Chapter 116 – Tomb of Crawling Nails
The air in the valley stank of death, a pervasive odor that clung to the soul itself. It was the smell of corruption, the fetid aroma of the dead rising from the very earth. The valley stretched wide before Rin, the horizon a sickly green, and the land seemed to pulse with something unnatural. It was as if the earth itself had been infected, and all that stood upon it was doomed to rot.
This was the domain of the rogue corpse cultivators, a group that had long been whispered about in the darkest corners of the world. Cultivators who had abandoned the natural laws of life and death, choosing instead to bind their souls to the bodies of the dead, gaining power from the decayed flesh and the lingering essences of the fallen.
Rin could feel their presence long before he laid eyes on the heart of their domain. There was a thick, oppressive aura that hung in the air, like the weight of a thousand gravestones pressing down on his chest. He was no stranger to death, but this was different. This was a place where death had become a way of life, and the very bones of the earth had been twisted into a grotesque mockery of existence.
It was here, in the midst of this death-saturated land, that Rin found himself standing before the gates of the rogue corpse cultivators. The gates were made of bone—gigantic, blackened ribs that arched high above him, forming an entrance that seemed to swallow the light itself. A chill ran through his spine as he passed beneath them, the sensation of being welcomed into a tomb.
The cultivators had been watching him for days, observing his every movement. They had sent out emissaries, those who had fallen into the grip of the corpse cultivation arts, seeking to make contact with him. Their offer was simple—join them. Become one of them. Share in the power they had gained by merging with the dead.
But Rin had no intention of joining them. He was not like them. He was not some twisted mockery of life and death. He had his own path to walk, and their domain of rot and corruption had no place in it.
Yet, he would play their game. He would pretend. For now, their trap was necessary. The time to strike was not yet right, but it would come. Soon.
As he entered their domain, the sights before him were enough to make his stomach turn. The landscape was dotted with massive, decaying corpses, their bloated bodies anchored to the ground by iron chains. The dead were everywhere—twisted, mutilated, and reshaped into grotesque living relics of forgotten wars. The corpse cultivators had made their home in these husks, and they had used the flesh of the dead to create a moving, living tomb.
The titanic corpse that served as the foundation of their domain was a thing of nightmares. It was an immense, rotting body—flesh turned black and slick with decay, but still somehow moving, its arms and legs shifting with unnatural life. Its eyes were hollow sockets, its mouth a jagged maw. The corpse was a titanic foundation, a body that stretched for miles, with living tunnels that carved through its insides, twisting through layers of rotten organs and decayed skin.