Yang Kai was quite interested in the many techniques and secret arts of the Thousand Leaves Sect. After all, they pertained to the path of puppetry—an area he had never ventured into before.
These techniques and secret arts were laid out right before him, and naturally, he was tempted.
However, he had already made up his mind to only observe and contemplate them for a brief while before bringing them back to Ye Hen. He had no intention of keeping them for himself.
With that thought, Yang Kai held his breath and stilled his mind, reaching out to grab the ring on the corpse's hand.
But just then, his heart suddenly lurched violently. An overwhelming sense of unease spread through his entire body, causing every hair to stand on end. Instinctively, he pushed off with his feet and drifted backward, putting distance between himself and the corpse.
In the very next instant, his eyes narrowed sharply as he beheld a scene that nearly sent his soul fleeing in terror.
The formation beneath the corpse suddenly hummed to life, bursting with a blinding radiance—as if it had been activated by some unknown cause. Moments later, rings of runes and lines of formation patterns began to surface across the corpse's body, tracing out an intricate and profound formation diagram. The desiccated, moistureless skin of the corpse took on a metallic sheen almost in the blink of an eye.
Boom… The formation diagram began operating of its own accord, and from within the corpse came a dense series of crackling sounds like beans being stir-fried. A pair of eyes that had been shut for untold years suddenly snapped open.
Those eyes glowed an eerie green, like two ghost flames flickering and dancing—utterly terrifying to behold.
A powerful aura of the Emperor Realm surged forth from the corpse without warning, crashing into Yang Kai like a physical force.
Yang Kai felt as though a great mountain had been pressed against his chest, suffocating beyond measure.
He knew things had gone terribly wrong. This corpse, dead for who knew how many years, had very likely developed its own spiritual intelligence and become a Corpse Spirit-like existence.
He had encountered this type of creature before on the Dark Star, back when the Corpse Spirit race had emerged without warning and wrought havoc upon that world. Countless martial cultivators had been infected by the corpse poison and converted into their kind. In the end, it had been Yang Kai who had turned the tide and strangled that catastrophe in its cradle.
But back then, the most powerful among the Corpse Spirit race had been merely a thousand-year Corpse General, with cultivation only at the Void Return Realm—not even remotely comparable to the Corpse Spirit standing before him now.
The one before him was a bona fide ten-thousand-year Corpse King.
And a ten-thousand-year Corpse King at the Emperor Realm at that. The imperial intent shrouding his body was absolutely no illusion.
At that thought, Yang Kai was drenched in cold sweat. He knew the situation was dire and dared not hesitate any longer. Space principles coiled around his body as he prepared to flee the cave.
In the blink of an eye, his figure began to blur.
But before he could escape the cave, the Corpse King—who had been seated cross-legged on the ground this entire time—suddenly opened its mouth and let out a piercing, venomous shriek. Within that shriek lurked some strange, unknown power that radiated outward in all directions, condensing into an invisible cage that locked down the surrounding space.
Yang Kai's body went rigid, and his blurring form materialized once more!
His expression changed drastically. He realized that his Space ability had been casually negated by the other party. How could he afford any delay? In a panic, he could only charge desperately toward the exit.
The Corpse King's ghostly eyes gleamed with a cold, sinister light, locked firmly onto him. It opened its mouth and spat—a stream of greenish energy shot forth in an instant.
"Corpse poison!" Yang Kai exclaimed in horror, finally understanding what that foul stench he had smelled upon entering the cave truly was.
The stench had obviously been the Corpse King's corpse poison—just a wisp seeping from its body. That mere wisp had already been enough to make him feel dizzy and poisoned. If he were to inhale a full breath of it, he would surely perish on the spot.
Terrified, Yang Kai held his breath and pushed his Source Power to its limits, forming a protective barrier around his body as he retreated like an arrow loosed from a bow.
He was fast, but the cloud of corpse poison was no slower. It shadowed him relentlessly, catching up in the blink of an eye and crashing against his Source Power shield.
A hissing sound rang out as the Source Power on Yang Kai's body dissolved like snow under a blazing sun, a gaping hole melted through his defenses in an instant. His shield offered virtually no resistance at all. The corpse poison slipped through the breach and began to entangle him.
The corrosive power was this formidable? Yang Kai could scarcely believe his eyes.
In this moment of mortal peril, his eyes nearly split with fury. He thrust one hand forward, pushing his Space power to its absolute limit, and growled under his breath: "Banish!"
Under the dominion of his laws, a black-hole-like void materialized before him. All of the oncoming corpse poison was swallowed whole by the darkness. His body flickered repeatedly, and then he burst out of the cave, returning to the valley beyond.
Before he could even catch his breath, a series of bestial roars erupted from the cave. The violent and cruel aura of the Corpse King was rapidly approaching, and the interior of the cave shuddered, sending loose stones clattering down.
"What grudge, what enmity!" Yang Kai's face was a mask of bitterness. He knew he had kicked an iron plate this time. Had he known it would come to this, he would never have peeked into that cave—and instead had drawn out this sort of monster.
Without even fighting, Yang Kai knew he was no match. The only path to survival was to flee back to the formation base platform of this secret realm as quickly as possible, repair it, and teleport out.