Ritual of Eternal Servitude

Two days later, I stood on the training ground with a sword in my hand.

As my Qi moved, a dark aura grew around the sword. I swung it, and the aura turned into a blade wave which flew outward until it hit a straw dummy, cleaved it in two, and left a gouge in the stone wall behind it.

That wall suffered a lot of damage in the last two days. No amount of mortar soldiers slathered over it could fix it fully. But I tried to hit it in different spots, so at least the building was still structurally sound.

It's all about the little things.

I put the sword back in the sheath with a flourish and turned expectantly toward my teacher.

However, Lin Chu was too used to me by now to show any shock. Instead, he looked tired.

That was probably because of the siege, though. Yesterday, the Crystal Phoenix Sect finished building trebuchets and began throwing rocks at the Thousand Swallows city.

We had almost no defense against it, short of sending forth cultivators on flying swords and hoping they wouldn't get killed by enemy cultivators on flying swords. Our crossbowmen could only do that much against siege engines.

So we were just hoping that the Thousand Swallows city had more walls than the enemy had rocks. I could hear booms of the enemy's shots from here if I tried to.

"Alright, I see that you have learned the Purple Dragon Claw, Disciple Ru," Lin Chu said. "Now you want me to teach you more techniques?"

I bowed. He knew me so well—however!

"Master, you promised that if I learn the Purple Dragon Claw technique, you will tell me more about creating undead soldiers and why the Lin clan doesn't have an undead army."

"I did, didn't I?" Lin Chu narrowed his eyes. "Yes. Alright, get a writing set and come to the graveyard. We might as well do this with an actual human corpse."

Yuck. Despite my disgust, though, I was full of enthusiasm when I scrambled to obey Lin Chu's commands.

***

Half an hour later, we stood at a local graveyard. Normally, only the rich people were buried inside the city walls, but now, because of the siege, several mass graves were dug nearby. Most of them were already covered with soil, but one was still open.

Even now, soldiers were putting more bodies in. They wore cloth masks over their nose and mouth to protect themselves from the miasma, but I was hit with a stench face-first.

That was a good fifty meters away from us. Lin Chu already arranged a body to be moved here, and was drawing a ritual circle around it with bone meal and blood from a small jar.

Unlike me, who was covering my nose with a sleeve, he showed no signs of discomfort over the smell of rotting bodies.

"Write down the symbols I use, their position—everything, Disciple," Lin Chu said when I arrived. "I'm not repeating this again, and a slight mistake can lead to a failure of the ritual."

My memory was excellent, but I obeyed without question.

"What I'm doing is the Ritual of Eternal Servitude. After it's complete and I imbue the corpse with a part of my Qi, it will stay forever loyal to me, or to a person I give the right of ownership to. Its rotting will stop, but not reverse."

"The Eternal Servant is moved by a shadow of its owner's soul, which is a good and a bad thing. It will be slow, barely able to speak, and will remember nothing about its life. It will have no will and emotions of its own, but only will be able to obey the simplest commands. You will see for yourself."

Lin Chu finished drawing and turned to me.

"The amount of Qi I will spend on one Eternal Servant equals to Qi of 50 low-grade Qi stones. It may not seem like much, but remember that you must put your Qi in it, not just Death energy. Death energy by itself will eventually expire—but the Qi inside of it will replenish the servant's Death energy. Bone meal and blood are much easier to find. By the way, it doesn't matter whom the latter belonged to, no matter what some may say—pig's bone and blood work as well as a chicken's or a human's. But with the siege, finding materials from humans has been much easier."

50 low-grade Qi stones… Right now, with my mind and Qi vision enhanced by concentration, I will probably be able to gather that amount of ambient Qi in my body in an hour or even less of meditation.

Then how many Eternal Servants I could make in a single day?

I banished the thought as Lin Chu moved to perform the ritual. All my attention was on the technique he used. It was less profound than Purple Dragon Claw, somewhere on Qi Foundation level. However, it took much longer to do than an average combat technique.

Lin Chu spent several minutes doing various gestures in the air, then drawing symbols with Qi on the corpse's forehead, stomach and limbs. All the while, energies of Death floated from the graveyard, gathering in the ritual circle, and the soldiers burying their comrades watched us with fear and awe.

Eventually, Lin Chu stepped back. The corpse didn't look different at all, except for the net of purple Qi that was glowing inside its body. The key points of the net were the symbols Lin Chu drew, which pulsed in a slow rhythm.

"Rise, servant."

The corpse sluggishly stood up and stared at Lin Chu with rotten, milky eyes.

"Orders, master?" it asked in a wet and hoarse voice.

"This is Ru Yujin. He's your master from now on," Lin Chu said, gesturing at me.

"Yes." The zombie turned toward me. "Orders, master?"

"Disciple Ru, I give you this Eternal Servant zombie so you could learn. Do whatever you want with it. Make him work for you. Either way, you will see how useless in a fight it is."

My eyes widened.

"Really? It's mine now? Thank you, Master."

I looked at my new property. The zombie stared back, still waiting for my answer.

It understood speech. Just how useless could it be?