This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 173 'Dark Creatures'

Fu Nian left.

She didn't seem too happy, but as a mature working woman, she didn't show it... well, she didn't show it too obviously.

But her emotions were obviously fake, her expression was neither warm nor cold, and she didn't even look back when she left.

Ping Xingdou was also starting to feel unhappy, but he didn't say anything. After all, Fu Nian was hypocritical and willful, and the two of them had the most disliked personality traits, something he had always known.

He simply hummed some off-key, crisp melody, picked up the stone slab, and sat down in the pile of animal hides on the ground.

Fu Nian had sat here during the day as well; this was the fixed spot for the daily recorder. Although Ping Xingdou hadn't done this for a long time, no one bothered him while he sat here until today's recorder arrived.

An aged voice echoed in the room as Ping Xingdou examined the star map he had replicated on the system interface. A chisel scraped against the stone slab, making a soft sound.

'despair. ’

……

In the darkness of the forest, an even deeper darkness lurks.

It was a human figure, or the shadow of a humanoid creature. Something shimmered within the shadow's body; upon closer inspection, it turned out to be tiny, dark blue starlight.

As the shadow moved, the swirling black mist flowed, and a dim light trembled within it. It silently traversed the mountains and forests, passed through the light and shadow, avoided the direction where Yi Jian was on the mountaintop, and arrived at the wall of the wooden house, silently seeping inside.

As if deliberately avoiding scrutiny, it quickly slipped into the cabin and crawled through the darkness at the edge of the lamplight. Its movements were swift, agile, and well-trained, allowing it to slip past the astronomers and into the recording room.

Ping Xingdou was engrossed in carving not far away, while the phantom of this kind of humanoid creature lay on the ground, taking a star stone from his bosom—no, from his chest.

The star-shaped stone glittered, and the phantom hid it in a corner, silently rising to prepare to leave.

One hand rested on its shoulder, while the other picked up the star stone.

Nie Weiyang looked at the star stone in his hand and turned his head.

“Welcome,” he said. “Won’t you sit down and have a cup of tea?”

Beneath him, a highly decomposed corpse knelt silently on the ground, its bones exposed, its face indistinct, and dead maggots piled up in its abdominal cavity.

Strangely, it emitted no odor, not even any smell, only a strong aura of dark creatures lingered around it.

It exists here, like a ghost born in the darkness. And on this ghost's blurry face, there truly is a hazy phantom.

It was a face that was neither human nor inhuman—the soul of a humanoid being was attached to this human corpse. It had a long skull, large eyes, and grayish-white skin. It seemed devoid of emotion, even thought, and self. It simply stared at the star stone in Nie Weiyang's hand and slowly raised its hand—

Before it could reach for the star stone, Nie Weiyang flicked it on the forehead.

[Spirit of Purification]!

A sword is a weapon, a motorcycle is a weapon, and a hand is also a weapon!
With a loud 'bang!' like a watermelon bursting open, the head of the corpse was severed, and dried blood and brain matter splattered on the ground, as if it had been smashed by a sledgehammer.

The ghost, having lost its host, made no move and vanished in a daze, like smoke and mist.

It did not go to the Netherworld like a normal dead soul, but instead transformed into a speck of dark blue star and fell into the star stone in Nie Weiyang's hand.

On the star stone, countless stars twinkle.

Nie Weiyang knew that another star had been added to the constellation.

"...Is this the dark creature?" Ping Xingdou asked.

He wasn't deaf; with such a commotion happening right next to him, he could naturally sense something was wrong. But when he saw the strange corpse, his expression changed.

"Mm," Nie Weiyang replied.

He squatted down beside the odorless, rotting corpse and examined it. "It's been dead for half a month," he said. "It looks like someone from the nearby settlement."

The emotions in Ping Xingdou's heart were undeniably intense.

"A corpse that's been dead for half a month, without any zombie parasites, has come to us more than once, just to put down a broken rock?" He asked incredulously, "What grudge does it have against us?"

“This is not your problem,” Nie Weiyang said.

He reached out his hand and sprinkled a purifying light upon it.

“It’s just… repeating itself,” he said.

Ping Xingdou remained noncommittal: "Repeating what?"

Nie Weiyang sighed. A complex expression appeared on his face, an expression that left Yi Jian, who had rushed down, stunned.

“Repeat what it did last before it died.” Nie Weiyang’s voice remained calm: “Hide the tombstone of your compatriot in a safe place.”

……

Starstone.

This is a naturally formed...mineral.

Its formation condition is that at the moment the material carrier of the soul is completely destroyed, the surrounding spacetime fluctuations are so great that they disrupt the rules, preventing the dead soul from going to the Netherworld.

At that time, if there are multiple souls within range, they will automatically gather into starstones.

"Is this what it is?"

Liang Zhenduan bent down, got close to the tray, and stared at the star stone for a long time, but couldn't figure it out.

The small black stone sparkled with starlight; it was beautiful, but it didn't reveal anything Nie Weiyang was talking about.

"About how many souls are inside?" Liang Zhenduan asked.

“I don’t know,” Nie Weiyang said. “They say that each starlight here is a soul…”

'All'? Which 'all'?
Liang Zhenduan glanced at Nie Weiyang seemingly unintentionally, while Nie Weiyang remained oblivious: "...but no one has ever counted them all." He said, "Each star stone looks pretty much the same. They fly through space with meteorites or space debris, and occasionally they may be triggered by external conditions to release the hidden phantoms of souls within them."

"Before the event ends, these phantoms will endlessly repeat the things they did last in life, whether it is killing, crying, or waiting to die."

"With something like this forming, the starry sky outside must look quite lively..." Liang Zhenduan murmured.

Nie Weiyang smiled and ignored his attempt to elicit a response.

"How many regions have we contacted?" he asked.

His map display showed that the chaotic state of the Sun Lord was now somewhat incomprehensible to him. It seemed that the Void-Crossing Demon had repeatedly tried to correct the chaotic soul aggregate rather than directly destroying this troublesome entity. It was clear that the special nature of the Sun Lord to the Void-Crossing Demon was indeed worth investigating.

These past two days, the Sun God has just had a manic episode—the weather has gotten hot and the sun has become intense, which made it very uncomfortable, causing it to relapse into another episode. I wonder what its other followers think.

It's late March or early April now. The weather in New World will start to turn summery in May, so the best time to raid Xunshan is before then.

"Oh, that's exactly what I was going to tell you." Liang Zhenduan perked up.

He took out a letter.

“We’ve made contact with the capital,” he said.

(End of this chapter)