325: Chapter 325 Dungeon Prisoner's Life: Treating Human Life Like Grass

At that moment, Jiang Chen quietly scanned the group. Within their bodies lay dormant a highly refined spiritual energy, as clear as spring water, far superior to those vessels churning with turbid energy. Logically, such a constitution should be extremely susceptible to the backlash of corpse poison and easily turn into the undead, yet they remained as steady as rocks, completely unharmed.

They were clad in black-patterned battle robes, with fine seals etched onto their hems and cuffs—clearly armor designed to prevent Yin Malice from invading the body. Every one of them wore a cold iron mask; there were many of them, both men and women. Jiang Chen could not discern their background, much less guess their true motives—but intuition told him they were up to no good.

Along the way, he had overheard fragments of conversation: "Tsk, caught another high-level undead! As expected of our Canglong City's 'Fifth Team'!"

"It's my first time seeing an undead that looks so much like a living person..."

"Don't be fooled by appearances! The more they look like humans, the more dangerous they are! Everyone stay alert, your lives depend on it!"

As Jiang Chen listened, the situation became clear to him—it turned out he had been mistaken for an infiltrating humanoid undead because of his leaking corpse qi. This misunderstanding struck him as somewhat absurd and amusing.

He could have simply walked away, but then he had a second thought: moving among them as a mortal would actually be more secure.

After all, he had seen it before—once he revealed his true cultivation, at best it would terrify the masses, and at worst, it would cause the social order to collapse. To avoid drawing fire to himself and to establish a foothold in this city, he simply suppressed his breath and aura, quietly sealed his Corpse Source, and then slowly drew spiritual energy into his body, refining it repeatedly until it became increasingly pure.

His movements were extremely light and slow, as he dared not show the slightest abnormality for fear of arousing suspicion.

Before long, Jiang Chen was escorted into a large, deep estate. The words "Fifth Team" were prominently carved into the stone tablet above the lintel, matching the emblems on their chests perfectly.

At this point, he no longer had any doubts—all his previous deductions were correct.

Subsequently, he was led all the way into a dungeon. The moment he stepped inside, the thick scent of rust mixed with rotting blood rushed into his nose. Looking up, he saw rows of black iron cages holding not hideous undead, but ordinary people with haggard faces and erratic breathing. Because of the slight traces of mixed Yin Qi remaining in their bodies, they had been treated as precursors to a corpse transformation and forcibly dragged into this sunless place.

Jiang Chen's heart sank. These people were not dead at all, let alone turned into corpses; at most, they were just tainted by a bit of foul Yin energy. Yet they were covered in wounds with flesh torn open, clearly having endured severe torture.

Could these so-called "Guardians" truly disregard human life so blatantly?

Immediately after, he was pushed into an interrogation room. The four walls were hung with various torture implements; the thick ones could snap a spine, while the thin ones could gouge out every tendon. Their cold glint was suffocating. Jiang Chen, however, remained unfazed. As he was being firmly bound to an iron rack, he spoke in a calm voice, "How do you plan to deal with me?"

Several people sneered with mocking tones. "How to deal with you? You, a high-level undead, dared to trespass into human territory, and you still have the nerve to ask us?"

Jiang Chen shook his head and a slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. "On what basis have you determined that I am an undead?"

The lead interrogator had a kind face and gentle features, but his eyes were as cold as a frozen lake. Jiang Chen saw through him at once—the more someone smiled like this, the more ruthless they were in their actions; once they decided on something, they would dig to the bottom of it until the very end.

He didn't buy it, and his voice suddenly deepened. "Do you know what you are doing? Using private torture without evidence—is this law enforcement? Or is it evil?"

"Evidence?" The man sneered, pulling a grey-green disc from his robes and pointing it directly at Jiang Chen's chest. "Open your eyes wide—look closely, this thing can recognize it!"

"Recognize what?" Jiang Chen asked.

"Recognize whether you're an undead!" Before the man could finish speaking, he suddenly froze. The light flowing on the disc's surface reflected neither corpse markings nor Yin meridians, but the vital signs of a living person filled with spiritual energy and clear meridians. Although it wasn't top-tier purity, he was undeniably a proper cultivator.

The smile on his face shattered completely. Staring at the disc, he muttered to himself, "This... this isn't right... the report just now clearly stated ninety percent undead, high-level..."

He paused and turned to his colleague, his voice tight. "This situation... how should we settle this?"

A cold, hard voice suddenly rang out from outside the interrogation room: "He is an undead—have you forgotten how many living corpses our Fifth Team has personally refined?"

"That... alright!" Before the words even landed, the man's Adam's apple bobbed. His gaze suddenly darkened, and a flash of hesitation crossed his eyes as he looked at Jiang Chen, but it was quickly covered by an iron-grey resolve. He forced Jiang Chen's jaw open and shoved a dark green pill into his mouth, growling, "From now on, you are an undead—remember that!"

Jiang Chen could have easily shattered the man's wrist, but he held his ground. He wanted to see exactly what kind of scheme these people were plotting. Thus, with a slight tremor of his dantian, he broke his own internal seal and looked down as he swallowed the pill, his movement as casual as swallowing a grain of salt.

The interrogator's brow arched, and he grinned. "Being sensible is a shortcut to staying alive. You've saved yourself some physical suffering; congratulations."

Jiang Chen looked up. "Why do you want to mass-produce undead?"

"It's not your place to dig for answers." The other man laughed easily, though his fingers tightened silently within his sleeve. "There's plenty of food, and the wine is being warmed—whether you can live until tomorrow depends entirely on how tough your bones are."

That smile didn't reach his eyes, and a wave of chilling cold crawled up Jiang Chen's spine like a venomous snake slithering against his skin.

Jiang Chen's heart tightened slightly; this person was not to be trifled with. He decided to talk less and listen more. What he truly wanted to keep a close eye on was this Fifth Team—just how much of a bloodbath could they stir up!

Sure enough, the man was as good as his word, sending in hot food, cloudy wine, and dried cured meat. However, by the midnight hour of the fifth night, the pill's energy within Jiang Chen's belly churned like boiling water. His spiritual energy was completely eroded, evaporating into forest-white undead qi. Immediately after, several dark shadows slipped in silently and dragged him onto a sealed Flying Shuttle.

The cabin was crowded with people. Every one of them had their eyes open, yet their pupils were dilated and their limbs were as stiff as puppets—their consciousness remained, but their vessels had become containers for undead qi. Most had blood at the corners of their mouths and their nails dug into their palms; they were clearly not here voluntarily.

True high-level undead could tear through chains with a single glance, while low-level ones would even gnaw on themselves when they went mad. Only these living humans forcibly transformed into 'semi-undead' by the pills were perfect: their sanity was not entirely extinguished, yet their violence was at its peak, and the undead qi within them was too thick to disperse—they were the most submissive and sharpest of blades.

Who were they planning to hand this blade to?

Jiang Chen quietly expanded his divine sense, letting it seep through the shuttle walls like a thin mist to look down at the shifting sea of stars below.

He never expected that the shuttle would actually burst through the atmosphere of Canglong Star and head straight for a giant, unfamiliar star—one where the spiritual energy was as pure as liquid, mountains floated in the sky, and seas of clouds churned. It was clearly an ancient, preserved blessed land.

The shuttle landed at the back mountain of a sect. The mountain terrain was rugged, with ancient trees reaching the sky, shadows of spiritual birds passing by, and traces of exotic beasts hidden away. But as soon as the group was roughly pushed into a deep pit, the guards turned and left, leaving them to gasp in the mud without a second glance.

Jiang Chen remained impassive. He couldn't guess the mastermind's full plan, but his intuition told him this game was far more complex than just killing a few people.

Suddenly, firelight flared up all around the edge of the pit!

Bronze lamps were lit one by one, illuminating the bottom of the pit in vivid detail.

Following that, rows of seats appeared on the circular stone steps, filled with shadowy figures—silk robes, masks, and cold eyes, silent as ghosts.

As it turned out, this wasn't a prison at all, but a Colosseum!