Eternal Thief

Once Ace understood that the corpse vessel hadn’t vanished because it wasn’t part of the mirror persona, because it was never supposed to, and the scripture did exactly what it was designed to do: steal the soul and reproduce it faithfully.

His eyes darkened with understanding as he thought, ’...I neglected the fundamentals!’

Now Ace was an Undead Soul, for a brief moment, frustration flickered through him as his plans had derailed. His timing had been tight. Any delay here was dangerous.

But the frustration didn’t last because another realization followed immediately after he thought about the five corpse vessels he had just stored away, and a sharp glint passed through his soul-light eyes as if realizing something extremely important.

’...If I’m an Undead Soul now...’ He thought as excitement was creeping into his otherwise calm reasoning, ’...then all I need is a body. Should I try to use Corpse Possession?’

Corpse Possession was the most basic method of the Corpse Race, which allows them to possess a suitable corpse before they refine it into their corpse vessel. Better yet, this Undead Soul already had a perfectly compatible corpse vessel, which had been thoroughly refined by him.

Lastly, Ace not only retains the memories of the previous Corpse Cultivator but also the mirror persona, which enables him to use Corpse Clan techniques seamlessly at the most fundamental level.

Once he thought about it, Ace didn’t waste time, and with a thought, he pulled the tall, lean corpse vessel from his storage. The body appeared before him, suspended slightly above the ground. Its skin was pale and translucent, corpse-veins frozen mid-pulse, eyes dull and lifeless.

Ace hovered closer, and up close, he could feel a faint resonance like an abandoned shell still remembering its owner, which made him ecstatic.

Thereafter, Ace instinctively accessed the Corpse Cultivator’s memories, and the method surfaced naturally, as if it were engraved in his soul.

’Corpse Reclamation!’

Unlike corpse refinement, this wasn’t conquest but return as Ace extended his Undead Soul, gray-black light stretching outward in thin tendrils. They brushed against the corpse vessel’s chest, then sank inward without resistance.

The sensation was immediate as weight returned, then pressure before a peculiar constraint. The next moment, his awareness snapped sharply back into a physical frame.

Bones locked into place, and corpse-veins reignited, pulsing with stable corpse Qi, which was the ’corrosive Qi’ in the air; the Corpse Clan called it Corpse Qi.

The next moment, Ace’s soul slammed fully into the vessel and merged seamlessly, and thereafter, the corpse’s eyes snapped open.

Murky light flared briefly, then stabilized, and Ace inhaled. The breath scraped through dead lungs, cold and hollow, but functional.

This was truly a unique yet loathsome feeling that Ace could never get used to, but this feeling also gave him insights into the mind of the Undead Race, and Ace was already labeled as a lunatic who abandoned everything just to have a longer life.

At this moment, he looked down at his pale hands and flexed his fingers slowly, feeling the strength embedded in the corpse vessel, the unnatural sturdiness of refined flesh.

There was no rejection, instability, or backlash because this body wasn’t stolen; it had merely been reclaimed.

Ace straightened and checked himself carefully. His aura matched perfectly. The decay patterns along his neck and temples were identical. Even the subtle corpse resonance that Corpse Cultivators used to recognize one another was intact.

Ace’s lips curled faintly as he was no longer impersonating a Corpse Cultivator, but he was one.

”Does this mean I can access the full strength of the true Abyssal Guardian?” Ace muttered, his voice now hoarse and hollow, exactly matching the Corpse Cultivator’s tone.

’What if I can possess the corpse of an Abyssal King?’ Ace thought with a hint of strong desire, but he quickly removed that thought because it was impossible.

First, even if by chance he can get his hands on an Abyssal King Realm corpse, his soul probably would be devoured by the corpse because he was still essentially an Ascension Master.

He was only able to dominate this Corpse Vessel because his soul was as strong as an Ascension Guardian or even an Ascension Lord. That’s why he dared not be so reckless.

Nonetheless, this also made him even more wary of the Corpse Clan and Undead Race, and he was almost certain that the reason behind the Evernight Council’s great enmity towards the Undead Race was because of their terrifying potential and uncanny abilities.

’This mistake,’ He thought calmly, ’turned out to be an advantage and revealed many things about the Grand Mirror Phantom Scripture!’

He now understood something crucial about the Grand Mirror Phantom Scripture. It not only allowed him to copy races, but it also forced him to experience their existence at its root.

That also meant if he wished, Ace could now walk the path of the Undead Race or any exotic race, as a matter of fact, from the inside, gaining unique understandings of unique laws and abilities.

’Just how powerful is the Veilborn Race that created this terrifying Universal Force Technique, and what kind of opportunity did Malservus encounter to acquire it?’

Just as Ace was mulling over it, at that moment, the Vein-Carriage rumbled faintly beneath his feet, continuing its silent journey below the Undead Boundary through the corpse-veins.

Ace put those thoughts back in his head before he raised his head and adjusted his thoughts as his eyes glinted with cold interest. The next moment, Ace quickly arranged everything he had stolen from the Corpse Cultivator in his mirror persona’s storage ring.

Furthermore, after hesitating for a moment, he stowed away the Ring of Lone Hunter into his Thief’s Space because he knew that the Undead Boundary was completely detached from the outside, and the Council wouldn’t be able to sense the existence of the Ring of Lone Hunter anymore.

Moreover, Ace knew for a fact that Nomad had probably drawn massive scrutiny from the Evernight Dukes and, most likely, the Evernight Kings.

That’s why Nomad might not see the light of day anymore, and he needed to figure out something else, unless something changed!