The necromancer patrolling the outside of Reaper’s Grave was hardly worth noting. Pin and garbed in bnd, grey rags, he would be just at fitting in a coffin as a regur room.

  He walked slowly, his eyes half-open, but his gaze seemed sharp as his focus darted around, examining anything and everything in sight. Thus, when he came upon an oddity, he headed straight towards it, although he didn’t allow himself to be distracted by it entirely. Anything odd could be a setup for an ambush, and he was not about to fall for it.

  There was a spot by the wall that was oddly dark, oddly… inconspicuous. It was as though it was deliberately attempting to call attention away from itself, which was rather peculiar. If this wasn’t caused by someone, then it was an anomaly in the array of the Reaper’s Grave, which made it noteworthy either way.

  Arriving close to the shadow, he could see nothing, perceive nothing, until, all of a sudden, a presence emerged, charging past him, away from the walls. He couldn’t help but look over and sprint over to it, chasing after this strange presence.

  Had he had a moment to think about it, he would’ve found many things to be odd. For one, he saw nothing, but perceived quite a bit with spiritual perception. On the other hand, the shadow was almost devoid of pnar energy, to an excessive degree. When he looked away, there was a sound coming from the wall, but he couldn’t spot anything using his spiritual perception.

  Everything was wrong, and yet he was distracted just long enough. When he finally lost any trace of that presence, and turned back around, the shadow was gone, and the wall was the same as before.

  “What the… did that thief, Luo Long, pass by here?”

  The basalt opened up in an impossible manner, seeming to fold into itself to open a perfectly round gap for them to slip into. Naturally, they rushed in right away, and then the opening sealed behind them as the reaper did something behind them, stepping in st.

  After ensuring that they had gotten in safely, and without being followed, Bianca turned to get a proper look at the pce they had entered.

  A perfectly round passage way, barring the indentations on either side of the passageway that about human-sized, each one separated by a thin rounded wall the width of a finger. Within each of these alcoves were…

  “Bodies?”

  “Corpses. That which the necromancers ought not to touch,” Shouge Zhe went ahead without much hesitation, “Don’t linger here too long. While your pn might confuse them as to our identity, they should be aware that someone had broken in, or is breaking in.”

  “Unfortunately… Huang Su, did you have no means of preventing him from coming here at all?”

  “Mistress, my skills excel when it comes to combat, but in scenarios like this, I’m afraid I’m somewhat cking.”

  That made sense, and the Sect Master bowed her head in shame, which satisfied Bianca enough for her to not want to pursue the matter further. Instead, she approached one of the alcoves for a moment, taking in the sight.

  In this particur one, there was a skeleton with bleached bones, as though it had been here for many decades, perfectly preserved and clean. It was id in a neutral position, arms at the side, facing up, skull resting on an elevated part of the alcove. If they weren’t in a dark, awfully quiet tunnel, and if the body wasn’t… well, a body, it might’ve looked comfortable.

  “Bianca? We shouldn’t dey, if you wish to see more of these bodies… I can permit you to enter this pce in the future, once it’s liberated,” the reaper said, beckoning her over, “Come on, don’t linger too long.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she caught up quickly, even without the use of her movement skill.

  It wasn’t that she had much longer legs or anything, it was more so that the reaper paused at every single set of alcoves for a moment, seeming to check the bodies or perhaps pay respects to the dead. It wasn’t easy to tell, and she didn’t seem interested in expining herself, so all Bianca could do was walk behind her and let her do as she wished.

  From the outside, it was hard to tell how rge the walls were, but she was quite sure that they weren’t anywhere near as thick as the tunnel they were talking down. There seemed to be no end to the bodies in sight, and it was as though this would lead them all the way to the core of the Reaper’s Grave.

  “How far are we going?”

  Before the reaper could answer, Huang Su asked a question of her own, “This passage has a spatial component, does it not?”

  “Indeed. It’s not a full spatial realm, more so an array that is able to distort space. We’re within the wall, still,” Shouge Zhe expined, not interrupting her regur stops at each alcove, “I’ve not been here before, so it is vital that I approach the bodies in the correct manner… but after we’re through, we’ll exist into the Reaper’s Grave on the opposite side of the wall.”

  “Why build something so important inside of a wall?”

  “It was the intention of my predecessors to pce it into a pce none would think to look. This wall is also among the worst locations to approach the Reaper’s Grave from, ensuring that attackers wouldn’t think to target it over any others,” the reaper expined, “I cannot say that I believe this to be a fwless pn, but at least in this instance, it seemed to work.”

  “It would appear so. I can’t necessarily bme the reapers for going with this approach, as I would imagine that their main holdings would be scoured and searched thoroughly within the first month of the pce being captured. Something like this is far less obvious,” the kitsune ended up agreeing, “So many bodies…”

  “The necromancers were relentless in trying to acquire powerful corpses to raise, and thus my predecessors decided on this solution. Destroying them outright wouldn’t be in line with our goal to let the natural order proceed, and thus let them rot naturally, but…” she stopped, and then didn’t move forward, “This proved the best we could do.”

  “Why have we stopped?”

  “Because this corridor is special for another reason. Rather than just stretching the wall into a long tunnel, it also loops the space onto itself. The reason you cannot see the end is precisely this,” Shouge Zhe said, turning around to face them as she removed the scythe from her back, “Truth be told, I was considering taking this opportunity to kill you, but with a sixth realm expert, there’s not much I can do.”

  Bianca raised an eyebrow, “… Okay, but why tell us?”

  “So that you know I’m choosing to trust you, and that I have means to control parts of the Reaper’s Grave to threaten those that would desecrate our legacy.”

  “I’m not pnning to do that, you know. I just want to get rid of the necromancers here, same as you, and then I want to be able to help the entire world. Is that so bad?”

  “It… I can’t trust your words just like that,” the reaper shook her head, “You will need to prove yourself with deeds, but as we are, we’re short on time. Thus, I will do what I must to get you through, and only that much.”

  “… I… can we just get going?” Bianca gnced to Xue Yaling, who simply shrugged, ‘I don’t get her. At all.’

  Even the quiet little voice inside her head seemed perplexed, ‘I think she was trying to make some kind of point, but this is just hurting my head…’

  The reaper nodded, seemingly content with the point she had made, and turned around again, swinging her scythe in a horizontal line. It seemed to cut straight through the world itself, a ghostly blue light opening up a passageway for them. It was the width of the tunnel and led them out into a dark, dreary clearing, although the opening was enough to reveal plenty of ruins and dipidated buildings in the distance.

  “Let us make haste. Follow me,” Shouge Zhe said, and rushed out.

  As they sprinted out, Bianca got to have a better look at the inner parts of the Reaper’s Grave, or what remained of them. Once upon a time, it looked as though just the pce they ran through could host hundreds, if not thousands of people – she could almost visualise it, countless people walking along the cobblestone paths, residing in the stone structures, and going about whatever a reaper did in their day.

  And now, this pce was completely empty and dead. The buildings were torn asunder, the paths were damaged and overgrown, and the ck of people hardly needed to be pointed out.

  Still, what ended up drawing her attention was the central fortress, which looked even rger now that she was closer to it. It towered above her, a literal mountain standing in front of her, the peak scraping against the clouds. There were several yers of walls and pathways that she could spot from here, all leading up to the top of that coffin-like mountain, the original majesty of this pce shining through the bleak ruins that remain.

  ‘This… makes it awfully clear just how dangerous the forces of the world were at the time they fought with the reapers. If they were able to tear all this down, then Long Shiyi, the Exarch, and all the rest… how powerful were they, and how powerful are they now?’

  “Mistress, you ought to keep pace with us!” the Sect Master’s voice reached her ears as she started to get a little too into observing her surroundings, “We can look around once the array is activated, and we’re safe from immediate retaliation.”

  She forced herself to stop looking and rush ahead, following the reaper as she ran through the long-abandoned streets as though she had been here many times before – which in turn distracted her quite a bit as well.

  After all, the reaper couldn’t be too old, given her cultivation realm, and thus she must’ve been born after the fall of the Reaper’s Grave. In that case, it should’ve been impossible for her to have been in this area without the necromancers going out to catch her. Therefore, she had to wonder what exactly Shouge Zhe had done in the past to familiarize herself with the environment as well as she did.

  The fortunate thing was that there were no guards in their vicinity, at least as far as she could tell. This gave them plenty of leeway to sprint around however much they wanted, without much need for stealth or concealment.

  At first, they had gone in a trajectory roughly resembling a straight line, but as they neared the next yer of the Reaper’s Grave, she started to slow down, take stranger routes, looking in all kinds of pces. It felt strange, so after watching it for a decent while, Bianca eventually couldn’t wait any longer and closed the distance between them.

  “So, uh, where are we going now? Do you have any idea?”

  “Of course I do… but I’ve not been here myself before. Things have changed, and I need to look out for the right signs,” the reaper replied, seeming frustrated with her question, “Once I find them, it should be… ah, there it is, look!”

  She pointed towards one of the ruined buildings, at the doorway to it. Although it was half-destroyed, the part still standing had a very faint set of markings on the stones, a different symbol for each. Once she noticed that, she also spotted there being quite a few other buildings with such symbols, although each was slightly different in shapes and positions.

  “Wait, don’t all the… ah, is that why you were looking around so much?”

  “Yes, these buildings have plenty of markings to throw others off, and only I can know the exact truth of the situation,” the reaper expined, gasping as she looked over and saw another set of symbols, “Excellent, this is the pce they remembered.”

  “They?”

  The reaper ignored her question and stopped in pce, everyone catching up to them and surrounding them.

  “Why… Ah, fuck it, nobody’s around anyway. Why are we stopping?” the kitsune asked, “The wall is over there!”

  “Do not be so impatient. Shouge Zhe is most familiar with this territory, and if it is her opinion that we ought to stop, then we ought to stop,” Huang Su shook her head, looking to the reaper and giving her room to talk.

  “This… ah, this pce is exactly where we need to be. There is a connection to the defensive array here, and while I wouldn’t recommend attempting to take control of it from here, there are certain shortcuts that were created for us to be able to traverse this pce even when it’s occupied by foes… it wasn’t enough to hold it when the Reaper’s Grave was attacked, unfortunately,” Shouge Zhe said, sighing, “Nonetheless, let me open up the way.”

  She raised her scythe before smming the bottom of the wooden rod onto the ground, a shockwave of energy spreading out and bringing a number of lines in the ground to light. Various paths for energy to flow along in the grand array that protected the Reaper’s Grave, and while they were rather gorgeous to behold – ghostly light surging from the dirt and stone, illuminating the area with its shade – they were also rather obvious to anyone that looked.

  Even if the number of necromancers present in the Reaper’s Grave was in the double of digits, it was basically certain that one of them would look over and see this lightshow.

  “Are we just advertising our position?”

  “I don’t have any other choice,” the reaper said matter-of-factly, “While they may not be guarding the wall, they will be guarding the entrance to the inner regions of the Reaper’s Grave. This pathway is the only viable one, unless you want to overpower the guards there.”

  “We’ll have to fight them either way, won’t we?”

  “Not if you have the ability to y cim to the array. Then, it won’t be difficult at all to handle our foes,” Shouge Zhe exhaled, channelling her energy into her weapon, and through it, into the array beneath their feet, “Worry not, as soon as I initiate this part of the array, I can assist everyone in fighting off this vile scum.”

  “That’s… never mind,” Bianca sighed, looking to Huang Su, “Remember, we’ll need your help.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” the Sect Master bowed to her, before readying her energy.

  Her fmes surged out, still tinged with darkness, although she kept them close to herself. As prominent as that energy was in her vision, the aura was still rather subdued, meaning she wouldn’t be pulling an excessive degree of attention to them.

  ‘Hopefully, anyway… I wonder if this pce has someone in the sixth realm or higher,’ Bianca looked around, readying her own weapon as she let the Demonic Tyrant stretch her spiritual perception out to its limit, ‘Better be one, and just one. She needs to remember that she’s part of all this, since she’s too fond of just ignoring us. Ignoring my pet, worst of all.’

  She didn’t have too much time to ponder the subject, as she saw the approaching threats long before her spiritual perception had any chance of perceiving them. There was a small number of people approaching from both sides, roughly a dozen or so people in either group at most.

  From their auras – or the vague glimpses Bianca could catch from such a distance – they were in the second and third realm on average, making them dangerous, but manageable. There were no signs of a fourth realm or above coming for them, so it wasn’t too concerning just yet, although Bianca knew to expect the worst at this point.

  “I’ll take this side, with Song Ming. Shouge Zhe…”

  “I will be able to fight in a minute, then I can join you,” the reaper was still busy filling up the array, forcing her to keep her scythe in pce – at least, presumably, she certainly wasn’t rushing to move from her spot – but the time didn’t seem to be too long.

  Whatever skills the necromancers had, rapid movement didn’t seem to be one of them, at least not for that bunch.

  “Everyone else, get the other side. Huang Su, you can handle protecting both, so do so,” Bianca commanded, and the Sect Master had no choice but to comply.

  Not because she held that much power over her, of course – the corruption was only beginning to settle in, so it would be a long time until she could do as she wanted – but because she couldn’t bear to see innocents being hurt. How kind of her.

  ‘It is, though… she’s a good person, and you want to use her like that…’

  ‘Oh, shut it, it was on our mind long ago,’ Bianca shrugged.