Chapter 138: Provocation

What is going on here? How could these people, rotten to this extent, possibly still be alive?

The Celestial Master portrait could only exert its power when sensing malevolent entities, but at this moment, those twenty ferocious fiends lacked even a sliver of evil aura. In particular, those eyes, resembling those of the living, sent a creeping chill straight up my scalp.

"Huh?" Even Liu Zhongguo wore a look of utter confusion upon witnessing this sight. He drew an eight-trigram mirror tarnished with bronze patina from his suit pocket. Through the reflection of that mirror, I could make out the people dressed in black longevity shrouds standing behind the coffins. These members of the Raiment Sect, acting as coffin bearers, all had their eyes rolled back, revealing only the whites, presenting a truly terrifying spectacle.

Taking in this scene, sudden enlightenment dawned upon me. No wonder I found the gaze in those corpses' eyes so familiar; those eyes did not belong to the corpses at all, but to the black-clad men carrying the coffins.

Borrowing souls to animate corpses.

Everyone has heard of borrowing corpses to resurrect souls—where the dead use a living person's body to come back to life. Borrowing souls to animate corpses, however, is a secret technique where the souls of the living possess dead bodies through arcane arts, thereby controlling them.

No wonder the Celestial Master portrait failed to sense the presence of these malevolent entities. Since the souls residing within these fiends belonged to living people, the Celestial Master had simply mistaken them for living humans.

Luo Xingtao looked at my utter astonishment, a triumphant expression finally returning to his face. "Pi Yangxi," he said, "I gave you a chance, but you didn't know how to cherish it. Now, not only am I going to kill you, but I will also slaughter your entire family. You still have a younger sister named Pi Lin'er in Duhe City, don't you? When the time comes, I'll sell her off to some deep mountain village to be someone else's wife."

"How dare you!"

Never before had I encountered someone so utterly shameless. In the realm of Feng Shui, there is an unwritten rule: no matter how deep the enmity between practitioners, they must never harm the families of those outside the trade.

For Luo Xingtao to be so brazenly shameless and target my family thoroughly enraged me. I could no longer contain myself. Before those ferocious fiends could make a move, I lashed the chained sickle in my hand directly toward Luo Xingtao.

Clang!

Just as the chained sickle was about to strike Luo Xingtao's neck, a ferocious fiend shot up into the air, using its physical body to block him. The blade struck the fiend as though hacking against a solid block of iron, bouncing off with a harsh vibration. A dull ache rippled through my palm, and I nearly lost my grip on the iron chain.

As the fiend moved, the black-clad man carrying the coffin behind it moved in tandem. This combination of man, corpse, and coffin operated as a unified, back-to-back entity.

"Pi Yangxi, I gave you a chance and you failed to grasp it. Do you finally know what it feels like to make an enemy of the Raiment Sect?" Luo Xingtao shoved the fiend aside and glared at me with an icy expression. I knew he was desperate to see me panic and lose my composure.

Seeing the anticipation in Luo Xingtao's eyes, my anger actually subsided. Leaving aside the fact that with Liu Zhongguo present today, I was not going to die easily—even if I were to perish, should the Raiment Sect dare to touch Pi Lin'er, given my current understanding of her, the Raiment Sect would likely face total annihilation. At this thought, a faint smile inevitably curved my lips.

Noticing that I wasn't angry, but rather smiling instead, Luo Xingtao froze in bewilderment. He coldly demanded, "Pi Yangxi, have you lost your mind?"

A smile playing on my lips, I swung the chained sickle in my hand and, under Luo Xingtao's puzzled gaze, walked step by step toward their sect's sacred artifact.

"Gugu... Wh-what are you trying to do?" Seeing the chilling smile plastered across my face, the monster instinctively retreated a few paces.

Luo Xingtao seemed to guess my intentions. Panic suddenly washed over his features, and he yelled at me, "Don't you dare do anything reckless!"

I glanced briefly at Luo Xingtao and said indifferently, "You're already planning to wipe out my entire family, so what else is left for me to fear? Luo Xingtao, let me tell you this: you won't be able to destroy my family, but right now, I am fully capable of destroying this monster of your sect!"