Chapter 111: Three Pots of Oil

Sophia was startled. Zhou Yi had already begun falling downward. Beneath them lay a cliff; one could climb up by catching hold of the rock face and leaping upward bit by bit, but descending backward like this would mean certain death!

She was just about to jump after him when Zhou Yi stepped onto the window lattice below and came back up. Sophia seized him at once, and the two of them hurriedly embraced before lying flat on the roof and concealing themselves in the darkness.

After watching both sides carefully, Zhou Yi sensed the area as well. No one seemed to be approaching, and the guards changing shifts at the corner tower had already dispersed.

Only then did Zhou Yi look down at Sophia’s hand. She was still clutching his and had not released it at all. She had probably thought he was about to fall to his death. Fortunately, he had remembered the incantation at the crucial moment.

“Dark Nether Mountain is strange. At present, I can sense people in the corner tower and inside the great hall opposite us, but nowhere else. Counting them together, there are only a dozen or so people. Could Dark Nether Mountain really have so few inhabitants?

“Or perhaps…”

Sophia tilted her head slightly and looked at Zhou Yi in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Zhou Yi’s brows drew tightly together. Instead of relaxing, he had grown even more tense.

“I think there may only be this many living people in Dark Nether Mountain. As for the rest—the ones we cannot sense—they may not be alive.”

Sophia shuddered, her breathing growing somewhat hurried.

Women had an instinctive fear of the dead, much as they instinctively feared cockroaches and rats. She might be merciless when fighting, but the moment she heard that this place was filled with corpses, her hands went cold.

“The dead? Could they be like the Black-Robed Grand Preceptor—undying corpses that cannot be killed?”

Zhou Yi shook his head. In truth, he was uncertain himself. Who had ever encountered such a thing? Yet the place gave him an intensely ominous feeling.

“I don’t think the forbidden art of creating undying corpses is that easy to perform. Otherwise, on the night of the siege at Green City Mountain, if they had sent out just one more person, the Black-Robed Grand Preceptor would not have died. Everyone from Green City Mountain, along with us, might have perished here instead.

“Didn’t Emperor Liang say that the Black-Robed Grand Preceptor Ruoqing’s master was gathering her soul? Once the soul was completely restored, she could be resurrected.

“I imagine that cannot be easy. Besides, it also shows that resurrecting an undying corpse is easier than creating one from scratch.”

Sophia nodded vigorously. Zhou Yi’s reasoning was sound. Yet as she looked at the buildings within Dark Nether Mountain, the place seemed even more sinister and terrifying.

“Your guess does make sense, but we have no way to verify it. There are so many houses here. Who knows where the Grand Preceptor’s soul is, or in what form it has been preserved? And her master—are they human, or an undying corpse?”

Zhou Yi fell silent.

Though he could sense things, his ability did not yet extend very far. He remembered the dangerous aura that had surrounded the Grand Preceptor, but he had not detected it anywhere nearby.

“We’ll search one place at a time. I can’t sense things from too far away, but if we get closer, I should be able to investigate.”

Sophia understood his meaning and nodded slightly. The two of them immediately leaped toward the rooftops on the left.

From a distance, they had only been able to see lights and human silhouettes.

Once they landed on the roof, Sophia kept her eyes on the corner tower above and to the side, where guards were stationed. Zhou Yi lay flat at the edge of the eaves, poked a hole through the paper window, and peered inside.

As soon as the paper was pierced, an odor drifted out.

Zhou Yi shook his head and adjusted his position. If he used his senses and happened to encounter an expert, he could easily be discovered. Taking a secret look was safer.

Through the shifting gap, Zhou Yi saw what appeared to be three people gathered around several enormous cauldrons, each more than two meters in diameter, boiling something inside. The smell came from them.

He sniffed carefully. It seemed to be the odor of bone broth, though there was also a strong, rancid stench.

For a moment, Zhou Yi could not determine what it was.

He turned his head from side to side again. As one of the women stirred the liquid, she lost her grip on the enormous ladle. A splash of scalding liquid flew up and struck her own face.

An instant later, she let out a terrible scream. The other two women were also startled and hurried over to inspect her.

“Sixth Sister, how are you? Are you burned?”

Judging by their voices, the shrieking Sixth Sister and the two women who had rushed to her aid were all quite young. But the moment Zhou Yi saw their faces, his eyes widened in shock.

Had he encountered people with such appearances under any other circumstances, he might instinctively have recoiled. The three of them looked horrifying.

Zhou Yi was not particularly concerned with beauty, but there was something deeply abnormal about these three.

Their bodies were obese and clumsy. The exposed skin on their hands and arms resembled an elephant’s hide, covered all over with cauliflower-like growths.

Apart from the massive growths covering their faces, they had almost no hair left. Patches of flesh seemed to hang down as though the air had been drained from them, making it look as if dozens of tiny pouches were dangling from their faces. Even opening their eyes required them to strain and lift their brows.

Suppressing his discomfort, Zhou Yi continued watching.

After calling out several times, Sixth Sister opened her eyes and pulled open her collar. The boiling liquid had apparently splashed onto her neck, and the other two helped examine the injury.

A piece of skin the size of a palm had peeled away, revealing bright red flesh beneath.

The hairs on Zhou Yi’s body stood on end. The sight was so revolting that it was almost impossible to endure.

Sixth Sister, however, seemed accustomed to such things. She rummaged around her body, pulled out a scrap of cloth, padded her neck with it, straightened her clothes, and stood up as though nothing had happened.

“Stop fussing over me. The oil in the cauldrons has to be kept moving. If these three batches are ruined, we’ll become the raw material for the oil ourselves. The Sect Master will be furious. We can’t delay.”

With that, she picked up the enormous ladle and hurried back to stirring. Nothing seemed to have changed inside the cauldron, and the worry on her face eased somewhat.

Zhou Yi’s gaze shifted from her to the contents of the cauldron. As the dark liquid churned, chunks of flesh and bones occasionally rolled to the surface.

Looking at those thick bones, Zhou Yi narrowed his eyes. They seemed somewhat like human femurs.

No—that woman had called the contents oil. That lay beyond Zhou Yi’s understanding. What kind of oil was this?

Just then, the woman reached up and pulled on an iron chain above the cauldron. Some mechanism seemed to activate. A large iron container, resembling a metal drum, slowly descended from above and began tilting over the cauldron.

Round, hairless human heads rolled out one after another. The liquid in the cauldron seemed to surge with excitement, repeatedly swallowing the heads beneath its surface before tossing them back up again.

Zhou Yi felt nauseated.

He rolled over and lay flat on the roof. Sophia could not see his expression, but his breathing had clearly changed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Below us are several strange women boiling human bones into bone oil—or perhaps corpse oil. Judging by the number of heads, there must be more than a dozen adult men. I think this is a place where medicines are refined, though probably one of the lower-grade facilities.”

Sophia covered her mouth.

What kind of world was this? Forbidden arts produced either undying corpses or oil boiled from human bones. She had traveled through many worlds, but she had never encountered anything like this.

Zhou Yi patted her arm and took hold of her fingers, signaling her to concentrate.

Sophia drew two deep breaths before lying beside Zhou Yi at the edge of the eaves and looking downward.

The three women were still busy around the cauldrons. Then footsteps came from the direction of the stairs, and a woman in blue robes walked up, lifting her veil slightly.

From Zhou Yi and Sophia’s angle, they could not see her face.

“How much longer until the corpse oil is ready?”

Sophia glanced at Zhou Yi. At that moment, Zhou Yi understood as well.

It was not only Sophia who felt a cold sweat break out across her back. He, too, had finally realized that this really was corpse oil. No wonder the stirring could not stop. No wonder the bodies of the three women were so rotten and ulcerated.

The woman in blue folded her hands inside her sleeves and made no unnecessary movement as she stared at the three workers. The woman called Sixth Sister quickly set down her ladle and bowed.

“This disciple greets Eldest Martial Aunt. The three cauldrons will be ready by noon tomorrow. We certainly will not delay your ritual.”

The woman in blue snorted.

“It is good that you understand the seriousness of this matter. Deliver the corpse oil before noon tomorrow. If the evening ritual is delayed, I will not be able to save you. Your master has only three disciples left, and I do not wish to watch you die—or be made into medicine humans. Conduct yourselves wisely.”

All three women trembled and kowtowed to her. Then they scrambled to their feet. Sixth Sister took out something, while the other two kept their heads lowered and continued watching the three cauldrons.

Bending at the waist, Sixth Sister walked over to the woman in blue and presented her with what she had taken out.

“While sorting through our things, we found this ring. It looks both antique and elegant. Eldest Martial Aunt, please do not disdain it. We cannot leave this place, and we have nothing else with which to show our respect.”