The mountains of Laoxiong Ridge were riddled with caves and dense forests, where the resident monkey troop roamed rampant, causing no small amount of havoc, preying often on single traveling merchants who passed near or far. The leader, an ancient gibbon, was particularly cunning and vicious. Its leg bone had been smashed to fragments by the Purple Gold Coffin, and when it tumbled into the underground pit, it rolled and crashed, breaking several ribs. Furthermore, it had been eviscerated by a flying knife. It pulled the blade out, spilling its guts instantly; it was clearly near death, yet it stubbornly dragged its broken leg and trailing entrails, intending to raise a stone and smash Hong Guniang, wanting to take her down with him even in death.

Zheguzhao, with eyes that surveyed all directions, though entangled by the zombie and unable to break free, was perfectly aware of the movements around him. Seeing that Hong Guniang’s life hung by a thread—a situation where normally he could have dispatched the ancient gibbon with a single shot—he found himself unable to act easily. The Yin Elixir within the Yuan Dynasty zombie was extremely potent; should that ancient zombie manage to bite him, all his vital energy would instantly dissipate.

He used all his strength to brace his elbow against the zombie's chin, but in moments, he felt he could no longer hold the weight. The zombie, after all, had been a seasoned general in life; in that age of cold steel, commanders-in-chief often rose through military merit. The sheer power gained from wielding hammers and lances on and off horseback had developed every sinew and bone in his body. Moreover, the man was naturally stout, towering over Zheguzhao by more than a head. His corpse had not decayed, and the rising of the zombie was due to the unrefined Yin Elixir within the ancient corpse, where Yin and Yang energies attracted one another—it wasn't the zombie lunging, but the true elixir inside driving the body forward.

Cold sweat beaded on Zheguzhao's forehead. At his wits' end, he saw the blood-drenched gibbon launch a deadly strike, raising the rock to smash down in an instant. If he didn't intervene now, he would only watch Hong Guniang's skull shatter. He had no choice but to risk death, launching a desperate, wave-breaking attack to survive.

In a flash, Zheguzhao had made his decision. He withdrew his elbow, and the zombie’s black, gaping maw immediately opened behind him, lunging for his nape.

Seizing the upward thrust momentum of the zombie pouncing from behind, Zheguzhao flipped and rolled, carrying the inescapable corpse with him, landing right beside Hong Guniang.

At this moment, Zheguzhao lay on his back, gazing skyward, the zombie hovering just behind him with its grimly shadowy mouth wide open. Just as the bite was about to land, Zheguzhao sharply turned his head. The ancient gibbon, lifting its stone, came crashing down precisely as it aimed. The boulder, the size of a large fist, skimmed past Zheguzhao’s cheek and smashed violently onto the Yuan Dynasty zombie’s head.

A muffled thud, like striking damp leather, echoed sharply. Because Zheguzhao was so close to the zombie behind him, the falling rock scraped several bloody gashes across his face as it struck, burning with searing pain.

This roll and dodge was the very essence of Zheguzhao’s life's ultimate skill. A breath too early or too late, or a difference of even a fraction of an inch, and the stone the gibbon dropped would have struck him and Hong Guniang instead of the zombie—life or death separated by the finest margin. Ignoring the sting on his face, Zheguzhao inwardly thanked the heavens for protection.

The gibbon, looking like a bloodied demon, hadn't anticipated a living person and a corpse rolling up beside it from nowhere. The rock intended for the woman smashed onto the zombie’s head, fueling its rage. Its entrails spilled further, a clump of dark, bluish-black trailing before it. Having bled so much, its eyes were already losing focus.

But the old gibbon, possessed of ancient cunning, knew its own death was imminent, all thanks to Hong Guniang’s poisoning. If it couldn't kill this enemy with its own hands, it wouldn't be able to close its eyes in death. A fierce glint suddenly appeared in its eyes. Ignoring the agony of its burst abdomen, it snatched up another rock and once more aimed it down at the unconscious Hong Guniang.

Seeing the gibbon still trying to kill in its death throes, Zheguzhao’s fury erupted. He roared, "Insolent!" He pushed off the zombie beneath him, ready to rise and end the gibbon's life. Unexpectedly, though the zombie’s head had been smashed by the rock, its skull fractured and its face dented, the Yin Elixir inside remained untouched. The rock rolled aside, and another wave of Yin energy swept from the zombie’s mouth.

A chill gripped Zheguzhao’s heart. Truly haunted by malevolent spirits, was this where they would all perish today? The fortune and survival of the Ban Shan lineage rested entirely on his shoulders; how could he so easily accept death? Necessity sharpened his wit. Seeing the hairy, bloody gibbon standing right beside him, raising its stone, and unable to rise himself, Zheguzhao swept his leg low, striking the gibbon’s base.

The dying gibbon, its body nearly drained of blood from the abdominal wound, could not withstand Zheguzhao’s connected hook and sweep, and it immediately tumbled to the ground.

Zheguzhao moved with lightning speed, grabbing the old ape by the neck and yanking it towards him. Normally, the gibbon would have struggled fiercely, and Zheguzhao might not have captured it so easily. But severely injured, it was already running on fumes, offering no resistance at all, and was dumped onto the ground precisely beside the zombie’s mouth.

The old ape didn’t even have time to cry out before it was seized by the Yin Elixir within the ancient Yuan Dynasty corpse. The remaining life force in its body was continuously siphoned into the zombie’s mouth. With several gurgling, mournful sounds, the white-bearded gibbon had all its fur fall out, as if time had instantly sped by and its life withered in a single breath.

The gibbon had already been hanging on by half a life. Once sucked by the Yin Elixir, all its blood seemed to instantly congeal and dry up. In a flash, it turned into a lifeless husk, like the guide Miaozi, though not yet deceased. Its limbs were paralyzed, leaving only two vacant eyes rolling aimlessly in the sunken, skull-like sockets. Its expression was beyond recognition, utterly terrifying.

Zheguzhao had unexpectedly used the old ape as a scapegoat. He felt the bottomless, chilling, soul-sucking force behind him vanish instantly. It was only thanks to swallowing the True Elixir of the Six-Winged Centipede in the Bottle Mountain Immortal Palace beforehand that he survived; otherwise, even if the zombie hadn't bitten him, the mere Yin Qi exhaled from its mouth would have been more than a living person could bear. In this exchange, the Centipede Elixir within Zheguzhao also dissipated. If it hadn't dissolved, Zheguzhao would have eventually died from his Dan Tian exploding. Yet, fate dictated he should not die here—such a fortuitous twist of events was completely beyond his reckoning at the time.

Seizing the moment the gibbon was being absorbed by the Yin Elixir, Zheguzhao executed a (carp flip) and sprang up from the ground. Without a second's hesitation, he grabbed the back of the zombie’s robe and hauled both the corpse and the gibbon up.

The ancient corpse still clung tightly to the near-dead ape. Zheguzhao unleashed the secret technique for subduing zombies, Kui Xing Ti Dou (Star-Kicking Combat Stance). His body twisting, he circled behind the zombie, threading his arms under its armpits to lock its neck from behind, while driving his knee into its Dazhui (major vertebra point). With this grip, even a thousand-year-old corpse-demon would have to submit to the Ban Shan secret arts.

Grave robbing inevitably involves dealing with the dead within the tombs. However, the methods of Fa Qiu and Mo Jin differ significantly from those of Ban Shan and Xie Ling, especially when confronting ancient corpses. Mo Jin Xiaowei operate with an air of mystery; they rarely disturb the tomb owner’s remains inside the coffin, often using gloves to take artifacts. If they make a mistake, they retreat immediately. When encountering an unrotted ancient corpse that rises to harm them, they use the method of stuffing a black donkey’s hoof into the corpse’s mouth.

Xie Ling relies on numbers and heavy equipment. After opening the coffin, they immediately use bamboo poles to pin down the zombie, cover it with a fishing net, and then hang the corpse upside down. They whip the corpse**, gouge out its intestines and mouth to seize gems and jade, and finally, regardless of whether the corpse showed signs of transformation, they dismember it with sharp blades or pile up wood to burn it, grinding its bones to ash. Their cruelty is unmatched among all tomb robbers.

But the Ban Shan Daoists, when delving into tombs, have always relied on esoteric methods of control and counteraction to deal with corpse transformations in ancient tombs. They possess the secret technique Kui Xing Ti Dou, inherited from the ancient Jin Dynasty art, the "Heavenly Official Corpse-Subduing Formation." With sheer skillful force, they target the zombie's Dazhui point, and even a fully formed Corpse Immortal cannot escape it.

Zheguzhao was one who acted without mercy when the situation demanded it; he hadn't shown leniency before and nearly lost his life. Seeing this opportune moment—one that would not come again—he redoubled his effort. A sound like layers of old silk and parchment rubbing against each other slowly emerged as the Yuan Dynasty zombie’s bones strained and cracked. The entire ancient corpse was yanked backward until its head arched up. The half-dead gibbon in front, as if granted a reprieve, immediately slipped free from the zombie's mouth, collapsing limply onto the ground, finally drawing its last breath and dying with its eyes wide open.

The ancient corpse, a former commanding general, was truly formidable. Under normal circumstances, Zheguzhao would have easily snapped its spine. But with its Yin Elixir solidified, it remained as potent as if alive; its muscles and bones were tightly compacted, and its physique was sturdy and large. Zheguzhao wrenched it, yet heard no sound of breaking bones. He gritted his teeth and put twelve parts of his strength into gripping the neck bone.

A sudden, loud clatter erupted as the zombie’s chain armor rattled. Bone cracked and snapped. The Ban Shan Daoist, Zheguzhao, forcibly tore the ancient corpse's head, along with more than a dozen vertebrae, clean out of its torso. The tall, headless body thudded to its knees on the ground. Black blood, mixed with internal organs, sprayed from the neck cavity along with the spine, splashing everywhere.

Zheguzhao was utterly spent, his eyes bloodshot, his entire being nearly in a semi-manic state. He held the zombie's severed head up, glanced at it, then threw it down viciously. It took him a long moment to regain his composure, feeling an unbearable ache throughout his limbs and bones.

Biting down hard, Zheguzhao steadied himself and retrieved the fallen horse lantern to survey his surroundings. Amidst the chaos, the ape corpse and the headless zombie lay sprawled on the ground. Hong Guniang, nearby, had a face as pale as gold paper, but her leg was broken; she had passed out from the intense pain, and upon receiving treatment, would likely be fine. More worrying was the guide Miaozi on the other side, who was now like a candle flickering in the wind, clearly on his last breaths.

Zheguzhao truly did not wish to see Miaozi die here. Frowning, he looked down at the internal organs the zombie had expelled. Amidst the bloody mess, he spotted a small, blue-glowing True Elixir, about the size of a fingernail cap. The alchemists in the Bottle Mountain Immortal Palace had tried for hundreds of years to refine such a Yin Elixir from ancient corpses but failed. Unexpectedly, this one came from the body of a strange Western hermit.

Once removed from the Dan Tian, the Yin Elixir lost its chilling, soul-sucking power. Unless preserved by special means, like the fungus or mushroom known as Rouzhi, it would wither and turn to dust in less than half a day.

A thought sparked in Zheguzhao’s mind: "This thing can save a life!" He immediately bent down, scooped the Yuan Dynasty Yin Elixir into his hand, rushed to Miaozi’s side, crushed it, and poured it down his throat mixed with water. Miaozi's cloudy, scattered gaze gradually refocused. His life was temporarily spared, but with his vital energy depleted, the withered, aged state could never be fully recovered; he would likely not live more than three to five years after they left.

But it was better than dying on the spot. Seeing the elixir’s marvelous effect, Zheguzhao finally eased the tension in his chest. Just as he was about to turn and set Hong Guniang’s broken leg, he felt a surge of chilling cold behind him. He spun around, and a cold sweat broke out immediately. The headless zombie of the Xiangxi Corpse King—though for what strange reason, no one knew—had silently risen again amidst a gust of dark wind, standing rigidly behind him.

① (shuò): An ancient weapon, a long-shafted spear.