Rebirth as a Demonic Cultivator: Starting with a Zombie Planet

Chapter 56: Top Grade Defensive Magical Artifact, Merit Bell!

Chu Xuan pulled out Huikong’s Storage Bag.

Ever since he slaughtered the Jinlong Temple monk, he hadn’t had a single moment to breathe. He’d plunged straight into the underground palace to rescue Wan Wuying, then immediately fled Misty Cloud Manor for Feishan Hall. Only now, sealed safely within his new cave abode, did he finally have the time to tally his bloody spoils.

Huikong’s Storage Bag was no ordinary item.

Typical Qi Condensation stage cultivators made do with Low Grade Storage Bags, offering a meager space of roughly one cubic meter. Foundation Establishment stage cultivators generally upgraded to Middle Grade bags, holding about ten cubic meters.

But Huikong? The hypocritical monk had been carrying a High Grade Storage Bag. It boasted a massive internal space of a full one hundred cubic meters!

Spatial magical artifacts were inherently rare. Because of the complex laws governing their creation, they were vastly more expensive than standard offensive, defensive, or flying magical artifacts. A High Grade Storage Bag easily fetched thirty percent more on the market than a High Grade weapon.

Even Li Xuanming, a seasoned cultivator, only possessed a Middle Grade bag. Yet Huikong had paraded around with a High Grade one.

Truly worthy of a Jinlong Temple prodigy, Chu Xuan sneered internally. Pious on the outside, dripping with extravagant wealth on the inside.

Rubbing his hands together with predatory anticipation, Chu Xuan cracked the Storage Bag open.

A dazzling array of loot spilled into his spiritual vision. First came the Spirit Stones. A literal mountain of small Spirit Stones greeted him—at least three thousand pieces by a rough estimate. Tucked into a corner sat a neat stack of about fifty middle Spirit Stones.

The sheer monetary value of this pile alone was enough to purchase three or four High Grade magical artifacts.

Beside the wealth lay a handful of magical artifacts. However, they were all Middle Grade. With his recent leaps in power, Chu Xuan’s standards had risen. Middle Grade trash barely caught his eye anymore; they were just fodder to be sold off.

What he really wanted were Huikong’s Vajra Beads. That artifact had been a flawless blend of offense and defense. If he could have corrupted it with Yin Evil Qi, it would have become a deadly weapon in his arsenal. Unfortunately, both the Vajra Beads and the monk’s Vajra Kasaya had been utterly pulverized during their brutal battle.

Only Huikong’s Precepts Knife had survived intact. But the blade had been forged by the righteous zealots of Jinlong Temple; its innate energy was rigidly unyielding. Chu Xuan’s demonic Qi clashed violently with it, meaning he could unleash at most thirty percent of its true power.

He sifted through a stack of jade slips.

“Jinlong Formation, Ghost Control Formation, Evil Dispelling Formation…” Chu Xuan muttered. “Decent Formations, but useless to me. I’ll fence them when I get the chance.”

He tossed them aside and picked up another. “‘Essentials of Foundation Establishment Stage Formations’… Now this is useful.”

Digging deeper into the bag’s corners, his hand brushed against a wooden container. “Oh? A box of Tai Sui Pills?”

A look of genuine surprise crossed his face. Tai Sui Pills were refined using the grotesque Flesh Tai Sui as their primary ingredient. To a living cultivator, these Pills were violently toxic. But to a Yin Corpse? They were the ultimate tonic. Countless Corpse Soldiers relied on Tai Sui Pills to break through and evolve into Corpse Generals.

Back in the day, the Wuji Sect had cultivated massive farms of Flesh Tai Sui just to mass-produce these Pills. Chu Xuan had just been wondering where he was going to source the vile ingredient, and here the “righteous” monk had hand-delivered it to his doorstep.

“There are even Flesh Tai Sui seeds in here,” Chu Xuan noted, a cynical smirk playing on his lips. “Huikong probably looted these off some Demonic Cultivator he ‘purified.’ The bald donkey didn’t even know what they were, so he just tossed them in his bag.”

He continued his rummaging until his fingers grazed something cold and heavy.

“What is this…?”

He pulled out a massive, exquisitely carved jade box. A glowing paper seal was plastered across the lid, bearing a single line of arrogant, flowing calligraphy:

Insufficient Merit, cannot open.

Chu Xuan raised an eyebrow. Merit? He didn’t know how the Heavens judged the petty squabbles of righteous hypocrites. But if it was Cosmic Karma they wanted? He had slaughtered tens of thousands of infected abominations on Hailan Planet. The Will of the Heavens had practically drowned him in golden rain. His karmic merit was overflowing.

Without a second thought, Chu Xuan ripped the seal off and threw open the lid.

Inside rested an ancient bronze bell. Its surface was intricately engraved with a pantheon of heavenly deities and Buddhas. There were Vajra Guardians glaring with wrathful eyes, Bodhisattvas looking down with serene pity, and Buddhas wearing faint, enigmatic smiles.

The moment he looked at it, Chu Xuan’s consciousness was violently yanked into the bell.

He felt the crushing weight of a thousand divine gazes locking onto him. Before them, he was nothing but an insect. The deities towered over him, as majestic and immovable as ancient mountains.

Then, as quickly as it came, the suffocating illusion shattered like glass. He was back in his damp, dimly lit cave abode.

“A mere glance at this magical artifact dragged me into an illusion?” Chu Xuan gasped, cold sweat prickling his skin.

But the shock quickly morphed into predatory glee. He hadn’t even touched it. He hadn’t channeled a single drop of spiritual energy into it, yet it radiated such overwhelming threat. If he actually activated it, how terrifying would its power be?

“The only question is… will it let a Demonic Cultivator wield it?” Chu Xuan pondered.

He didn’t act rashly. He methodically set up his defensive arrays and readied his escape routes before finally reaching into the box and lifting the heavy bronze bell.

DOOONG!

The instant it left the box, the bell rang of its own accord. A blinding wave of golden Buddhist light erupted from the metal, violently scanning Chu Xuan’s soul to judge if this dark cultivator was worthy.

And then…

The Heavens answered. A blazing halo of pure, unadulterated Heavenly Merit ignited behind Chu Xuan’s head. The golden wheel rotated slowly, radiating a vast, majestic, and terrifyingly profound cosmic weight. The sheer density of his karmic reward for cleansing the apocalyptic plague made him look like a true Buddha descending upon the mortal realm!

The bell’s righteous ringing choked off instantly. It sounded exactly like a screaming duck getting its neck snapped in the dead of night.

The oppressive, judgmental gazes of the engraved deities vanished. The crushing Pressure evaporated. In fact, the divine auras radiating from the bronze surface suddenly felt distinctly… sycophantic.

Hum.

The golden halo of merit faded back into Chu Xuan’s soul. He stared down at the ancient, holy artifact that was now resting docilely in his bloodstained hands. He scratched his chin, a dark, cynical grin spreading across his face.

“Well. It seems my ‘tiny’ bit of apocalyptic slaughter actually counts for something.”

Flipping the heavy bronze bell over, he spotted three archaic characters etched into its base: Merit Bell.

Chu Xuan’s eyes widened. He knew that name.

Decades ago, when the current abbot of Jinlong Temple, Yuan Hong, was merely at the Foundation Establishment stage, he had wielded this exact artifact. With the Merit Bell in hand, Yuan Hong was practically encased in a Vajra’s indestructible shell. No matter how many enemies swarmed him, he stood like an immovable mountain.

Yuan Hong’s most legendary battle involved him standing alone against six Demonic Cultivators of the same realm. He had tanked their combined assaults for five days and five nights without suffering a single scratch, holding out until reinforcements arrived!

Now that Yuan Hong had ascended to become a Golden Core stage eminent monk, he had naturally passed the artifact down to the younger generation.

And he had given it to Huikong!

But Huikong’s karmic merit had clearly been insufficient to activate it. If the hypocritical monk had been able to use this Top Grade magical artifact during their battle, Chu Xuan and the other three demonic disciples could have attacked him together and still failed to dent his defense.

“Perfect! The righteous hypocrites can’t even wield their own holy relics! Only I can!” Chu Xuan threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing off the damp cave walls.

It was a darkly hilarious irony. The pompous elders of Jinlong Temple could never have imagined in their wildest nightmares that a ruthless Demonic Cultivator would possess enough cosmic karma to command their sacred Merit Bell!

Chu Xuan turned to look at the zombified corpse of Huikong standing silently in the corner of the cave. He patted the rotting monk’s shoulder with a fond, mocking smile.

“Huikong, oh Huikong. You really are my greatest benefactor.”

The zombified Huikong merely stared back with dead, vacant eyes. Stripped of his memories and his pious arrogance, the corpse retained nothing but absolute, slavish reverence for its new master.

Chu Xuan spent the next hour meticulously cataloging the rest of the Storage Bag’s contents. When he finished, he nodded in deep satisfaction.

The Merit Bell, the Tai Sui Pills, and the mountain of over three thousand Spirit Stones were an absolute windfall. But a predator couldn’t afford to rest on his laurels. The brief moment of joy passed, replaced instantly by cold, calculating pragmatism. He mentally mapped out his next steps.

“First, nurture my Life Gu.”

“Second, harvest more Yin Evil Qi and replenish the Great Blood Bead.”

“Third, hunt down a powerful living soul to act as the core for my Formation.”

“Fourth, accelerate my cultivation and break through to the next realm.”

Every single task was critical. Time was a luxury he didn’t have in the cutthroat Wuji Sect.

“Good thing I have a whole other world to farm,” he muttered.

The temporal distortion between the Cangxuan Heaven and Earth and Hailan Planet was the ultimate cheat code. Chu Xuan pulled out the thrumming, energy-gorged Blood Mirror. Without a second of hesitation, he activated it, ready to plunge back into the apocalypse.