Chapter 344 - 11: Your Head is Gone

Little Fatty scooted closer, and they both began to look at the book the Little Daoist’s master had left behind.

The moment he saw the cover, he felt every character on it twist and warp, making his eyes swim.

But when Duan Fei opened it, Little Fatty saw that the text inside looked normal enough, yet each word seemed... off.

In the gaps between the words were countless, densely packed eyes, each the size of a grain of rice. The sight made Little Fatty cry out, and whatever he was holding flew from his hand, shattering on the ground.

Sitting on the floor, he pointed at the *Yingjie Chapter* and stammered, "This... this... there’s something wrong with this thing!"

"I think so too," the Little Daoist said. "The *Yingjie Chapter* is a secret technique of our sect. Those with insufficient Cultivation can’t even withstand a single glance. Okay, Duan Someone, don’t force yourself. Just a quick look is enough."

Duan Fei, however, took the Daoist Scripture and began to read through it in detail.

When the Little Daoist saw that Duan Fei was not only unaffected but was actually getting more engrossed the more he read, he momentarily wondered if he’d grabbed the wrong book. He stepped forward to take a look, but the eyes within the pages immediately made him so dizzy and disoriented that he had to stumble back.

Once he finally recovered, he stared at Duan Fei, who was still turning the pages, and exclaimed in horror, "Duan Someone, how are you able to keep reading?!"

"With my eyes."

"But..."

Looking at the book, the further one flipped, the more eyes appeared on the pages.

Every one of these eyes was bloodshot. Soon, black tentacles began to poke out from between the pages, swaying about as if trying to corrupt everything around them.

Black cracks spread out from the Daoist Scripture, making the entire courtyard look like a shattered mirror. Something was about to crawl out from inside it.

Unfortunately, Duan Fei still couldn’t see any of it.

He could see the paper effigies because they had their own physical forms.

But the things in the book were purely part of the wraiths; they couldn’t perceive Duan Fei’s existence at all, much less affect him.

In this bizarre atmosphere, Duan Fei finished reading the Daoist Scripture and closed it.

The surrounding paranormal phenomena vanished abruptly.

The Little Daoist and Little Fatty, who had been watching from the side, suddenly remembered that humans need to breathe. They gasped for air for a good while before asking, "What was all that?"

"Quiet down. I’m going to read it again."

"You’re reading it *again*?!"

Under the astonished gazes of the Little Daoist and Little Fatty, Duan Fei opened the book again and read the entire thing through one more time.

After he finished, he let out a long breath and said to the two of them, who were trembling and huddled together, "This thing... it reads like a repair manual."

"What do you mean by that?" the Little Daoist asked, confused.

Raising a hand, Duan Fei asked, "Let me ask you something. Did the Old Dao leave you another book? It should be related to application... I mean, Cultivation."

The Little Daoist looked at Duan Fei in surprise and nodded. "He did. But that last group of people borrowed it. Then they caused a huge mess, and the book went missing. Don’t tell me they took it with them?"

"No," Duan Fei said, shaking his head. "This book is indestructible and can’t be taken from this place. So it’s definitely still here. We’ll have to look for it later."

Little Fatty stood up, dusted off his pants, and walked over. "Duan Someone, what did you mean about it being a repair manual?"

"If you could read it, you’d get the same feeling. I’ll try to copy some of it for you guys. Let’s see if that causes any problems."

After borrowing a gel pen and some paper from the Little Daoist, Duan Fei attempted to transcribe the book’s contents.

But he had just finished the first line when Little Fatty clapped his hands over his eyes and said, trembling, "I can’t! It feels like my head is going to explode just from a single glance!"

The Little Daoist was holding up slightly better, but he was also swaying on his feet. He forced himself to say, "Me neither. I can’t stand to even look at it, yet you can actually copy it down. Who in the world are you?"

Realizing that even the copied text was dangerous, Duan Fei had no choice but to open the book again and analyze it himself.

He wasn’t joking when he called it a repair manual.

In the *Yingjie Chapter*, the author stated that the world was facing a great calamity. This world’s Spirituality would slowly fade, and it would eventually fall into darkness.

Because of this, the various Divine Spirits would slowly lose their spiritual connection and eventually degenerate into wraith-like beings, losing their original Power.

To counter this, one had to follow a series of procedures to resolve each of the world’s calamities. Only then could the world be restarted, allowing it to break free from the tribulation and be reborn.

The first step required an expert of profound Cultivation to perform a ’martial dissolution,’ using their physical body as the catalyst.

Walking over to the coffin, Duan Fei saw that although the Old Dao inside was deceased, his complexion was rosy, not at all like a dead man’s.

Duan Fei checked for breath and found none. There was something propped under the man’s head. Tilting his own head to see, he discovered it was a gleaming kitchen cleaver.

’So "martial dissolution" means using an iron weapon to sever the connection to the flesh. It seems this cleaver was the Old Dao’s tool for the ritual.’

As for the second step, it was to cook for the body.

After the dissolution, the primordial spirit ascends, but the physical body remains and transforms into an Evil Corpse. At that point, someone is needed to prepare all sorts of food for this corpse, satisfying the Evil Corpse’s gluttonous desires to ultimately suppress it.

If the suppression is successful, the Daoist will undergo a Soul Return, and their Cultivation will increase dramatically.

Furthermore, this process could steal back a sliver of divine essence, reigniting the world’s Spirituality and allowing it to be revitalized.

The only problem was that the Evil Corpse was filled with desires like greed, anger, and delusion. Appeasing it wouldn’t be easy, and one would have to endure its verbal abuse. You couldn’t handle this thing without a strong will.

And if the Evil Corpse wasn’t satisfied, it would degenerate further, transforming into a Vile Abomination, which would be even more difficult to deal with.

Comparing everything he’d seen since entering the instance, Duan Fei finally understood its true backstory.

This world was dying. The Old Dao had realized it, so he used the *Yingjie Chapter* to perform the martial dissolution on himself and begin the ritual.

And the ones who could do the cooking were, naturally, the players from the outside world, sent here to help the Old Dao complete the ritual from the *Yingjie Chapter*.

When the Old Dao was alive, he could suppress the wraiths of this place. Now that he was gone, there was nothing to keep them in check.

Moreover, Duan Fei suspected that the Old Dao’s Evil Corpse could also command those wraiths. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have claimed the Old Dao sent them to attack the kitchen.

The reason for attacking the kitchen was simple: the Evil Corpse wanted to become a Vile Abomination, seize this world for itself, and become a scourge upon the land.

’Thinking about it now, this Old Dao was pretty daring, trying something like this. Wasn’t he afraid of failure?’

’Or maybe he’d already figured out a backup plan in case of failure, which is why he went ahead with it so confidently?’

Just as Duan Fei was pondering this, Little Fatty suddenly let out a piercing scream.

Turning his head, Duan Fei saw the Elder Daoist in the coffin sitting up. His shriveled hand was gripping Duan Fei’s arm tightly. His blackened eyes stared at him, a bizarre smile spreading across his face.

He was still dressed in burial shrouds. His withered fingernails were long and thin, their reddish tips on the verge of digging into Duan Fei’s flesh.

"Young man, how about you do me a favor?" the Elder Daoist’s Evil Corpse said. "Stay out of this. I have my own way of handling things."

"You... You’re not my master! Who are you?!" the Little Daoist shouted, drawing the Money Sword from his back.

"How noisy."

The Old Dao simply pointed a finger, and Duan Fei watched as the Little Daoist was sent flying for no apparent reason. He landed in a heap on the ground and started coughing up blood.

The Old Dao turned his head back to Duan Fei. "You see? My Power is unparalleled throughout history; not even the gods can stand against me. If you submit to me, I will..."

"Ah, thank you."

"You’re welco—wait, what are you thanking me for?"

"For hitting him. I feel much better now. And next up, it’s you!"

Seeing Duan Fei pull out his Crowbar, the Old Dao’s Evil Corpse sighed in exasperation. "Hopelessly stubborn. You’re truly courting death. In all my years, I’ve..."

The Crowbar came down, and the Old Dao’s voice cut off abruptly as his entire head went flying.