After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

A girl who was about fifteen or sixteen years old.

She was wearing a faded dark blue coarse cloth outfit, with the trousers cuffed with leggings, and a pair of cloth shoes with thick soles covered in yellow mud.

A tall, rectangular wooden box, about half a person's height, stood prominently beside her.

The wooden box was dark all over, its surface covered with twisted runes made of cinnabar, and its lid was tightly closed, exuding a chilling aura that seeped into one's bones.

The girl was holding a can of protein powder.

She grabbed a handful of powder and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing it with relish.

When Zhou Ran entered, the girl stopped what she was doing, patted the powder off her hands, and scrutinized Zhou Ran from head to toe with her large, clear eyes.

"Are you the boss this fat guy was talking about?"

The girl's voice was clear and bright, with a local Xiangxi accent.

Zhou Ran ignored her question; his attention was entirely focused on the dark wooden box, and his demonic eyes narrowed.

Corpse-raising coffin.

Moreover, it is a top-grade product made from the core of locust wood and soaked in corpse oil for at least ten years.

Such things are rarely seen, not only in ordinary cities, but even in the world of cultivation.

"Put him down."

Zhou Ran walked to the squat rack, his voice flat.

The girl tilted her head and took out a silver bell from her waist, playing with it in her hand.

"This fat guy has a special physique; his fat body hides a lot of yang energy, which is perfect for my 'Big Black' to have as a snack."

"You're the boss, so you're going to compensate me?"

"Big Black?"

Zhou Ran glanced at the wooden box.

"It is my iron corpse."

The girl patted the wooden box, making a dull sound.

"Since you're the boss, I'll perform a ritual for you to remove the negative energy from the gym."

"I don't need much, just 100 catties of glutinous rice, 10 catties of cinnabar, and... this white powder, give me 10 buckets."

She pointed to the jar of protein powder in her hand.

Zhou Ran laughed in exasperation.

They went to his territory, kidnapped his men, and all they wanted was to extort a few buckets of protein powder.

"Has the Xiangxi corpse-driving tradition fallen so low that they have to rob gyms to survive?"

Zhou Ran's words caused the girl's expression to change drastically.

She sprang up from her seat, the silver bell in her hand making a short, crisp sound.

"jingle--!"

After the bell rang, the dark wooden box that had been standing on the ground began to shake violently.

A thick aura of malevolent energy surged out from the crack, causing the surrounding temperature to drop sharply.

"Who exactly are you? How do you know my background?"

The girl watched Zhou Ran warily, her right hand already clutching several copper coins.

Who I am is not important.

Zhou Ran took a step forward, and a pressure emanating from his soul made the girl pause in her breathing.

"The important thing is that you're causing trouble on my turf and haven't figured out how to end this."

The girl's eyes turned fierce:

"You ungrateful wretch! Big Black, come out and stretch your legs!"

She shook the silver bell in her hand vigorously.

Bang!

The wooden box lid flew outwards, and a tall, dark figure darted out, aiming straight for Zhou Ran's face.

It was a zombie covered in black hair.

Its fingernails were as sharp as knives, its fangs were exposed, its eyes were bloodshot, and its whole body exuded a nauseating stench.

Iron Corpse possesses strength comparable to the peak of internal energy in the martial arts world, and its indestructible nature makes it capable of confronting a Grandmaster of Transformation Energy.

Seeing the iron corpse rushing towards him, Zhou Ran didn't even lift his eyelids.

He didn't make any unnecessary movements; he simply raised his right hand and slapped it across the face.

Snapped!

A resounding slap echoed through the empty gym.

The iron corpse, capable of easily tearing apart tigers and leopards, spun three times in the air like a ball that had been knocked away, before crashing heavily into the distant wall.

Boom!

The wall caved inward, and rubble flew everywhere.

The iron corpse was stuck in the wall, half of its face shattered by the blows. Its once ferocious red eyes now held a hint of bewilderment, and it struggled a few times but couldn't climb out.

The entire gym...

You could hear a pin drop.

Fatty Wang's eyes widened in disbelief, and he even forgot to struggle.

The silver bell in the girl's hand jingled and fell to the ground. Her mouth opened into an "O" shape, and her face was filled with astonishment.

"This...this is an Iron Corpse..."

She muttered to herself, "This is a treasure passed down from my master. It has been refined with secret techniques and is not afraid of bullets. How could it be crippled by a single slap?"

Zhou Ran picked up the damp towel next to him and slowly wiped his hands, as if he had just swatted a mosquito.

"If it's a bronze-armored corpse, perhaps I can take another look."

"You dare to flaunt this kind of shoddy goods?"

Zhou Ran walked up to the girl and looked down at her.

"Now, can we have a proper talk?"

The girl involuntarily took a step back, her back against the squat rack, like a small animal cornered.

"You...you mustn't do anything reckless!"

My master is Wu Sansheng, the "King of Corpse Transport"!

If you dare touch me, the entire Xiangxi mountain range will not let you get away with it!

"Wu Sansheng?"

Zhou Ran's eyebrows twitched.

I've never heard of it before.

This title may carry some weight in the mortal martial arts world.

But in his eyes as a cultivator, he was nothing more than a low-class sorcerer who manipulated corpses.

However, the girl did not possess an excessive amount of bloodthirsty aura.

This shows that although she acted eccentrically, she never used living people to create corpses.

This is also why Zhou Ran didn't kill him.

"Put him down."

Zhou Ran pointed to Fatty Wang above his head.

The girl dared not resist. With a flick of her finger, an invisible force severed the hemp rope.

"Ouch!"

Fatty Wang screamed and fell to the ground, his fat body jiggling.

Ignoring the pain, he crawled on all fours behind Zhou Ran and pointed at the girl to complain:

"Ran-ge! This girl is too ruthless!"

She insisted that our gym had a yin energy, that you weren't a good person, and that I was too fleshy and had too much yang energy, and that she wanted to turn me into a "corpse oil lamp"!

Zhou Ran glanced at Fatty Wang and pressed his fat belly.

"The yang energy is indeed abundant."

A thought flashed through Zhou Ran's mind.

The young girl must have been passing by and was attracted by the lingering aura of the Yin-Yang Gathering Array in the mezzanine of the gym.

Although the formation was destroyed, the remaining yin energy was indeed more noticeable in this densely populated city center than elsewhere.

His gaze returned to the girl.

"What's your name?"

What are you doing in Jiangcheng?

Don't try to fool me with that nonsense about finding yang energy.

The girl bit her lip, looked at the half-dead iron corpse embedded in the wall, and realized that she had kicked a hornet's nest today.

"My name is... Miao Yingying."

The girl lowered her head, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible.

"I came to Jiangcheng to retrieve the sacred artifact of my sect."

"A sacred object?"

"Um."

Miao Yingying nodded, a hint of resentment in her eyes.

"Half a month ago, a group of people broke into western Hunan, injured my master, and stole a 'corpse-suppressing token'."

I followed that scent and discovered they had entered Jiangcheng.

"The person who stole the token had a strong stench of death on him, just like the smell in your gym."

As Miao Yingying spoke, she pointed to the mezzanine.

Zhou Ran's thoughts raced.

Order to suppress the corpse.

This thing is usually used to suppress extremely inauspicious objects in extremely yin places.

The Song family is collecting seven-leaf lingzhi mushrooms and searching for yin-sha stones; now they've also stolen the corpse-suppressing token from the corpse-driving lineage.

It seems they know more about the port ruins than they thought.

They not only wanted to release the drought demon, but also planned to use these things to control that ferocious beast!

Do you know where those people are?

Zhou Ran asked.