This Immortal Uses the Supreme Corpse-Driving Art!

The ancestral hall. "Looks like the villagers come to the ancestral hall quite often. Look, there's so much food laid out before the spirit tablets." Meng Jingzhou was a little surprised. The ancestral hall was cleaned spotless and bright, and humble offerings such as steamed buns and pickled vegetables were set before the tablets. "Indeed. And the food is still warm." Lu Yang noticed steam still wafting from the steamed buns, as if they had just been steamed not long ago. "Looking at it makes me hungry. Let's eat something." From his identity jade token, Meng Jingzhou brought out dish after dish of prepared food. These were delicacies he had bought from the commercial street; eating them greatly aided one's cultivation. Such was the wonder of a spiritual chef. Seeing the food, Lu Yang was reminded that a celestial chef resided in his spiritual space—eating the meals she made would benefit his cultivation even more. At that thought, Lu Yang's heart sank with dread. Lu Yang raised his hand and tossed out a plume of Three-Flavor True Fire. No firewood was needed; a single wisp of spiritual energy was enough to keep this ball of Three-Flavor True Fire burning for a long time. The two placed their food over the Three-Flavor True Fire to heat it up, making the already delicious dishes all the more mouthwatering. "Speaking of which, Eldest Senior Sister isn't here, but don't you know the Lu Clan Imitation Fist? Couldn't you just summon her?" Meng Jingzhou had a sudden flash of inspiration, arriving at what seemed like the most convenient solution. After all, someone of Eldest Senior Sister's venerated standing wouldn't be affected by karmic backlash. Lu Yang rolled his eyes at Meng Jingzhou. *Easy for you to come up with that idea when you're not the one summoning her!* "Think about it. Whenever I've invited Eldest Senior Sister over, wasn't it because of a life-or-death crisis? Your measly karmic backlash is hardly a big deal. If I summoned her here and she saw what it was all about, do you think she'd deal with your karmic backlash first, or deal with you first?" Meng Jingzhou pictured Eldest Senior Sister being summoned by Lu Yang, hearing the cause and effect, and then glaring coldly down at him as though looking at a dead man. A chill ran down his spine. "Th-Then forget it. We'd better resolve this karmic backlash ourselves." Lu Yang continued explaining, "Besides, Eldest Senior Sister has a myriad of affairs to handle every day. What she works on is far more important. If I disturb her and throw things off or delay her business, what would we do then?" This was also why Lu Yang wouldn't summon Eldest Senior Sister lightly. While having her step in could indeed solve difficulties, doing so would rob him of the opportunity to temper himself. Moreover, Eldest Senior Sister was a cultivator of high attainment whose tasks were critical and could not be casually disrupted. Unless he found himself in a truly fatal pinch, Lu Yang would not ask her to come. "It's a pity the Grand Elder isn't around. With his vast experience, he might've offered a different answer." Although he didn't know what the Grand Elder had gone off to do, Meng Jingzhou could guess—in all likelihood, he had gone to build tombs. Given the Grand Elder's habit of constantly constructing graves and packing them with zombies, Meng Jingzhou refused to believe the man had no business dealings with the Corpse Driving Sect. The Grand Elder possessed high cultivation and rich experience; perhaps he would know how to handle this situation, or tell them whom to seek out in Huangzhou. "I heard Huangzhou has had a corpse-driving tradition since ancient times," Meng Jingzhou said, pointing to a passage in *Customs of Huangzhou*. "A hundred thousand years ago, when the Great Yu Dynasty collapsed and the realm fell into chaos, rebellions erupted everywhere. Fighting broke out in a chaotic mess right here, with rivers of blood and corpses carpeting the land. Many bodies underwent corpse changes, giving rise to a large cohort of corpse drivers. One group of these drivers banded together for warmth and formed a sect, which became today's Corpse Driving Sect." "Hearing you say that, the custom of corpse driving goes pretty far back," Lu Yang remarked. To him, a hundred thousand years ago was already an unimaginably distant era. Even the Dao Seeking Sect, one of the oldest sects around, had existed for only about a hundred and twenty thousand years. "Corpse driving is older than you think," the Immortal Fairy chimed in at just the right moment. "There were corpse-driving arts in the ancient era?" The Immortal Fairy smacked her lips, reminiscing over the glorious old days. "More or less. But back then, corpse-driving techniques were all over the place, and the spells cast to herd corpses didn't share a unified name. It wasn't like today, where everything is collectively called a corpse-driving art. "Do you remember that idiot who had Words as Law? Just by using his mouth, he could drive corpses around. He was quite formidable. Whenever he ran into a powerful enemy, he'd burrow straight into a graveyard and yell at the top of his lungs, and the corpses in the cemetery would scramble out, one after another. Terrifying stuff. He was one of the formidable foes I encountered." For someone to be called an idiot by the Immortal Fairy, he really had to be an idiot. Lu Yang remembered that fool. Possessing Words as Law, he had been exceedingly difficult to deal with, exceptionally renowned in the ancient era, and one of the individuals most likely to achieve immortality. Legends about him even survived into later generations. Then the Immortal Fairy had launched a sneak attack on him, prompting him to scream, "I'm dying of pain!"—and then he had actually died. "Then there was that guy who formed a Harem Golden Core. Through a stroke of luck, he cultivated a beautiful female zombie. After spending a long time getting acquainted, the beauty developed feelings for him, and once she advanced to the rank of Hanba, she seemed to truly come back to life, becoming one of his harem." Lu Yang had an impression of this Harem Golden Core fellow as well. Surrounded by countless beauties and possessing a vast harem, he had practiced dual cultivation arts with the help of those various women, taking partners every night. His cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds, only for him to fail at managing relations among his harem, resulting in him being torn limb from limb and meeting a tragic end. To be fair, setting aside that final ending, the experiences of that Harem Golden Core prodigy were genuinely enviable. "Fairy, do you know how to drive corpses?" "Of course! This Immortal uses the supreme corpse-driving art!" "You know it?" Lu Yang's eyes sparkled with astonishment. As expected of a fairy—there was no spell she didn't know, and hers was the supreme kind! It had to be far more advanced than whatever the Corpse Driving Sect practiced. "Do you want to learn the Art of Playing Dead?" "I want... wait, the Art of Playing Dead?" Lu Yang snapped to his senses. "That's right! I pretend to be dead first, and then I resurrect. Isn't that the supreme corpse-driving art?" Lu Yang fell silent. Raising the dead was indeed the supreme art of driving a corpse, but somehow, something felt terribly wrong. Remembering something, Lu Yang asked, "Aside from your Art of Playing Dead, are there other corpse-driving arts that can bring the dead back to life?" "Not sure." "Not sure?" "Theoretically, yes, but this Immortal has yet to see a corpse-driving art that could hold a candle to mine. "The five of us discussed this question over dinner back then. Logically, the supreme corpse-driving art should be able to resurrect the dead, but if the original soul is gone and a new soul is born within the old vessel, how can you call that resurrection?" Lu Yang thought to himself, *Wasn't that discussion just because Immortal Ying Tian and the other three were afraid of dropping dead from eating your cooking?* "Wait, something's approaching!" Lu Yang didn't continue the conversation, withdrawing from the spiritual space. He sensed something drawing near. Judging by the sounds, there was a huge number of them! Almost at the exact same moment, Meng Jingzhou also reacted, dropping into a stance to meet the incoming enemies. *Bang—* The doors of the ancestral hall were flung wide. Outside stood a throng of desiccated corpses—at a single glance, nearly a hundred of them! The two released their divine senses, only to find the horde of shriveled corpses surrounding the ancestral hall so tightly that not even water could trickle through! "Why are there living corpses everywhere in Huangzhou?"