Chapter 155: Mortal World 21

Chaos. Destruction. Streets littered with corpses, stormed by vengeful ghosts and tainted by blood. Seeing this both Lia and Yano were shocked. To think that the exorcists had such a hard time.

"I'll barricade the city, you go and find the others, be careful, ok?" Yano squeezed Lia's hand before he set off. The sight wasn't that much different than the area Lia and Yano took care of, but the amount of corpses really exceeded a number they've expected.

Apart from broken things, cracked streets and buildings and the increasing amount of dead mortals, this wasn't a much more gruesome sight. But the fact that so many mortals died and all the ghosts still roamed around, showed that something wasn't right here.

Without wasting her time, Lia searched through the city to find Mil or at least some of the exorcists. Along the way, Lia practised to use her life force and purged the ghosts she came across. There were barely any mortals. The ones outside were all dead. The mortals quickly grasped to hide in their houses.

So, Lia didn't need to worry about saving any of them which made her goal extremely easier. The large city housed many hidden places that only a local could know of but then Lia heard noises.

Fighting noises. Instantly, she made her way over there and witnessed a few exorcists struggling with a horde of ghosts overwhelming them. Lia, without thinking, poured out her life force and the smoke enveloped the ghosts making them move slower.

The exorcists turned heads and saw Lia, they nodded before quickly purging the ghosts. After the street was empty of the ghosts, one of the exorcists approached Lia, "You have our thanks."

"It's nothing. Where's Mil? What happened here?"

"We got separated from the others in our team and now only a handful are in each city, as you can see, we aren't coping well. As for the captain," the exorcist pointed at a large building in the back, "He's in there overseeing everything and guiding us. Well, after all his power isn't that useful in combat."

"I see," Lia didn't waste any more time and parted from the group of exorcists after wishing them well. The large building in the back was a tall skyscraper, completely made out of glass and shaped like a boat's sailing.

When Lia arrived, she saw a bunch of ghosts crowding the entrance. Their faces were pressed against the glass and their saliva slid down and formed a puddle on the ground. Lia contorted her face in disgust before approaching them.

On her way, she picked up some weapons from a store and coated them in her life force. However, right now, the area she was in was deserted and apart from the skyscraper, no other buildings were there. This pedestrianised area belonged to the skyscraper.

Lia used this opportunity to test her powers, as seemingly no one was here. Out of the ring, a small ball of white life force escaped and entered a corpse. Once it spread inside the corpse, Lia said, "Stand up."

It did as she said and Lia focused all of her energy to control this one corpse. As this was one of the few times she practised her power with her life force, it was still a bit hard for her to get used to it. Right now, she could only control one corpse. There wasn't even room to think about multiple corpses.

"Get rid of the ghosts," the corpse painfully slowly moved to the ghosts and it was unbearable for Lia to watch how it tore through them. This wasn't even one-tenth of what she used to have. She wanted to give up on the corpse and left her life force inside the corpse to vanish but then in an instant, the corpse gained ten times the speed and in a second all the ghosts disappeared.

Then the corpse headed towards Lia and swung his arm forward as if it wanted to hit her but instead it purged the oncoming ghosts behind her. Lia's eyes widened. There was no way.

Lia only ordered her corpse to purge the ghosts in front of the entrance and not other ones that might appear. Was this the breakthrough she sought after? Was this what it meant for the corpse to move on its own and have intelligence?

Lia's hands trembled with excitement, she touched the corpse and extracted her life force but it wasn't there anymore. There was nothing for her to pull out that belonged to her. Lia finally understood. She also finally understood what Xavi meant back then.

Her soul and life force were interchangeable, so what Xavi said wasn't wrong. If she could regard a part of herself as the corpse's then the corpse might come to life and have a consciousness. Lia, for a second, left the life force in her corpse unattended and the corpse, seemingly, made the life force his own, that was why it could think on its own.

In other words, what Lia needed to do was to merge her life force with the corpse, so she didn't only infuse the corpse, but breathed, for a short time, life back into the corpse. This meant, she wasn't controlling the corpses but she was bringing them back to life, even if it was for a short amount of time.

Lia had to verify her assumption. If the amount of life force poured into a corpse equalled the time it could stay alive, then the more of herself she gave the corpses, the longer they could sustain themselves, before her life force finally vanished, as it couldn't reproduce itself in a strange body that wasn't hers.

This was different from her soul. With her soul she needed to actively extract it back again for the corpse to stop, the downside was that her soul might be lost if she forgot it and she had to remind herself to do it, the upside was that she could control when the corpse would cease to live.

With her life force, there was a time limit but since her life force continuously regenerated itself, she didn't need to be afraid of losing it. So, the only issue to figure out was that even if her life force wasn't hers anymore in the corpse's body, she could make the corpse stop on her will.

Lia once again infused her life force into a random corpse, this time she increased the amount and watched how long it held on. Then she did it again with different amounts. Her assumptions were right, the more life force she gave them, the longer they could sustain themselves. Right now, a ball the size of her hand was enough for 20 minutes.

The next thing she needed to check was that even if she merged her life force with the corpse, to what extent it listened to her commands as they started to have a conscious of their own and could disobey her. But right now, the observations she made was that her words were absolute, even if the corpse could think, her words bound them to completely obey her.

Lia was relieved and happy about this new discovery. The more she trained, the better her power would get and the better and stronger her corpses would be. The days of being powerless and despairing over it were finally over. Her goal and revenge could be fulfilled.

With this realisation, an exhilarating feeling spread in Lia but she quickly pushed it down. Her recklessness and her confidence were part of why she has struggled until now.

Looking at the building, Lia became aware that she wasted too much time and tried to open the door of the entrance, but it was locked.

She also didn't want to break it open as the ghosts could enter. From the outside she watched, to see if she could detect Mil anywhere but after a while of searching, she didn't find anything. Instead, Yano came.

"You found Mil?" Yano's face was part dirty and part sweaty but it didn't cover his handsomeness and the bright eyes that lit up even more whenever he saw Lia. In fact, it made him even more attractive.

Subconsciously Lia stretched out her hand and wiped the dirty spots on Yano's face away. Two pairs of wide eyes met each other. Lia quickly retracted her hand, but Yano caught it.

"Continue." he purred in a low voice and his eyes now deepened their gaze. The bright glint was lost instead it was an endless torrent conveying its desire to completely swallow Lia up.

"We need to hurry," Lia tried to talk some sense into Yano but he didn't bulge. Lia wanted to cry but as fast as she could she wiped Yano's face clean before stepping away from him.

"Can you contact him?" Lia again stirred the topic into the necessary direction as Yano just looked at her without any intention to back off.

"Yano, please," now Lia was pleading. The way Yano was looking at her, she didn't like it, it was as if a predator was looking at its vulnerable prey. Lia was afraid he would jump at her any moment and do inappropriate things to her.

"Say my name again," Yano's voice was only a whisper but hot emotions were mixed inside and made it incredibly seductive.

"No," Lia shook her head, "This is not the time."

Before Lia's worry doubled, Yano retracted his gaze and sighed.

"You're right, don't forget your words, 'this' is not the time, but after it's over, it'll be," a mischievous smile formed on Yano's lips and Lia prayed that the time would never come. Hopefully, she could drag things out until she'd be back in the Immortal World.

Back in the Immortal World… away from Yano and back to a world filled with nothing but her desire to kill Min and to become the Immortal King. This realisation actually stung a little.