What do you mean by saying that the corpses I sew are all ominous creatures?

More importantly, only by condensing the Demon Core will I be qualified to go to the capital and come into contact with the world left behind by my parents.

I took a deep breath and poured out a muscle-regenerating pill from the porcelain bottle.

The elixir was smooth and round like jade, melting instantly in the mouth.

A warm, moist sensation instantly spread through the mouth, flowing down the throat and into the lower abdomen.

Then the medicinal power felt like countless gentle little hands, gently smoothing out the fine cracks in my meridians caused by the evil spirits.

I closed my eyes, sat cross-legged, and began to circulate my internal energy.

The malevolent energy flowed slowly through the meridians, becoming more concentrated with each place it passed through that was nourished by the medicinal power.

I could feel that those previously dry acupoints were greedily absorbing the medicinal power.

I sat there for a full three hours.

When I opened my eyes again, the sky outside the window was already turning a pale white.

I exhaled a breath of stale air, stretched my shoulders, and found that the persistent fatigue had mostly disappeared.

Although my strength has not fully recovered, my spirit and energy have improved a lot.

I turned around and looked at the head of the bed.

The grayish-white snake egg lay quietly inside, its surface still appearing lifeless.

I stretched out my index finger and gently touched the eggshell.

Today marks the seventh day.

After finishing the blood feeding, I withdrew my hand and looked at the wound on my fingertip that was healing rapidly, my eyes becoming deep.

"Jiangcheng, the Corpse Stitcher..."

I recalled the divination Zhang Banxian performed for Master Liu.

What exactly does this glimmer of hope refer to?

Is it my blood, or this murderous aura I possess?

……

In the days that followed, I decided to stay home as much as possible.

The turmoil in Jiangcheng's underground was suppressed by the authorities in an extremely tough manner due to Lei Zhenshan's strong intervention and his status as a special envoy.

Lei Zhenshan has escorted the Holy Maiden of Wandie Valley to the capital, and the acting director has taken over the mess of the Jiangcheng branch. Everything seems to be back on track.

And Jiangcheng returned to its original tranquility.

I know that what I should do most right now is improve myself.

Instead of rushing to the funeral home to cancel my leave, I called Director Wang and extended my vacation.

The reason is the same old one.

Although Director Wang sounded a bit resentful on the phone, he still told me to get some rest and then readily approved my leave.

Thus, this somewhat cramped rented room became my secluded retreat, a place of quiet contemplation completely cut off from the world.

On days when I don't go out, my life becomes extremely regular, even boring, but I enjoy it.

Every morning, when the first rays of sunlight shine through the gap in the curtains onto the wooden floor, I will promptly pour out and swallow a muscle-regenerating pill left by Lei Zhenshan.

This pill truly lives up to its reputation as a secret medicine supplied internally by the General Administration; it not only has a remarkable effect on repairing meridians but also possesses potent medicinal properties.

With the help of the medicine, I would practice the "Mountain-Shaking Strength" taught by Guan the Blind Man over and over again in the cramped living room.

This body-refining method emphasizes large, sweeping movements, using qi and blood to cleanse the physical body.

With each breath I took, my bones emitted extremely faint crackling sounds.

I can clearly feel my flesh and blood becoming firmer and more resilient at a slow but steady pace.

Especially my left arm, which was stitched up with the self-sewage technique, is becoming increasingly compatible with my body under the dual nourishment of medicine and blood.

When the malevolent energy flowed within it, there was no longer the slightest sense of stagnation.

Every seven days, I would stop my cultivation and go to my bedside.

The grayish-white snake egg still lay lifeless inside.

I took out the scalpel I always carried with me and lightly made a cut on my left index finger.

A drop of fresh blood fell precisely onto the eggshell.

"Sizzle—"

The blood was instantly absorbed by the dry, calcareous eggshell.

"Little one, the old master said you have three more years. You don't look like you'll die young. Show some spirit."

I looked at the snake egg and muttered something softly.

I spend my days healing and refining my physical body, but at night, I have other things to do.

I know that the art of self-sewage is a double-edged sword. Although it brings great improvement, each time I sew myself up, it plants the seed of going astray in my subconscious.

To suppress this risk, I must store up enough cool air.

Staying at home and waiting for wandering spirits to come to me is clearly not efficient enough for me right now.

So every day at one o'clock in the morning, I would change into a black casual outfit that blended into the night and hide the mysterious black bone needle close to my body.

I've been to many different places.

My footprints can be found in the old city of Jiangcheng, abandoned unfinished buildings, and even the most eerie crossroads.

What I'm looking for isn't the kind of vicious, vengeful ghost that requires a desperate battle.

Rather, they are ordinary wandering souls who, due to their violent deaths, suffer karmic harm and are thus unable to re-enter the cycle of reincarnation.

In this degenerate age, such pitiful wandering souls are actually quite common.

I remember on the eighth night of my retreat, I encountered the spirit of an old woman at the entrance of a dilapidated alley in an urban village.

Her translucent figure flickered under the streetlights, her spirit form missing half of its head.

She made empty sewing motions with her hands while muttering her grandson's name.

She was hit and killed by a dump truck that was illegally transporting soil.

Because her death was so sudden, part of her three souls and seven spirits were scattered, causing her to be trapped at the moment of death, becoming a bound spirit with only obsession left.

I walked up to her, and she didn't notice, just mechanically repeating the same actions.

I sighed, took out the black bone needle from my pocket, and channeled a wisp of pure malevolent energy within my body, using the malevolent energy as a thread to thread the needle.

"Old man, it's time to get going."

My calm voice rang out in the quiet alley.

The bone needle pierced her fragmented spirit body, drawing the scattered fragments of her soul one by one and meticulously stitching them back into the gap.

As the last needle was inserted, the old woman's spirit instantly became whole again.

Her cloudy eyes regained clarity for a moment, and she glanced at me, as if she understood something.

Then, she bowed slightly to me, and then turned into countless specks of firefly light, disappearing into the night wind.

The instant she vanished, a pure and familiar cool aura flowed upstream along the black bone needle in my hand, rushing straight to my brow.

During these past two weeks of nighttime wanderings, I have used this method to piece together more than a dozen fragmented wandering souls.

Some of those wandering spirits were in car accidents, some jumped off buildings, and some died suddenly.

Every stitch is a witness to a human tragedy, and also a test of my own mind.

As more and more wandering souls were stitched up, the cool aura that had been lingering between my brows had transformed from a faint, almost imperceptible coolness into a small, slowly rotating vortex.

As the days passed, on the eighteenth day of my seclusion, I finally stopped all my activities.