Empire (Xichen X OC)

Chapter 37

"A seam?" Weuxian exclaimed out loud once he recognised the mark, his tone indicating that he was unhappy about their latest findings.

Wangji stood up. "It can be found on all these corpses at various locations."

"No wonder that crazy woman screeched at the sound of meat being cleaved. She probably saw bodies being chopped to pieces."

Guan-Yin tried to conceal the shiver that made her hair stand on end at the idea of someone just cutting corpses. However, it did not entirely make sense to her.

Upon further inspection of the body, she noticed that they had been sewn back together. "Why?" she found herself asking out loud. "Why cut the corpses and then sew them back?"

She couldn't understand why someone would do that, considering how much energy and time it would take. At the same time, she could not honestly find a reason for someone to get into all that trouble.

She glanced at the two adults by her side, seeing that Wuxian must have been thinking the same thing.

Wangji had no answer either, but he needed to test something. With two fingers lifted and placed close to his lips, his blue spiritual energy started to travel around the corpse.

A few moments later, the energy disappeared, but the Second Jade had already gotten his answer. "Other than the head, the corpses bear no traces of vicious energy."

"I get it!" Wuxian said, finally connecting the dots. "Someone split the bodies to release resentful energy and then stitched the pieces onto normal corpses to suppress its vicious aura."

"It sounds like a lot of work. Whoever did this had time on their hands, and they were trying to achieve something worthwhile. Otherwise, they wouldn't go into all that trouble, right?"

Wuxian noticed that Guan-Yin had stopped inspecting the body, but her hand was still on the corpse, close to the neck. "Guan-Yin, can you move the head, please?"

Curious about why, she nodded and used one finger to move the head to the side. Immediately, they both noticed a red mark imprinted on the skin.

"I had never seen this rune before", Wangji admitted.

"Mm. It's a first for me too," his soulmate added.

Yue shook her head, indicating she had not seen it anywhere. However, seeing the two most knowledgeable cultivators not have an answer about it was slightly alarming, especially if one was talking about Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

"However", Wuxian continued, making the duo look at him. "It looks very similar to an array that blocks out resentful energy, except that the order of brush strokes, thus its power, has been entirely reversed."

"That means what? That it absorbs resentful energy?" Guan-Yin questioned, looking at him to see if she was indeed catching up to what he was saying and if she was not thinking way of the mark.

He nodded. "I believe so, and it actually must do it in a short time."

Wangji narrowed his eyes slightly once he realized where this was going. "A man-made fuel for vicious energy..."

"Although the effect only lasts briefly, it is mighty. A few days is all it needs to create a vicious feral zombie."

The Second Jade glanced around him momentarily at all the corpses covered by vines. "So, 11 years ago, someone researched whether they could use dismembered corpses to suppress vicious energy in this very location."

"Huaicang Hill is remote and concealed by the Zombie Trap Array. If Jin Zixun's head had not triggered that abnormal flow of energy, the secrets of this hill would remain hidden."