Poison God's Heritage

I went back to the designated tree that both I and the tiger agreed would be my 'territory'

I didn't need a lot of space, especially with the Lord of Lord's pagoda that I'm able to use. But I still needed a safe location where I can enter and exit the pagoda at will.

I infused my Qi into the ground parting some of the dirt from under the tree's giant roots. I made sure not to remove too much in fear of the tree collapsing, but my worries were for naught. Trees this big, had roots that spread far and wide, and the space between the roots alone can be a cave by itself.

Once I opened a hole and dove in, I closed it and asked the Automaton to take me into the lord's pagoda.

I moved to the third floor, where the white space existed. This was my personal lab where I did all sorts of weird and strange things, like what I'm about to do.

"Can you bring me the corpse from earlier," I asked the automaton and he obliged?

Soon, I had Shen Mo's body on top of the operating table of my device.

The body was still warm, and with me having sealed his dying soul inside his body, it should allow for better preservation.

I then opened both the Poison God's Book and the Corpse Master's Manual that I obtained from Shen Mo's holding bag.

After reading through the Poison God's book, the Death Heritage part, and then supplementing the lacking information from the Corpse Master's Manual. I came to a conclusion.

"Death is inevitable."

I sighed.

When I saw the former owner of the Death Heritage resurrecting over and over after dying at the hands of the King Corpse. I thought that he had achieved some sort of immortality. But from reading through the Poison God's Death Heritage I understood what was actually going on.

It was a trade, a trade of equivalent exchange. The first law of Pure Alchemy. The alchemy here is not the making of pills, but the creation of matter by transforming matter.

The Poison Cultivator was actually trading his own death with the death of souls he was saving inside the Poison God's book. It sounds like a great method to live eternally but once one knows the required method to achieve mastery of this fake resurrection, one would probably have second thoughts.

It is called the Soul Exchange, and it's more like a deal with the devil. One is required to slaughter a thousand innocent souls, meaning, children. Since they are without sin. Every year. One thousand sacrifices must be made before the person can even take the first step into this Soul Exchange path.

Once nine years have gone by, one must kill nine hundred allies in nine months. Then ninety relatives. And then nine loyal friends.

And finally, kill off the first offspring on the ninth day of its birth.

The number nine is recurring, symbolizing nigh perfection. After all these conditions have been fulfilled, the person who was able to fulfill this tedious task will be able to harness and exchange the souls of the people he had killed for his own whenever his life is on the line. The drawback, however, is for every soul that is exchanged for your own, meaning your death, you will lose longevity. The body's longevity, in a sense one can probably never go through all ten thousand souls they have amassed.

Not to mention there is even another condition, the cost of every exchange will be doubled. Meaning one death is one soul, two deaths are two souls, three deaths are six souls, and so on. At one point a person will not have enough harnessed souls to exchange and then they will pay with their own.

It's a very limited and dangerous way of achieving semi-immortality. Not to mention pretty disgusting.

Yet, the poison god's book didn't only speak of the Soul Exchange, it also mentioned corpses, and this was the part I was primarily interested in.

The soul can be considered where the memories and feelings of a person are hosted. Basically, it is the person itself, but it is not the whole person. The body is also a part of a person, so is the heart and the mind. The Corpse Cultivation the Poison God was speaking of was that where one can take advantage of a body and make it do one's bidding as if it was a puppet.

Yet what I found surprising was the fact that the poison God had mentioned some matters in less detail than I found in the Corpse Master's manual.

For example, the Poison God had given a method on how to seal a soul into a body and how to refine it to function into a battle puppet.

The Corpse Master manual, it detailed the degree of putridness the corpse needed to be at before starting, the time to perform the operation of Corpse Making. The freshness of the body, the quality of the body, and even the wounds on it. It spoke in length about how 'clean' the body should be from the inside out, and how to apply the Corpse Technique to control it. Not only that it even spoke about a method on how to Possess the soul, a risky and dangerous method on how to make one use the very corpse they refined as a second avatar.

From the way the Poison God speaks about the Death Heritage, I could understand that it was like a generalist doctor, while the Corpse Master's Manual was more of a specialist in the field.

The Poison God gave details about all that is related to Death in his Death Heritage, as for the Corpse Master it spoke in detail about corpses and corpses alone. Which made me nod in respect to a person who took pride in their work and the details they made into creating a perfect technique.

Caring if the Corpse Mastery and desecration of corpses was immoral is nothing but hubris. In a world of cultivation, only the strong have the right to set the moral bar.

After realizing all I needed from both books I decided to start working on the next part. The Corpse Creation part.

I removed Shen Mo's clothes and began cleaning his wounds as per the manual. I even made sure that all of his bowls were cleaned, and that was not a fun experience.

There was no need for me to remove any of his vital organs because they will all be needed, especially after what I'm about to do.

Then I began by applying the required methods of creating seals on the body. Nothing that my brush can't replicate.

Once I followed after the manual's 'recipe' I cut my finger and poured blood on the corpse's forehead.

With this, the refining process will start, yet I cannot refine this, not with my poison Qi, at least not when It's not a part of me.

The two books clearly state that for a corpse to be a corpse it cannot have a soul otherwise it is a living being. A corpse that had lost its soul will not accept another. Unless it is a direct possession and that can only occur when the possessing soul is stronger than the host. Still, possession is not perfect and the body will always try and reject the foreign soul.

I'll have to disagree with a part of this statement because I'm also a soul that shouldn't belong to this body, I possessed it but never found it hard to stay in it. But cultivation is wide and the secrets of cultivation and soul have not all been uncovered.

I pressed my hand on the corpse's forehead and entered my Sea of Consciousness.

Once I was at the tower, I was in the presence of the Dragon Soul and the whimpering soul.

Which still creeps me out now. This dark abomination of a soul, is full of negative energy.

A turmoil of dissatisfaction, pain, agony, depression, and murderous intent, yet at the same time, self-deprecation, disdain towards oneself, and loneliness. It reminded me of myself when I was younger. Not even in this world, full of negativity and without vigor to face life.

"What a sorry sight you are," I spoke. "But I'll give you a chance, a chance to rid yourself of the ugly part of you, and embrace the worst in you."

I then grabbed the whimpering soul and took it from my own sea of consciousness.

Once I opened my eyes, I felt as if the soul I had grabbed was in the palm of my own hand, and with a press, I forced it into the corps' forehead.

"I never thought I'll be using this thing like this, I have to admit, one should thank one's enemies. Servant Mao, you gave me a good gift!"

With my other palm, I slammed it on the corpse's chest, creating a surge of writing that spread all over the corpse.

The corpse shook and shuddered as the Soul Sealing Shackles roped and coiled themselves around the corpse, sealing the dark soul inside it.

Though a soul cannot remain inside a body that it does not belong to, I can seal it inside it. Forcing it there.

Then the corpse opened its eyes. Eyes as black as the night stared at me, fear and worry in them as they gazed upon my own.

"Now then, you've been freeloading in my Sea of Consciousness for a while, how about you start earning your keep!"