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

I filled Li Qing's teacup with hot water.

"Whatever they want to do, if they dare to lay a finger on us, we'll chop them off."

Li Qing looked at me, paused for two seconds, and then a familiar, slightly arrogant smile appeared on his lips.

"Damn, after a month or two, your act of showing off has become more and more natural."

Li Qing picked up the cigarette case on the table, took out another cigarette, and lit it.

"However, I like it."

Jin Wanliang clapped his hands and laughed loudly, "Hahaha! Good! Domineering!"

"Come on, come on! Today, your brother is treating us to a feast at Haiyanlou. Let's have a good get-together and welcome Li Qing back!"

I did not refuse.

It's definitely worth having a drink when old friends reunite.

Moreover, I need to completely relax my mind before going into seclusion this weekend to attempt the Sha Dan breakthrough.

The last rays of the setting sun shone through the windows of the lounge, casting long shadows of the three of us on the floor.

……

Inside the private room at Haiyanlou Restaurant, the lighting was soft, and the table was laden with the finest delicacies from Jiangcheng.

Jin Wanliang opened a bottle of Moutai that he had treasured for many years, and the aroma of the liquor filled the air.

The three of us, old brothers who had been through life and death together, sat around a table, and the atmosphere was unusually relaxed and comfortable.

Li Qing vividly recounted how he watched his master use the "Nine Palaces Flying Stars" formation to bury those evil cultivators alive in the Gobi Desert of Northwest China.

When he got excited, he wouldn't forget to take a big gulp of wine and swear a couple of times.

I held my wine glass, just smiling gently, occasionally adding a few words of agreement.

The dinner at Haiyanlou continued until late at night.

During the meal, I did not hide anything.

He told Jin Wanliang and Li Qing about his plan to officially go into seclusion this weekend and use the Nine Nether Lightning Strike Wood Heart to break through to the Fiend Core realm.

For any cultivator, the formation of the Golden Core is a critical juncture of life and death.

In this degenerate age of spiritual depletion, those who can step into the Dan realm are all renowned figures in the martial arts world.

But the dangers involved are also proportional.

Even the slightest external interference can lead to qi deviation and complete destruction of one's cultivation, or even immediate death from body explosion.

This breakthrough to the Demon Core stage definitely won't be possible in a rented room.

I need to find an absolutely safe and quiet environment to complete this retreat.

Upon hearing this, Jin Wanliang put down his wine cup without saying a word, patted his chest, and took on the responsibility of finding the venue.

"Brother Chen, leave this to me."

I have an underground safe house on the outskirts of Jiangcheng that I built to hide from my enemies. The walls are made of half-meter-thick reinforced concrete with lead plates, which can not be penetrated even by heavy bunker busters.

It's absolutely quiet there; not even a fly could get in.

Li Qing then stubbed out his cigarette, his gaze unusually serious.

"We've got the place, and Lao Jin can handle the people we need to protect, but when it comes to protecting against things we can't see, we'll have to rely on me."

I'll go there first thing tomorrow morning to set up the formation, reverse yin and yang, and lock down the flow of energy.

"I guarantee that even if you make a huge commotion inside, no one outside will notice a thing."

I looked at them without saying a word.

He simply picked up his glass and drank it all in one gulp.

This is a bond forged in life and death.

No need for unnecessary words or insincere pleasantries.

On Saturday evening, Jin Wanliang personally drove me to an abandoned factory in the western suburbs of Jiangcheng.

Passing through the messy factory buildings, we entered a hidden freight elevator.

We descended nearly twenty meters before finally reaching the underground safe house.

As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, I felt the air around me become extremely thick and cold.

Li Qing was squatting in front of the heavy alloy door of the safe house, holding a vermilion pen, sketching the last array pattern on the ground.

Seeing us come down, he stood up and patted the red ash off his hands.

"Eight Gates Locking Yin Formation plus Small Sumeru Mustard Seed Formation".

I drew all the yin energy from within a five-mile radius, and incidentally wiped the energy from this room completely from this world.

Li Qing pointed to several yellowed talismans pasted on the surrounding walls.

"Go in. As long as you don't blow this place up, even a god couldn't find you."

"You've worked hard." I patted him on the shoulder.

"Stop talking nonsense and come out alive."

Li Qing pursed his lips, turned around and walked to the monitoring station next to him, took out his handheld game console, but his eyes were fixed on the screen.

Jin Wanliang also looked solemn: "Brother, we'll keep watch outside, you can focus on your seclusion."

I nodded, pushed open the heavy alloy door, and stepped into the secret room.

The secret room was small, only about thirty square meters, and empty except for a futon placed in the center.

The air was filled with the dense Yin energy that Li Qing had gathered using an array.

To ordinary people, this place is like an icebox, but to me, a corpse stitcher, it feels as comfortable as a fish returning to water.

I sat cross-legged on the futon, took a deep breath, and allowed myself to calm down completely.

Then, I took the black wooden box out of my pocket.

"Pat-pat"

With a soft click, the box was opened.

The piece of Nine Nether Lightning-Struck Wood, only half the size of a palm, lay quietly inside.

As I looked at the piece of wood, the words Zhang Xuanqing had said to me in the rented room that day echoed in my mind once again.

Extreme yin gives rise to yang.

I composed myself, slowly extended my right hand, and grasped the Nine Nether Lightning-Struck Wood Heart in my palm.

I closed my eyes and began to circulate the evil energy within my body, which had already reached the peak of the half-step evil core.

The malevolent energy flowed along the meridians and slowly entered the wooden core in the palm.

"boom!"

The instant my malevolent energy touched the wooden core, an extremely vast and pure Yin energy suddenly erupted from within it.

And it poured wildly down my arm and into my body.

The profound heritage of the ancient locust tree is fully revealed at this moment.

The mercury-like evil energy within my body had already reached its limit.

Upon being struck by this external, extremely yin energy, it was as if a pot of boiling water was raging and crashing wildly through the wide meridians.

A sharp, throbbing pain spread throughout my body, and even fine beads of blood seeped from my skin.

But I didn't panic. Instead, I gritted my teeth and pushed my mountain-shaking power to its limit.

A layer of resilient sheen instantly appeared on my skin, which withstood the internal pressure that was about to burst me.

Time passed slowly, and the extreme yin energy within my body continued to rise, reaching a critical point.

Just then.

The dormant dark golden patterns in the wood seemed to be completely awakened by this extreme yin energy.

"Crack!"

A muffled rumble of thunder seemed to echo in my mind.

A wisp of extremely faint, yet domineering pure yang thunderfire, following the extreme yin energy, suddenly surged into my meridians!

Within the extreme yin, a sliver of yang energy is born!

The moment that wisp of lightning entered my body, all the muscles in my body instantly began to spasm uncontrollably.

The feeling was as if someone had pierced my very marrow with a red-hot steel needle.

The extremely yin evil energy and the extremely yang thunder and fire collided violently in my meridians and dantian, and the two completely opposite forces began a frenzied struggle!