Fan Shaohuang remained stationed at Guantian Court. For several days, nothing of note occurred, until he discovered an amusing pastime: watching how the green-eyed zombie played with its "toy."
It was much like watching a dog with a chew toy. After observing for a few days, even a man as solemn as he couldn't help but chuckle. "Is this really how you play with her?"
The green-eyed zombie looked at him with pure innocence. "How else should I play?"
Fan Shaohuang shifted the subject. Though his heart was strayed from the righteous path, he was still a man of the cloth. He had long since grown indifferent to the complexities of human emotion and had no desire to beat around the bush. "She is missing a *po*—a fragment of her soul. That is why her reactions are slower than a normal person's."
The green-eyed zombie didn't believe him. It held Qiao’er, feeling her four limbs and seeing her five features all intact; it couldn't perceive any defect. However, Fan Shaohuang was truly a prodigy in the Taoist arts. If he said she was missing one soul fragment, it was impossible for her to be missing two.
That evening, after tinkering in his room for a while, Fan Shaohuang had the green-eyed zombie bring Qiao’er over. Even Guiche was astonished—it was the Soul-Refining Art. He took a soul fragment obtained from some unknown source and forcibly refined it into Qiao’er’s spirit. The green-eyed zombie felt a chill of apprehension; it seemed this man had consumed the souls and essences of countless cultivators to have mastered such wicked techniques.
At the start of the refining process, Qiao’er was frightened. The green-eyed zombie immediately grew reluctant—if Qiao’er was afraid, it was unwilling, no matter how great the benefit.
In the end, it was only when Qiao’er saw that the man and the zombie were about to reach an impasse that she finally agreed.
Fan Shaohuang, however, was brimming with confidence. These ancient, lost secret techniques for reconstructing the soul were like child's play to him.
Regardless of Fan Shaohuang’s ulterior motives, Qiao’er benefited immensely from receiving this soul fragment. Her memory became far better than before, reaching the point of near-photographic recall. The green-eyed zombie held Qiao’er and observed her for two days. Finding no side effects, it finally set its heart at ease.
As if to verify his results, Fan Shaohuang specifically assigned a young Taoist priest to teach her how to read and write, as well as some introductory Taoist spells. Consequently, on the first day Qiao’er learned the "Crane Messaging" spell, every scrap of paper in Guantian Court was folded into paper cranes. A literal rain of paper cranes filled the sky...
Fan Shaohuang barked a cold reprimand, forbidding Qiao’er from folding any more. In response, the green-eyed zombie hauled up over a dozen more bundles of paper and clumsily helped her fold them. Veins popped on Fan Shaohuang’s forehead. With a cold snort, he decided to stop bothering with these two idiots.
As more zombies gathered at Guantian Court, their collective power grew. Fan Shaohuang and the green-eyed zombie were often away, and Qiao’er would have been bored alone if not for the zombies' company. With them, she could practice her writing or chat.
However, this group of zombies was becoming increasingly mischievous and bold. One day, one of them discovered the jars of salted vegetables Qiao’er had pickled in the back garden. It even pried one open to steal a bite. They couldn't taste flavors, but they found the vegetable leaves dreadfully unpalatable. Thus, they found a new source of amusement—whenever they took a dislike to a young Taoist priest, they would tie him up, drag him to the back garden, and force-feed him pickles while forbidding him from drinking water...
Every time Qiao’er shouted at them, the group of zombies would scatter in all directions, leaving behind a miserable young priest with a mouth full of pickles and a face full of woe.
Worse still, they decided that the ocean floor was an excellent place for cultivation due to its abundant spiritual energy. They took it upon themselves to throw the young priests into the sea to "cultivate." The green-eyed zombie had to fish priests out of the water several times.
After a few such incidents, Fan Shaohuang grew angry. If this continued, the dignity of his priests would be entirely lost. He placed protective talismans on every priest to keep evil entities at bay and invited Door Gods to guard the priests' living quarters, ensuring the zombies could not cross the threshold.
With the priests no longer available to play with, the zombies began to wander further afield. They eventually discovered that human "cubs" were quite fun—soft, warm, and making adorable "ee-ah" noises. Consequently, they frequently went to the distant fishing villages to steal babies. Fearing they would take the infants to the seabed to cultivate, Qiao’er spent every day inspecting her makeshift army to see who had stolen a baby, urgently ordering the young priests to return them...
Later, whenever a family lost a baby, they would come to Guantian Court to seek divine guidance, and they were guaranteed to find their child.
Qiao’er spent two months acting as a nanny, working until her eyes were dark with exhaustion. Ironically, Guantian Court’s reputation for answering every prayer grew even more renowned...
As the zombies at Guantian Court increased in number, the "corpse qi" grew heavy. Even Fan Shaohuang’s talismans could not entirely mask it, inevitably attracting the scrutiny of self-proclaimed defenders of the Way. For the past few days, Qiao’er noticed several Taoists pacing around the beach. She didn't recognize them, but Fan Shaohuang did: they were from the Hao family.
The Hao family had been professional zombie hunters for generations. Whether it was because they owed too many "life debts" to zombies or because Heaven was playing a joke on them, their highly respected ninth-generation ancestor had eventually turned into a zombie.
When the old ancestor first turned, he was quite endearing and had not yet learned to commit evil. The family of professional zombie hunters was caught in a ridiculous dilemma. They couldn't capture him, they couldn't burn him, and they couldn't bear to watch others desecrate his body. They had no choice but to take good care of him every day. Having hunted countless zombies over the generations, they naturally understood zombie habits perfectly, allowing them to serve their ancestor with meticulous care. This life of having everything handed to him bred a lazy personality in their ancestor. Every night at dusk, his grandsons would carry him out to bask in the moonlight and absorb spiritual energy, always choosing auspicious locations. When the rooster crowed, his grandsons would carry him back and place him in a deep cellar. From beginning to end, he never had to lift a finger.
The Hao family kept a close watch, terrified that their ancestor might accidentally discover that zombies could drink blood. They had disciples dedicated to serving him. Since he lay in comfort, he was too lazy to even move a finger. From that point on, the Hao family stopped blindly slaughtering zombies. For the sake of this one ancestor, they exhausted the efforts of several generations trying to find a way to stop a zombie from drinking blood while still allowing it to absorb spiritual energy to cultivate and live on.
However, before they could perfect the method, their endearing old ancestor vanished. The Hao family searched the world. They found plenty of zombies, but never a trace of their ancestor.
Thus, when the Hao family detected the faint corpse qi at Guantian Court, they immediately brought men to investigate, fearing their ninth-generation ancestor had fallen into the hands of villains.
Fan Shaohuang had also been watching this group for a few days. He had the green-eyed zombie pass down orders for the others to stay in the sea and not come up. The green-eyed zombie herded the rest into the water. Guiche, however, frequently wandered about. It didn't dare provoke Fan Shaohuang, so it spent every day giving the green-eyed zombie "intelligence reports" on the Taoists, insisting they were there to steal things!
The green-eyed zombie maintained a suspicious, wait-and-see attitude. Guiche, meanwhile, eyed the Taoists with drooling hunger, all nine of its heads urging the green-eyed zombie: "They're definitely here to cause trouble! Kill them all, kill them all..."
The green-eyed zombie didn't believe it. Even Qiao’er could see that every one of Guiche's eighteen eyes was screaming: *I want to eat meat, eat meat, meat, meat...*
On the fourth day of the standoff, the red-eyed zombie finally couldn't hold back and sneaked up from the sea. The zombies had found many pearls and shells on the seabed; thinking they were beautiful, they wanted to give them to Qiao’er.
The Hao family was startled to see a monster covered in seaweed suddenly crawl out of the ocean. Their specialty was catching zombies; they likely couldn't handle a sea demon. As the Taoists stood ready for battle, the "sea demon" cheerfully headed toward Guantian Court. As its back was about to disappear from view, the group of Taoists fell into a collective silence. Finally, one noticed something. "Don't you think the back of that sea demon looks very familiar?"
The patriarch, Hao Ren, raised his eyebrows sharply. "Familiar my foot! That’s our family's ancestor!!"
