Chapter 128: The Profound Yin Corpse-Refining Art

It seems tonight's affairs have finally come to an end. Yuning straightened up, placed the bone book back into its box, and then carefully tucked the box into the hidden wall recess. With a gentle tap of her hand, the small door of the recess emitted a crisp click and snapped shut, sealing so seamlessly with the surrounding wall that not the slightest anomaly could be detected from the outside.

Having finished all this, Yuning slowly lay back down, pressing closely against Hu San as if intending to sleep right there. However, at that very moment, the deeply slumbering Hu San abruptly rolled over.

That alone would not have been enough to startle Yuning; rolling over was merely rolling over. What chilled her to the bone and made her feel as though her soul had left her body was that Hu San's eyes were wide open. The gaze emanating from them was intensely clear—not at all the occasional wakefulness of a drunken man. Most fatally of all, Hu San actually blinked at her!

Indeed, Yuning would stake her life on it: at this very moment, the man before her was blinking at her, and the amusement in his eyes was visible even to a blind person.

"How can this be? Could it be that he hasn't been asleep at all, and all of this was an act?"

Yuning's mind went rigid. Instantly recalling the anomalies during the corpse-refining process, her face began to turn a shade of pale green. It appeared that this time, when she chose a cheap husband, she had truly picked a tyrannosaurus rex! Yet now, it seemed this dragon's teeth were far too sharp, and her, a mere little cheetah, was nothing more than a joke before him.

"Very startled? Very surprised?"

Before Yuning could cry out in shock, Hu San had already seized her by the throat with one hand, casting an astonished gaze over her curvaceous figure. He chuckled, "I was wondering how the heavens could grant me such a massive bargain, and it turns out this cheap son-in-law isn't so easy to play after all. Tsk tsk, refining a corpse? You certainly have good taste. I may not be good at much, but I do possess brute strength. I suppose if you managed to successfully refine it, the power would indeed be formidable."

Yuning's wide eyes stared fixedly as she felt the large hand clamped around her throat tighten inexorably. The sensation of suffocation prevented her from even mustering her internal energy, let alone deploying any other methods.

While holding Yuning with one hand, Hu San beckoned gently toward the bedroom door with the other. Driven by his mental cultivation technique, the spatial stone he had previously knocked into the door flew directly over.

With a deft flick of his right hand, Hu San slipped on the wrist guard bearing the spatial stone.

"To be honest, I'm quite surprised too. I never imagined that merely attending a hydrangea-tossing matchmaking ceremony would unearth so many complications. Heh, this is my first time getting this close to a living immortal cultivator, but aren't you a bit unqualified as a cultivator? How can you be this poor? You don't even have a spatial stone. I always thought I was the poorest immortal cultivator alive."

With great difficulty, Yuning finally managed to summon her internal energy, but under Hu San's immense physical strength, it was brushed aside and dissipated like a bursting bubble.

Hu San familiarly patted the wall beside him, smoothly opening the hidden recess, and took out everything inside right before Yuning's eyes.

Observing the mixture of terror and despair in Yuning's eyes, Hu San casually flipped through the bone-bound book and discovered that it indeed recorded a technique for refining living corpses, titled the *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art*.

Despite its imposing title, this technique was merely the most basic method of corpse control.

Cultivating this technique required a corpse-control pill. Catalyzed by soul-attracting incense, the medicinal properties of the pill would be used to channel the cultivator's own Dark Yin true qi into the target. Once the true qi and the corpse-control pill reacted and combined perfectly within the target, the initial refining of the corpse-control technique was complete.

At this stage, although the target appeared completely normal on the surface, their spiritual consciousness had vanished entirely, leaving their every movement subject to the refiner's control. From then on, the refiner only needed to channel Dark Yin true qi into the target's body daily to merge with the corpse-control pill. Naturally, for a brief initial period, without meticulous inspection, one would never discover the living corpse's abnormality.

According to the text, the refiner could even control the target to speak and eat.

After a period of refining, the target's body would gradually harden under the influence of the corpse-control pill, developing scales on the surface and steadily increasing in physical strength until they became infinitely strong and impervious to blades and spears. At that point, the *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art* would reach complete mastery. To continue refining further after that, one had to adopt an advanced method known as the *Dark Yin Corpse-Sacrifice Art*.

The book stated that the *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art* could elevate a living corpse up to the fourth tier of the Dharma Gathering realm, while its advanced counterpart, the *Dark Yin Corpse-Sacrifice Art*, could push it to the eighth tier. However, this represented the absolute peak of this corpse-refining art, with no further stages beyond it.

Thus, according to the text, this *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art* was the preferred choice among disciples of the Black Spirit Sect. In their view, living corpses were essential items for home and travel; not only did they require no food, but they possessed boundless strength, terrifying corpse poison, and invulnerability to weapons, providing immense auxiliary support even in battles at the Dharma Gathering stage.

Naturally, the choice of the subject for corpse-refining also determined the ultimate outcome. The more unique the subject's constitution and the greater their inherent physical strength and vital blood, the more formidable the resulting corpse would be.

The Black Spirit Sect once recorded that an ancestor, while in the Dharma Gathering stage, used a gifted martial artist as a subject to refine a living corpse whose ultimate combat prowess rivaled that of peak Dharma Gathering experts. One could easily imagine how crucial the selection of the subject was to this technique.

Seeing this, Hu San deduced why he had been chosen by Yuning. She presumably possessed a method to perceive vital blood; although his cultivation level was inconspicuous, his vital blood was vastly superior to that of ordinary people. Once this *Dark Yin Corpse-Control Art* was successfully refined, the subject's prior cultivation would vanish entirely, retaining only their physical strength. Therefore, using him to refine a living corpse was infinitely better than using other martial artists.

Gently laying the bone book aside, it would be a lie to say Hu San was not tempted. Although this corpse-refining method was crude, it was exceptionally valuable to him at the moment. The only issue was that the refining method itself was somewhat repulsive: to force the Dark Yin true qi into the target's body, one had to engage in intimate physical contact, and this process had to be repeated multiple times.

If the target happened to be an enchanting and alluring woman, that might be acceptable, but typically, subjects chosen for living corpses were burly, rough-hewn men. Consequently, advancing this mental cultivation method could prove rather difficult.

What Hu San did not know was that even within the Black Spirit Sect, those who truly managed to master this corpse-refining technique were mostly female disciples. Male disciples could manage it once or twice, but once their cultivation grew, no one was willing to continue refining living corpses. Of course, there were male disciples who used females for refining, but their numbers were relatively small.

"Oh? It can be done this way?"

With a roll of his eyes, Hu San's peripheral vision suddenly caught the very last page of the text—the method for cultivating Dark Yin true qi that he had previously overlooked.

Though termed true qi, this Dark Yin true qi differed fundamentally from a martial artist's true qi; it was converted by immortal cultivators relying on their own magical power through a series of procedural methods.

Although simple to cultivate, this substance was extremely time-consuming; without three to five years, one could not hope to cultivate it to the level required for corpse-refining. Initially, upon seeing this, Hu San had dismissed the idea of corpse-refining, but the final appendix made his eyes light up once more.

The final appendix stated that, in fact, the ultimate corpse-refining effect was achieved by using someone who already practiced Dark Yin true qi as the subject. The more profound the subject's mastery of Dark Yin true qi, the stronger the resulting living corpse would be. Ultimately, when the Dark Yin true qi underwent a mutation and the refinement was fully completed, such a living corpse even had a certain probability of acquiring an offensive method known as the Dark Yin Corpse-Fiend Qi.

However, ordinary people could not cultivate Dark Yin true qi at all; it had to be converted from an immortal cultivator's magical power. Consequently, acquiring a subject who practiced Dark Yin true qi was exceedingly difficult!

To prevent disciples from slaughtering one another, the Black Spirit Sect strictly prohibited its members from refining their own kin into living corpses. Anyone discovered would face pursuit and execution by the entire sect, with no leniency whatsoever.

Even so, every year numerous disciples practicing the *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art* went missing in the Black Spirit Sect. Even though many disciples were caught and publicly executed annually, it could not deter the covetous desires others held toward their peers.

Therefore, within the Black Spirit Sect, once a disciple cultivated the Dark Yin true qi of the corpse-refining art to the point where they could refine a living corpse, they would not hesitate for a moment. They would secretly and randomly find someone to finish the refinement and thoroughly purge the Dark Yin true qi to avoid bringing a fatal catastrophe upon themselves. Over time, this had become an unwritten rule within the Black Spirit Sect.

As for someone like Yuning, who had refined her Dark Yin true qi almost to the verge of minor success, she was rare, if not entirely unique. Aside from the senior who created this technique, there was probably no second person who had achieved such a feat.

Of course, at this moment Hu San did not know to what extent Yuning had cultivated, but that did not prevent him from using this woman to practice the *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art*.

Amidst Yuning's horrified gaze, Hu San chuckled. With a swipe of his right hand across the corner of his mouth, he retrieved the foul-smelling corpse-control pill. It turned out Hu San had all along enveloped the pill with his internal energy; even though Yuning had forced it down his throat, with his physical cultivation, a mere thought was enough to expel the pill right back out.

"Although cultivating the *Dark Yin Corpse-Refining Art* is quite repulsive, if the subject happens to be a breathtaking beauty, it might just be acceptable."

Muttering to himself, Hu San retrieved a stick of soul-attracting incense from the box and lit it on the red candle beside the bed, just as Yuning had done earlier. Soon, the entire room was once again suffused with red smoke.

"It even has aphrodisiac properties?"

Frowning slightly, Hu San felt his body begin to heat up after inhaling a few breaths of the smoke, and his lower extremities stiffened aggressively. Instantly, he circulated his internal power slightly, suppressing the surging wave of heat.

Turning his gaze to the immobilized Yuning beneath him, perhaps due to the earlier backlash of her Dark Yin true qi, upon contacting the red smoke, her entire body suddenly flushed red and radiated an astonishing heat. Even though her neck remained firmly in Hu San's grip, her curvaceous body began to twist unconsciously, desperately rubbing against him.