One more catty, one more attribute point

Chapter 305 Who is the Prisoner, the Princess from a Thousand Years Ago

"Let's go!" After dealing with that strange monk, Su Heng gestured to Meng Huan and Wu Cuicheng, "Let's go inside and see what exactly happened in White Tower Temple that turned it into this bizarre state!"

"Okay!" Meng Huan nodded in agreement.

Wu Cuicheng was also very excited; they had been stopped by these living corpses for quite some time.

It was the first time they had witnessed the true killing of living corpses. The situation inside White Tower Temple was very odd, but Wu Cuicheng wasn't worried. With Su Heng leading the team, even if they really encountered danger, they could resolve it effortlessly.

Walking along the road in front of the temple, they crossed the main gate and entered the interior.

Before them lay a vast square, and at the end stood a lofty great hall. The main doors of the hall were wide open, its interior pitch-black, like the gaping maw of a beast in hibernation. Standing hundreds of meters away, they seemed to feel the cold breeze blowing out of the temple.

On both sides of the square, there were Arhat statues, sutra flags, prayer wheels, and so on.

Among the many temples in Skull Plain, these setups were quite common. Although varying in size and decoration, there was nothing particularly shocking.

The key problem was that not long ago, elite forces had been mobilized from White Tower Temple. Yet, in just a few months, these Buddhist statues and utensils had become covered with rust and moss, as if hundreds of years had swiftly passed by in this isolated world, bringing visible wear and tear.

Wu Cuicheng was surprised, "The last time I led men here, the scene was desolate as well, but not as exaggerated as it is now."

"Hiss..." As he spoke, he suddenly tightened his arm.

A chill penetrated and made him shiver uncontrollably.

"Look there!" Meng Huan seemed to hear something, suddenly looked up, and stared towards the wide-open doors of the temple.

In the pitch-black hall.

Shadows appeared, tall and short, fat and thin.

The aura they emitted varied in strength, but all wore expressionless faces, with a dead and dreary appearance. They didn't look much different from the living corpses they had just seen.

"Did these living corpses appear here to stop us?" Meng Huan reached for his sword hilt while glancing at Su Heng from the corner of his eye. But upon looking, he saw Su Heng's eyebrows deeply furrowed, his face bearing an expression of disbelief.

What the hell could scare you... Meng Huan's heart skipped a beat, but he still pretended to be nonchalant as he asked, "Is there something special happening?"

"That guy..." Su Heng exhaled a turbid breath and pointed forward.

His pointing directed them to a stout, fat monk standing within the temple. The monk was almost five meters tall, his body a mass of fat. From a distance, he resembled a mountain of flesh. With just a slight motion, waves of flesh rolled on his body. Just looking at him from afar was like smelling an offensive, greasy odor.

"What's with that monk, anything special about him?" Meng Huan asked curiously.

"That guy is Jialan Gunna." Before Su Heng could speak, Wu Cuicheng next to him said with some shock, "He led the Monk Soldiers and invaded the territories of the great Zhou state by breaking through the Hanwu Barrier. He was the leading commander among the allied forces of Skull Plain."

"I remember this person died at your hands, Lord. How could he suddenly appear here?" Wu Cuicheng widened his eyes, looking towards Su Heng.

"I personally killed him, and he was definitely dead, no question about that," Su Heng said softly.

"Then could it be that the dead have come back to life!?" Wu Cuicheng exclaimed in shock.

"Once dead, it's over, there's no such thing as reincarnation or the dead coming back to life," Meng Huan scoffed, "There must be another explanation, perhaps illusion? Though it's not quite right, these monks still have some of the aura from when they were alive."

"Let me think..." Su Heng rubbed his temples, recalling the scene when he killed Jialan Gunna.

Because he needed to accumulate attribute points, he had to absorb a lot of nutrients from the outside world.

Su Heng had always had a good habit.

After battles, he would habitually absorb the nutrients from the corpses, rarely wasting any.

He was now using the Bright Sun Divine Skill, but before, it was the flesh-fungus species of the Mist Demons. Jialan Gunna was an exception; after being killed by Su Heng, his body had withered and decayed as if all the essence and nutrients inside dissipated instantly. Su Heng was somewhat frustrated at the time, which imprinted the memory deeply.

Now that he thought about it, that power hadn't scattered into nothing.

Instead, it was guided by something back to White Tower Temple and was refined by some mysterious presence deep within the temple, to be reused.

"That guidance is... 'Corpse Fragrance Supplies'!" It was as if a light flashed in Su Heng's mind, connecting the dots all at once.

"What's the situation?" Seeing the look of realization on Su Heng's face.

Meng Huan couldn't contain his curiosity any longer and asked. Wu Cuicheng was also all ears.

Su Heng didn't leave them in suspense and directly said, "A strong person of the Earth Immortal Realm can infuse their spiritual power into their flesh and blood. And the highest quality Corpse Fragrance Supplies in White Tower Temple are made from the fresh blood of that former Princess of the Great Yu."

"If some method is used, and the spiritual power inside is not completely refined."

"Then by using Emperor Grade Corpse Fragrance for cultivation, your strength indeed grows rapidly, but in the process, your spirit changes, becoming dominated by another consciousness.

Therefore, it seems like the cultivators of White Tower Temple imprisoned that person inside the White Tower as some sort of expendable resource. But in reality, the true situation is the complete opposite. Over the millennia, many cultivators above Heavenly Deceit in White Tower Temple have been devoured and refined without their knowledge."

"Hiss..." Hearing Su Heng say this, Meng Huan suddenly felt a chill.

The most terrifying part of this affair was that the initial cultivators who used the Corpse Fragrance Supplies underwent a transformation in their spirits. Even if they noticed something was wrong during the process, by that time, their minds and thoughts had already been controlled, and it was too late.

They had no choice but to comply obediently, even enticing other cultivators within their sect to tread upon this path.

Eventually, after centuries had passed, the entire upper echelon of the White Tower Temple fell, becoming puppets of the great Princess of the Moon.

"It's not just the White Tower Temple," Meng Huan said seriously. "The Imperial-control Method spread from the White Tower Temple was also very popular among other Esoteric Sects. Corpse Fragrance offerings have even become a hard currency among the Heavenly Deceit cultivators of the Esoteric Sects... by this account, the number of people secretly controlled and refined within other Esoteric Sects is also not a small figure."

"If it really is as Su Heng has guessed, after a thousand years, countless cultivators have had their spiritual power devoured and assimilated, what kind of monster would be formed?" Meng Huan was an Earth Immortal, but the mere thought made him shudder with dread.

"But there's one more thing," Wu Cuicheng raised his hand and said, "I've also heard about that princess. Since she was suppressed within the White Tower Temple, she naturally couldn't enter the realm of immortality. Under normal circumstances in the world, even a master at the Earth Immortal Realm wouldn't live more than five or six hundred years."

"That person should have turned into a handful of yellow earth a long time ago since she was already a famous master in her region a thousand years ago; there's no way she could've lived until now."

Meng Huan frowned, exchanging a glance with Su Heng.

"You do have a point," Meng Huan conceded. "But many things in this world should not be measured by common sense."

"We must see the princess's majesty in person to get to the bottom of this," Su Heng also opened his mouth to speak.

His gaze landed on the group of living corpses below the hall, "Jialan Gunna..."

With a cold laugh, Su Heng said, "Back then, I found it wasn't easy to kill this fellow. As for now, dying at my hands twice counts as his great fortune accumulated over ten lifetimes of cultivation."

Boom!

Su Heng's aura erupted without hesitation.

He stretched out his arms, and then, with a thunderous punch, he lashed out.

His physical strength was so formidable that even a casual punch was like a heavenly might rolling in, destroying everything.

The terrifying force compressed the air, instantly forming a massive tidal wave of impact in front of him. Tens of meters high and hundreds of meters wide, the ornately decorated great hall was directly pierced by Su Heng's fist. The ground caved inward, and various fragments of broken tiles and wood pieces, the dark remnants, were whirled into the sky, taking a long time to slowly fall back down.

The living corpses were torn into pieces, scattered on the ground, and were struggling to heal.

But Su Heng lifted his leg and stepped past them, as a ripple of pitch-black spread out beneath his feet.

The moment the two touched, the living corpses seemed to be submerged, their fragmented bodies directly assimilated and absorbed by the Seed of Destruction, transforming into nourishment and merging into Su Heng's body.

The White Tower Temple was divided into the inner and outer courts.

The outer court was decorated with splendor, a majestic complex of ancient temples.

The inner court, in stark contrast, was a simple, secluded environment, a vast garden.

It was planted with numerous Bodhi trees and Sal trees, green as far as the eye could see. Many plain lecture halls, meditation rooms, and white pagodas, could be seen here.

Whoosh!

Su Heng and his party had just set foot inside.

Suddenly, a breeze brushed by, and the Bodhi trees rustled.

From those simple wooden buildings, one by one, doors opened. Each door revealed a figure standing still with a vacant look, enshrouded in profound darkness. A pair of emotionless eyes focused on Su Heng.

"Hiss..." Even just affected by their gaze, Wu Cuicheng felt his heart rate slightly quicken, his breathing accelerated, a clear sign of his nervousness. Even Meng Huan, previously nonchalant, tensed up, his muscles rigid under his long robe, a hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

In contrast, Su Heng appeared unperturbed as he surveyed his surroundings, his expression relaxed and casual as if strolling in a serene, profound temple.

One of the monks came before Su Heng, bowing deeply, and gestured with a hand to guide the way.

"It seems that person wants to meet with me alone," Su Heng could roughly guess the intentions.

"We'll wait for you here," Meng Huan smiled and said. "Don't worry, I might not be a match for that person, but these cloned puppets can hardly take me down."

"Okay!" Su Heng nodded.

Within the Earth Immortal Realm, Meng Huan was certainly not a weakling.

Since he said so, he must have his own confidence, and Su Heng need not worry.

The group temporarily split up.

Following the monk guiding the way, they traversed through the thickets and soon arrived in front of a serene pond with a gigantic Bodhi tree at the foothills of a snow mountain. This place was nearly at mid-mountain, with pristine snow above, and a lush, verdant garden below.

In the midst, a deep pond, a Bodhi tree, a white pagoda.

An idyllic and peaceful scenery straight out of a fairy tale, dividing the surrounding environment into two distinct halves.

And at the edge of the icy pond, amidst the snow, sat a slender figure on a wooden stake. Draped in a snow-white fur cloak, her hair was pinned with a simple hairpin, cascading down like a waterfall. Despite only showing her back, her bearing exuded a chill and distant aura.

She casually rested a guqin on her slightly slanted thigh.

The distant sound of the string instrument was like the ringing of jade pendants, mountains high and water flowing. But the sentiment it carried seemed even colder than the icy pond and snow, by three degrees.