Rebirth as a Demonic Cultivator: Starting with a Zombie Planet

Chapter 18: Merit Descends! Golden Flowers Scatter!

Chu Xuan cast a brief, dismissive glance at the retreating figures of the three survivors before turning his attention to the task at hand. The real harvest was about to begin. Activating the Blood Transformation Great Array took priority over everything else.

Guiding his flying sword, he ascended into the sky. He looked down at the unfinished building, watching the horde of zombies milling about like headless flies trapped in a jar. With a thought, he activated the array disk.

*Hum!*

A strange, bloody luminescence erupted from eighteen distinct points, instantly weaving into a massive canopy that swallowed the entire construction site. Inside the Blood Transformation Great Array, the world dissolved into a hazy, crimson nightmare.

The array immediately went to work, violently extracting the blood essence from every undead vessel trapped within. The zombies, previously thrashing and roaring with frenzied vigor, began to visibly deflate. As the crimson light siphoned the very marrow from their bones, their frantic movements ground to a halt.

In less than three minutes, the first zombie was sucked dry. It collapsed into a desiccated husk of brittle bone and leathery skin. Then fell the second, the third, the fourth…

Torrents of extracted blood essence surged toward the array disk, swirling and compressing until they spontaneously condensed into fist-sized Blood Beads. Hovering above the slaughter on his flying sword, Chu Xuan smiled.

The efficiency was staggering.

Minutes later, the array fell silent. The horde had been utterly drained. Simultaneously, the Spirit Stones powering the eighteen array flags crumbled into useless dust, their energy spent.

Chu Xuan inspected the array disk. Thirteen massive Blood Beads rested upon it. Each sphere was perfectly round and flawlessly smooth, gleaming like polished red agate. A faint, metallic tang of blood lingered around them.

He couldn’t help but admire the harvest. These fist-sized Blood Beads were of exceptional quality; just one was easily worth twenty of the smaller variants he usually refined.

*These thirteen should be more than enough to push me to the ninth level of Qi Condensation,* he calculated, giving a satisfied nod.

He was just about to recall his sword when the sky above him warped. Vast amounts of golden light materialized out of thin air, weaving together to form ethereal golden lotuses. They drifted down from the heavens, swirling gently around him.

The celestial spectacle lasted for five full minutes before fading into the ether. Chu Xuan stood frozen in sheer disbelief.

*Golden flowers scattering from the heavens?*

This was a legendary phenomenon, an anomaly triggered only by saints and saviors who had accumulated boundless karmic merit. Why the hell was it descending upon *him*?

His mind raced, quickly connecting the dots. He had just slaughtered thousands of zombies. He didn’t bother counting the exact number, but it was easily over three thousand. Eradicating a single zombie granted a microscopic, almost negligible sliver of heavenly merit. But multiplied by thousands? The sheer volume of that accumulated merit had forcefully triggered the golden flower phenomenon!

Chu Xuan’s expression twisted into something highly peculiar.

A Demonic Cultivator. Heavenly merit. Golden flowers.

These concepts were fundamentally incompatible. A Demonic Cultivator was a creature of slaughter, drowning in karmic debt and blood-soaked sins. Simply avoiding a smiting from heavenly thunder and earthly fire was considered a good day.

But to be rewarded with *great merit*? To be showered in *golden flowers*?

*Throughout the entire history of cultivation, I might be the first and only Demonic Cultivator to ever trigger a heavenly merit anomaly,* Chu Xuan thought, letting out a dry, incredulous chuckle.

As the last of the golden light sank into his flesh, Chu Xuan blinked. A profound clarity washed over his mind. The mental fog that usually accompanied the esoteric bottlenecks of the Blood Transformation Spirit Stealing Art vanished. Complex cultivation theories that had previously stumped him unraveled effortlessly, the answers presenting themselves like sudden epiphanies.

But the changes weren’t just mental. He felt a fundamental shift in his very existence—something intangible yet undeniably real. His lifespan had expanded. His Providence had deepened.

This was the true power of heavenly merit! Skyrocketing comprehension! Increased longevity! A shroud of absolute Providence!

His previous, smaller-scale zombie culls had laid the foundation, but this mass slaughter had pushed the quantitative accumulation into a qualitative evolution.

*No wonder those hypocrites from the righteous sects are always screaming about ‘exterminating demons’ and ‘acting on behalf of Heaven,’* Chu Xuan realized with a cynical smirk. *With rewards like this, who wouldn’t be addicted to playing the hero?*

His mind immediately pivoted to the logistics of scale.

*If I set up a massive Blood Transformation Great Array in the future… if I blood-sacrifice a hundred thousand, a million, or even a billion zombies… the heavenly merit would be an unstoppable flood.*

*My comprehension, my Providence, my lifespan—they would all scale infinitely!*

A cold, predatory joy lit up his eyes as he calculated the sheer profit of this apocalypse. Hailan Planet wasn’t a ruined world. It was a limitless, unharvested paradise for a Demonic Cultivator!

Wasting no more time, Chu Xuan swiftly retrieved his array flags and shot into the horizon on his flying sword. With a haul of this magnitude, it was time to enter secluded cultivation and digest his spoils.

***

Shortly after Chu Xuan’s departure, the heavy thwack of rotor blades tore through the silence. A helicopter roared over the ruined skyline.

In the back seats sat Zheng Baoshan, Zhuang Qiang, and Sun Meng. At the controls was Wang Yong, the pilot and captain of Team One from the Black Vanguard Security Company.

“Elder Zheng, we scrambled as soon as we caught your distress signal,” Wang Yong explained, his voice crackling over the headset with a defensive edge. “But the bird had been grounded for too long. We were missing parts, and the repairs ate up our time. Please don’t hold it against us, Elder Zheng. And you two brothers from the Linjiang Army, I hope you understand.”

Zhuang Qiang let out a harsh sneer. “If a certain someone hadn’t intervened, we would be rotting corpses in Donghu City right now! If the institute’s research is delayed because of your incompetence, throwing your entire team to the zombies wouldn’t even begin to cover the loss!”

Wang Yong forced an awkward, placating smile. “Yes, yes, of course. You’re absolutely right, brother.”

He glanced back, hoping to smooth things over with the VIP, but Zheng Baoshan kept his face turned toward the window, refusing to spare the pilot a single glance.

The silence in the cabin grew suffocating. Desperate to break the tension, Wang Yong opened his mouth to speak again, only to freeze. He pointed through the canopy at the sprawling construction site below, his eyes widening.

“My God… what happened down there?”

Zheng Baoshan and the two soldiers leaned over to look. They instantly recognized the unfinished building they had fled from just half an hour ago. But the site, previously a writhing sea of thousands of infected, was now a graveyard of absolute silence.

Peering closer, they saw the ground carpeted with thousands of desiccated husks. The zombies that had been relentlessly hunting them with terrifying vigor were now completely, utterly dead.

And the manner of their death was deeply unnatural.

“Set us down,” Zheng Baoshan ordered, his voice tight. “I need to see this up close.”

Wang Yong balked. “Sir, that’s a hot zone. There could still be biters hiding in the shadows—”

“I said, set us down.” Zheng Baoshan locked eyes with the pilot, his tone leaving absolutely no room for debate.

Swallowing his protests, Wang Yong brought the chopper down in a nearby clearing. Moments later, flanked by Zhuang Qiang and Sun Meng, Zheng Baoshan stepped onto the cracked concrete outside the unfinished building.

Up close, the sheer scale of the massacre was breathtaking.

Zhuang Qiang drew his combat knife and knelt beside one of the husks. He drove the blade into the creature’s chest and carved it open. Not a single drop of blood spilled out. He reached down and pinched the flesh; it instantly crumbled into a fine, ash-like powder between his fingers.

Every microscopic drop of fluid and marrow had been violently extracted.

“How on earth is this possible?” Zheng Baoshan whispered, utterly dumbfounded.

They had been gone for barely thirty minutes. In that tiny window of time, a horde of thousands had been systematically drained dry. This was a feat far beyond the realm of modern weaponry or human capability.

“Was it… the Cultivator?” Sun Meng asked, his voice hushed with awe.

Zheng Baoshan recalled Chu Xuan’s cold, god-like demeanor as he rode the flying sword. He gave a grim, resolute nod. “It has to be him.”

He turned to the two soldiers. “This changes everything. We need to return to base immediately and report this directly to General Ye.”

“Understood,” Zhuang Qiang and Sun Meng replied in unison, their expressions dead serious.