Lu Yin was soon informed about the appearance of the dried up corpses. He stared at the display of his gadget, saw the blood leaking from Bai Shui’s mouth, and looked past her to see a corpse destroying a spacecraft.
Lu Yin’s eyes flickered at this sight. He had nearly forgotten about that dried up corpse, but more had reappeared.
“Alliance Leader Lu, that corpse is as powerful as an Enlighter, and your soldiers can’t stop it!” Bai Shui shouted as she clung to Bai Xiaodie.
Lu Yin’s eyes focused. “My people will protect you, but you’ll have to hold out until then. Don’t worry. They’ll get there soon.”
Bai Shui looked back and gritted her teeth before using the God of Wind battle technique.
There was a bang. The corpse had smashed the vessel with a downward swing of a hand, and then it shot through the Allied Force’s lines to grab hold of Bai Shui. “Ancient bloodline detected. Target acquired: kill.”
Bai Shui raced away, as her attacks were useless against this corpse.
Lu Yin frowned. If he had known that this would happen, he would have given Bai Shui something to use to protect herself. He had given her some flashbombs, but they were clearly useless against this corpse.
Fortunately, Nightking Yuanjing arrived just in time to destroy the corpse and save Bai Shui.
Bai Shui had been quite lucky, as she had been attacked just when the Allied Forces had entered Daynight Flowzone. If the timing had been even slightly different, she would have died before the Allied Forces could even arrive.
“What happened?” Lu Yin asked.
He saw on the display that Bai Shui was panting heavily and that she had been seriously injured. “I don’t know. That thing showed up out of nowhere to kill me! It said something about an ancient bloodline.”
Lu Yin’s eyes grew cold. An ancient bloodline? Could it be referring to people with primeval surnames? Were these dried up corpses searching for members of the primeval surnames? Lu Yin remembered how the desiccated corpse that had tried to kill him had once slaughtered a corpse king, which suggested that these things were not products of the Neohuman Alliance, though that was not certain either. Who else aside from Aeternus would target the primeval surnames?
At this moment, En Ya delivered a report stating that there were many dried up corpses conducting massacres throughout the Outerverse and the Innerverse. Some of the people who had been killed were cultivators while others were actually ordinary people.
Lu Yin’s expression changed, and he immediately tried to contact the Sea King to ask the man to go with Elder He to protect Earth.
Earth was home to far too many people with primeval surnames, and if one of these corpses happened to find Earth, the entire planet would be destroyed.
Over the course of just a few days, more and more of the corpses appeared everywhere.
Lu Yin also got in contact with the Hall of Honor to ask about where these desiccated corpses had come from, but Arch-Elder Zen did not have any time to pay attention to Lu Yin.
One of the corpses appeared just outside of the Ross Empire’s mobile fortress. “Ancient bloodline detected. Target acquired: kill.”
The owner of the voice was suddenly smashed by a giant. Chen Jian glanced down at his hand. “Huh?”
Elsewhere in the Innerverse, in a minor flowzone, a vessel tore through space, only to be instantly shattered by a corpse. A middle-aged man was exposed within the wreckage. He looked quite determined. “No, I don’t want to die. I can’t die! Our family’s inheritance cannot be destroyed! “
He let out a roar as he raised a long knife. The blade flickered, and the flickers suddenly created the image of a strange mountain and river. It radiated an inexplicable power, and it shattered the void as the knife flickers slashed the corpse.
However, the man was not even a Cruiser, and despite his superb blade skill, he was completely powerless against the corpse. The man was smashed to death with a single palm strike.
The man did not possess a primeval surname.
In the Cosmic Sea, there was a small island with flames that rose high into the sky. A desiccated corpse emerged from the flames and looked down at a woman who was lying on the ground with an upraised hand.
The woman felt desperate, as she was just an ordinary human. She had no idea why she was being attacked. There was a jade pendant that shone brightly on her chest, but the corpse’s hand fell, and the woman suffered a tragic death. The pendant shattered, and a grain of fatesand fell out. It sank along with the island.
In the Neoverse, a corpse entered a city that drifted through the stars. This particular dried up corpse had a power level of over 400,000. It fought with the master of the city for half an hour before finally killing the man. The corpse then descended into the courtyard of a certain family that lived in the city.
The family’s ancestor had been an Enlighter who had served the master of the city, but the descendants were just normal humans.
The arrival of the corpse spelled a disaster for the family. Every single person died, except for a little boy who hid in a corner.
The little boy stared at the corpse in terror. A hand was raised, and the child fell into despair. The fear was so bad that he closed his eyes.
However, despite waiting for a while, he was never attacked by the corpse. Instead, a fragrant breeze blew past the boy. When he opened his eyes, still terrified, he saw that the desiccated corpse was gone. All he saw was a woman who was looking at him tenderly. “Child, don’t be afraid. It’s alright.”
The little boy started wailing. He was clutching a piece of jade tightly. Maybe from fear, or maybe because he squeezed too hard, but the child’s nails pierced the flesh of his hands, and his blood dripped out and touched the jade. There was a flash of light, and the jade disappeared into the boy’s head.
Even though it happened in an instant, the woman still saw it. She stared at the child.
The little boy’s eyes went blank for a moment, but he quickly recovered and wiped away his tears.
“Child, did you just learn something?” the woman asked. She looked at the boy curiously.
He continued to clean his face as he nodded. “Yeah, a little guy taught me some moves.”
“What moves?” The woman was taken aback. That jade had been an inheritance, and this child had just inherited a battle technique.
The little boy considered the question and then made a move. However, he only moved his body. He was not a cultivator, and he knew nothing of star energy, so the woman was not able to see a thing.
“Can you tell this auntie what the move is called?” the woman asked.
The little boy replied, “Hidden- Hidden Needle.”
The woman was Yuan Miao, and she was an elder from the Cosmic Sect. She had happened to be passing by, and she had decided to rescue the little boy. She took him back to the Cosmic Sect and reported the corpse’s slaughter. The matter drew the attention of the entire Cosmic Sect, and the story even shocked the other elders, who all wanted to meet the child.
“Child, make that move again,” Elder Gong softly requested.
The little boy raised a hand and stretched it forward. His palm was facing down, and then it turned up. It was a very ordinary movement, but it was not ordinary in Elder Gong’s eyes.
When he had snuck into the Perennial World, he had fought against cultivators from the Lu family, and their Hidden Needle technique had left a deep impression on him. The fact that this Hidden Needle could be used to expel toxins from the body or even heal injuries showed how miraculous it was.
“Child, what’s your name?” Elder Gong asked.
The little boy replied, “Er Qi.”
Er Qi? This answer startled Elder Gong, as the child actually did not have the Lu surname. The elder stared at the boy for a while and then asked Yuan Miao to take care of him. “Help me get in touch with Lu Yin.”
Lu Yin had been dealing with one headache after another for two days. The Great Eastern Alliance had spread far and now covered too large a territory; there were no fewer than ten of these desiccated corpses within their territory. Each of them was killing people without any rhyme or reason. Even ordinary humans were being killed.
However, Lu Yin had also found a way to deal with the corpses, which was that they did not typically touch anyone who was not a target or who did not attack them. The dried up corpses did not randomly attack people.
Lu Yin felt quite frustrated, and he had dispatched all of the powerhouses under his command who were at least at the Enlighter realm, as they were the only ones who stood a chance against any of the corpses. However, not all of the dried up corpses had the same level of strength, and some were much stronger than others. The most powerful one that had been discovered so far had actually killed Ling Shen, an Enlighter from the Lingling clan with a power level of more than 450,000. The elder’s death had enraged Ling Qiu, who had personally gone out to hunt the corpse down.
The Hall of Honor had also not been idle, and they had continuously sent out experts to surround and eliminate corpses.
Many people believed that the corpses had been released by the Neohuman Alliance, but they were also clearly different from the corpse kings.
Fortunately, not one corpse had been discovered with the strength of an Envoy yet.
Lu Yin’s gadget beeped, and he saw it was a call from Yuan Qiong, the Cosmic Sect’s sect master.
“Sect Master, what can I do for you?” Lu Yin bluntly asked as soon as he connected to the call. He made no efforts to be too polite or to act like a disciple who looked at the sect master in awe.
Yuan Qiong was unconcerned, as Lu Yin was not a disciple of his Cosmic Sect. If not for the pattern on the bottom of Lu Yin’s foot, the Cosmic Sect would not care about him at all. “Elder Gong wanted to speak with you.”
Elder Gong appeared on the display, his face grim. “Yuan Qiong, you can leave now.”
Yuan Qiong was startled; was even he not allowed to be present for this conversation?
Lu Yin’s eyes flickered, and a vague guess popped up in his mind.
After Yuan Qiong left, Elder Gong focused on Lu Yin. “Lu Xiaoxuan.”
Lu Yin’s smile turned bitter, and he bowed low. “I apologize, Elder, for lying to you.”
Arch-Elder Zen had learned of Lu Yin’s identity as Lu Xiaoxuan, and he would not hide such a thing from the other Semi-Progenitors such as Highsage Grandmaster. Lu Yin had waited for the old powerhouses to call him, but they had taken so long to do so that he had forgotten about the matter.
This also made it a surprise that Elder Gong had reached out to Lu Yin.
“Forget about that for now. Do you know the Hidden Needle technique?” Elder Gong asked.
Lu Yin felt puzzled, but he shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
Elder Gong stared at Lu Yin for a while before letting out a sigh. “It appears that you really did forget everything.”
Lu Yin’s eyebrows rose. “Is it connected to the Lu family?”
“Hidden Needle is one of the Lu family’s unique techniques,” Elder Gong explained.
Lu Yin’s tone grew bitter. “This junior has forgotten it. Even though I should have learned it back then since it’s a technique that belongs to the Lu family, I’ve had to restart my cultivation from scratch. I have no connection to that technique any longer.”
Elder Gong grew serious. “There’s a child who was hunted down today by one of the desiccated corpses, but he managed to acquire the Hidden Needle technique from an inheritance.”
Lu Yin was startled. “I thought that you said that Hidden Needle is an exclusive technique of the Lu family’s.”
“It is. No one can possess the technique except for the Lu family, and yet this child just received an inheritance because of his blood, and he managed to obtain Hidden Needle.”
“Are you saying that this child is a member of my Lu family?” Lu Yin was stunned.
Elder Gong felt a bit puzzled. “That’s possible, but not guaranteed. While Hidden Needle has always been a skill that belonged exclusively to the Lu family, they might not have been the ones to create it. It’s possible that a member of the family picked up the technique somewhere else. Even if an inheritance can only be obtained by a single bloodline, that does not mean that someone can’t teach the technique to other people.”
“What are you trying to say, Senior?” Lu Yin wondered.
Elder Gong’s expression became solemn once again. “These mummies are chasing after ancient blood, but they might not be chasing after the primeval surnames. It’s possible that everyone who has been attacked possesses an extraordinary lineage that triggers such targeting and that these mummies are going after those bloodlines. Regardless, the future is about to change.”
Lu Yin started thinking.
“As these desiccated corpses continue to hunt down more people, more and more ancient inheritances will pop up. This child’s parents and grandparents never learned Hidden Needle, and yet he did. This is a unique technique that has returned to the universe, and it’s possible that the other inheritances are the same, though there are likely some that have already vanished,” the elder continued.
Lu Yin looked back up at the old man. “What are you trying to say, Elder?”
“Try to protect those that are being targeted, as you might be able to pick up some secrets regarding the ancient times by doing this, at least if you are lucky,” the elder replied.
Lu Yin quickly understood that the dried up corpses were targeting and trying to kill people because of their ancient bloodline. This meant that anyone targeted by a corpse most likely possessed some sort of ancient inheritance, even though the inheritance might have already disappeared.
