Novel Full Chapter 1241: Draining With No Corpses
Chapter 1241: Draining With No Corpses
In a battlefield in the starry sky, dazzling starlight shone down, and the sound of a very unique drum echoed out, filled with immortal magic that made the void tremble.
They were called the god-crushing drums. They were one of the signature weapons of the patrolling battalions of the Longscale Regiment, and they were designed to flush gods out of hiding. They could sense traces of gods in a wide area, and were very sensitive to mutagen. Guided by the sound of the drums, five ships from the patrol regiment veered off and shot into a specific direction.
The remaining battalions continued on their way to continue inspecting other areas. They would not just sit and wait for the five battalions to complete their mission and return.
And thus, time slipped by. Before the remaining battalions could reach any other locations to inspect, a message came in from the ships that had departed. The person delivering the message sounded a bit flummoxed.
“Exalted one, we’ve followed the drums to Planet Graytomb, where the gods were erecting an altar. However, the only thing here are dead gods…. There’s nothing else. Some unknown party apparently arrived before us and wiped thēm out.”
In the main patrol group was the man in charge of the mission, a middle-aged cultivator with a stern look on his face. He wore a blue-colored suit of scale armor, and he pulsed with the extraordinary fluctuations of a peak Quasi-Immortal.
After receiving the message, he opened his eyes, revealing a thoughtful look. In this relatively large section of the battlefield, the Longscale Regiment was the only group tasked with carrying out patrols. And yet, some unknown party had beaten them to the punch….
After only a moment of consideration, the middle-aged cultivator issued new orders. Shortly after, all of the flying ships changed course and sped through the starry sky toward Planet Graytomb. Before long, ripples spread out through the void outside Planet Graytomb, where the Profound, Overlook, Ink, Spirit, and Wing Battalions waited. Then the rest of the flying ships arrived.
The Quasi-Immortal leader flew off his ship, followed by over a hundred members of his personal guard. Looking like shooting stars, they flew directly toward the planet. After landing… all of them looked around with strange expressions on their faces.
The god altar had clearly been destroyed, and the surroundings were littered with god corpses. The corpses had clearly been sucked dry. It wasn’t a case of them having been killed with fatal blows. They had clearly been milked for all of the ringsource they contained. It had been accomplished very tidily. Not one bit of ringsource was left behind.
The Longscale cultivators exchanged awkward glances. This was definitely not how the Longscale Regiment operated.
The leader looked around at the members of his guard and said, “This looks more like the work of a squadron of Corpsedrainers…. Such efficiency.”
He had merely given voice to what they were all thinking. What they were seeing really did seem like something done by Corpsedrainers. Extracting ringsource was delicate work, and the fact remained that none of them could have accomplished it with such finesse. Work like that took a lot of practice. But then people started questioning the situation.
“But the Corpsedrainers are like vultures. They only show up on big battlefields.”
“You never see them at places like this with only a few dozen god corpses.”
“Maybe it’s the work of scouts from some other regiment. Could they have Corpsedrainers with them? Maybe they’re working together.”
As everyone discussed the situation, the Quasi-Immortal leader looked around at the corpses, studied the altar, and finally fixed his gaze on one corpse in particular.
That was when his eyes suddenly glittered. “That god… is a mid Altar God! Thēy had hidden this place to set up that god altar. But thēy were forced to activate it before thēy were ready. Thēy were obviously in a rush.
“Whoever attacked thēm didn’t sense thēm by means of god-crushing drums. The attackers… were following thēm. To kill an Altar God in such short order, and also remove any evidence of their presence, making it impossible for us to identify thēm… well, it indicates these people are no simpletons.”
No one responded to his words. A moment passed, and the leader looked away from the Altar God corpse.
“Report this matter up the chain of command. It’s probably just some fellow warriors from another regiment who accidentally crossed into our area of operations.”
With that, he flew back up into the starry sky, followed by the others, all the way back to his flying ship. However, along the way, many of his personal guards looked over their shoulders and sighed. They were all thinking similar things.
They crossed into our AO and brought Corpsedrainers with them…?
***
A good distance away from Planet Graytomb was Xu Qing and the other ascendees, who the Longscale Regiment had taken to be fellow warriors who had crossed into their area of operations. They were proceeding along in concealment, all the while talking back and forth as they analyzed how the fight had played out.
“We’re still too slow. The extraction wasn’t fast enough.”
“We might be good at extracting ringsource from living targets, but in the past they were always sealed first. And sealing takes longer than killing.”
“And to get the best results you have to continuously provoke the target….”
“Basically, life extraction is fine under normal circumstances, but on the battlefield, it really is better to deal with corpses!”
“Maybe we should just practice more on the dead bodies. Rapid extraction really is the most suitable for the battlefield.”
At a certain point, Xu Qing interrupted. “From now on, we’ll continue with our assigned Corpsedrainer mission, but at the same time, we’ll do as we just did. We’ll track down suitable god squadrons to practice our extraction techniques!”
Everyone nodded, then scattered to look for new targets.
Soon, Xu Qing was the only one left behind. After watching everyone leave, he found an asteroid where he hewed out a temporary mansion grotto. Once inside, he settled down cross-legged. His plan was to continue absorbing ringsource and push his cultivation base higher. At the same time, he was thinking about the war in the context of everything he had experienced up to this point.
Given how these skirmishes are playing out in the eastern theater, it almost seems like the two sides are playing a complicated game. They both have their own goals. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough information to figure out exactly what those goals are. But one thing is for certain…. Given the scale of the war, and the sacrifices being made, both sides are attempting to accomplish something of great strategic significance!
In order to get a better idea of what was going on, it was necessary to understand the larger trends.
I’m currently an early Quasi-Immortal. If I want to reach the great circle, I’ll need more ringsource. A lot more…. There’s just not enough time. I need to think of ways to speed things up!
Taking out some extracted ringsource, he started absorbing it.
Three months passed in a flash. During that time, the Longscale Regiment experienced several situations similar to what had just played out on Planet Graytomb. Every single time, there were gods in hiding, but before the Longscale patrol could reach them, thēy were wiped out and thēir ringsource extracted. The speed of fighting and extraction only increased. The battlefields were left cleaner and cleaner.
Before long, a rumor started to spread in the Longscale Regiment. Supposedly, a squadron from another regiment had crossed into their area of operations. They were said to be cruel and ruthless. What was more, they were traveling with Corpsedrainers, and whenever they took action, they were quick and deadly.
Over time, the other Corpsedrainer squadrons in the area were getting a bit irritated. What was more, the army leadership eventually noticed what was happening. Unfortunately, nothing anyone did to identify the mysterious squadron actually worked. Though the incidents kept happening, it seemed impossible to identify the perpetrators, so the Longscale Regiment gradually stopped working so hard to find them. Another factor at play was that the war was starting to heat up.
***
On an enormous pure white planet, a small skirmish was playing out involving a few thousand combatants. Booms and screams rang out everywhere. God magics and immortal techniques flared, sending multicolored light shining in all directions. The fighting was getting intense.
On the border of the field of battle was a gigantic white mountain, where a squadron of Corpsedrainers waited. Among them was the same old man Xu Qing had run into a few months before. Xu Qing and his people were there as well, seated cross-legged and keeping an eye on the fighting.
While the other Corpsedrainers were obviously on guard, Xu Qing and the ascendees seemed a bit impatient. Hustling on the side had been quite profitable recently, and they were getting a lot better at their extraction techniques. Their cultivation bases had also improved. However, because more battles were being fought in the war, they had less time for their side hustle, and had to do more official work as Corpsedrainers. They had already been waiting for a long time atop the mountain, yet no side had yet prevailed. Eyes glittering, they began to look over at Xu Qing.
Xu Qing was frowning. The ringsource he had acquired over the past few months had helped his cultivation base a lot, and he was eager to move on to the next battlefield. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any end in sight for this particular skirmish.
After some thought, Xu Qing stood and started walking forward. The other ascendees excitedly got to their feet as well.
The other Corpsedrainers looked over in surprise. That was especially true of the old man who had given Xu Qing advice earlier on. He even opened his mouth to speak. But before he could say anything, Xu Qing burst into motion. Rumbling sounds then echoed out as he became a streak of light that shot like a blade toward the battlefield.
Zhou Zhengli and everyone else followed him without hesitation. They looked like vultures, but at the same time wolves, and it left the other Corpsedrainers on the mountain feeling shaken to the core.
The old man’s eyes widened. “They’re going in early? But—”
He was clearly shocked, but before he could even finish his sentence, Xu Qing and the ascendees reached the battlefield! They charged into the fighting without hesitation! Deafening booms rang out, and shockwaves from magical techniques spread out in all directions.
Xu Qing was a blur of afterimages that stopped right in front of the corpse of a Godfire god. He reached out, placed his hand onto the god’s chest, and even as both sides of the conflict continued to fight, he began to extract the ringsource! The corpse of the god withered up in front of him.
Meanwhile, when the combatants noticed what was happening, be they gods or Longscale Regiment cultivators, they looked over in astonishment. No one had ever seen anything like this happening.
As the stunned gods and cultivators looked on, Zhou Zhengli and the other ascendees arrived, spread out, and started finding god corpses.
They started extracting ringsource like crazy! They were fast and skilled, after extracting all the ringsource, they would quickly move on to the next corpse.
Everyone looked on in pure astonishment. The fighting was clearly not over, and yet this group of Corpsedrainers had swooped in right in front of everybody to extract ringsource from the corpses. The cultivators found it strange, but since these people were humans, they didn’t react like the gods. On the other hand, the gods were obviously provoked, and immediately tried to attack them.
However, the Corpsedrainers’ goal was clear. As soon as they met any resistance, they just gave up and moved on to a different god corpse.
Previously, there had been a deadlock on the battlefield, which could have tipped either way. But with these Corpsedrainers here, there were plenty of distractions, and the Longscale Regiment cultivators were quick to take advantage of that. As a result, the gods were forced to take the fighting seriously.
Besides, these Corpsedrainers were extraordinarily strong, and were like fish in water on the battlefield. They were going around like crazy, absorbing ringsource from all the corpses.
If that were all there were to it, it might not have been a big deal. After all, there weren’t even twenty of the Corpsedrainers, and they didn’t affect the fighting much.
But… before long something different happened. It started with Xu Qing. As he was racing toward a god corpse, a peak Godfire god appeared in front of him, who was locked in deadly combat with a Longscale Regiment cultivator.
The god’s eyes were cold and apathetic as hē unleashed god magics, causing the ringsource to seethe within hīm. The Longscale Regiment cultivator’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was about to put everything on the line. That was when the vision of the cultivator and the god blurred.
Xu Qing suddenly appeared right in front of them. Before either could react, Xu Qing reached out and latched his hand down onto the god’s throat. The power of his immortal embryo surged like flood waters, sweeping into the god. A howl of anguish escaped the god’s lips as hē felt hīs life force about to be snuffed out. Then a cracking sound echoed out from the god’s neck, and then hē fell to the ground. The god was a corpse now.
Xu Qing squatted down over the corpse and efficiently extracted the ringsource.
The Longscale Regiment cultivator stared in astonishment. Then his eyes shone with gratitude.
Sir Vilespirit was quick to notice what Xu Qing had done. Licking his lips, he suddenly attacked a god who was fighting a nearby cultivator. The god quickly became a corpse. The other ascendees followed suit, lunging toward the gods like wolves or tigers. If they ran into corpses, they sucked them dry. If they saw enticing targets, they turned them into corpses. If they had to fight, they fought. If they had to launch sneak attacks, they did. If an opponent was too strong, they would rely on life-saving techniques to get away.
In that manner, they became a huge wave sweeping across the battlefield. Though their influence was minimal at first, when they went crazy under Xu Qing’s lead, they soon became the center of attention.
The leaders on both sides saw what was happening. The leader of the gods frowned. In contrast, the leader of the cultivators, who was that same peak Quasi-Immortal from before, looked on with shining eyes.
On the nearby mountain, the other Corpsedrainers, including the old man, were dumbstruck.
“Are they really Corpsedrainers?” one of the squadron members muttered.
“They are. But from what I can see, they kill them first, then drain them….”