The second Hui’s qi passed through the coffin walls, it faded away. Startled, Hui yanked back his tendril of qi and found it dying, as if infected with death qi. He severed the tendril, leaving it to shrivel up into darkness.

Right! That water’s dangerous. If I want to examine it, I’ll have to use death qi.

Actually… as a death cultivator, shouldn’t I only have death qi? He peeked open an eye to see if Fa Chuyou had noticed, but she stood in the corner, busily working on some project. Blood gushed, splattering across the hallway. She delicately leaped out of its way, made a quick gesture, and stemmed the flow of blood, then stepped back in to continue working as if nothing had happened.

Hui closed his eyes again. She’s busy. I doubt she noticed.

He reached out again, this time with a tendril of death qi. His qi passed through the coffin walls and pressed into the water. A chill struck him instantly, along with a strange, empty feeling. The tendril slowed, and Hui frowned. What am I doing? Why am I…

He furrowed his brows, forcing himself to focus. The corpse. Find the corpse! I’m trying to resonate with the corpse. Remember that, the corpse! Don’t let the Yellow Spring waters’ influence wash away your memories of what you’re doing!

The death qi connected to something, an object hanging in the empty water. A void of sensation rushed up to meet him. Focusing, he spread his qi throughout the entire corpse, searching. Nothing… nothing…

Ah, there!

A faint spark. The barest memory of a technique. He reached out to it, and it faded. Startled, Hui drew back. Right, death qi! If I touch her qi with it, I’ll kill whatever little is left of it. He hovered close, unwilling to touch.

The tiny trace of remnant qi fluctuated. Quietly, Hui watched, recording the fluctuation in his death qi. Slowly, he matched his qi to the remnant qi, fluctuating in time with it.

As he did, he reached out his hand toward the chest. Using another scrap of death qi, he copied the fluctuations again, hovering them over the objects in the chest. The objects’ fluctuations clashed with the fluctuations of his death qi. He flicked his finger. A piece of silver leaped from the chest and clattered a small distance away, its clashing fluctuations gone. Again, and again, flicking away the most clashing items one at a time into a neat pile a meter away from the chest. At last, three items remained: the dark amber, a shard of bone, and a thin gold wire.

He drew the three items toward him. They whooshed through the air and hovered over his open palm, slowly rotating.

The bone hummed, slightly off tune, but the death aura in it drew out the corpse’s death aura, creating an additive power. The amber gave a clear resonance, pure and dark. Although the resonance wasn’t perfect, the clash was so small as to be barely noticeable.

Finally, the wire. It vibrated in his hand, clearly off-resonance. And yet… he furrowed his brows. And yet, it’s also perfect. Perfect, and not perfect, as if… as if there’s two different resonances!

He returned his attention to the corpse and the scraps of qi inside of it. Suddenly, the one resonance he’d been sensing split into two. One, dark and placid, pulsed with almost a heartbeat—the black blood. The other glowed a brilliant green, lively and aggressive.

Hui stared. That’s—that’s the remnants of the puppet technique’s qi! It’s still inside the corpse? Then… could I use that puppet qi through the corpse? If I can resonate with both…

Turning back to the items in his hand, he focused again. The dark amber pulsed with the same slow beat as the black blood, while the wire writhed with the lively energy of the puppet technique’s qi. The black blood’s resonance was stronger, leading the wire to stand off-resonance more obviously, but both fit the remnants of the qi inside the corpse.

I’ve decided. The answer… is these two! He sent the scrap of bone into the pile with the rest of the rejected materials, then opened his eyes, releasing his meditative state. The amber and the wire fell into his palm, clattering against one another. He waved at the small pile, and the items lifted into the air and settled back into the chest.

Hui stood, looking down at the corpse in the coffin. Only her face floated above the dark liquid, a pale death mask looming from the gloomy dark. He pressed the amber and the wire against her forehead and circulated his death qi through them. Reaching out, he used the resonance of the wire and the amber to call out to the scraps of qi inside the corpse’s body. They shuddered, then leaped to his call, rushing toward the materials. At the same instant, the amber and wire melted into the corpse’s body, leaving no mark.

Following the materials with his death qi, Hui guided the materials toward the remnant qi, careful not to touch the remnants nor the materials with his qi directly. They met and shuddered, resonating with one another. From the outside, he circulated his qi, guiding the remnant qi without directly touching it. It slowly began to turn under his guidance, merging with the materials and the aura of his death qi at the same time.

As the two merged, his death qi diminished. Hui almost retreated, startled, but stopped himself at the last second. Wait! If my death qi is diminishing, that means the process is using it! I’m succeeding, I’m integrating my death qi into the corpse! More, I need to feed it more! Rather than cutting off the flow of his death qi, he widened the passages, sending more death qi into the corpse.

More and more of his death qi flowed into the corpse. His dantian grew low on qi, and his cultivation shuddered, about to fall back into the second stage. He furrowed his brows. I can’t keep this up much longer. My reserves—

“Use the death aura from the Yellow Springs Water,” Fa Chuyou said.

He looked up, startled. She stood right beside him, frowning down at the corpse. At his look, she grabbed his chin and turned it back toward the corpse. “Don’t get distracted now. Give her all your attention. This is a critical moment!”

Immediately, Hui turned back to the corpse. He reached out to the Yellow Springs Water tentatively. I couldn’t draw any death qi out of it earlier, and it washed away my memories while I was at it. Can I—

Death aura thickened into death qi. A second stream of death qi flowed into the corpse from the water. Hui grabbed onto it like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver and drew it back toward him.

The second the death qi left the corpse, it dissipated. Hui stared, mind blank. It’s… it’s useless! I—

Wait. I can manipulate it in the corpse. So…

Ah! So I can’t use it to restore my own reserves, but I can use it to power the process. As long as it’s in the corpse, it can be used!

Hui stopped trying to draw the death qi into himself and instead circulated it through the corpse. The death qi from the water had no ownership or fluctuations to it, but matched his and the corpse’s qi perfectly. With the supplemental qi from the water, the materials melted into the remnant qi from the corpse, then circulated into the corpse’s body, strengthening it.

As the last of the materials melted away, Hui drew his consciousness out of the corpse and drew a breath, exhausted. He looked at Fa Chuyou.

She nodded, smiling. “Good job! For your first time, that was impressive. You drew at least sixty percent of the potential out of those materials… it’s not uncommon to draw out ten, twenty, or thirty percent on a first try. Though usually death cultivators don’t cultivate other corpses. Interesting! Your deeper comprehension of death qi must have given you an advantage. I wonder if a live cultivator could take advantage of that… no, but they’d have to cultivate death qi. Death qi is fundamentally incompatible with life…” She waved her hand. “It’s impossible, after all.”

Ah… right. But this small cultivator is a live cultivator who cultivates death qi! My apologies, Elder Sister.

The split image of Gu Tian and his soul suddenly popped back into Hui’s mind. He rubbed his forehead, thoughtful. I… wonder. I did die once. Is it possible that…

That… what? I reincarnated into this world. I’m not still dead.

He shook his head at himself, banishing the thoughts. “Is the corpse ready now?”

“Not yet. It needs time to soak in the fluid and incorporate the materials fully into itself. When all the fluid is absorbed, the corpse can be considered cultivated at the first realm. You’ll have to repeat the process with more powerful materials to move it up to the second, then third realm,” Fa Chuyou said.

That long? Corpse cultivation is exhausting! I’ll need so much death qi… and what about the materials? I’ll need so much amber, so much of that wire! Hui sighed, already tired just thinking about it.

Oh well. I’m used to working long hours. I should be able to make it work!

But… it’s worthless for saving Xixing. Dammit! What am I supposed to do, then?

Fa Chuyou nodded. “With this corpse… I think it should be able to absorb this much fluid within a week. Come back then, okay? I should have some leftover second stage materials you can try for the next refinement.”

Hui nodded. I can’t rely on her materials. I should find my own, if I can.

Argh, Xixing would be so much help for that! But… she’s trapped…

I need the corpse to save Xixing, I need Xixing to help refine the corpse. What should I do?

He furrowed his brows, lost in thought.

Fa Chuyou tilted her head at him. “What’s wrong?”

Could she help? Well… it’s worth asking. Hui looked at her. “Elder Sister, there’s one of our Elder Brothers recently caught a famed pill cultivator from a righteous sect. Our sect doesn’t have pill refining, but isn’t pill refining similar to corpse cultivation? Do you think we could ask them to loan us the pill cultivator for a while so we can… er, seek enlightenment from her?”

“Seek enlightenment? From a pill cultivator?” Fa Chuyou frowned. “Pill cultivators ought to seek enlightenment from us, not the other way around.”

“Ah… that’s true, that’s true, Elder Sister, but this small cultivator is but on the first step on the path of corpse cultivation. Elder Sister’s methods are too mysterious and deep for this cultivator to understand. By studying pill cultivation as a stepping-stone on the way to the true path of corpse cultivation, I hope to grow half a step closer to Elder Sister’s comprehension,” Hui replied, giving her an adulating look.

She nodded, putting a hand on her chin. “That… is a good thought. I wouldn’t want you to deviate from the true path of corpse cultivation, though…”

Hui shook his head and slapped his chest. “Elder Sister, have no fear. This small cultivator has absolutely no ability to cultivate pills! I don’t even know how to turn on a pill furnace!”

“Oh! Well, in that case, of course!” Fa Chuyou said, beaming. “Do you know who captured the pill cultivator? I could ask Master Jing to help us negotiate with their Master to borrow the pill cultivator for a while.”

Master Jing! Right, he had an eye on me. And I need a Master to sponsor me so I can enter the trials zone. This is a chance to not only help Xixing, but also to show my skills before a potential sponsor! He nodded, then hesitated. I don’t actually know their names, though. “Er… I know which vertebra they’re in.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine. We can figure it out from there,” she said, nodding.

“I believe it was… Vertebra 46?”

She furrowed her brows, then nodded. “I’ll speak with Master Jing. We should be able to negotiate something!”

Hui bowed. “Thank you, Elder Sister!”