Hearing Zhou Gu's words, Uncle Qin immediately jogged over to stand beside Li Ban.
Beside them, the carriage still blazed fiercely.
They stood near the flames. Though the intense heat baked their skin, no one backed away.
Every eye was fixed on the corpse on the ground.
A one-eyed man holding an iron claw stepped forward. "Any corpse fished out of the River of Forgetfulness belongs to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda. Is Clerk Zhou planning to break that rule?"
Zhou Gu raised a hand, cutting him off.
"Wang Ying, how can you claim this is a corpse from the River of Forgetfulness? This is clearly the thug who murdered your corpse fishers. As officials of the Death Prison, we happened to be passing by, lent a hand, and struck the criminal down. By all rights, we should be the ones taking the culprit's body back, shouldn't we?"
Listening to them argue, Li Ban realized they were indeed fighting over the body.
Setting the dead man's identity aside, he had possessed a fire ability.
That was why both the Death Prison and the Myriad Ancient Pagoda wanted to claim the corpse to extract this element.
But the man was already dead. Unlike living-type or creation-type elements, energy-type elements didn't need a visible physical vessel to house them.
Li Ban had checked the arsonist's wrist just moments ago and found nothing physical there, yet his mission assistance system had successfully extracted the Blazing Flame Art from it.
Anyone else trying to obtain the Blazing Flame Art would have to guess where the element was hidden on the body, then attempt to analyze and extract it, part by part.
And element extraction could easily fail.
If they extracted nothing, they would assume they had either failed or picked the wrong spot, forcing them to try somewhere else.
Yet Li Ban had touched the corpse and obtained the Blazing Flame Art in less than three seconds. The Myriad Ancient Pagoda's men would never suspect he could have completed an extraction that fast.
When they inevitably found nothing, they would just assume their luck was bad and that the energy-type element couldn't be recovered from this body.
But until they made that attempt, no one was going to give up their claim to the corpse.
After all, what if they succeeded?
It was worth a fortune!
Zhou Gu badly wanted to take the corpse away, but the Myriad Ancient Pagoda's men clearly weren't going to back down.
Wang Ying ordered his men to check on the two corpse fishers lying on the road.
One was burned so badly he was already dead. The other still had a breath left in him, though he had lost consciousness.
"Hurry, get him to a doctor," Wang Ying said, looking relieved. He turned back to Zhou Gu. "Clerk Zhou, your carriage is ruined, and your young friend here is injured. Why don't you rest inside the pagoda first, and we can discuss who gets the corpse later?"
Zhou Gu was about to object when Wang Ying added, "Clerk Zhou, you and I have worked together plenty of times. Don't worry, we aren't going to throw our weight around. We just need to inspect the body properly."
Li Ban noticed that Wang Ying subtly emphasized the phrase "worked together."
'Right,' Li Ban thought. 'They still have leverage over Zhou Gu.'
But Zhou Gu didn't look nearly as nervous as Li Ban expected.
Instead, he took a step forward, narrowing his eyes. "You're right, Brother Wang. We have a deep personal relationship. We naturally wouldn't fall out over a single corpse, would we?"
"Of course," Wang Ying said with a narrow-eyed smile.
But it was clear that Zhou Gu's refusal to back down annoyed him.
Still, he didn't actually lose his temper.
It seemed this leverage went both ways.
So Li Ban followed Zhou Gu into the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
As for Uncle Qin, Zhou Gu had him borrow a fast horse from the pagoda to ride back with a message.
The goal was to bring Zhang Baishan back with him. Otherwise, Zhou Gu would be fighting for the corpse alone, putting him at a severe disadvantage.
Since the pagoda master's mount, the Black-Winged Qiongqi, was currently absent, the Myriad Ancient Pagoda felt significantly less oppressive.
The interior featured antique architecture, with numerous small courtyards nestled between several tall pagodas.
The courtyards were planted with bizarrely shaped trees and exotic flowers. Pavilions dotted the grounds, and winding paths led to secluded corners.
No matter how you looked at it, this didn't seem like a place dedicated to collecting and processing corpses.
The guards led Li Ban to a small courtyard near a side gate, while Zhou Gu was escorted to a main hall to rest.
Baskets of medicinal herbs lay drying in the sun. This was likely where the resident doctors lived.
"Doctor Chen!"
The guard leading the way shouted through the courtyard gate.
"Coming, coming."
A short, scrawny old man shuffled out of the main room.
He was holding a tray of drying herbs in his hands.
"Doctor Chen, please tend to this..."
"Li Ban."
"...tend to Brother Li here."
Doctor Chen laboriously made his way over and looked Li Ban up and down. "Ah, but I'm just an herbalist..."
Before he could finish, the guard tugged on Doctor Chen's sleeve.
"Doctor Chen, Doctor Sun is busy treating the severely burned corpse bearer. Since you're an herbalist, you're perfectly suited to apply some ointment for Brother Li."
"Oh, very well, very well. Come in, young man."
Li Ban followed him inside. He was treated with ointment for his burns and scrapes, drank a bowl of bitter medicinal broth, and was finally left to rest in a guest room.
Only then did he finally let his guard down a little.
His newly acquired third element, the Blazing Flame Art, was still fresh in his possession.
But he didn't plan to fuse with it just yet.
He wanted to wait until his second element, the Iron Fish Scale, reached full spiritual rhinoceros, see if he had a chance to be promoted to prison guard, and then decide whether to fuse the new element.
If an opportunity for promotion arose, but he missed out because he had just absorbed a new element that lacked full spiritual rhinoceros, it would be a massive waste.
He had already missed out on promotion once, and he absolutely refused to miss it again.
Even if he couldn't fuse it immediately, Li Ban was still ecstatic to get his hands on a fine-grade energy element.
Thinking back to how the enemy had used those azure flames to incinerate one corpse bearer and critically injure another, he knew just how terrifying energy-type elements could be.
They were impossible to predict and incredibly difficult to block.
Alone in the guest room of Doctor Chen's courtyard, Li Ban closed his eyes and began to cultivate.
A brilliant Star River formed in his mind, its swirling nebulas rapidly absorbing spiritual rhinoceros.
Ever since his first element, the Right Eye, had reached full spiritual rhinoceros, Li Ban had grown increasingly familiar with the flow of spiritual rhinoceros.
As long as they weren't actively hiding it, Li Ban could now easily tell who was a spirit practitioner and who wasn't.
Although Doctor Chen had his own private courtyard in the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, he was an ordinary mortal, not a spirit practitioner.
Because of this, Li Ban felt safe cultivating here.
Aside from dropping off tea and food, Doctor Chen never came in to bother him, allowing Li Ban to cultivate in perfect peace until dusk.
At dusk, the guard from the front courtyard came looking for him again.
"Brother Li, Clerk Zhou wants you to head over."
Li Ban quickly got up and followed the guard to Zhou Gu's courtyard.
Stepping inside, he noticed the courtyard was dead silent.
When he followed the guard into the main hall and looked up, he saw Zhou Gu and Wang Ying both standing inside.
Only one person in the room was seated.
Prison Officer Du An of the Death Prison.
Why had he come here personally?
Was it really just to fight over a corpse?
Li Ban hurried forward and bowed.
Zhou Gu nudged him from behind. "Quick," he whispered, "tell Lord Du how you killed the man."
But Lord Du merely glanced at Li Ban and raised a hand. "No need."
Du An's gaze swept over him.
An intense wave of discomfort washed over Li Ban. He felt as if every inch of his body was fundamentally wrong, yet he couldn't pinpoint a single specific source for the unease.
Fortunately, Du An quickly looked away. "Where is the corpse?" he asked Wang Ying flatly.
Wang Ying kept shooting glances at the door, clearly waiting for someone. Hearing Du An's question, he looked troubled. "Lord Du, our vice pagoda master will be here shortly."
Du An looked down and smoothly brushed the hem of his robes over his knees. "I'm merely looking."
With that, he stood up, silently demanding that Wang Ying lead the way immediately.
In the end, Wang Ying lacked the courage to outright refuse him.
"Very well. It's in the cellar in the backyard. Please, follow me."
Zhou Gu moved to follow them, but Du An stopped him. "The rest of you, wait here."
Li Ban watched Du An and the others leave. Once only Zhou Gu and a few servants remained in the room, he walked over.
"Clerk Zhou, is there something special about that corpse?"
Zhou Gu answered absentmindedly, "An energy-type element. A highly aggressive one at that. If their luck holds and they manage to strip it from the corpse... Lord Du wouldn't want to let such an opportunity slip by."
It seemed the value of this energy-type element was far higher than Li Ban had imagined.
It was enough to draw out a prison officer of the Death Prison.
To be even bolder—a thousand taels!
Li Ban was quietly celebrating his new element when he suddenly saw Du An striding back in from the rear courtyard, closely followed by a bewildered-looking Wang Ying.
"Let's go!"
Du An reached the main doors, threw a single glance at Zhou Gu and Li Ban, and turned to walk out.