Start with push-ups to gain experience

Mr. Qian muttered to himself, his gaze returning to the well, his withered fingers gripping the pure gold lion-head cane tightly.

"I, Qian Dongming, have spent most of my life battling in the business world, accumulating wealth that I could never spend in several lifetimes. But so what?"

"At this age, the numbers in those bank accounts can't buy me even one more day of life."

“The cancer cells have spread throughout my body, and the top doctors can do nothing but let me wait to die.”

He suddenly turned around, opened his arms, and looked up at the pale, round moon in the sky.

"But our master can! As the invincible general of the Yu Dynasty, the ghoul king who commands thousands of Yin soldiers! Only he can break the boundary between life and death and grant us true immortality!"

Qian Dongming became extremely agitated, his cane striking the bluestone slab with a crisp sound.

"For thirty years, I have invested countless funds in these mountains, smoothed out all the connections, and even helped you set up shell companies outside, all to find healthy and vigorous living people and continuously send them into this ancient locust village to accumulate enough blood and food for the master's great resurrection project!"

Upon hearing this, Xu Hao felt a chill creeping into his heart.

He finally understood the whole story.

The wealthy man Qian Dongming, who is half-buried in the ground, is the financial backer and protector of these monsters in the real world.

As for Manager Wu, he sacrificed his soul thirty years ago and obtained some kind of blood or power from Jiang Chen, turning into a high-level ghoul with self-awareness.

The stiff-bodied village guards and villagers in this village are nothing more than low-level puppets transformed from those whose life force has been drained.

What kind of village keeper earns a million-dollar annual salary?

The so-called "strong and healthy, carefree" orphans recruited by the company were not there to work as security guards at all.

Instead, it was high-grade meat used to feed the creatures in that well.

"You call this immortality?"

Xu Hao forced out a disdainful sneer, raising his chin towards the stitched-up corpse on his right:
"If I were to become this inhuman, ghostly state, devoid of even the ability to feel pain, with all my emotions and desires rendered meaningless, I'd rather beg under a bridge than covet this damned immortality!"

Qian Dongming turned his head, his cloudy eyes looking at Xu Hao with undisguised contempt in them:
"You're just an ordinary mortal! You're a lowly thug whose mind is only filled with bravado and fighting. You can't possibly understand the great meaning of transcending the mortal body."

"No matter how strong the human body is, it will eventually decay and rot, but the power bestowed by the master can allow us to completely escape the tragic cycle of fate in this world."

"Chairman Qian is right."

Manager Wu coldly took over the conversation, his voice remaining completely emotionless:
"We zombies have shed our flesh and blood weaknesses, achieving a true leap in the level of life. We are absolutely perfect beings, surpassing you humans."

"Moreover, only the lowest-ranking members of the tribe lose their minds. As long as they make enough contributions, their master will naturally grant them a perfect transformation."

"Like me, except that I no longer need to eat human food, I am no different from a normal person. In fact, I will not get sick or age."

He paused for a moment, then took two steps forward, carrying the lantern, and walked up to Xu Hao.

"But you are different. You will die, your flesh will rot and stink, and your bones will turn into a handful of dust. During the upcoming sacrifice, you had better pray that you can withstand the master's divine initiation."

"Otherwise, you are only fit to be a lowly two-legged sheep, using your flesh and blood to nourish your master's parched body."

Xu Hao looked at the dead face so close to his face, then suddenly leaned forward and spat a mouthful of phlegm directly onto Manager Wu's face.

"You think I'm a sheep? Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Once I'm free, the first thing I'll do is break your old bones into toothpicks!"

Manager Wu did not dodge.

He slowly raised his sleeve to wipe the filth from his face, his eyes showing no anger, only indifference as if looking at a dead object.

A cold wind, reeking of blood, swept by, stirring up a few fallen leaves on the ground.

Qian Dongming looked up at the full moon hanging in mid-air, then took a half-step back, leaning on his cane.
"Manager Wu, it's almost time. To avoid any unforeseen complications, the sacrificial ceremony can begin."

"Yes."

Manager Wu turned around and hung the paper lantern in his hand on a wooden frame next to the well curb.

Then, facing the door, he announced loudly in a cold and hard voice:

"The sacrificial ceremony is officially beginning. You may come in now."

"Squeak-"

The half-closed wooden door of the ancestral hall courtyard was pushed open from the outside.

A series of orderly footsteps sounded outside the door.

Dozens of figures emerged from the thick fog.

They included men and women, young and old, all dressed in different styles of clothes, but all were extremely old.

All of these people wore that standard, mask-like, stiff smile.

They carried white paper lanterns, the eerie green flames flickering slightly inside the paper covers, illuminating their bloodless faces.

The group of people walked into the courtyard mechanically, and then spontaneously formed concentric circles around the large black well.

Standing in the innermost circle were twelve of the most robust-looking men.

The ritual was completely different from last night's.

Manager Wu walked slowly to the well, pulled out a roll of yellowed paper from his sleeve, and unfolded it with both hands.

All the villagers and guards around the village knelt down on both knees, their foreheads pressed against the ground.

Supervisor Wu straightened his back, his lips moved, and he recited in a melodious and rhythmic tone:

"In the beginning of the Netherworld, evil spirits gathered in the Nine Springs. The Supreme General of the Yu Dynasty, the Master of War, possessed divine might. He devoured the essence of the sun and moon, and seized the creation of heaven and earth. He commanded the Yin army, immortal and indestructible... Now, with the blood of pure Yang, I summon my king and his ministers to break through the earth and return!"

As his prayers echoed, the pale full moon in the sky suddenly underwent a strange change.

The edge of the moon looked as if it had been cut open by some unseen sharp blade.

A dark red shadow, like seeping blood, began to slowly spread along the outline of the moon.

In just a few minutes, the originally bright moonlight was completely swallowed up.

The entire full moon transformed into a dark red blood sphere hanging in the night sky.

The red moon hangs high in the sky.

The light falling on the ground changed from a pale white to an even more eerie dark red.

The temperature in the air dropped rapidly.
Xu Hao shuddered, his hair standing on end.

His breath condensed into white mist in front of him instantly, and even his eyelashes formed a layer of tiny ice crystals.

It felt like falling into an ice cave.

As the moonlight changed, a thick, gray-black fog began to rise from the ground in the courtyard of the ancestral hall.

These fogs were extremely viscous; instead of drifting away with the wind, they clung to the base of the walls and spread rapidly in all directions along the ditches.

The thick fog gathered higher and higher, like layers of dark clouds closing in above the courtyard of the ancestral hall.

Ultimately, a barrier resembling an inverted giant bowl was formed, completely enveloping the entire ancestral hall and even the entire Ancient Locust Village.

After reciting the prayer, Supervisor Wu put away the parchment scroll and walked to the well platform.

Then, he took out a simple-looking bronze dagger from his waist.

The dagger was covered in green patina, and the hilt was engraved with the head of a hideous demon.

He held the blade with both hands and presented the dagger to Qian Dongming, who was standing to the side.

With rapid breathing, Qian Dongming threw away his cane, stretched out his age-spotted hands, and grabbed the bronze dagger.

Without hesitation, he pressed the sharp edge onto his left index finger and made a forceful cut.

His fingertip split open, and crimson blood seeped out. He gritted his teeth and endured the pain, dangling his bleeding finger above the dark well, letting a few drops of blood fall into the bottomless pit.

After staring intently for several seconds, he suddenly turned around and faced the villagers kneeling on the ground.

"Great King! Please accept the gift from your loyal servant!"

Qian Dongming used all his strength to roar out in a hoarse voice.

As soon as he finished speaking, the twelve strong men in the innermost circle moved simultaneously.

They stood up in unison and walked straight to Xu Hao.

Twelve cold, ruthless gazes fell upon Xu Hao simultaneously.

Xu Hao's scalp tingled, and the muscles in his arms tensed up abruptly.

This posture clearly indicates that they intend to use him as a guinea pig to bleed him dry.

But he's a tough guy by nature, and the more desperate the situation, the more he wants to use his sharp tongue.

So he suddenly stretched his neck forward and shouted insults at the approaching man:
"Come on, you bunch of spineless bastards! If I blink even once today, it's because you raised me!"

"If you've got the guts, just go straight for my heart. If you even flinch, I'll change my surname to yours..."

The shouts and curses echoed loudly in the empty, dark ancestral hall.

The twelve burly men ignored him, walked right past him, and lined up on either side of the two wooden pillars.

Xu Hao paused for a moment, then swallowed the rest of the swear word back.

Their targets were the corpse stitched together with black thread and another villager with a blank expression.

The twelve men stretched out their stiff fingers and grabbed the limbs, heads, and torsos of the two village guards.

Xu Hao's pupils contracted sharply, and his stomach churned violently.

Those men did not use any sharp weapons; they relied entirely on the force exerted by their fingers.

With a series of tearing sounds and the cracking of breaking bones, the two village guards were torn into more than a dozen pieces of flesh.

Black blood and fragments of internal organs were splattered all over the ground.

The men, expressionless, held up the severed limbs in their hands, walked to the dark well, and threw the pieces of flesh into it.

"Gudong."

As the pieces of meat fell into the water, a dense and greedy chewing sound immediately came from the bottom of the well.

"Crunch... Squeak..."

The sound was more than ten times louder than last night.

It was as if thousands of mouths with fangs were fighting for this food in the deepest part of the darkness.

Or perhaps, below lies the Yellow Springs Road, which connects to the underworld, where countless hungry ghosts lurk.

The crisp sound of chewing bones amplified along the well shaft, faintly echoing within the dark red barrier.

The twelve men returned to their original positions and knelt on the ground again.

What happened next completely shattered Xu Hao's understanding of human behavior.

The twelve people simultaneously raised their hands and plunged their ten black, sharp fingernails into the arteries on the sides of their necks.

Without any hesitation, they ripped their skin and flesh apart with their bare hands.

Dark red blood gushed out like a high-pressure water gun.

Strangely, the blood did not spill randomly, but seemed to be drawn by some invisible force, falling into the texture of the stone troughs around the well platform that were usually covered by soil.

Blood flowed rapidly down the stone trough, outlining an extremely complex and enormous array pattern.

After the first group of people finished their sacrifice, they did not die; instead, countless tiny buds of flesh immediately sprouted from their wounds.

These granulation tissues intertwined and tangled together, and within just a few breaths, the torn skin and flesh were reattached.

Aside from their faces becoming even paler, they remained able to move freely, tacitly taking a half-step back.

The second person immediately stepped forward, crossing over their companion's footprints, and repeated the same self-harming action.

Fresh blood continuously flowed into the formation.

Under the dark red moonlight, the ground formation began to emit an eerie, blood-red glow.

Qian Dongming knelt at the edge of the formation, holding the bronze dagger high, and rapidly chanted some obscure and strange incantation.

Supervisor Wu also knelt beside him, his hands flat on the ground, his forehead pressed tightly against the cold stone slab.

The ancestral hall was filled with the strong smell of blood and the sounds of flesh being torn apart.

Xu Hao clenched his fists tightly, his nails digging into the flesh of his palms, trying to use the pain to stay calm.

He stared intently at the black well that was constantly emitting red light.

It seems that an extremely evil monster is being conceived there.

As blood continued to be injected, the chewing sounds at the bottom of the well gradually subsided.

Instead, a very dull and powerful tremor followed.

"Boom."

"Boom."

The sound didn't come from the air, but traveled through the underground rock strata, directly vibrating Xu Hao's eardrums and heart.

Like a giant heart that had been dormant for thousands of years, after drinking enough blood, it finally began its first powerful beat.

The bluestone slabs around the well began to tremble violently, and small pebbles jumped restlessly on the ground.

The wooden stake binding Xu Hao also creaked under the strain, its wood fibers breaking one after another as it vibrated.

An extremely ancient, extremely decaying, yet suffocatingly terrifying aura, like a volcanic eruption, shot straight into the sky from the bottom of that large black well.

Faced with such immense pressure, Xu Hao felt like an ant facing an ancient ferocious beast, finding even breathing incredibly difficult.

The blood in his body circulated under the suppression of this aura, and even briefly stopped.

"King...our great king of the zombie race!"

Qian Dongming and Supervisor Wu knelt on the ground, their bodies trembling violently from extreme excitement, and hysterical, frenzied shouts emanating from their throats.

All the village guards and villagers buried their heads deep in the ground, their bodies trembling.

At the mouth of the Great Black Well, a dark red light shone brightly.

Thick blood, like boiling magma, slowly overflowed from the edge of the well.

A withered, enormous, bluish-gray hand suddenly emerged from the blood.

Five long, jet-black fingernails, each half a foot long, gripped the bluestone slab at the edge of the well platform like five sharp daggers.

sizzle-

The surface of the bluestone was instantly corroded into five deep grooves, emitting pungent white smoke.

General.

The ghoul king, slumbering in the annals of history, is finally about to rise. (End of Chapter)