The elder's thoughts spun rapidly.
He couldn't afford hesitation. Through the threadbare connection still linking him to the Grey Mist, he gritted his teeth, metaphorically, since the mist had no teeth, and forced another portion of his spirit into the damaged construct.
Pain exploded through him. His body, hundreds of kilometers away in its hidden cave, broke out in cold sweat. His breathing became labored, his heartbeat irregular.
He looked like death warmed over. Which, given the circumstances, wasn't far from the truth.
The moment he regained control of the Grey Mist, he twisted it violently, trying to dodge the corpse puppet's slash.
"Got it! I—"
WHAM.
He didn't got it.
The stone sword grazed the edge of the mist, and the spiritual construct went flying backward, crashing through bushes.
Back in the cave, the elder's consciousness was violently ejected from the Grey Mist.
Blood erupted from his mouth in a fine spray, painting the cave wall in front of him.
"Gah..."
He collapsed forward, catching himself on trembling hands. His vision swam. Every nerve in his body screamed warnings about imminent spiritual collapse.
Two attacks.
And the corpse puppet had destroyed nearly two-fifths of his soul.
One more strike, and the portion of his spirit animating the Grey Mist would be completely annihilated.
Worse, the Grey Mist itself, a treasure he'd spent hundreds of years refining and perfecting, would be destroyed along with it.
His face twisted.
He made a decision that would've made any sensible cultivator call him insane: he pulled almost all of his consciousness into the Grey Mist, leaving only the bare minimum in his physical body to keep his heart beating and lungs working.
But if he didn't risk it, he'd lose everything anyway.
The Grey Mist's vision stabilized just in time to see a sword filling its entire field of view.
"Shit—"
BOOM.
No room to dodge or time to react. The blade connected dead-center, and the world exploded into pain.
This time, he didn't lose control of the Grey Mist. But the connection to his physical body severed completely.
The elder, or rather, the consciousness piloting the Grey Mist, drew in a breath it didn't technically need.
This corpse puppet is insane. How is this even possible? It feels like I'm fighting one of those barbarians from the North.
His primary soul was now trapped in the Grey Mist. If it died, his real body would become a mindless husk, unable to even feed itself, slowly starving to death in a cave nobody knew existed.
The attack had launched him backward again, creating distance.
He seized the opportunity and shot skyward, climbing a full thousand meters before he felt even safe.
Below, the corpse puppet spun in place for a few seconds, searching for the target that had suddenly vanished. Finding nothing, it shambled off in a random direction, sword dragging behind it.
The elder hovered there, trying to process what had just happened.
He hadn't sensed any fluctuations of cultivation from the the corpse puppet, nor any curse energy or parasitic spirits. And he was now sure that the stone sword was just that, a stone sword, not an artifact. He could be wrong, but after being hit by it again and feeling no strange energy, he was fairly confident he was right.
Ning Qingxue was important for stabilizing the Ghost Sect's current position in regional politics. But this corpse puppet that could kill him through his Grey Mist?
This threatened the sect's very foundation.
If enemy sects learned to replicate this technique, every Grey Mist user in the Ghost Sect would become vulnerable. Their greatest advantage would turn into their greatest weakness.
The implications were staggering.
And terrifying.
The elder forced the Grey Mist to move faster, descending carefully to ground level, far from where the corpse puppet had wandered off. He needed to return to his body and use real hands and proper magical tools to capture one of them for study
---
Morning light filtered through the canopy.
Inside the treehouse, Alexei sat on the edge of the bed with a fishing rod. Since the bed was occupied, he had spent the entire night fishing to pass the time and stay alert in case Qingxue's condition changed or that grey mist thing found them.
The haul had been pretty good, all things considered.
He'd caught another fishing rod, always useful since they broke eventually. Two bows, both with enchantments he'd need to check later. And most importantly, two more tripwire hooks, which he'd deconstructed into a single iron ingot.
His iron count now sat at a whopping two ingots.
To craft an anvil, he needed... let's see... three iron blocks plus four iron ingots.
Three blocks meant twenty-seven ingots. Plus the extra four. Thirty-one total.
"So I only need twenty-nine more iron," he muttered. "At this rate, I'll have an anvil by next year."
The mooshroom, which had been dozing in the corner, mooed encouragingly.
"Thanks for the support, Bessie."
He set down his fishing rod and turned to check on his patient.
Qingxue lay exactly where he'd left her, still unconscious, but her condition had clearly improved overnight.
Her breathing was more regular. The blue tinge had left her lips entirely. Her face had more color, not healthy by any means, but no longer corpse-pale.
He checked her temperature by pressing the back of his hand to her forehead.
Normal. Or at least, normal-ish. Cultivators probably ran at different temperatures than regular humans.
Her pulse, when he checked her wrist, was still weak. Much better than the irregular heartbeat from yesterday.
"This is good." He sat back. "You're not dying."
He had no idea if she could hear him, but talking helped organize his thoughts.
"So here's the situation: you're in my treehouse."
No response. Not that he'd expected one.
"When you wake up, if you wake up, we need to have a serious talk. Because I have questions."
---
Qingxue had been awake for the last ten minutes.
Not fully conscious, her body was still too damaged for that. But aware enough to track sounds, piece together fragments of conversation, and understand that she was somewhere safe.
Somewhere the Grey Mist hadn't found.
That last part seemed impossible. Her jade pendant was depleted. Her spiritual signature should be broadcasting her location to anyone with divine sense.
She felt no probing spiritual energy, only the voice of the mortal who had saved her, talking to what sounded like a cow.
He doesn't know anything about cultivation, she realized. He's just a mortal who stumbled into this.
Which made his decision to help her either incredibly brave.
Just a little longer, she told herself. I just need a little more time to heal.
---
Outside the treehouse, separated by a single wooden wall that looked fragile but wasn't, the elder had returned.
His real body this time, not just the Grey Mist.
He stood in a small clearing, frowning at three black coffins propped upright against tree trunks. From inside came periodic groans and the clatter of bones.
He'd spent the past few hours capturing three of the corpse puppets. It had been a delicate operation, requiring him to lure them into prepared traps one at a time, since fighting them directly was too risky. Originally, there had been more, but several hadn't survived his experiments. Their deaths had been… strange.
When these corpse puppets died, they left behind nothing but odd-shaped smoke, yellow-green glassy beads, and a few pieces of bone and flesh floating in midair
This was very different from killing normal creatures or even cultivated spiritual beasts.
He'd tested the captured corpse puppets extensively using his real body, keeping well out of reach of their weapons.
The results were baffling.
They were weak. Pathetically weak.
Their attack power was barely above an ordinary mortal's. Their defense, when unarmored, was lower than a body-tempering cultivator's.
Even the one with a stone sword only hit with the force of an early Core Formation cultivator, strong by mortal standards, laughable by Ghost Sect standards.
And against flesh and blood targets, they showed no ability to damage souls.
He'd tested them on several demon beasts captured from the forest. Not one had shown signs of spiritual injury from corpse puppet attacks. Which meant the corpse puppets could only attack souls through the Grey Mist.
That specificity was what terrified him.
This wasn't accidental. This wasn't natural. Someone had created a weapon that targeted the Ghost Sect's primary technique.
And connecting that realization to the recent movements of sects across the eastern region...
Someone was specifically researching methods to counter the Ghost Sect!
And judging by the sophistication of these corpse puppets, this plan had been in motion for years. Possibly decades.
Cold sweat ran down his back.
He felt eyes on him. Dozens of them. Hundreds. The ghosts of sect leaders and elders his organization had killed over the centuries, watching from the shadows, waiting for their revenge.
"I need to get these back to the sect."
A branch cracked somewhere in the forest.
The elder spun, spiritual energy flaring.
Nothing. Just wind through the trees. But his paranoia was fully activated now. Every shadow looked like a threat. He grabbed the three coffins with spiritual energy, lifting them into the air, and took off at maximum speed.
He needed to get out of this forest.