother, here is your talisman, I’ll give it back to you,” Kaiqiang added.
I took the talisman, “You don’t need to do research?”
“We looked at it and didn’t understand what was going on, so we had to return it to you. Brother Lei, we brothers would like to meet you once, can you come?“
”Yes, of course, I was also going to go see your companions.” I quickly agreed. A necromancer can control hundreds of combat power, and such a talent, if used by me, will not worry about not accomplishing great things.
“We have an organization called the Necromancer Association, and they have the Dark Magician Association. Now we are going to meet with the two presidents, who want to talk to you about something.“
”So what is your position in the Necromancer Association?“ I asked Kaiqiang.
”Kai Lao is the chief advisor of the Necromancer Association,“ said Yalichi with deep respect in his tone.
”It’s nothing, I just made some contributions to the improvement of necromancy.”
I looked at Kai Lao with some respect.