Twin female zombies come to the door: My lord, please have mercy!

Jiangzhou City has welcomed the long-awaited clear autumn skies and crisp air.

The sky appeared as a vast, deep blue.

Without any clouds to block the sun, the brilliant autumn sun poured down without reservation, drying the dark water that had accumulated in the cracks of the bluestone slabs of Taiping Old Street.

The ginkgo leaves on both sides of the street have turned completely yellow.

A dry autumn wind swept across the street corner, swirling up the crisp fallen leaves that twirled and flew away in mid-air.

The air had a dry, sun-dried smell.

This kind of weather is the most comfortable for living people.

For those shady, evil spirits and demons that cannot be brought to the light of day, it is a natural death warrant.

The front hall of the Lin Family Funeral Shop has been completely renovated.

The newly installed floor-to-ceiling glass doors were wide open, allowing sunlight to flood the room and brighten the hall.

The colorful paper children and horses were moved to a shady corner.

Fatty Wang sat imposingly behind the brand-new mahogany cabinet.

He had the cap of a carbon pen in his mouth, and his fingers were rapidly pressing keys on a calculator as he calculated the bill.

Ayougu squatted by the threshold.

Today, the Miao girl is wearing a short cloth shirt with Miao characteristics, paired with faded denim shorts.

She held a dry twig in her hand, idly drawing circles on the ground, occasionally poking at the dry ants that passed by.

Leng Yue did not stay in the front hall.

The midday sun was extremely strong and yang, and since she was a zombie, it made her somewhat irritable.

The cold moon retreated into the shadows of the backlit corridor leading to the backyard.

She was wearing a form-fitting dark green cheongsam and holding a cup of cooled tea.

His deep red eyes gazed at the sunlight outside the door, his expression profound and serene.

Froststar retreated into the obsidian chamber, ten meters underground.

For the little girl, this bright, sunny day was pure torture.

She would rather sleep with that lightning-struck wooden array plate until dark than take even half a step up it.

A yellow taxi stopped at the entrance of the old street.

The car door opened, and Bai Yu stepped out, carrying a huge military green hiking backpack and covered in sweat.

Today he was wearing a plaid shirt with casual trousers, and his signature gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

He struggled to carry two sealed kraft paper file boxes in his hands and walked heavily into the funeral parlor.

"Old Bai, did you empty out the entire library of Jiangzhou University?"

Lin Ye came out of the inner room, carrying an old purple clay teapot.

Bai Yu walked to the octagonal table in the center of the hall and slammed the heavy file box he was carrying onto the table.

"Bang."

With a muffled thud, a few wisps of fine dust were shaken up from the bottom of the box.

Bai Yu took off his glasses and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his forehead and neck.

"These two boxes of documents are top-secret files that I retrieved from the rare book room in the city library using my supervisor's highest level of authority."

Bai Yu, panting, untied the thread binding the outside of the file box.

As soon as the box was opened, a musty smell of old paper mixed with mothballs instantly filled the air.

This flavor is thick and dry, carrying a sense of vicissitudes accumulated over the years.

The box was filled with yellowed, thread-bound books.

The collection includes the "Gazetteer of the Counties and Prefectures in the Southwest Frontier" compiled during the Guangxu era of the Qing Dynasty, hand-drawn geological exploration and hydrological maps from the Republican era, and several rubbings of oracle bone inscriptions in sealed bags.

Lin Ye stepped forward, placed the purple clay teapot on the table, and poured Bai Yu a cup of warm tea.

"Sit down and talk."

Lin Ye pulled out a chair and sat down.

Bai Yu picked up his teacup and drank it all in one gulp.

He took a tablet computer out of his backpack, opened a modern, high-precision satellite contour map, and placed it flat on the octagonal table.

"Mr. Lin, please take out the map made of human skin from that bronze box so we can compare them again."

Bai Yu's tone revealed a rigorous academic attitude.

Lin Ye reached into his robes and pulled out the neatly folded, fragmented map.

He carefully spread the remaining map out on the Eight Immortals table.

This image is made from tanned human skin.

After more than two thousand years, the skin has become severely dehydrated, presenting a sickly, deathly gray color.

The skin at the edges is shrunken and curled inwards.

The mountains and rivers depicted on the painting, rendered with cinnabar mixed with some kind of preservative mineral, exude a dark red, deathly aura under ample light.

Bai Yu pulled a high-powered magnifying glass out of his vest pocket.

He was practically lying face down on the table, moving the magnifying glass inch by inch along the tattered human skin scroll.

He pointed to a vermilion circle in the center of the human skin map with his finger.

"The location of the Yellow Springs Palace of the Western Zhou kings and nobles was extremely carefully selected."

Bai Yu looked up and drew a corresponding arc on the satellite map of the tablet computer with his finger.

"Look at the trend of this satellite image. In the heart of the Miao region's Hundred Thousand Mountains, there are two mountain ranges that are distributed at an angle to each other."

"The area where these two mountain ranges are located was an active volcanic region 200 million years ago."

Bai Yu's fingertips finally landed in a deep valley where two mountain ranges meet.

"The spurs of two volcanoes meet here. In feng shui, this is called 'Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl.' These two dragons are dead, and the pearl must be a natural, extremely cold and yin pool."

Lin Ye stared at the map made of human skin, his brows furrowing slightly.

He took out a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and put it in his mouth.

"Sizzle."

A small flame ignited.

He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.

The grayish-white smoke rose slowly under the sunlight.

"The feng shui acupoint is located on the throat of a dead dragon."

Lin Ye exhaled smoke, his voice low.

"The builders of this underground palace did not seek any blessings for their descendants."

"He gathered the death energy from the two mountain ranges to nourish the bead, forcibly reversing yin and yang, attempting to fight for a glimmer of hope in the deadly situation."

Bai Yu nodded vigorously, his eyes gleaming with a fervent thirst for knowledge.

"That's right! This matches perfectly with the inscription on the bottom of that Western Han Dynasty bronze ding."

The inscription says that the Zhou emperor sent an army of 100,000 south to suppress the evil spirits of the year with a giant bronze tripod.

"This year's evil influence is actually caused by a magnetic field anomaly when the immortal bone statue in the underground palace was broken from its seal."

Fatty Wang walked over with an account book in his hand.

He pulled up a chair and sat down, his face full of confusion.

"Ye Zi, I've heard you guys talk about zombies before: purple zombies, white zombies, green zombies, hairy zombies, flying zombies. Even someone like my sister-in-law, who's at the Drought Demon level, is still a creature of flesh and blood."

"What exactly is this 'Unmelting Bone' thing? Judging from the name, it's just a bone. Can a bone jump up and bite people?"

Lin Ye held a cigarette between his fingers and gently flicked it against the edge of the ashtray.

He didn't answer directly, but tapped his finger twice on the table, starting the most professional explanation of the path of the corpse.

"Fatty, after a person dies, their essence dissipates and their flesh and bones return to dust. The corpses buried in this ominous place are nourished by the yin energy of the earth's veins. If their resentment does not dissipate, they will turn into zombies."

Lin Ye spoke calmly, each sentence pointing directly to the origins of metaphysics.

"Ordinary zombies, whether they are low-level walking corpses with white hair or flying zombies that can fly and burrow underground, all derive their power from their incorruptible bodies. Once the physical body is destroyed and the corpse energy dissipates, the zombie faces its true death."

He exhaled a smoke ring, his gaze becoming unusually solemn.

"It does not dissolve bones, as it transcends the laws of mutual generation and restraint among the five elements."

"The body of an evil creature that has cultivated to this level has long since rotted away. All its three souls and seven spirits, along with the death energy of the sun and moon that it has absorbed for thousands of years, are compressed and condensed in the hardest bone in its body."

"This bone could be a skull, a finger bone, or a vertebra. It has withstood lightning strikes and earth-fire, yet remains completely intact."

Lin Ye stubbed out the cigarette butt in his hand.

"It is immortal and indestructible. Even if only a bone fragment remains, as long as it comes into contact with the life force of a living person, it can attach itself to the living person and forcibly possess and be reborn."

"It is the true source of all evil in the entire Corpse Path."