"Do not worry. She possessed a soul, but it was far too frail. The moment it separated from this body, it scattered into nothingness."
Looking at Nangong Wanwan's corpse, Zhenwo Changjing's eyes were filled with pity. She had watched with her own eyes as Nangong Wanwan's soul detached from the body and dissolved in a shriek of terror, yet Zhenwo Changjing had done nothing to cause it.
Great mental power, a high spiritual realm.
Those were the underlying reasons Nangong Wanwan had managed to coalesce a soul. Having a soul was not necessarily a good thing, however; hers had only just formed, leaving it frail and unstable. Deprived of the body's shelter, it dispersed in an instant.
Perhaps it was karmic retribution. She had slaughtered countless people, and so in death she was made to experience the most terrifying spectacle of all, meeting an utterly miserable end.
Looking down at the corpse on the ground, Yu Xian asked, "So even if I revive her, she won't truly be her?"
"Precisely," Zhenwo Changjing nodded.
With his answer, Yu Xian was finally freed of any inner conflict.
He pricked his own finger and let a drop of Final Origin Blood fall onto Nangong Wanwan's corpse. Bit by bit, the wound on her forehead squeezed out the broken bamboo, and within seconds, her skin had completely healed.
Color gradually returned to her lifeless eyes. Rising to her knees before Yu Xian, she bowed her head. "Nangong Wanwan greets the Master."
"Mm. From now on, call me proprietor. The real Nangong Wanwan's soul has already scattered. How much of her strength can you exert now?" Yu Xian asked, looking down at her.
Nangong Wanwan closed her eyes. After a moment, she replied, "Reporting to the proprietor, aside from being unable to use her martial realm, all other abilities remain."
"So the soul takes the martial realm with it," Yu Xian murmured to himself with a nod.
Then he asked her, "Can you train and reforge that martial realm?"
In his eyes, a Nangong Wanwan stripped of her martial realm suffered a massive drop in value, her combat strength reduced by at least half.
He cast Appraisal on her again. Sure enough, her Force value was down to just 0.02.
"Proprietor, I do not know if I can reforge the martial realm," Nangong Wanwan answered honestly. "The original experienced countless perils, constantly honing herself at the brink of life and death before she finally attained it. I cannot truly feel those experiences. Looking back on those memories now feels more like watching a movie."
In truth, she had inherited all of Nangong Wanwan's memories, and even her personality naturally trended toward that of the original. Yet because of Yu Xian, she instinctively rejected that persona, knowing he disliked the former Nangong Wanwan.
This clash between conflicting instincts left her appearing somewhat dazed, entirely different from how she had been before.
"Then just do your best. From now on, you will watch over the house and hone your martial arts while you're at it. If I need you in battle, I will summon you," Yu Xian said, placing a bubble on her ear.
Nangong Wanwan quickly spoke up, "Proprietor, I know where the original hid her treasure. Might you be interested?"
"She had a treasure trove?" Yu Xian asked, slightly surprised.
Nangong Wanwan nodded. "Yes. The original worked abroad as an assassin for years. If not for the bounty reaching five billion, she never would have returned to the country. Her treasure is hidden in Caiyun City along the border. There are roughly fifty storage rings, many transcendent weapons, as well as gold and silver, totaling over ten billion in value."
"I have no interest in ill-gotten gains like that. Find some time later to donate it all," Yu Xian decided without hesitation.
As the saying went: in poverty, cultivate your own virtues; in prosperity, aid the whole world. A noble person desires wealth, but acquires it through proper means.
If he were penniless, he might have loosened his moral belt a notch, but he already possessed more gold than he could ever spend. He had no need for tainted spoils drenched in blood, so he genuinely looked down on Nangong Wanwan's hoard.
After sending Nangong Wanwan home, Yu Xian took out his phone and dialed Zhang Kai's number, asking him to send a crew to clear the bamboo grove.
The bamboo grove Nangong Wanwan had sprouted using Growth of All Things turned out to be completely real.
After her death, the grove had not vanished. Instead, it remained frozen in the shape of its final moments. Looking up, Yu Xian could see countless stalks of bamboo pointing directly at him.
He hung up, pocketed his phone, and expanded a spatial bubble, returning instantly to the Qilin headquarters.
***
Inside the conference room.
The moment Yu Xian stepped in, he saw Gong Qian playing cards.
He glanced over at Nora and her mother. Seeing that both were asleep, he softened his footsteps and walked over.
"Pair of threes."
"Pair of fours."
"Two jokers."
"Pass."
"Big seven."
"Pass."
"A single five. I win!"
Gong Qian tossed out her last card and cheered happily.
Beside her, Hua Qiang laid down his cards in defeat. Seeing Yu Xian return, he asked, "Everything taken care of?"
"Yeah. Nine mercenaries from the Hairy Hand race over in Ice City, and an assassin here in Silver City. Both handled," Yu Xian nodded.
Gong Qian looked surprised. "An assassin? We still have that profession in our country?"
"She fled abroad and then exported herself back home. Fairly capable, but unfortunately, aside from dancing well, she's not much use anymore," Yu Xian explained.
To his mind, without her martial realm, Nangong Wanwan's only remaining virtue was indeed how gracefully she danced.
"A woman? Aren't you worried your little girlfriend will get jealous?" Hua Qiang teased in a low voice once he caught on.
Yu Xian rolled his eyes at him, brimming with confidence. "A straight foot fears no crooked shoe. What do I have to worry about?"
He pulled a chair from his storage ring, sat down, and took out his phone to check the latest news. Sure enough, multiple countries had discovered that their blood banks were contaminated by vampires, resulting in countless deaths.
Several nations had already declared war on the Dragon Blood Ancestral Court, with missiles of every class aimed squarely at its capital.
"Director, my squadmate says there appears to be an anomaly along our coastline," White Shark, captain of the Swordfish Squad, spoke up, looking anxiously toward Xiao Cheng.
An anomaly along the coast?
Hearing that, Yu Xian immediately closed his eyes.
Under his control, countless minuscule bubbles across the coastal cities swiftly sprouted eyeballs.
Because spatial bubbles could be converted into eyeball bubbles, Yu Xian no longer needed to travel anywhere in person to deploy them. He merely released the bubbles and let them fly on their own.
He could even nest multiple bubbles, placing one inside another.
That allowed the bubbles to travel at maximum speed—twenty times the speed of sound. Even if the outer bubble popped, the one inside could keep moving.
That had been his method for traveling to Mars in the first place.
He would prepare a vast number of bubbles, launch them at extreme velocity, and let the innermost bubble sprout an eye to maintain their heading. Once they reached Mars, Yu Xian could simply teleport across.
The method was both safe and convenient, so he had continued using it on Earth, seeding bubbles throughout numerous cities.
Through the multitude of eyeball bubbles, Yu Xian now saw countless red tentacles churning in the distant sea. A single glance told him they belonged to aberrant worms.
*The aberrant worms expanded into the ocean, and now they're launching a counteroffensive on the mainland?*
As the thought crossed his mind, he spotted a whale-shaped aberrant worm maneuvering giant tentacles on both flanks, charging ashore at terrifying speed.
Then Xu Ao descended from the sky in the form of an Eastern dragon.
Under his command, currents of water surged like razor-sharp blue chainsaws, butchering every aberrant worm that made landfall in an instant.
Out in the ocean, an aberrant worm resembling a Western dragon burst angrily through the surface. Xu Ao, enveloped in swirling torrents, slammed straight into it. The surging water operated like a tunnel boring machine, detonating the formidable worm on impact.
From the moment he appeared to the conclusion of the battle, less than a minute had elapsed.
Though he had been battered black and blue by the Xingtian zombie king, Xu Ao was clearly anything but weak. On the contrary, he was terrifyingly powerful.
One could only say that the stock of the Xingtian zombie king was still on the rise.
Chapter 159