The others didn't stop Heart. Like the Child, he quickly walked up behind the group and tried the sa thing.
No one paid him any mind, nor did anyone react in any special way. The person he pushed over simply trembled back to their feet, a few pieces of their body falling off in the process.
So, he walked over to the bonfire. He first glanced at what was cooking in the pot, then straightened up and pulled open the front of his robe.
He took out a small carving knife and slashed it across his chest twice.
He put the knife away, but no blood flowed from the wound. Instead, he used both hands to forcefully pry open the gash in his flesh and thrust one hand inside.
He seed to have found sothing. With a hard tug, he pulled out a bloody heart. Veins and blood vessels still connected it to his body; he hadn't torn them loose.
He seed a little flustered. He quickly lifted the hem of his robe, wrapped it around the heart in his hand, and gave it a wipe, cleaning off much of the blood.
Next, he held the heart out over the iron pot. He poked a hole in it with his finger, then squeezed hard.
SPLASH!
As he squeezed the heart, a stream of black blood gushed from the hole he had made, pouring into the iron pot.
The pot had been simring with so unknown, sticky concoction. As soon as the black blood entered, the mixture instantly began to boil furiously, bubbling more and more.
The contents of the iron pot swelled higher and higher, about to overflow.
Just then, the figures guarding the fire were captivated by the pot's contents. For a mont, they even stopped their chanting.
Heart took a few steps back and stuffed the heart he had removed back into his chest. But instead of returning to where Yang An and the others were, he simply waited there.
Before long, the boiling in the pot subsided. Then, several black things crawled out, and the figures surrounding the fire imdiately scrambled to grab them.
These creatures were like madn. They completely ignored the fire still raging beneath the pot, and the flas seared their bodies with a SIZZLING sound.
They plunged their hands directly into the iron pot. Their flesh-stripped bones stirred the contents as they fought over the prize: black, patch-like morsels, which they then stuffed into their mouths.
Many of them had rotten mouths and couldn't chew, so the morsels slid directly down their torn gullets.
So morsels fell out through their rib cages, only to be picked up and tossed back into their mouths.
Others landed in their stomachs but were still visible through their hollow rib cages.
A few of them, however, though their skin and flesh were also rotting, still had intact stomachs. Once the food was inside, expressions of bliss and satisfaction spread across their faces.
At this ti, Heart waved to Yang An and the others, signaling them to co over.
Yang An, White Bird, and the Child imdiately hurried over, arriving behind these people.
"You can ask now. So of them should be able to hear us," Heart said.
The substance he'd put in the pot must have worked. As Yang An's group approached, they saw a few of the figures turn their heads to look at them.
These people's faces were all rotten, with only bones connected to so flesh. Each was uglier than the last, and they exuded a thick, foul stench.
"What is this place? Does anyone know?"
White Bird imdiately asked, not wanting to beat around the bush and waste too much ti.
Yang An looked at them. So didn't even have ears. 'Can they really hear us speak?'
But the few who had turned their heads indeed seed to react. The mont they saw Yang An's group, their bodies imdiately started to tremble.
As they trembled, their flesh, like wet dough, stretched into stringy strands and sloughed off with sticky blood, falling onto their clothes and the ground.
But the group waited for several monts without receiving any answer.
Just then, these responsive people prostrated themselves on the ground one by one.
"Immor—"
They made a sound, so hoarse that it was nearly impossible to discern what they were saying without listening closely.
"Immortal, do you perceive us! Immortal, do you perceive us!"
Their flesh was rotting and falling off in chunks, and they had no mouths or tongues, yet the sounds still issued from where their mouths should have been.
They seed to treat Yang An's group as so kind of object of worship and beca even more frantic.
White Bird asked again, but the figures had the sa reaction.
THWACK!
Heart struck without warning, punching one of the figures' heads clean off.
The head fell to the ground. Its jaw, still clinging to scraps of rotten flesh, opened and closed a few tis before going still. The headless torso collapsed.
Yet, the others acted as if they hadn't seen a thing, their frenzy unabated.
The group backed away. It was clear they wouldn't get any answers in this situation, so they decided not to waste any more ti.
"Let's go."
White Bird turned and left without hesitation, and the other two followed.
Yang An remained for a mont, glancing at the figures who were neither human nor ghost, as if possessed, before he too turned to follow the others.
"Immortal, do you perceive us! Immortal, do you perceive us!"
The sound of their chanting, eerie and strange, followed them from behind.
'How did they survive with their flesh rotting like this? And they keep chanting about immortals... are there really immortals here?'
Yang An wondered. As he left, he casually activated his Qi Seal Sensing Technique, placing a Qi Seal on each of their bodies.
After leaving, the group soon found a few houses that didn't look too badly damaged. They decided to split up and search the surrounding area for any clues.
But after searching for a good while, they found nothing useful.
In these clusters of buildings, everything was completely decayed, making it impossible to discern their original forms.
After about ten minutes of searching, the group gathered once more.
"Why don't we leave this place and search elsewhere? If we can find another place with signs of human activity, or so kind of landmark, we might be able to figure out where we are."
Zhi Ying suggested.
Continuing to search here would yield no clues.
But her proposal was rejected by White Bird and Heart.
"The entirety of Yundan Country has been occupied by Demon Fiends. If we go elsewhere, we're likely to encounter them. If we run into a powerful one, it would be very difficult to escape. I don't recomnd looking for trouble,"
White Bird said.
"Let's wait a bit longer. Maybe the Workshop Master will find sothing soon. Let's see what the Workshop Master has to say first," Heart said.
"If the whole of Yundan Country is occupied by Demon Fiends, why haven't we seen any here?"
Yang An asked after a mont of thought, and the other three fell silent.
This was precisely the question they had all been thinking about.
This place, aside from those half-dead people, didn't even have the aura of a Demon Fiend. Even in the valley where Yang An had first arrived, though there were so Demon Fiends, they were absurdly weak.
"There are two possibilities. One, this place is so worthless that even Demon Fiends ignore it.
Two, this place is so dangerous that no Demon Fiend dares to set foot here."
This was Yang An's guess, but no one hoped it was the latter.
Just then, Yang An's brow furrowed. He felt a familiar tap in his mind.
A new ssage had arrived from the Tree of Flesh and Blood!
At that mont, they all imrsed their consciousnesses in the Tree of Flesh and Blood and imdiately saw the ssage from the Workshop Master.
"The vessel teleportation is unusable. You must have been intercepted by sothing. I can't lock onto your position—you're very likely in an isolated pocket of space!
Have you found any clues?"
The Tree of Flesh and Blood could communicate across dinsions, allowing the ssage to get through, but the Workshop Master was unable to pinpoint their location.
White Bird imdiately replied, recounting everything that had happened since they arrived.
The Workshop Master's ssage ca again.
"Find a way to leave that place as soon as possible! The vessel teleportation is unusable, and the space is isolated. You're in danger; your consciousness won't be able to return to your original body!
Also! Whatever you do, don't try to commit suicide!"
Hearing the Workshop Master's new ssage, a chill ran down everyone's spine. They finally understood just how serious the situation was.
'We've been trapped in an isolated pocket of space?!'
The group imdiately withdrew their consciousnesses from the Tree of Flesh and Blood.
"What do we do?"
The Child looked at White Bird and Heart. Among the four of them, their Cultivation Levels were higher.
"Has this ever happened before?"
Yang An asked, but the other three all shook their heads.
'Damn it! How could we be so unlucky!'
'My very first vessel teleportation, and this happens,' Yang An cursed inwardly.
'We haven't found a single clue, we don't know where we are, and now the Workshop Master says we're in an isolated space. How are we supposed to get out of here?'
For a mont, none of them could co up with a plan.
Yang An thought for a mont, then said to the others, "Let's go back and find those people. We need to find a way to pry sothing out of them. Right now, they might be our only hope for finding a clue."
The others agreed with Yang An's proposal and imdiately headed back toward where they had found the group.
Before long, they reached the earthen wall from before.
But when they went around the wall, the scene before them was completely unexpected.
They were all dead!
Just ten minutes ago, these half-dead people had been sitting around the fire, chanting, fighting over the contents of the pot in a mad, sinister frenzy.
But now, they were all collapsed on the ground, motionless—nothing more than corpses.
Insects were crawling out of their bodies, burrowing into the piles of rubble on the ground, as if they didn't want to stay on these corpses any longer.
The bonfire still burned. The thick, black, mud-like soup in the iron pot propped up above it had been completely devoured. A good amount had been spilled on the ground, leaving a filthy ss.
Seeing this, the group could only look at each other in dismay, completely caught off guard by this turn of events.
It was too sudden and too strange. They hadn't been gone for long.
"Let's see if we can find anything,"
Yang An said.
At this point, their only option was to see if they could find any useful clues on these corpses.
The bodies were turned over one by one. Their clothes were heavily damaged, stuck with bits of flesh, and crumbled at the touch. There was definitely no way to hide anything in them.
But soon, the Child suddenly discovered sothing inside a corpse's stomach.
So flesh and blood remained inside this corpse. Its stomach was mostly rotted through, and so of the black soup it had just eaten was slowly seeping out.
And inside that mostly rotted stomach, they found a tangled clump of tattered cloth strips.
Despite the sight of rotten flesh and other filth tangled together in the stomach, Heart didn't seem disgusted. He reached into the stomach and pulled out the tattered cloth strips.
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