From Paper Craftsman to World-Suppressing Immortal

Zhang Zhixuan used the Xuanwu puppet to save the corpse retriever, Old Sun. Just then, a piercing shriek suddenly rang out from the water. Zhang Zhixuan looked down and what he saw sent chills down his spine.

Beneath the murky, yellowish river water, the unrecognizable corpse of a woman lies submerged.

The woman's body was pale and swollen from being submerged in the river water. Her flesh bulged out like over-fermented dough. Her eyes were just dark, empty holes. Most of her face, including her eyeballs and lips, had been eaten away by the fish in the river, leaving only her white gums and broken teeth.

The flesh on her face was rolled up in pieces, revealing the grayish-white bones underneath. Countless small fish swam around her face, occasionally nibbling at her.

Her long hair spread out in the water, like a large clump of black seaweed. The Xuanwu puppet's claw had just severed the strands of hair, but the rest of her hair still floated eerily in the water, as if it were alive.

What's most chilling is her posture.

The woman stood upright in the water, maintaining the posture of standing on the riverbed, but her arms were raised high, her ten swollen and white fingers tightly gripping the ankles of the other dead child's body, trying to lift the child to the surface.

Zhang Zhixuan was overcome with grief upon seeing this. He imagined that after the mother and child fell into the water, the mother must have used her last strength to lift the child to the surface, but she herself swallowed a bellyful of water and sank.

Even in death, her hands did not loosen. Her body had been submerged in the water for an unknown amount of time, yet she still maintained the posture of lifting the child before her death, steadily holding the child above the water.

Fate played a cruel trick; the child was pulled to the surface by his mother's desperate efforts, but ultimately he could not survive, and both mother and child tragically perished.

Just then, the female corpse underwater seemed to sense something. Her two dark eye sockets turned towards Zhang Zhixuan, and her tightly closed teeth suddenly opened. A hoarse and piercing scream came out from her throat.

The sharp, piercing sound was filled with malice, resentment, and sorrow.

The shrill sound pierced Zhang Zhixuan's ears, causing his eardrums to ache and his head to buzz. Then everything went black. In an instant, Zhang Zhixuan's mind was thrown into chaos, and he almost couldn't breathe.

Just then, Old Sun, who was on the verge of death from being tossed around by the water, suddenly found the strength to yank Zhang Zhixuan.

Zhang Zhixuan suddenly regained consciousness and quickly used the Xuanwu puppet to lift the two of them out of the water.

"Huff... huff... huff..."

Zhang Zhixuan took a few deep breaths to catch his breath. He glanced at Old Sun, who was also quite exhausted, and decided to get Old Sun ashore first, without worrying about the two floating objects in the water.

Just then, Old Sun managed to sit up, grabbed Zhang Zhixuan's hand, and with his last bit of strength, said haltingly, "The one down there has too much resentment; to retrieve the corpse, we need to first summon the body..."

"Young man, right now, besides you, there's no one else who can take care of us..."

As he spoke, Old Sun clasped his hands together, forming a strange hand seal, and said, "To summon the corpse seal, you need this..."

"I understand. Take a breath, I'll get you ashore first." Zhang Zhixuan frowned as he looked at the strange handprint on Old Sun's hand, silently memorizing it, and then used the Xuanwu puppet to send him ashore.

"They're back! They've been rescued!"

The Xuanwu puppet carried the two back to the shore. Old Sun's two apprentices rushed over immediately, thanking him profusely as they took the dying Old Sun away. Many boatmen who had been watching on the shore also went to help with the rescue, and for a moment it was chaos.

Zhang Zhixuan ignored everything else and urged the Xuanwu puppet to swim back to the location of the two floating objects.

This time, when Zhang Zhixuan looked at the female corpse underwater again, his feelings were completely different.

At first, he only thought the woman floating underwater was unrecognizable, tragic and terrifying, but now there was an indescribable meaning behind it.

This is resentment, a resentment soaring to the heavens!

She resented that God not only killed her, but also caused her child to die.

With nowhere to vent their resentment, they clung to everyone who went into the water. If these two floating bodies weren't pulled ashore, more people would lose their lives here in the future.

Zhang Zhixuan sighed silently in his heart, then clasped his hands together underwater, forming the "Summon Corpse Seal" that Old Sun had taught him.

In the profession of corpse retrievers, this handprint means making a deal with the dead in the water: I ask you to come ashore and return to dust, so that you can rest in peace. Please don't make things difficult for me.

Once the handprint was formed, it proved effective!

The female corpse underwater stiffened noticeably. Her long, flowing hair suddenly quieted down, no longer thrashing about like a living thing, but returning to normal hair. Although her two dark eye sockets were still terrifying, they no longer stared intently at Zhang Zhixuan, but instead looked blankly elsewhere.

Zhang Zhixuan breathed a sigh of relief, urged the Xuanwu puppet to support him and sink a little further, getting close to the female corpse's side, and finally circling around to the back of the female corpse.

Zhang Zhixuan reached out and held the female corpse, only to feel a cold, slippery sensation in his hand. The feeling of rotting flesh soaked in water traveled through the water, making his stomach churn.

Zhang Zhixuan gritted his teeth and suppressed his nausea, then used his right hand to support the woman's lower back, gently straightening her previously stiff body.

The female corpse had been submerged in the water for who knows how long, and her body had long since stiffened and solidified. When he touched her, her joints made a dull creaking sound that sent shivers down one's spine.

As the woman's body was laid flat, the child's body on the river surface also sank down.

Zhang Zhixuan was prepared and activated the Xuanwu puppet to float upwards, catching the child's corpse.

On the broad, flat back of the Xuanwu puppet, the mother and son finally met again. Just when Zhang Zhixuan thought things had gone smoothly and he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, a dark current surged up from the depths of the river, and several enormous black shadows, each over a meter long, rushed toward him at an extremely fast speed.

Alarm bells rang in Zhang Zhixuan's mind. He turned around abruptly and saw several strange fish, each over a meter long, with sharp teeth and ferocious faces, rushing towards him at an extremely fast speed.

"There are these things here too!" Zhang Zhixuan was shocked and suddenly remembered the strange fish that had appeared in the river when the body sank.

Those strange fish looked exactly like the strange fish rushing towards him, and Zhang Zhixuan immediately became very vigilant.

Currently, he was unable to move easily in the water and only had the Xuanwu puppet as his support. Faced with such a large number and size of strange fish, Zhang Zhixuan dared not be careless and quickly urged the Xuanwu puppet to swim back.

The strange fish swung their bodies in the water at great speed, and in the blink of an eye, two of them opened their mouths wide and rushed close.

Zhang Zhixuan seized the opportunity and urged the Xuanwu puppet to unleash a powerful claw strike, which landed squarely on the head of the strange fish in front of him.

"Pfft"

With a muffled thud in the water, the strange fish's head was instantly smashed open, and the foul-smelling flesh and blood spread throughout the water. Other strange fish, smelling the blood, immediately turned and rushed towards the corpse of their kind, opening their mouths wide to fight over the carcass.

"Luckily, they're just a bunch of brainless beasts." Zhang Zhixuan breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn't dare to relax for a moment. Taking advantage of the fact that the strange fish were killing each other, he continued to swim quickly toward the shore.

Those on the shore only saw Zhang Zhixuan ride the strange turtle-shaped puppet and jump back into the river. In no time, the water surface churned as if boiling, and several pieces of the strange fish carcasses floated to the surface.

After a while, the Xuanwu puppet carrying Zhang Zhixuan finally emerged from the water and returned to the shore.

The fierce battle underwater had only lasted a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity to Zhang Zhixuan. When he returned to shore, he was completely exhausted and collapsed on the ground, panting heavily.

Just as Zhang Zhixuan finally breathed a sigh of relief, a voice suddenly rang in his ears.