This time, everyone heard the skeletal fortress ship scream like a wounded animal. Hearts pounding, countless immortals stopped what they were doing and stared at the ship, struck dumb with shock.
The weapon had connected with great ferocity and left great damage in its wake. Crimson ripples spread through the air as the ship careened into Dusk City.
Hum!
Tremendous sword energy discharged from the inheritance tower at the center of the city and kept the ship outside.
Thud!
The vessel crash-landed on the ground, filling the air with dust.
“Graaawl!” Giant maw yawning open, the ship of white bones shrieked with a fury that resonated in everyone’s heart.
Bam!
Before it could recover, a third beam of light pummeled its body. This time the attack caused true damage, scattering bones in all directions. Half of the ship was shattered by the light beam. The skeletal ship roared, as did Li Wushang from on top of the bow.
The Cauldron of Invincible Constitution above his head was pushed to its limit, almost fully morphing into lines of strange runes and circling around his body. Tattered and torn, his skin covered him like ragged clothes, and rotten gray flesh clung to his bones like jelly.
By this point, the cauldron was fully disassembled into golden runes that filled the air, desperately repairing Li Wushang’s deteriorating body. A thick stench of decay emanated from his body, and corpsewater-like blood dripped from his moldering flesh.
“Protect the young lord!” Immortals of the Jiangchen Clan made a mad dash for their young master when they saw his injuries and fell into formation to block the fourth shot from the weapon.
Bam!
The blast barreled forward with enough momentum to destroy heaven and earth. Even the inheritance tower in Dusk City trembled, releasing brilliant splendor to protect the city. The beam of light blew a hole from one side of the fortress ship to the other, finally rendering it immobile. Everyone stared with dread at the living ship of fifty kilometers in length.
“It took four hits from the weapon of war to immobilize the ship… what manner of monster is it?! Where did the Jiangchen Clan find such a twisted thing?!” It was too terrifying to put into words. It’d taken four hits from the weapon to subdue the ship, and Li Wushang, at the helm, was still alive!
Four hits from a weapon of war should’ve obliterated even an arcane dao immortal!
“Hot damn, I didn’t expect to have a chance to fire a weapon of war one day!” Li Youcai laughed heartily, quite pleased with the turn of events.
This was the one that Lu Yun had brought back from the banks of the Blood Sea. The former governor had moved the stronghold and its terrain to the crater left after the collapse of Myriad Formation Summit. The new city stood on top of the burial mound, which, although destroyed, still contained a good number of tunnels with terrible corpse flies residing within, including the tunnel Lu Yun had dug to raid the burial mound.
If the flies flew out, it would be a great disaster for Dusk Province. It was the perfect solution to seal the great crater with an enormous city that spanned twenty-five hundred kilometers in radius.
Established on top of the ruins of Truewater, the city was bequeathed the same name. Li Youcai was appointed the city lord and put in charge of the weapon of war.
Excitement and surprise gripped him after taking four shots with the weapon of war and finally shooting down the skeletal fortress ship. The fortress ship’s defensive power had exceeded even that of arcane dao immortals!
Yuying and the others allowed themselves surreptitious sighs of relief. Shooting down the fortress ship would send an unspoken warning and intimidate all immortals of Dusk.
“Kill Li Wushang!” exclaimed Yuying. Aoxue and Huangqing rushed out in twin crimson blurs and attacked the man atop the skeletal ship.
“Hahaha! You want to kill me?” Li Wushang burst into laughter. Now completely in its golden rune form, his cauldron entered his spirit and beams of golden light quickly restored his tattered body. In the blink of an eye, he grew into a golden giant roughly three hundred meters in height.
Bam! Bam!
Li Wushang swung out with a punch at each woman. Golden runes danced around him while both Aoxue and Huangqing trembled before they were thrown backward, blood seeping from their mouths from that singular counterattack.
The crowd goggled with shock.
Aoxue was a peak august immortal. When she’d blockaded the Qing entrance for a month, no august immortals of the Qing Clan, or clans friendly with them, had proven able to defeat her.
She was fighting alongside a woman who could rival her, yet Li Wushang managed to knock them away with a single move. The man was only an empyrean immortal!
Crack crack crack!
Sounds of broken bones being reconnected emitted from the skeletal ship beneath Li Wushang’s feet. Next, the vessel that’d been cleanly penetrated by the weapon of war gradually rose into the air. Its giant skeletal wings slowly unfurled and it extended its giant mouth.
“Grrrrrl!!” Beastly howls rang through the area.
“You can that try again, fucking fatty.” Li Wushang’s voice was dreadfully chilling, devoid of any human emotions and like that of a ghost crawled out from the deepest hell.
Far off in the distance, Li Youcai shuddered. He felt a chilling malice locking onto him, attempting to freeze his body and soul.
“So I will!” he growled through the cold. “Blast both the skeletal ship and the golden bastard on the ship into pieces! You piece of shit, don’t think I won’t attack you just because we share the same surname!”
Bam!
An enormous image of the Black Tortoise and three hundred million premium immortal crystals fueled the weapon of war. Endless power from the land converged into a white beam of light and spewed out of the treasure.
Waging war was an exercise in consuming wealth. Lu Yun hadn’t had much of these immortal crystals to begin with, but the Feng Clan had earned plenty for him in the year they ruled over Dusk Province, charging a hundred thousand crystals for every visit to the inheritance tower. Those crystals were now all Lu Yun’s.
Li Wushang’s expression froze. He hadn’t expected the fat guy from five thousand kilometers out to not only survive the vicious aura he’d released, but remain wholly unaffected. He had no idea about Li Youcai’s unique constitution, which had allowed him to remain hale and hearty even after being possessed by an immortal ghost. Mere killing intent wouldn’t do anything to the fatty.
The white beam of light from the weapon of war tore into the skeletal ship’s open mouth.
Bam!
The ship was again pierced through, and ugly cracks splintered throughout the vessel.
Bam!
The enormous ship once again plummeted from the sky and crashed into the ground. Li Youcai belly-laughed with satisfaction. “I’m not gonna pull my punches even if you’re another Li!”
However, he didn’t keep attacking. Five shots from the weapon of war had burned through billions of crystals. There wasn’t that much more left in Truewater City. Moreover, Dusk City was right behind the ship. If he took another shot, the city might end up razed to the ground instead.
Li Wushang struggled out of the ship, cocooned in golden runes that focused on repairing his deteriorating body.
“He’s still alive!” Sharp inhalations sounded from onlookers. Five shots from the weapon of war later, neither the ship nor Li Wushang had been annihilated! Finally, someone noticed something amiss about the man. Li Wushang wasn’t human!
“He’s a zombie!” exclaimed Mo Chenfeng. “Li Wushang has become a zombie! And the ship is a zombie too!”
“Jiangchen Wushang of Truespirit Major’s Corpse Refiners, at your service.”
Hum!
‘Li Wushang’ soared into the sky, his enormous body blazing with golden light. A young man with a devilish smile appeared over his head. The Cauldron of Invincible Constitution reverted to its original form and fell into the youth’s hand. Dressed in grey, the young man had both a handsome and feminine face. The deviant smile tugging at his lips wreathed him in eerie disquiet.
“Li Wushang, Jiangchen Wushang… We’re both Wushang, so it was destined that our paths would cross. He was one of the geniuses who’d emerged from the Dusk tournament and found great favor in my eyes, so I couldn’t resist refining him into a zombie.”
His words sent shudders down everyone’s spine. He’d refined a living person into a zombie!
The Corpse Refiners!
Over the past year, their disciples had appeared to challenge geniuses all over the world and taken many lives. What they all had in common was that all of them were accompanied by a zombie!
Folks had originally thought that the zombies were unearthed from some ancient tombs, but Jiangchen Wushuang's reveal of the ugly truth made their hearts burn with incandescent fury. Corpse refiners’ zombies came from living victims. What was even worse was that if Li Wushang hadn’t been gravely injured, the other immortals wouldn’t have sensed anything wrong about him!
He seemed just like any one of them.
“Mo Chenfeng....” Jiangchen Wushang turned to Mo Chenfeng with a fey smile. “Li Wushang has become my battle zombie. Now, it’s your turn. I’ve come for you this time, Mo Chenfeng. Be mine to command!”
Swoosh!
Li Wushang abruptly shrank and punched out at Mo Chenfeng.
“Bastard!” The august immortal standing guard by Mo Chenfeng’s side raised his hands and rained down a barrage of a dozen combat arts at Li Wushang.
Bam!
The immortal threw up a mouthful of blood and his body shattered like porcelain.
“Third uncle!” Mo Chenfeng cried out with dismay. Without hesitation, he attacked with his sword, but he realized with a start that the man before him was an illusion.
Meanwhile, Jiangchen Wushang and Li Wushang suddenly appeared beside Lu Yun and attacked in unison. Lu Yun was his real target!
