"In their desperation to try and contain the abilities of the flame, the kingdom forcibly conscripted commoners and taught them a corpse-purifying art that worked with the leaves of the White Mulberry Kingdom.

With the art, they could purge the negative energy around the battlefield and the corpses thus reducing the fuel needed for the purgatory flame art. The art was made in haste, so it wasn't that powerful, and it was more like trying to put out a wild flame with a drop of water.

Corpses were gathered in specific spots around the kingdom, and the ritual purifiers, so they called them will be sent to those areas, to purge the corruptive energy from those corpses. The leaves of the White Mulberry Tree though afforded them protection, it wasn't enough as many fell victim to those corruptive energies, in the most egregious of deaths, with some being eaten alive by the compatriots who had lost their minds to those energies.

The lifespan of the ritual purifiers was no more than two months, however, the Wang Patriarch managed to overturn it, by surviving 150 years, and in the end, he became the only survivor in the entire White Mulberry Kingdom after its destruction by the Purgatory black tiger cult, who also left that war a little worse for wears.

The Wang Patriarch didn't have any special physique or talent or some special cultivation art, but he had a stubborn and conscientious heart that led to his survival. At his designated spot, which was almost an entire town, there were two statues that he liked to sleep under whenever he felt overdrawn from his purifying activities, or when his body and mind just couldn't keep up.He would go to the two statues, and no matter how tired, or broken his body was, he always ensured he cleaned the statues and a few meters around it, to the extent of overdrawing himself when he used the purifying art he was taught to purify the area despite the location not having any corpse.

Countless years later when his descendants asked him why he did it, his response was those statues provided a place for him to sleep, it was the least he could do to repay the favor.

At the time, he had no idea that the two statues were special, and his actions were driven by a sense of responsibility and propriety more than anything else.

Every day no matter how exhausted or how broken his body was, not once did he ever miss tidying up the statues, and unbeknownst to him the statues repaid him in kind, it was just at the time he was too weak and preoccupied to notice it.

When he got sent to that burial site, those sent were about a thousand, and after three days that number was reduced to eight hundred, and a month later, that number went down four hundred, and by the time two months were up, only less than a hundred were left, and when it hit the fifth month only the Wang family patriarch was left.

He hadn't realized it at the time, but his daily routine of cleaning up the statues had inadvertently given him a lifeline. Those two unassuming statues outside some long ruined tea house had kept him alive.

Every time he went to clean them, they would reciprocate in kind by cleaning his body, soul, spirit, and mind by cleansing him of the corruption of the burial site. I couldn't help but laugh when the emperor's brother told me it took their patriarch close to thirty years before he realized there was something strange with those statues and even then, he didn't know exactly what was special with them, only that they seemed to make his body and mind lighter and full of purifying energy, much purer than the leaf of the White Mulberry Tree.It was only after the leaf he had been given finally gave in to the corrupting miasma and malevolent energy of the burial site did he finally discover some of the special features of the two statues and the effects it had on him.

He was already in the foundation establishment realm at the time, with a mediocre foundation of red-grade pillars, however, whenever he used the purifying art he had been given, his ability to cleanse the corruption was much higher than when he used the leaf of the white mulberry tree, and the strain on his body and mind also seemed to decrease.

His efficiency increased and could work for longer hours, however, he still ensured that every day at the appointed time he went back to clean the area around those statues.

Slowly by slowly his body got transformed to a point that it was even obvious to him that he had changed. With time he no longer needed the basic purifying art he was given to purge the malevolent energy or purify the corpses, just releasing his internal qi was enough. His internal qi had transformed into a golden white qi which seemed to be able to restrain the malevolent energy, corrupting miasma, toxic plagues, and other dangers common to the area.

Alone, he purified the site, block by block, still maintaining a habitual schedule of purging during the day, and at night he cleaned the statues before he rested. Twenty more years quickly flew by with his foundation pillars getting transformed in the process. They had changed from the red grade to a variant of gold white that matched his qi and even his ability to comprehend things had transformed.

Over the years his body had been strengthened to the point that he could directly handle the corpses without fear of being corrupted by its energy. It was then that he started looking through those corpses for anything of value such as storage rings, cultivation arts, talismans, anything that of value.

It was as a result of those searches that he discovered even his comprehension seemed to have been elevated. Even though they were mostly low grade, with nothing at the blue grade level, he ended up mastering countless arts and techniques and in the process, he even ended up gaining palm intent, something that would have been entirely impossible for him as he even struggled to reach the blooming phase with red grade arts.

Gradually he started filling the deficiencies and foundational gaps he had in his cultivation and at some point as luck would have it, he ended up stumbling onto a blue-grade cultivation art that he practised religiously, and in eight years he broke through to the core formation realm. In all his years, he said, that was one of the happiest moments in his entire life. It felt like a rebirth to him.

His cultivation base rapidly grew after that along with his insights, and after three years despiting working alone, he had already purified half the gravesite, which contained tens of millions of corpses. No new people had been sent during that time, which he more than welcomed as it meant more loot for him to discover, and the more he purified the area, the stronger he seemed to become, which was how in just three years despite having freshly broken through to the core formation realm, he had already reached the middle stages.

It was when he reached the late stages of the core formation realm that a lethal fortuitous opportunity befell him..."