Am I really hallucinating?

Chapter 414 The "Corpse" Travels

After the formalities were over, the Undying King began to speak of personal matters. He took out a manuscript from a mountain of documents piled up beside him: "Your understanding of eternity last week showed good progress compared to the beginning. You have indeed been diligently exploring your own ideas, combining them with my understanding to find the truth you can glean from a concept, which is good."

"Could you excuse me from this week's work?"

"No."

Jiang Si turned her head away and clicked her tongue.

"By drawing inferences from one instance to another, guided by this mindset, your abilities have also been subtly improved. How do you feel about the spiritual essence I gave you before?" the Undying King asked.

"It feels like it could be directly converted into aggressive energy, but before that, it's more helpful to my inner self. It can calm my restlessness," Jiang Si said.

The Undying King nodded: "Not bad, you weren't fooled by appearances."

Then it turned to Zheng Fan beside it: "As mentioned above, as you said, she is indeed a very promising junior."

"It feels like a parent-teacher meeting where the teacher is reporting on their child's academic progress," Zheng Fan couldn't help but complain. "Thank you, Teacher Wang."

Ignoring Zheng Fan's quirky nickname, the Undying King continued, "But she still has too many impurities. Transforming into a corpse was indeed a bold attempt, and it gave her the opportunity to restore her true nature. However, the red on her back is still deeply imprinted in her mind and body."

"There's nothing impure about it, it's just her birth," Zheng Fan said bluntly.

The Undying King nodded slightly: "It's alright. What the future holds is her own choice, and wisdom lies in taking responsibility for one's choices. I'm fine now, you may leave."

After saying goodbye to the Immortal King, Jiang Si returned to the elevator and went straight to the bottom.

Zheng Fan followed up and said, "The teacher praised you, are you happy?"

"You can't get rid of my weekly summary, so what's there to be happy about?" Jiang Si rolled her eyes. "I can't even write 10,000 words a week without padding it out? Is that something a human can do?"

"Isn't this great? You can finally go to university now, although I don't know what major you'll get." Zheng Fan put his hands on his head with a teasing expression.

Although Jiang Si was very unhappy about this, it was not hard to see from the Undying King's evaluation that no matter how unwilling she was or how much she complained, it did not prevent her from always fulfilling the Undying King's requirements for her very well.

This quality is rare and commendable for a student.

He was a semi-illiterate man who had only learned to read from his father, who wasn't very educated to begin with, but now he's a "little god of the Eternal Realm" who can "produce" a paper every week.

Considering Jiang Si's family situation mentioned earlier, she might really be the "only college student in the village."

In a violent world, it's not easy to find someone who enjoys thinking; it's even harder to find someone who can think deeply.

Unfortunately, her family isn't proud of her because of this.

It's okay. When we get back, Zheng will take her to beat up her family. They'll be proud of themselves when they're on the ground.

Putting studies aside for now, Zheng Fan looked at the documents in Jiang Si's hand and asked, "What exactly is the mission this time?"

"'Frankenstein' is a gathering place for stitched-up corpses. Although they submitted to the Undying King a long time ago, they haven't been truly conquered, so the corpses there have never been very peaceful. The Undying King must have sensed something and sent me to investigate. If it's minor, I'll handle it directly; if it's serious, we'll talk about it later," Jiang Si replied.

The Undying King was clearly not just a theorist. Whenever it noticed that Jiang Si's understanding had improved and that he might need to improve through practical experience, it would send Jiang Si out to demonstrate his skills under the guise of some mission.

As the Undying King began his grand plan to reclaim and unify this world, most of the tasks Jiang Si received were related to this.

It's not about going directly to war and clashing head-on; it's about going somewhere as an envoy to probe the other side's attitude. If they are willing to submit, everything is fine; if they have a bad attitude or any objections to the Undying King, then we'll fight them.

"Based on my experience, nothing good ever comes of being an envoy," Jiang Si said with her eyes half-open.

“Mr. Wang isn’t very popular with the people around him,” Zheng Fan said.

"Because most of the beings in this world, whether corpses or other things, are still struggling for their own existence. The barrier between them and the Undying King lies here; they find it difficult to accept the order of the Undying City," Jiang Si said.

"It's not exactly a mistake, considering it's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland," Zheng Fan said. Jiang Si nodded: "I wonder what this world went through in the past."

A corpse is, of course, produced from the death of a living thing.

It's unknown if there are still people in this world, but at least Jiang Si didn't hear any related rumors during this time. She also talked about this with Shan Zhen, who said she had never seen any living creature.

After leaving the tower, Zheng Fan hadn't seen the scenery of the Undying City for a long time, except for when he came here.

Just as Jiang Si said, the Undying King did indeed suppress those noisy fellows in the city.

As they traveled along, the city was quiet and peaceful, the corpses lived in peace and contentment, and there were hardly any traces of war.

"Actually, it's because most of the Undying King's campaigns end very quickly. The longest I know of to end one was only a week. This is mainly based on cities, and the Undying City hasn't encountered a city it can't conquer. In fact, most of the time the Undying King just sits there and doesn't have to take action; sometimes it's too lazy to even go out," Jiang Si said.

"The gap in strength is significant."

Clearly, if it weren't for the enormous disparity in strength, the war in the Undead City would undoubtedly be much more serious.

However, after the previous riotous protests, everyone here was quite peaceful.

There was no more frenzy, no more heaviness, and even the disturbances were gone; everyone's daily life was much better.

There is reason to suspect that the Undead King's previous failure to deal with those who stirred up the protests was either a ploy to entrap the undead or simply an attempt to put pressure on the corpses.

Of course, it shouldn't be that boring.

Jiang Si took out her identification and travel documents from the file. With these, they went up the city wall and found a small leather-bodied airship.

After Jiang Si skillfully operated the equipment for a while, they set off.

This corpse-wearing airship is used by the Undead City's military and flies very fast. It is incomparable to the ordinary civilian aircraft that Zheng Fan and Jiang Sichu rode when they first arrived.

The scenery on the ground was instantly forgotten. Jiang Si, meanwhile, began carefully reviewing the documents inside the cabin.

A stitched corpse is a special type of corpse. A normal corpse becomes a normal corpse after it naturally regains consciousness. A stitched corpse, however, is one whose body was incomplete due to some accident before it regained consciousness. Even an unconscious corpse will begin to try to piece itself back together.

These corpses, after being pieced together in various ways, will not have the traces of their piecing together disappear; in fact, they may remain permanently fixed.

Their organs are more prone to specialized mutations compared to normal corpses, especially the parts they were previously pieced together. However, the instability of their bodies also increases, and if the degree of mutation is not controlled, they can easily turn into monsters that are no longer resembling corpses.

Because of this relationship, normal corpses often do not like sewn corpses, especially since the specialized organs of sewn corpses are difficult to adapt to normal corpses, making it difficult to achieve an equal exchange.

In the Undead City, only a few corpses, greedy for small gains, will choose to purchase cheap, sewn-up corpse organs.

This is how the distinction between stitched-up corpses and normal corpses came about.

Frankenstein is a city built by such stitched-together corpses.

But in reality, the Undead King treated all stitched corpses equally; he even allowed travel and trade between the Undead City and Frankenstein.

Frankenstein's preservation techniques are quite advanced, likely due to the fact that stitched corpses are prone to decay and mutation, which has spurred the development of a large number of excellent preservation industries.

The Undead City's powerful industrial capabilities helped Frankenstein develop from a series of small shelters into a post-apocalyptic city in every way.

Now that the Immortal King is planning to unify the land, Frankenstein seems reluctant to cooperate.

From this perspective, it's somewhat rebellious.

(End of this chapter)