Chapter Seventy-Five: The True Form of the White Bone Dharma Body

The corpse involuntarily retreated half a step; what stood before it was by no means an ordinary true body—its very presence instinctively threatened it. Meanwhile, Zhou Bai's situation grew increasingly complex. His consciousness was slipping, signs of losing control flickering within him, while his body had been wholly seized by the White Bone Dharma Body.

If it had been mere loss of control, it might have been manageable, but a strange, foreign consciousness was now taking root within him—a presence of pure, unadulterated evil. Zhou Bai found himself utterly powerless to stop it. Under its influence, vast quantities of unclaimed yin energy surged into his body, accelerating his transformation into a demon.

The Ghost Tree tried to help, striving to absorb some of this yin energy, but it was barely a drop in the ocean. After a few heartbeats, Zhou Bai could no longer cling to his last shreds of sanity; his mind plunged into darkness.

At the final moment before his awareness slipped away, he heard the system prompt: "Demonic possession. True body descends."

Not far away, Yu Jun, lying on the ground, gazed at Zhou Bai with dawning realization. She muttered under her breath, "Yet another one, acting so recklessly..."

Under her astonished eyes, the White Bone Dharma Body began to change again. It raised its head and opened its mouth to the sky. Suddenly, the raging storm overhead stilled. Countless streams of yin energy surged toward the White Bone Dharma Body, quickly forming a massive vortex.

The corpse was momentarily stunned; its adversary was directly swallowing the yin energy from the Ghost Valley Earth-Locking Formation, forcibly breaking the spell. But the White Bone Dharma Body was not absorbing the yin energy to break the formation—it was pushing its own presence to the very pinnacle.

Its blood-red eyes bore into the corpse before it, a savage force burning in its chest, demanding release. The corpse understood that to maintain the formation, it had to kill this man and return the yin energy within him to the array.

With that thought, it gathered its power and charged forward. But before it could take more than a few steps, the White Bone Dharma Body stomped on the ground. The earth for ten meters around collapsed, stones flying in all directions.

In the next instant, the White Bone Dharma Body appeared before the corpse, a skeletal fist crashing toward its face.

“So fast…”

That was the only thought to flash through the corpse’s mind before it was caught in a barrage of blows, as relentless as a storm.

Each strike from the White Bone Dharma Body sent the corpse crashing into the earth, the crater beneath them growing larger and larger, soon expanding to a hundred meters across.

Yu Jun and the coffins in the courtyard were nearly caught in the destruction, but vines reached out and pulled them to safety. As Bai Wanming himself stepped out of the courtyard, his final vestiges of consciousness faded. His roots burrowed into the ground, branches stretched outward, and he transformed into a towering tree on the spot.

Moments later, the entire magistrate’s office had vanished, replaced by a giant pit as if left by a meteor’s impact.

At the bottom of the pit lay the corpse, battered and broken, its face so mangled that its original features were unrecognizable, all its features mashed together in a grotesque blur.

The White Bone Dharma Body stood before it, mouth agape, streams of yin energy spilling out, its jaw moving up and down as if in silent mockery.

“Mother of No-Life, Home of the Void…” the corpse mumbled, its eyes seething with venom. This was only an avatar, after all. It had memorized its adversary’s appearance; when the time was right, it would come for vengeance.

The White Bone Dharma Body cocked its head to one side, bent down, and seized the corpse’s skull in both hands, dragging it close. Their eyes met—at first, the corpse was confused, but that quickly gave way to alarm as its memories began to blur.

The eyes of the White Bone Dharma Body grew ever redder, its gaze swirling like a vortex intent on absorbing the corpse entirely.

After a long while, the White Bone Dharma Body tossed the corpse aside, lifted its right foot, and stamped on its head, crushing it to dust.

Leaping from the pit, it looked north. The White Bone Dharma Body possessed no intellect, but from the corpse’s memories, it sensed another threat, one sharing the same origin.

Anything that posed a threat, the White Bone Dharma Body would seek to eradicate. Though the distance was not insignificant, it was an isolated island near the mouth of the Qinghe River.

The White Bone Dharma Body did not hesitate. It opened its maw, and all the yin energy of the Ghost Valley Earth-Locking Formation surged toward its mouth, warping the air and cracking the earth.

Before Yu Jun lost consciousness, she witnessed a sight that would haunt her forever.

The White Bone Dharma Body gathered all the yin power, then opened its mouth and spat forth a beam of black light, piercing the formation and shooting toward the horizon.

The isolated island was covered in towering ancient trees, and at its center stood an extinct volcano.

Within the mouth of the volcano, a coffin was suspended in midair by iron chains above a bottomless abyss. The coffin lid was pushed open from within, and a shriveled skeleton sat up inside, drawing in streams of yin energy from the abyss below.

This extinct volcano had been transformed by the skeleton into a massive graveyard, its base carved with runes and filled with heaps of human and animal bones.

Drawing power from the emanating yin energy, the skeleton had cultivated here for centuries, remaining hidden even under the noses of the Underworld Registry.

Upon awakening, the skeleton sat in contemplation, the memories of its destroyed avatar flooding back. Fragments of recollection flashed by, settling at last on Zhou Bai’s face.

"You destroyed my avatar, ruined a hundred years of cultivation. Boy, I won’t forget you," the skeleton said with a cold laugh.

Its only avatar had carried a great deal of its own essence, as well as overseeing all White Lotus Sect activity near Yangzhou. Its loss was a devastating blow, deepening the skeleton’s hatred for Zhou Bai.

At that moment, a speck of black light appeared in the clouds. The skeleton did not react immediately, and then a massive pillar of yin energy crashed down upon it, dissolving most of its flesh in an instant. Blood spurted from its mouth.

The blow gravely wounded the skeleton, but worse was yet to come.

The vast concentration of yin energy struck the base of the volcano, and under such provocation, the long-dormant mountain began to stir.

The temperature at the mouth of the volcano soared, cracks opened, and magma exploded outward.

With a deafening roar, the volcano erupted. The magma was filled with extreme yang energy. Against the force of nature, the skeleton was no more than a slightly larger ant, especially now that it was gravely injured.

“Zhou Bai, damn you—” the skeleton tried to scream, but its voice was drowned out by the roar of the volcano as its very last trace was wiped from existence.