Chapter 295: Chapter 158: The Clouds Part to Reveal the Moon, a Successful Breakthrough

All this work could be left to these puppets—absolutely loyal and fearless.

All he had to do was find a perfectly safe place to hide and wait for his ’takeout’ to arrive.

As for the puppets’ "raw materials"...

Lin Ye’s gaze swept over the dead, silent wasteland.

Yin Liulan, the other instructors, and the cadets who entered the Nirvana Tower before him had probably already prepared plenty of corpses for him.

And what’s more, these were the corpses of the genuine Celestial Abyss Race!

Their strength far surpassed that of the mutated beast corpses back in the fallen district of Linchuan.

He got right to work.

Lin Ye wasted no more time and immediately began his search.

He didn’t venture too deep, instead moving cautiously around the perimeter of the rift’s entrance.

This area was relatively safe, but not absolutely.

At one point, he even spotted another training camp cadet in the distance, also searching for something. They kept a mutual, unspoken distance, neither one approaching the other.

Finally, on the edge of a grove of short, withered trees, Lin Ye made a discovery.

Four burly figures lay twisted on the ground. Under the dim, red light of the sky, their grayish-black skin had the texture of rock.

Their appearance was similar to the gargoyles of legend, with gnarled muscles and ferocious faces.

These were four members of the Stone Ghost Race.

Lin Ye kept low, observing from a distance for a long while. Only after confirming that all four members of the Stone Ghost Race were truly dead, their bodies riddled with wounds from sharp weapons, did he slowly approach.

His gaze was quickly drawn to one corpse in particular. It was noticeably taller and more powerfully built than its companions and sported a pair of huge, bat-like wings.

An elite of the Stone Ghost Race!

Lin Ye walked over to the elite’s corpse, crouched down, and reached out to touch the fatal wound on its chest, which was so deep the bone was visible.

The instant his fingertip touched the wound, a streak of black light flashed in his eyes.

The next moment, Lin Ye felt nearly a third of his Spiritual Power drain away instantly.

A hundred black spores, invisible to the naked eye, had successfully traveled through the wound and embedded themselves deep within the elite’s body.

Lin Ye didn’t stop, and repeated the process, planting spores in two other relatively intact ordinary Stone Ghost Race corpses. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Once he was finished, he didn’t linger. He immediately turned and left to find himself a safe shelter.

Soon, in a jumble of rocks where the terrain was complex, he found a natural cave concealed by several massive chunks of Obsidian.

The entrance was narrow, allowing only one person to pass, but the space inside was quite large—more than enough for him to take shelter.

All that was left was to wait.

Fortunately, this time the wait didn’t last too long.

Just half an hour later, Lin Ye sensed three faint signal sources appear in his spiritual world, slowly establishing a connection with him.

He wasn’t in a hurry.

The growth and spread of the mycelia took time.

Another half an hour passed.

Lin Ye closed his eyes. He could already intermittently receive sensory input from the elite Stone Ghost Race corpse a kilometer away: the feel of the wind against its wings, the crackling of nearby bubbling hot springs, and the sight of the withered forest through its hollow eye sockets.

Lin Ye took a deep breath.

He completely submerged his consciousness into the connection with the corpse.

「One kilometer away, at the edge of the withered forest.」

The elite Stone Ghost Race corpse, over three meters tall with gnarled muscles, suddenly had a finger on its right claw twitch.

Immediately after, within its dim eye sockets, countless fine black mycelia wriggled madly, weaving and intertwining as if they were alive.

It rose stiffly from the cold ground.

The mycelia had completely invaded every one of its joints, every muscle fiber, and even penetrated its cranial cavity, completely taking over this powerful shell.

Inside the stone cave, Lin Ye’s eyes snapped open.

In an instant, four distinctly different scenes flooded his mind, overlapping violently in his spiritual world.

One was of the narrow stone cave he was in himself.

The other three came from the Stone Ghost Race corpses he was controlling, their perspectives shaky and the scenery bleak.

Lin Ye’s temples throbbed, and a strong wave of dizziness washed over him.

’This won’t do. My CPU’s about to fry.’

Simultaneously processing the massive amount of information from four perspectives was still too much of a burden for his current Spiritual Power.

The main problem was that the images were too numerous and chaotic.

Lin Ye quickly made a decision. He forcibly severed the sensory links to the two ordinary Stone Ghost corpses, leaving only the most basic command channel open.

He focused his entire consciousness on the winged elite of the Stone Ghost Race.

The world instantly fell silent.

It was as if Lin Ye’s consciousness had been pulled from his own body and fully injected into the puppet a kilometer away.

He tried controlling it, making it stand up straight and take a step.

One step, two steps.

From initial stiffness to gradual coordination.

Next was a light jog, then a leap.

Though the corpse had died a gruesome death, the fatal wound was internal—its heart had been pierced by a sharp weapon. Its limbs and torso, however, were remarkably well-preserved. When it moved, it was almost indistinguishable from when it was alive.

After testing its running and jumping, a thought occurred to Lin Ye. He tried flapping the pair of huge, bat-like wings on the puppet’s back.

WHOOSH—!

WHOOSH—!

A fierce wind suddenly rose, kicking up the volcanic ash on the ground with a muffled howl.