Back in the room.
After repeatedly toggling the daily settlement panel for about a quarter of an hour, Wen Jiu's excitement finally subsided like a receding tide.
A sense of drowsiness once again pulled him into a dreamlike state.
Early the next morning, before dawn, Wen Jiu suddenly awoke from the wooden bed. His first action upon waking was to open the daily settlement panel. Seeing the panel truly existed, Wen Jiu let out a sigh of relief.
"Thank goodness it wasn't a dream."
Looking up, the sky outside was already showing a hint of dawn, and a strong sense of hunger surged in.
Just as he was about to gulp down some water to fill his empty stomach before seeking food, a knock at the door and a woman's voice rang out simultaneously.
"Lazy boy, get up quickly."
"Open the door for me."
The voice was gentle yet carried a hint of fierceness.
It was very familiar.
Wen Jiu hurriedly went to open the door, and what greeted his eyes was a woman in a plain blue cloth long dress.
Though simply dressed, her appearance was quite extraordinary, with dark eyebrows and almond-shaped eyes, and skin as white as snow.
However, upon seeing her, memories of her instantly surfaced.
Wen Ya.
His sister!
"So, how is it? After resting for a night, do you feel a bit better now?" Wen Ya entered the room and placed a sea bowl covered with a lotus leaf on a wooden table, speaking as she unwrapped the leaf.
Wen Jiu knew what she was asking about, and as he answered, he looked at the fragrant sea bowl, "It's okay, I feel like I can eat now... Sis, what is this thing, why does it smell so good?"
When the lotus leaf was lifted.
It was actually a bowl of rice.
It seemed he was truly starving, for the mere aroma of a bowl of plain rice made his mouth water.
"Smells good, doesn't it? This is a bowl of Spirit Rice, although it's low-grade, it's still food for the Immortal Family!"
As she spoke, Wen Ya handed over the sea bowl and chopsticks.
Wen Jiu didn't take them, his face full of doubt, "Sis, how did you get Spirit Rice?"
In his memory.
He had signed a contract to sell himself as a Corpse Burier.
His sister worked as a servant at Deadman Peak.
Though servants earned three to five more taels compared to Corpse Buriers, they could never afford even low-grade Spirit Rice.
Wen Ya forced a smile, "An Immortal Steward who oversees the Corpse Buriers appreciated my efficient work, so he let me work as a maid in his place... Hurry and eat, this low-grade Spirit Rice can cleanse impurities from your body and protect your organs from the invasion of blood energy, corpse aura, death aura, and yin aura."
"Sis, did you agree to that just for the Spirit Rice?" Having worked for seven or eight years, how could he not see through Wen Ya's forced smile? Things surely weren't that simple!
Wen Ya hurriedly shook her head, "No, no, why are you asking so many questions? Just eat quickly, or you'll have to go bury corpses again soon. Without eating your fill, where will you get the strength to bury corpses?"
After saying that.
Wen Ya did not give Wen Jiu a chance to speak, stood up, and was about to leave, leaving a parting remark, "Do your best, always remember... our staying here at the Immortal Mountain was at the cost of our parents' lives."
Bang!
The wooden door was tightly shut.
Wen Jiu stood stunned for a few breaths, not chasing after her, but rather picked up the sea bowl and ate it in big mouthfuls.
At this point.
There was nothing he could do.
He couldn't change anything either.
The only thing he could do was to eat his fill and then use the daily settlement panel to become stronger step by step.
...
Soon.
Wen Jiu returned once more to the Corpse Remains Death Land.
Compared to yesterday, today the Corpse Remains Death Land was even chillier, and stepping within a hundred feet of it felt like piercing cold to the bone. The Corpse Buriers beside him tightened their clothes but could not fend off the chill.
Yet, compared to yesterday, today in this land scattered with corpses, Wen Jiu felt like a fish in water.
So-called chilliness.
So-called death aura, corpse aura.
All of it made him truly enjoy it.
If not for the fear of exposing anything unusual, Wen Jiu would have wanted to take off his coat, remove his mask, and greedily, in big gulps, inhale the death aura, corpse aura.
"Everyone, be efficient, today we'll finish up early. If anyone dares to slack off, don't blame me for whipping you." After the middle-aged Steward warned them, Wen Jiu picked up a shovel and started turning the bloody mud, moving the corpses onto the cart.
Wherever his eyes rested.
The leftover limbs and scattered corpses no longer seemed terrifying.
Instead, Wen Jiu conceived the idea of having them all become mutated, for my own use.
But considering there is currently only one mutated corpse, combined with the Level 1 Corpse Nurturer information given by the panel, Wen Jiu decided to slowly search for a complete corpse. This is because a complete corpse, once mutated, is much stronger than a partial corpse.
However.
After half a day, Wen Jiu still couldn't find a complete corpse.
The surrounding Corpse Buriers were in the same situation.
The most complete corpse Wen Jiu saw after half a day was a middle-aged male cultivator with only the upper body left.
Though a complete corpse was yet to be found, hearing the conversations of others allowed Wen Jiu to deeply understand the cruelty of the cultivation realm. As it turns out, those who died here were all those lofty immortals.
Not ordinary people!
No one knows how many cultivator's remains are scattered across this land of death, but Wen Jiu believed there were at least tens of thousands.
Tens of thousands of cultivators just exposed in the wilderness.
After death, only Corpse Buriers would bury them in the Nameless Green Mountain Land.
Truly sorrowful and lamentable.
"Every ordinary person dreams of cultivation, even my original parents were willing to sacrifice their lives just to keep their children on the Immortal Mountain by serving cultivators... But who knows the cruelty of the cultivation realm?"
Wen Jiu couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
Just as Wen Jiu was sighing, a male cultivator's corpse kneeling on the ground, with resentment and anger carved in its clear facial features, its chest seemingly hollowed out by some beast, appeared in his view. As Wen Jiu approached, he felt the yin energy around it was threefold heavier than its surroundings. Do not underestimate this threefold; if he hadn't already become a Corpse Nurturer, being invaded by this level of yin energy would leave him bedridden for days, if not dead.
"You'll do!"
Wen Jiu slowly walked towards it.
Simple information of the male corpse gradually appeared before him.
[Anonymous Male Corpse]
[Bone Age: Thirty-five, Body Refining First Layer before death]
[Mutate?]
After glancing around and seeing no entirely complete corpse, Wen Jiu immediately chose yes.
Just after making that choice, Wen Jiu secretly bit his finger and dripped three drops of his blood onto its head and both shoulders. In an instant, the corpse absorbed the three drops fiercely.
Accompanied by the influx of blood, the yin energy around the male corpse surged even more, but fortunately, it was far enough from the middle-aged steward, so the abnormality wasn't noticed—Wen Jiu knew, the mutation had begun.
Next, he only needed to place the corpse around the land of death and quietly wait for it to devour the yin and death energy.
After a period of time.
It would transform into a White Corpse!
No need to follow traditional corpse nourishing techniques like corpse selection, preservation, bath, and refining.
Just need to select the Corpse Nourishing Land.
What is corpse selection, preservation, bath, and refining?
Corpse selection, as the name implies, means choosing a suitable corpse, which must have a yin fate, and must die at a time between morning and yin hours.
Preservation is actually another form of selection; the corpse must be placed in the chosen land for five to seven days. If it doesn't decay and, like this male cultivator corpse, increases in yin energy, then it's qualified.
As for the bath and refining.
The former means cleansing the corpse, washing away all traces of its past completely; while refining is quite complex. It takes at least forty-nine days, in which fresh livestock blood must be poured over the corpse morning, noon, and night, supplemented with the Corpse Nourishing Spell.
But with the secret technique for mutated corpses, he just needs to leave the corpse around the land of death and drip his blood on its burial site daily, then allow it to absorb yin and death energy by itself.
When it has absorbed to full capacity, it will transform itself into a White Corpse, covered in white hair. But White Corpses fear sunlight, fire, water, chickens, dogs, and humans, so it cannot be taken out yet.
It needs to be further nurtured.
Once it sheds all its white hair and transforms into a Black Corpse, the day of success arrives!
At that time, the Black Corpse can be used by a Corpse Nurturer, becoming a method of attack for a Corpse Nurturer.
By then.
He will truly be a Corpse Nurturer.
A real cultivator.
Soon, Wen Jiu dragged it with difficulty toward the green mountain opposite the burial site, burying it three feet deep in the yellow earth there.
After completing all this, Wen Jiu returned to the land of death, continued moving corpses, and kept accumulating corpse and death energy in his body through inhaling and exhaling.
Corpse energy can be applied to corpses.
Death energy can be used for cultivation.
Although he hasn't started cultivating yet, hoarding a heap of death energy surely wouldn't be wrong.
...
3:00 PM.
Before sunset, the middle-aged steward abruptly halted everyone.
As if something urgent happened, everyone was quickly taken back, but afterward, they weren't sent back to the wooden house.
Instead, Wen Jiu and a hundred others were taken to a market three miles away where the Corpse Buriers reside, where cultivators live.