Rebirth as a Demonic Cultivator: Starting with a Zombie Planet

Chapter 70: Nurturing Fiend Grand Array, Demonic Array Illustrated Guide

Chu Xuan sat in the third-floor private room, nursing his second cup of bitter Maojian tea. Heavy footsteps soon echoed on the wooden stairs, and a figure stepped through the doorway.

Chu Xuan’s gaze swept over the newcomer—a young male cultivator draped in white.

The man’s disguise technique was amateurish at best. It might have been sufficient to fool ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivators, but Chu Xuan had spent years mastering the art of concealment to survive endless hunts by righteous sects. His skills in the field bordered on perfection. Unless a Golden Core mighty figure descended upon this teahouse, no one could pierce his veil.

But this youth? Chu Xuan read him like an open book at a single glance.

Beneath the flimsy illusion, the cultivator’s true face was strikingly young. To reach Foundation Establishment at such an age spoke of decent aptitude. Yet, here he was, dumped in Wuzhou to serve as cannon fodder in the first wave of attacks against the native sects. He was a textbook casualty of internal factional warfare.

“Greetings, Fellow Daoist. I am Song Feng. How might I address you?” the young cultivator asked with a practiced smile.

“He Liang,” Chu Xuan replied coolly. A fake name for a fake face. Any random alias would do.

Song Feng’s smile widened. “Fellow Daoist He, what do you have to sell? And what is it you require?”

Instead of answering, Chu Xuan flicked a large Blood Bead across the table. Song Feng snatched it out of the air. As he examined it, his polite facade cracked, revealing raw astonishment.

The Blood Bead was flawless—perfectly round, smooth as polished jade, and radiating a sickly-sweet, coppery scent of concentrated vitality. Large Blood Beads of this purity were incredibly rare.

“For large Blood Beads of this caliber,” Song Feng said, his eyes gleaming, “I will take as many as you have, Fellow Daoist He.”

“Don’t rush,” Chu Xuan said, his voice flat. “What I need, you might not be able to provide.”

Song Feng laughed heartily. “You underestimate me. Please, name your price.”

Chu Xuan leaned back, rattling off three names with clinical precision. “Yin-Fiend Soul-Refining Grand Array, Tainted Blood Nurturing Fiend Grand Array, or the Soul-Returning Blood-Fiend Grand Array. Do you have them?”

All three were vastly superior to his current Yin-Fiend Soul-Stealing Grand Array. The latter two even bordered on Top Grade Foundation Establishment Formations. Their area of effect would be at least ten times larger than what he currently utilized.

Hearing those names, the blood drained from Song Feng’s face.

He truly couldn’t produce them. The three arrays Chu Xuan had just named were first-rate slaughter Formations. They were designed to butcher every living creature within their boundaries to harvest and nurture Yin-Fiend energy. Currently, the five righteous sects were waging a brutal crusade against any acts that harmed mortals, meaning such demonic arrays had been heavily targeted and confiscated. The Tianyin Sect hadn’t plundered much during the previous war, leaving their stockpiles of demonic arrays pitifully bare.

Song Feng offered an awkward, strained smile. “Fellow Daoist… I don’t have grand arrays of that scale. However, I do have a High Grade aptitude Yin Corpse that I’ve refined for years. It has already reached the peak of the ninth-level Corpse Soldier realm—”

Chu Xuan raised a hand, cutting him off. “You don’t have them? Then we have nothing to discuss.”

He was here for industrial-scale arrays. Nothing else mattered.

Song Feng refused to give up. “Fellow Daoist, I have three High Grade Magical Artifacts! I can sell them to you at a steep discount. I only want the large Blood Beads!”

“Only grand arrays,” Chu Xuan repeated, his tone leaving no room for negotiation.

Song Feng opened his mouth to argue, but heavy, thudding footsteps on the stairs interrupted him. A burly, imposing cultivator barged into the private room.

“Grand arrays?” the newcomer boomed, chuckling heartily. “I have them!”

Chu Xuan nodded, gesturing to the empty seat across from him. “May I take a look?”

“Of course!” The burly cultivator sneered at Song Feng. “Fellow Daoist Song, the man doesn’t want your trash. Get lost. This deal is mine.”

Song Feng sighed softly. He cast a lingering, envious look at Chu Xuan before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

Chu Xuan chuckled lightly. “How should I address you?”

The burly cultivator dropped into the chair, grabbed a handful of pastries from the table, and shoved them into his mouth. “Since we’re all wearing fake faces and using fake names, call me whatever you want. Hmm, Old Han works.”

Chu Xuan smiled. The man was pragmatic and blunt. He liked that.

Old Han casually pulled a set of array disks from his Storage Bag and tossed them onto the table. “Here. A Nurturing Fiend Grand Array. Take a look.”

Chu Xuan inspected the disks, his brow furrowing. “This is only a Middle Grade Foundation Establishment array. It doesn’t meet my requirements.”

Old Han gave a helpless shrug. “Fellow Daoist, the specific grand arrays you named are extinct on the market. I’d wager even the surviving remnants of the Wuji Sect don’t have their hands on blueprints like those anymore. This Nurturing Fiend Grand Array is as good as it gets right now. Tell you what—I’ll throw in a Formation manual. If you have any talent for the craft, you can splice this array with others to meet your needs.”

He slid a thin, worn booklet across the table. The cover bore six characters: Demonic Array Illustrated Guide.

Chu Xuan flipped through the fragile pages. It was a compendium of Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment Formations, all strictly demonic in nature. It was clearly the life’s work of some rogue Formation master obsessed with unorthodox slaughter arrays.

“Barely acceptable,” Chu Xuan said, snapping the book shut. “Name your price.”

He flicked another large Blood Bead over. Old Han caught it, turning it over in his thick fingers. He clicked his tongue in awe.

“The purity of this Blood Bead… how many cities did you have to butcher to condense this?” Old Han muttered, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Strange. I haven’t heard a single whisper about mortal cities being slaughtered recently.”

Chu Xuan didn’t answer. He simply lifted his teacup and took a slow sip.

Seeing that his probing had hit a brick wall, Old Han didn’t press the issue. He chuckled and shifted to a strictly business tone. “If your entire stock is of this quality, I can offer you a premium rate. Fifty small Spirit Stones per large Blood Bead. My Nurturing Fiend Grand Array, plus the Demonic Array Illustrated Guide, comes out to roughly five hundred small Spirit Stones. Ten large Blood Beads, and we call it even.”

Chu Xuan nodded internally. The standard market rate for a large Blood Bead used to be forty small Spirit Stones. But with the Wuji Sect annihilated, the infrastructure to refine them was gone, causing their value to skyrocket. Fifty was a highly favorable exchange rate.

“Done.”

Chu Xuan produced ten large Blood Beads and pushed them across the table.

Old Han grinned, sweeping the beads into his Storage Bag. “Pleasure doing business. If you ever need to offload more of these, you know who to find. I deal in plenty of other goods: Yin Corpses, Gu insects, blood arts, evil pills, demonic talismans…”

Chu Xuan’s eyes glinted. “Do you have Second Revolution Gu?”

Old Han blinked, taken aback. “Second Revolution Gu? Those are incredibly rare. But… I do know a guy. He breeds a massive swarm of Gu insects, and he definitely has Second Revolution stock. I can act as a middleman.”

“Agreed,” Chu Xuan said. He tossed three extra Blood Beads onto the table. “Consider this a deposit. There will be a generous reward upon a successful transaction.”

Old Han threw his head back and laughed. “Straightforward! I like doing business with generous people! However, my contact hasn’t arrived in Wuzhou yet. Once he crosses the border, I’ll reach out.”

Chu Xuan nodded. He placed a smooth, fractured stone on the table—a Child-Mother Stone. “When the time comes, crush this jade fragment. I will know.”

The Child-Mother Stone consisted of two linked pieces. Crushing the child fragment would instantly fracture the mother stone, regardless of the distance separating them. He would normally use a communication jade, but since he planned to return to the Hailan Planet to cultivate, a standard jade slip wouldn’t transmit across dimensions. The Child-Mother Stone was a necessary workaround.

“Understood,” Old Han said, pocketing the stone.

He remained in the third-floor room, watching through the window as Chu Xuan disappeared into the crowded streets below. He stroked his chin, his eyes dark with calculation.

Such dense, steady spiritual power, Old Han thought. And his disguise technique is absolutely flawless. Unlike that idiot Song Feng, I couldn’t see a single crack in his facade.

To drop ten large Blood Beads without blinking… he’s definitely sitting on a massive stockpile. Where the hell is he harvesting them?

Old Han shook his head, dismissing the greedy thoughts bubbling in his mind. Forget it. His true strength is a mystery. It’s better not to act rashly. Who knows what kind of lethal trump cards a monster like that is hiding?

Choosing caution over greed, the burly smuggler withdrew his gaze and vanished into the shadows of the teahouse.