Seeing Baiyun Shanren undergo ever greater changes until he looked very much like a zombie, Qin Sang suddenly stopped, interrupting the corpse refining secret art.
Shifting his gaze to the corpse puppet pouch, he beckoned with his hand, drawing the cloud of grayish-white qi formed from aggregated demon souls into his grasp. With a slight stir of his spiritual sense, he drew out a single demon soul.
The demon soul squirmed in Qin Sang's hand, at times taking the shape of a fish—it was the soul of a fish demon.
The ones Qin Sang had hunted were all minor demons in the Mortal Demon stage, whose spiritual intelligence was yet unopened. The resistance of their demon souls was weak and would not cause trouble while executing the corpse refining secret art. The only drawback was that it required a greater number of demon souls and a longer refining time. However, as this was Qin Sang's first time refining a corpse, it was a safe and prudent choice.
Next came the second step of corpse refining. Instead of requiring a prolonged period of using yin qi to nourish the corpse, he would directly refine these souls into the corpse's body, forcefully endowing it with spirituality.
Holding the demon soul, Qin Sang formed another hand seal, though this restriction was vastly different from before. As the restriction took shape, the demon soul was gradually enveloped by it, ultimately dissipating completely and fusing together with the restriction.
Qin Sang flicked his finger, and the transparent restriction floated before him, a faint streak of grayish-white qi wandering within it.
He had not expected to succeed on the very first try.
Qin Sang immediately drew forth another demon soul and repeated the process, but before the restriction could form, the demon soul suddenly shattered into pieces.
Qin Sang's brow furrowed slightly, but he casually waved away the shattered demon soul and summoned a new one.
Success was not guaranteed every time. Fortunately, Qin Sang's spiritual sense was not weak. As he grew increasingly familiar with the secret art, he managed to maintain a success rate of around seventy percent—a respectable efficiency.
Unaware of the passage of time inside the cave dwelling, Qin Sang concentrated wholeheartedly on condensing the restrictions. Without him knowing how much time had passed, the grayish-white qi had been mostly consumed, and a dense cluster of tiny restrictions floated before him.
Finally, the last restriction was completed. Qin Sang clenched his fist, and the restrictions coalesced sharply. Though initially somewhat chaotic, they soon gathered together in an orderly manner, floating in midair to form an ethereal, humanoid restriction.
The next step was to split off a wisp of his soul and, following the secret art of the Heavenly Yin Corpse Art, forge a soul imprint to control the refined corpse. He would fuse this soul imprint with the restriction and engrave them together into the corpse.
Once the refinement was successful, he could subdue the refined corpse through the soul imprint and control it to face enemies.
Splitting one's soul caused some injury to the origin soul, but a few days of quiet meditation would suffice to recover. Qin Sang had long grown accustomed to the sword qi devouring his soul; this bit of pain was nothing to him. He quickly severed a wisp of soul from his origin soul and seized the moment to condense the soul imprint.
Once the soul imprint was successfully condensed, Qin Sang embedded it into the humanoid restriction before him, then engraved them both into Baiyun Shanren's body.
As the restriction merged within, a new change came over Baiyun Shanren. His tightly shut eyes opened at some point, his eyeballs pitch-black as ink without any whites. They could turn, appearing quite lively.
Those profound, dark pupils stared straight ahead, filled with hatred toward living creatures and a thirst for slaughter—thoroughly sinister and uncanny.
At this moment, he had completely turned into a zombie!
Stowing the remaining demon souls back into the corpse puppet pouch, Qin Sang shifted his gaze to Baiyun Shanren. After a brief hesitation, he issued a command for it to move.
Baiyun Shanren proved exceptionally obedient. When Qin Sang commanded him to go left, he went left; when commanded to turn right, he did so without the slightest hesitation, showing no sign of struggle or defiance.
*Thud!*
Baiyun Shanren clawed a piece of gravel from the wall and, at Qin Sang's command, handed it over, standing before Qin Sang with utter obedience, motionless.
Qin Sang's expression grew increasingly astonished, for this was completely different from what was described in the Heavenly Yin Corpse Art.
The Heavenly Yin Corpse Art contained a warning for corpse refiners: when a refined corpse was newly formed and its spirituality newly birthed, it would instinctively resist its controller and might even attack.
At that moment, the corpse refiner had to stabilize the soul imprint on the corpse as quickly as possible to suppress and subdue it, remaining vigilant against sneak attacks from the corpse before total control was achieved.
There were many who, despite successfully refining a corpse, ended up killed by it due to a momentary lapse in vigilance.
Qin Sang was not afraid of a mere zombie, but he had prepared to follow the established procedure to subdue it. To his surprise, before he could even make a move, Baiyun Shanren was incomparably docile, without the slightest bit of resistance.
While this caught Qin Sang completely off guard, it also set him pondering the reason.
The Heavenly Yin Corpse Art was a heritage secret art of the Heavenly Corpse Sect, proven countless times; the chance of an error was minuscule.
The secret art stated clearly that a refined corpse's resistance to its controller stemmed from instinct and would not change based on the controller's cultivation level. Those with higher cultivation could at most suppress and subdue the corpse instantaneously.
Yet an exception had occurred with him...
Aside from the jade Buddha, Qin Sang did not believe there was anything particularly special about him compared to others.
The soul imprint was a wisp split from his origin soul. Could it also inherit the jade Buddha's power, becoming just as unshakeable as his main origin soul?
Could it mean that anyone or anything, once controlled by him, would be powerless to resist and could only willingly submit to enslavement?
Qin Sang's eyes brightened abruptly, his heart surging with excitement. It felt as if a grand highway to heaven had opened before him!
After all, the cultivation world had far more than just corpse-refining secret arts. The Yuling Sect possessed methods for controlling demon beasts, and the demonic sects even had sinister arts to directly enslave humans and control cultivators.
Given the unfathomable mysteries of the jade Buddha, if he could find a similar secret art and walk the path of enslavement to control a Golden Core Master, would he not have all the miraculous elixirs, magic treasures, and cultivation arts he could ever desire?
"No!"
The excitement that had just surfaced on Qin Sang's face vanished instantly.
Examining the soul imprint closely, he discovered that there was indeed a layer of yellow light over it, but it was exceptionally faint—virtually undetectable unless one looked carefully. Moreover, this faint light lacked the indestructible aura inherent to the jade Buddha itself.
Seeing this, Qin Sang fell into contemplation.
Most likely, the power of the soul imprint had its limits. Baiyun Shanren had only just been refined into a zombie and had yet to draw baleful qi into his body; his strength was roughly equivalent to only a cultivator at the Qi Refinement stage, which was why he lacked any ability to resist.
As far as Qin Sang knew, under the Yuling Sect's beast-controlling arts, a demon beast's strength could not exceed its master's by too much; otherwise, the beast would turn on its master.
While it was still impossible to determine the upper limit of the soul imprint's power, it was definitely superior to that of ordinary people. Qin Sang still retained ample confidence in the jade Buddha's abilities.
Furthermore, Qin Sang could not help but recall the scene at the Heavenly Corpse Sect's sub-altar, when he had attempted to forcibly subdue that living corpse with a secret art and failed. Evidently, while the jade Buddha could enhance the strength of a soul imprint, the prerequisite was that one first had to be able to control the target and engrave the soul imprint onto them—and that happened to be the most difficult step of all.
Though it was not quite as heaven-defying as he had initially imagined, it was still well worthy of being called an unexpected delight.
Chapter 189