Rebirth as a Demonic Cultivator: Starting with a Zombie Planet

Chapter 67: Refining the Blood Fiend Puppet Shadow! Three Corpse Generals!

Chu Xuan stared down at the Corpse Mother, his voice devoid of warmth. “Your sole purpose now is to produce neutered zombie spawn. They will not eat. They will not move. They will not think.” He gestured to the sprawling rooftop. “They are the flesh-substrate of this farm. Do you understand?”

The Corpse Mother nodded frantically. The previous slaughter had completely shattered its will to resist. It would do anything to survive.

Gorged on the provided biomass, the Corpse Mother shifted into an organic assembly line, churning out eggs at a frenzied pace. Chu Xuan’s Yin Corpses systematically harvested the clutches, burying them in excavated pits across the rooftop. Within five days, the eggs hatched. These mindless, immobile zombies served a single, macabre purpose: they were living incubators for his demonic flora.

Rooted deep within their rotting flesh, spirit plants like the Meat Tai Sui and Blood Demon Fang could now be mass-produced. This industrial-scale harvest would rapidly accelerate the cultivation of the Yin Corpses under Chu Xuan’s command. Better yet, every time a zombie spawn was sucked dry by a demonic plant, the Heavenly Dao rewarded Chu Xuan with a sliver of merit.

Standing on the edge of the rooftop, Chu Xuan surveyed his thriving, grotesque plantation. A cold, satisfied smile touched his lips. “This is how you run a business.”

Soon after, he stepped back into the Yin-Fiend Soul-Stealing Grand Array, sitting cross-legged at its center to begin refining the Blood Fiend Puppet Shadow.

The process was a grueling grind of attrition, demanding vast reserves of both essence blood and Yin-Fiend energy. Chu Xuan calculated it would take a full year to forge three complete Blood Fiend Puppet Shadows. Fortunately, time was his greatest asset. Here on Hailan Planet, time flowed at a mere tenth of the speed of the Cangxuan Heaven and Earth. Two years in this apocalyptic wasteland equated to barely two months back home. To a cultivator, two months was nothing but a fleeting breath. What did it matter if it took a bit longer?

The days bled together into a clinical, efficient routine. By day, he concocted Tai Sui Pills and other elixirs; by night, he poured his focus into the Blood Fiend Puppet Shadows.

One year later.

Chu Xuan remained seated within the Yin-Fiend Soul-Stealing Grand Array. His shadow stretched unnaturally long across the concrete, writhing as if some vile, parasitic entity had burrowed into its depths.

“The third Blood Fiend Puppet Shadow is complete,” he murmured. “Three extra lives. Three guaranteed methods to negate a fatal blow. Now, I can afford to trade injury for injury, life for life.”

His smile was predatory.

At that moment, three guttural roars shattered the silence. Little Dragon, Little Tiger, and Little Leopard had sensed the end of his Secluded Cultivation and immediately converged on his location. Moments later, the three Yin Corpses stood at attention before him.

They were entirely distinct, yet all three radiated suffocating, tyrannical auras.

Little Dragon, the towering bald brute, possessed a physique forged for slaughter. He was a flawless hybrid, equally devastating in brutal melee combat and dark spellcasting.

Little Tiger was a hulking behemoth, his frame dwarfing even Little Dragon’s. He was an absolute juggernaut—an impenetrable wall of dead muscle.

Little Leopard was wiry and emaciated, his form shrouded in a faint, light-swallowing black haze. He was an assassin born of the shadows, a serrated blade ready to slit throats in the dark. However, the illusion of lethal grace was somewhat ruined by the half-swallowed rat tail dangling limply from his jaws.

“Stop eating garbage,” Chu Xuan reprimanded coldly.

Little Leopard flinched, hurriedly spitting the bloody tail onto the floor and shrinking his neck in submission.

Sweeping his gaze over his creations, Chu Xuan noted their natural progression. All three had shattered their bottlenecks, ascending to the Corpse General realm. Little Dragon led the pack as a second-level Corpse General, while Little Tiger and Little Leopard had stabilized at the first level.

Soon, the rest of the horde arrived. These were the first batch of Yin Corpses he had casually refined. Their strength varied wildly—the strongest had reached the eighth level of the Corpse Soldier realm, while the weakest lingered at the fifth. Chu Xuan viewed them purely as expendable assets. He let them roam and feed freely, expecting nothing more than for them to serve as meat shields when the time came.

Three Corpse Generals. That is equivalent to three Foundation Establishment cultivators under my absolute control.

“If I had remained in the Cangxuan Heaven and Earth, starved of resources and Tai Sui Pills, breeding three Corpse Generals would have been a pipe dream,” Chu Xuan mused, highly satisfied.

Hailan Planet was an infinite goldmine. Every visit exponentially multiplied his strength and arsenal. When he returned to the Cangxuan Heaven and Earth this time, he would no longer be a vulnerable, newly-advanced Foundation Establishment cultivator. He now commanded three Corpse Generals, the Blood Refining Corpse Fire, and the Blood Fiend Puppet Shadows. His Natal Artifact, the Fiend Soul Chain, was now anchored by Huikong, who had fully evolved into a Fiend Soul. And crowning it all was the Merit Bell—an incredibly powerful defensive Magical Artifact!

“However, the efficiency of this Yin-Fiend Soul-Stealing Grand Array has hit a bottleneck,” he noted, analyzing the ambient energy. “The daily yield of Yin-Fiend energy is barely enough to sustain my cultivation and feed the Fiend Souls. It’s operating at a deficit.”

Looking around, the degradation was obvious. The thick, oppressive miasma had thinned considerably. If he continued to siphon energy at this rate, within three months, this sinister domain of death would revert to a mundane, sunlit rooftop.

That was unacceptable.

He needed to expand and upgrade the array. Unfortunately, his current mastery over Formations wasn’t profound enough to manually re-engineer the Yin-Fiend Soul-Stealing Grand Array. The only pragmatic solution was to buy a superior replacement.

Procuring a new grand array would be his top priority upon returning to the Cangxuan Heaven and Earth. Ideally, he would also acquire several Formation classics to deepen his own comprehension.

His secondary objective was securing a second Gu insect. There were two avenues for this.

The first was to hunt for a wild Gu insect with exceptional aptitude. But the world was vast; panning for a needle in a continent-sized haystack could waste decades. He would likely have to purchase one. Having already cultivated a Second-Revolution Gu insect like his steel wire, Chu Xuan had no interest in inferior First-Revolution trash. He needed to buy at least a Second-Revolution Gu insect, complete with its proprietary feeding and breeding manuals. The capital required for such a transaction would be astronomical.

The alternative was to find a compatible mate for his current Gu. After devouring that anomalous blood, his steel wire Gu had evolved to the Second Revolution, drastically enhancing its genetic baseline. If he could crossbreed it with another Second-Revolution—or even a Third-Revolution—Gu insect, the resulting offspring could be terrifyingly potent.

This route was more cost-effective, but it was a genetic gamble. There was no guaranteeing what kind of monstrosity would hatch. Pragmatic as always, Chu Xuan decided to pursue both methods simultaneously. He wouldn’t leave his progression to chance.

After issuing his final directives to the horde, Chu Xuan stored Little Dragon and Little Leopard. He reached into the Yin-Fiend Soul-Stealing Grand Array, ruthlessly extracting the Two-Headed Python’s soul, before activating the Blood Mirror.

In a flash of crimson light, he vanished.

…

Within the Water Curtain Cave, a strange light swirled, depositing Chu Xuan out of thin air.

He didn’t move a muscle. Instead, he instantly expanded his spiritual senses, sweeping the cavern for any anomalies. The Formations he had laid down prior to his departure remained pristine, showing no signs of tampering or forced entry. Only then did he relax his guard.

He summoned the Two-Headed Python’s soul, preparing to integrate it into the cave’s defensive Formation. Over the past year, the beast’s soul had thoroughly mutated into a Fiend Soul. Furthermore, after enduring months of relentless, brutal beatings from Huikong, its rebellious spirit had been entirely broken. It was now a perfectly subservient tool.

Refining it into the Formation’s core took a mere twenty-four hours. As the process concluded, the spectral Two-Headed Python reared its heads and unleashed a silent, spiritual roar, officially binding itself as the Formation’s main soul. From now on, whenever Chu Xuan was absent, this Fiend Soul would serve as the Water Curtain Cave’s absolute warden.

Empowered by the cave’s Formation and fueled by its own innate Yin-Fiend energy, the python could easily repel the full-force assault of a sixth-level Foundation Establishment cultivator.

With his stronghold secured, Chu Xuan finally stepped toward the exit. After spending so much time in Secluded Cultivation, it was time to see how the world outside had changed.