Chapter 157

Chapter 157

The man was shirtless, with nothing but a tattered monk’s robe wrapped around his waist. Scriptures had been tattooed across his entire body.

And clutched in his hand was a severed Leg Bone.

The Leg Bone had been polished to an oily sheen from years of handling. It was pitch-black from end to end, covered in carved scriptures coated with gold lacquer. This was clearly no ordinary object.

A terrifying murderous aura radiated from the man. He must have been a vicious, irredeemable criminal while alive, yet after death, he had been refined into a zombie. He wore a monk’s robe, his body was covered in scriptures, and he wielded an unholy artifact engraved with even more scriptures.

The sheer contradiction was enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end at a glance.

We had already deduced a great deal beforehand, but now that we had actually climbed the mountain and entered this Temple tonight, everything we saw still defied our expectations.

Neither the Corpse Formation bathed in golden light nor the scripture-covered zombie before us was something an ordinary person could have created and controlled.

Guo Zhen’s wits had already been scattered by all the torment she’d suffered. I’d barely managed to call them back with a quick ritual, only for this sight to frighten them clean out of her again.

She huddled blankly in the corner, trembling uncontrollably.

I stepped in front of her, summoned Fengwu, drew the bow, and fired a bolt of flame at the approaching man.

Fengwu’s flames were deadly to zombies like this one.

Once the flames entered zombies or Souls, they would immediately ignite and spread like wildfire.

But before the flames could even reach him, the man swung his Leg Bone and intercepted them with perfect precision.

The instant the Leg Bone struck the flames, the sound of scriptures being chanted bored straight into my ears. The flames shattered instantly.

Forget burning their way into the zombie’s body — they couldn’t even get close to him.

Not only had he crushed the flames, but the chanting itself was beginning to affect me.

I knew the longer this dragged on, the worse my position would become. I had to end this quickly.

Once again, I gripped the Copper Coin Liu Junyan had given me. Everything depended on this one strike.

If it failed, Guo Zhen and I might not make it through the night.

I drew the bowstring all the way back. As it launched the Copper Coin, I had no confidence whatsoever that this would work.

Every ritual artifact had a limited lifespan.

For example, someone might ask for a protection talisman at a temple and carry it with them. That talisman could ward off one deadly force for its owner, but afterward, the inscriptions on it might vanish.

Others wore ancestral jade pendants around their necks, only to discover that the jade had shattered at some point after they narrowly escaped a great Calamity. That, too, meant the jade had protected its owner from disaster.

I had only just used the Golden Copper Coin Liu Junyan gave me to force Feng Lishu back. If I now used it against this zombie and exhausted the spiritual power stored within it, the artifact would become useless.

But I had no other choice. I could only take the gamble.

The Copper Coin whistled toward the zombie, and sure enough, he swung the Leg Bone once more.

The instant they collided, the chanting began again, pounding relentlessly against my eardrums.

But this time, the chanting sounded strange. I could make out two distinct voices tangled together.

It was as if two old monks were sitting face-to-face, chanting scriptures as they battled through mystical arts. Back and forth they went, their voices merging into one unbroken torrent.

In the corner, Guo Zhen clamped both hands over her ears and shook her head violently, her face twisted in agony.

Before long, two thin trails of blood began running from her nostrils.

I was growing unbearably agitated as well, and the ‘Slave’ mark on my cheek began to burn like fire.

Then blood started flowing from Guo Zhen’s ears too.
I felt around in my pockets. I had kept all the protective charms Yu Nian had given me on my person, but several of them had already crumbled to ash. Only one remained.

So in that split second, the charms had already shielded me from several waves of baleful energy.

No wonder my reaction hadn’t been nearly as severe as Guo Zhen’s.

Without hesitation, I stuffed the last charm into Guo Zhen’s pocket. Her emotional state immediately improved considerably.

Meanwhile, the Red Thread emerging from the hole in the Copper Coin kept searching for an opportunity to wrap itself around the Leg Bone the man was swinging.

But every time the Red Thread appeared, the scriptures carved into the Leg Bone flashed with light and forced it back.

As long as the Red Thread couldn’t latch on, I couldn’t deploy the Copper-Coin Formation.

I couldn’t help marveling inwardly. There was always someone stronger, always a greater power beyond the heavens.

With a wave of my hand, the Copper Coin immediately returned to me.

The man gripped the Leg Bone and watched me like a predator eyeing its prey.

Clearly, he was also waiting for an opening to take me down in one decisive blow.

There were many kinds of zombies, but I had never heard of one like this-not only had it gained intelligence, it even possessed Buddha-nature.

Just who was the Fake Ascetic Monk?

How had he created something so bizarre?

The man ground his teeth, his sharp fangs producing a skin-crawling screech. The next moment, he raised his foot and charged at me in great strides.

He was incredibly fast. Before he even reached me, he had already raised the Leg Bone high overhead. This time, he drew it back for a massive swing aimed straight at my face.

I swiftly leaped to the side, drawing his attack away so Guo Zhen wouldn’t be caught in it.

At the same time, I bit my finger and squeezed a drop of blood onto the Copper Coin. Then I drew my bow to its limit once more and fired the Copper Coin straight at him.

The instant the Leg Bone collided with the Copper Coin again, the Red Thread spread out like veins, wrapping the Leg Bone from end to end in the blink of an eye.

The sight was terrifying.

Golden scriptures covered the pitch-black Leg Bone. Countless blood-red filaments visibly traced the patterns of those scriptures as they climbed upward. In the blink of an eye, they clung to the bone like maggots and overwrote every last scripture.

Crimson engulfed the gold and took its place, as if fresh blood had been pumped into the Leg Bone and brought it back to life.

Of course, the Leg Bone couldn’t truly come alive. Once the blood-red filaments seeped into it, flames burst out from within.

The man stared at the Leg Bone in disbelief. When he saw the gold vanish and flames spring to life, he let out an anguished howl and hurled the Leg Bone away, furious yet utterly unwilling to part with it.

The instant the Leg Bone hit the ground, it shattered into powder like a piece of charcoal burned all the way through.

Relief washed over me. Losing that ritual artifact was like losing an arm to him. This was good.

I glanced at the Copper Coin that had returned to my hand and found it as pristine as ever.

I frowned. Just how much power had Liu Junyan poured into this thing?

How had it still not run out?

But then another possibility occurred to me. What if this Golden Copper Coin wasn’t an independent object?

Liu Junyan had once given me a Scale for protection. It had indeed shielded me several times, but in the end, its power and Merit had been exhausted, and it had disappeared.

This Copper Coin seemed different from that Scale.

Could it… still be connected to Liu Junyan?

Every time I consumed the Copper Coin’s power, was I actually draining Liu Junyan instead?