The Death-Row Prison.
Walking alongside Yu Lie, Yu Xian found his eyes thoroughly opened.
This was no ordinary prison, but a facility for Transcendents. Moreover, every inmate here was on death row, already sentenced to death and awaiting the day of their execution.
Because these condemned prisoners possessed supernatural powers and their abilities varied widely, their containment methods were equally diverse. There was a lizard-like death-row inmate encased in ice; one with six arms, every limb bound in thick iron chains; and a half-human, half-tiger prisoner whose waist was bolted to the cage.
Curious, Yu Xian asked, "What crimes did these people commit?"
"Mostly homicides," Yu Lie explained. "Take that half-man, half-tiger over there. His name is Hu Qi. The day his bloodline awakened, he slaughtered his entire family and surrounding neighbors in one go. Eight families were completely wiped out. His crimes are heinous, and he will be executed next month."
Yu Xian glanced at Hu Qi, feeling a faint pang of pity for him. After all, nobody wished to lose their mind during a bloodline awakening.
"That lizardman is named Zeng Xiaofan," Yu Lie continued. "After his bloodline awakened, he used invisibility to commit multiple murders and rapes. He's extraordinarily good at running away, so he was frozen solid. He'll face a firing squad in a week."
Yu Xian grimaced in disgust. "A rapist. He deserves to die."
Come to think of it, Mingzhu City seemed to have a wanted criminal who was also a serial rapist with the exact same name. Could it be a parallel-universe version of him?
As they spoke, the two arrived before a condemned prisoner. This inmate wore no shackles whatsoever and had a colossal build, standing fully five meters tall. His entire body was packed with bulging muscle, even across his face.
"Zhang Gangxing, your chance for atonement has arrived," Yu Lie said, looking at the prisoner.
The inmate inside the cell raised his head to look at Yu Lie. Yu Lie briefly explained the situation regarding the infinite corpse qi, then added, "Haven't you always wanted to atone? Once you die, we will use your corpse to contain corpse qi capable of destroying the world. Does that satisfy you?"
"Thank you. That's the best outcome. I'm willing," Zhang Gangxing agreed without hesitation upon hearing this.
He took a deep breath, raised a hand to steady himself, and his muscles suddenly surged. Turning his gaze to Yu Xian, he smiled. "I know you. You're a hero. Please make good use of this useless hide of mine. If possible... save more people."
With that, he closed his eyes and struck his own cranium with tremendous force.
In the next second, his swollen muscles deflated like a punctured balloon. His head slumped to the side, his breath extinguished.
Watching Zhang Gangxing's life force dissipate, Yu Xian asked in bewilderment, "Minister, what's his... story?"
"Zhang Gangxing, originally named Zhang Xiaoxing. Dragon-rank. He cultivated the Tiangang Virgin Boy Art, and after eating a Forbidden Fruit, it mutated into the Tiangang Colossal Strength Divine Art. Afterward, he changed his name to Zhang Gangxing and went to the Abyss, not returning for six years. Everyone assumed he was dead.
"A few pieces of trash who had beef with him started preying on his family's remnants.
"When he returned, he discovered his mother had been murdered. His wife had betrayed him, running off with his wealth to bear children with his enemies. His only daughter had been tortured to death by those same enemies, and many friends who stood up for him had also met gruesome ends.
"He flew into an uncontrollable rage on the spot. In his frenzy, he tracked down his enemies, but their battle ended up engulfing the entire city. Once he calmed down, he realized that while he had gotten his revenge, he had also caused the deaths of several million innocent people, even accidentally killing the wives and children of his own friends. Brokenhearted and utterly despondent, he turned himself in," Yu Lie recounted with mixed emotions.
Listening to the story, Yu Xian's heart felt just as heavy, but it reaffirmed one conviction: enemies should never be left alive overnight—every last one of them must be thoroughly slaughtered.
"His only wish was to atone," Yu Lie told Yu Xian. "He surrendered his cultivation manual and signed a body donation agreement. Since he's dead now, take the corpse."
Yu Xian nodded and shoved open the cell door, making Yu Lie's brow twitch.
This cell was forged from transcendent alloy, utilizing the latest technology—the very techniques used to craft Star Divine Artifacts.
Although it was a simplified version and the materials were not top-grade, no one below Dragon-rank could dream of budging it.
Yet Yu Xian pushed it open with effortless ease. Looking at the warped door, Yu Lie was deeply curious just how powerful Yu Xian currently was, and to what realm his cultivation had progressed.
...
...
The Pacific Ocean.
Gripping a saber in one hand and a sword in the other, Zhang Buyao relentlessly cleaved through the zombies falling from the sky.
In truth, she had the power to seal the rift in the sky, but channeling was better than blocking. Allowing the corpse qi emitted by the Infinite Sea Corpse Vein Dragon to vent into another world populated entirely by zombies was beneficial to Yu Xian's world.
If she sealed the rift, the concentration of corpse qi on Earth would increase further. At that point, it wouldn't just be a matter of the dead turning into zombies; living people would succumb to corpse poison after just a few breaths and mutate into zombies themselves.
"Fifteen minutes..."
"Twenty minutes. Yu Xian, you're dead meat. I told you to be back within ten minutes."
Once the ten-minute mark passed, Zhang Buyao grumbled with every passing minute, the irritation in her chest swelling along with the time.
She had explicitly told Yu Xian to return within ten minutes, yet twenty minutes had already gone by. Fortunately, none of those bizarre anomalies had appeared, or she would have beaten Yu Xian black and blue afterward.
*So saving the world is actually this hard,* Zhang Buyao thought wearily as she finished slaughtering a horde of zombies, only to see yet another batch dropping from above.
Her body wasn't tired, but endlessly killing zombies—especially mowing them down like grass—was mentally exhausting. After all, it wasn't much different from screwing bolts on a factory assembly line: purely mechanical repetition that didn't even require using her brain.
Just then, space rippled, and Yu Xian stepped out from the ripples. Zhang Buyao immediately swatted a falling zombie with the flat of her blade, sending it flying straight at him.
Yu Xian knew full well he hadn't made it back within the agreed time. He casually swatted the zombie away and apologized, "Yaoyao, I'm sorry. I didn't expect finding a corpse to be so difficult."
"Well, did you find one or not?" Zhang Buyao asked.
Yu Xian nodded. "I did. See if this works."
With that, he brought out a spatial bubble containing Zhang Gangxing's corpse.
"Where did you find such a massive fellow?" Zhang Buyao exclaimed in surprise.
Yu Xian recounted Zhang Gangxing's story to her. Slaying zombies as she listened, Zhang Buyao said with sympathy, "Then he's a pitiful soul, too. But doing wrong always demands a price. Let's use him to save this world, then, and we can tell his story to the public—let those disgusting scum think twice before doing evil about whether they can bear the consequences."
"All right," Yu Xian agreed with a nod.
Because Zhang Gangxing was already dead, and all the cells throughout his body had been sent into outer space by Yu Xian to be eradicated, Zhang Gangxing was now completely and utterly a stone-dead corpse.
Yu Xian retrieved the Bully Writing Brush, paused in thought for a moment, and wrote his own name onto Zhang Gangxing's back.
Chapter 369