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The ghastly sun rose in the east at the dawn of a new day.
Teeming masses of ghost zombies receded like the tides when illuminated by sunlight. They instantly vanished without a trace, their whereabouts unknown.
Drenched in blood, Lu Yun was in poor shape. The black corpse of a ghost zombie dangled from his hand. After his recovery, he joined the ranks of this world’s cultivators. Yuan Yi swept him out of her wooden house, leaving the young man to fend for himself and earn his living by joining the battle against the ghost zombies.
The only ones excused from the war and could shelter in the city’s heart were pregnant women and children. The rest, even if they were elders with a foot in the grave, had to join the fray in the battlefield.
Granted, there were no elders in this world. When one’s physical strength began declining after one’s prime, there was no hope of survival against the ghost zombies.
Neither did the ghost zombies attack every night—there were occasional periods of rest. If not, the city would’ve been leveled a long time ago.
There was just one cultivator left in Jingzhou City—Yuan Yi. Lu Yun could very possibly become the second. The cultivation methods of this world were simple, but very difficult. One had to cultivate oneself and continuously excavate the potential of the human body. Human strength had to be fully released so that it could triumph over nature.
The first step was to condense and temper qi and blood. However, external sustenance was needed for this step—such as a meat diet. But in this world, the only meat that could be eaten were those that’d died a natural death.
Other than that, grass and trees struggling equally hard to live were the only other sources of food. People sometimes even ate dirt.
If they didn’t, they would starve to death and their bones become someone else’s food.
Wagons creaked in and out of the city, ferrying corpses through the city gates. Those who died to the ghost zombies were infused with corpse poison and would become ghost zombies before long. Anyone who ate them would mutate as well.
Lu Yun’s qi and blood had long been tempered to a realm of great perfection. He didn’t need to eat meat or take in any sustenance. A massive strength brewed in his body; it was the last trace of strength remaining from the nothing after he arrived in this world.
When he was still in the nothing, he stood at the pinnacle of the realm. This last bit of strength from those heights was sufficient for Lu Yun to forgo the need for food and become a cultivator. It was also this vestige of power that enabled him to recover in such a short period of time.
“What are you doing with a ghost zombie corpse?” Yuan Yi frowned when she drew near and saw what was in Lu Yun’s hand.
Ordinary people didn’t possess the ability to kill ghost zombies. The only thing they could do was fill the gaps in the formation with their bodies, physically providing a stopgap against the enemy so they couldn’t make it to where the children and pregnant women were.
That was all.
The only ones who could kill ghost zombies were cultivators, and Yuan Yi was the only one. It immensely surprised her that Lu Yun had become a cultivator in such a short period of time after his arrival. At the same time, it also provided some relief.
“Ghost zombies don’t really die. That one may look like it’s dead, but it’ll revitalize after seven days,” Yuan Yi said seriously.
“So is this thing a ghost or a zombie?” Lu Yun blinked. He’d found a black crystal core inside the body. Crushing it would truly kill the ghost zombie. In his eyes, this was neither ghost nor zombie, but a strange new creature.
But based on Yuan Yi’s words, especially coming back to life after seven days… Lu Yun found the entity incredulous. There were stories of the dead’s soul returning after seven days in the nothing, and Lu Yun’s Resurrection death art could resurrect anyone who’d died in the last seven days.
If these ghost zombies could also do the same thing… then it might really have something to do with ghosts or zombies.
“No one knows what they are. They appeared out of nowhere one day and turned the world into ruins.” Yuan Yi shook her head. “There were people before who captured ghost zombies like you or studied their corpses. All of them met horrible ends.
“They were either killed by the suddenly resurrecting ghost zombie or struck with misfortune and turned into one themselves. So my advice to you is to throw away the corpse or burn it.”
Burning a ghost zombie’s corpse was the only way to kill it.
Burn…
Lu Yun mused over the notion. The most direct way of expressing reincarnation was fire. Whatever the fire was, it was the power of reincarnation—including Lu Yun’s flame of civilization. Civilization was part of reincarnation and could even be considered a byproduct of reincarnation.
He only possessed the fire of civilization within him now, there was no reincarnation. The young man suddenly grew excited when he saw the burning flames within the pit outside of the city.
Fire!
Reincarnation!
He’d grasped the meaning of civilization with God’s help and lit its flame, but to Lu Yun, the strongest had always been reincarnation! He even felt that the Tome of Life and Death hadn’t truly vanished, that it was only hidden in a corner of his body. If he could reactivate reincarnation, he would be able to summon it again.
There was a patch of real existence within the book! It was a complete heaven and earth that contained a complete great dao and order!
He would have everything again if he held the Tome of Life and Death. He would rise to the peak of this world and then… go home! The flame of civilization could be lit from the Tome of Life and Death, then spread out to this seemingly dead world.
He was no longer lost, he had his goal and direction.
Fire was reincarnation!
This novel is available on bit.ly/3iBfjkV.
All Lu Yun needed to do was to control fire and use it to access the reincarnation hidden in the Tome of Life and Death. He had a hunch that everything he possessed had not disappeared. It’d merely been concealed by the book.
“You seem to have somehow changed,” asked a baffled Yuan Yi as she looked at the young man.
Although Lu Yun had never given up hope and remained in optimistic spirits, a lost look had flashed through his eyes from time to time. In this moment, Yuan Yi noticed that the lost look was no longer there. His whole aura had shifted.
“I have,” he grinned brilliantly. “I’m going to study what the deal is with this ghost zombie. Oh, I’ve built a stone house close to the city gates. I won’t bring trouble to the city if anything goes wrong.”