Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Fang Lin’an rushed over as well. He looked Zhou Benxin up and down, then from left to right, before finally reaching a conclusion.

“He’s breathing.”

Yun Jianyue held a hand beneath Zhou Benxin’s nose and, sure enough, felt warm breath against her skin. She immediately hauled him into the room, then ran to check the coffin where his body had been placed. It was completely empty.

Zhou Benxin had come back to life!

The realization left them both dumbfounded. Zhou Benxin, meanwhile, looked utterly exhausted and collapsed onto the bed.

“Hold on. How did you die and then come back to life?” Lu Changxue floated several circles around Zhou Benxin before belatedly realizing something. “I don’t have any resentment left, and the Ox Tears should have worn off by now. How can you still see and hear me?”

Zhou Benxin tilted his head and stared at Lu Changxue, equally confused. “Huh? You don’t have any resentment now? Then how am I seeing you?”

“What’s going on?” Yun Jianyue turned to Fang Lin’an.

Pressing his fingers to his temples, Fang Lin’an paced agitatedly around the room, muttering under his breath. After thinking for a long while, he seemed to remember something. He stopped in front of Zhou Benxin’s bed and asked, “How do you feel right now?”

“Exhausted. Like I’m an eighty-year-old widower who carried thirty loads of water from one end of the village to the other, spent the whole day watering the fields, and then discovered they belonged to someone else,” Zhou Benxin replied weakly.

Fang Lin’an opened his Heavenly Eye and confirmed that Zhou Benxin was really himself, not a Doppelganger or some wandering ghost. A bold theory began to form in his mind.

“I think I read about a case similar to yours in the Record of Strange Tales from the Lingxi Sect’s library.

“The man in the story was also intersex, except he had been born that way. He wasn’t like you, who became intersex later by defying the natural order and changing your sex. His family also summoned a Doppelganger for him when he was young, but the ritual wasn’t fully developed at the time, and he ended up encountering his own Doppelganger.

“His Doppelganger was also filled with resentment. It wanted to kill him, and even his entire family. After the Doppelganger killed him, his soul nearly dissipated, but what remained of it hid in a corner of his body. The Doppelganger took control of his body and tried to kill his family.

“To protect them, he rallied at the last moment, wrested back control of his body, and devoured the Doppelganger ghost. He thought that was the end of it. Then, several years later, an enemy of his family came looking for revenge. A fight broke out, and the enemy killed him.

“Once the enemy realized someone had actually died, they fled in panic. His family hurried to report the murder to the authorities, but by the time the constables arrived, they found him standing at home, alive and well, still wearing the same bloodstained clothes. Everyone thought he was a ghost, so the locals tied him up and burned him to death.

“Afterward, they dumped his body in a mass grave. His family still couldn’t put their minds at ease, so they went to retrieve his remains in the middle of the night. But even though he’d been burned to charcoal, he came back to life again! His family went mad, and he later disappeared without a trace.

“At the end, the Record of Strange Tales said that the man eventually became a drifter. He died and came back to life several more times. Then the dynasty fell, and he vanished amid the flames of war.”

Yun Jianyue rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “So the man in that story gained the ability to come back from the dead, and Zhou Benxin may have gained the same ability?”

Zhou Benxin couldn’t help rolling his eyes. “What are you saying? I’m immortal now? And how are we supposed to confirm that? Kill me again and see what happens?”

This was only a theory Fang Lin’an and Yun Jianyue had come up with. If they actually killed Zhou Benxin and it turned out he wasn’t immortal, the two of them would become murderers.

A fourth person’s voice suddenly rang out inside the room.
“Try it.”

Yun Jianyue shot up from her stool. Her reaction was fast, but not fast enough to beat the Evil God.

The Evil God casually snapped his fingers. An invisible, crushing force instantly twisted Zhou Benxin’s neck until it broke.

The crack of bone rang crisp and clear. So did Yun Jianyue’s slap.

“Smack!”

Mo Chen’s handsome face snapped to the right. Yun Jianyue glared at him, eyes blazing with fury. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

With an Evil God suddenly appearing in the room, Fang Lin’an and Lu Changxue were both trembling. The man and the ghost were furious that Mo Chen had killed Zhou Benxin, but neither dared to be as bold as Yun Jianyue.

Mo Chen’s pitch-black eyes slid toward her, his voice ominously low. “Do you have a death wish?”

“Come on, then. Try me.” Yun Jianyue stared him down without yielding a single step.

They locked eyes for a long moment. At last, Mo Chen gave an inscrutable chuckle. “Someone died, that’s all. Why are you getting so worked up?”

Yun Jianyue raised her chainsaw and swung it at him without the slightest hesitation.

“I’m only going to hack you to death. I hope you won’t get too worked up either.”

Yun Jianyue was fast, but Mo Chen was faster. He merely raised a hand, and the overwhelming Evil God’s Power disabled the chainsaw with ease.

Even with the chain no longer moving, the saw still came crashing toward him. Yet Mo Chen caught it effortlessly between two fingers.

Fang Lin’an’s scalp went numb. Yun Jianyue could kick a burly man weighing nearly two hundred pounds several yards through the air, yet Mo Chen had stopped her full-force blow as if it were nothing.

And with only two fingers. That was downright humiliating!

Yun Jianyue released the chainsaw without hesitation and drove a vicious left hook at Mo Chen’s devastatingly handsome face.

Mo Chen raised one hand, his broad palm enveloping her fist. No matter how hard she pushed, she could not move another inch closer.

“You humans are so amusing,” Mo Chen said with an ambiguous sneer.

He could not understand why Yun Jianyue was so furious. When the human named Zhou Benxin died the first time, she had not shed a single tear.

If she were truly grieving, humans were supposed to cry, weren’t they?

So Yun Jianyue clearly wasn’t sad. Why, then, was she so angry now?

Yun Jianyue thrust her knee toward his groin. She knew more than her fair share of dirty tricks.

As though he had anticipated it, Mo Chen moved in a flash, darting behind her. He twisted her arm behind her back, forcing her to bend over.

“Still won’t give up?” Mo Chen gazed at the back of Yun Jianyue’s head with interest. He had just noticed that her hair was rather long.

It was not as long as his had once been, but it still reached her shoulders.

The Evil God’s Power spilled from Mo Chen and coalesced in midair into an incorporeal pair of scissors, which slowly approached Yun Jianyue’s head.

Lu Changxue no longer cared how frightened she was. She launched herself at Mo Chen, desperate to save Yun Jianyue. “Don’t kill my Darling!”

Before she could reach him, a tremendous force hurled her away. She slammed heavily into the floor.

As a ghost, she could not feel pain, but the innate suppression forced her to lie there trembling uncontrollably.

What the hell was this guy? He was absurdly overpowered!

Seeing Yun Jianyue remain silent, Mo Chen asked curiously, “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Would you let me go if I were?” Yun Jianyue shot back.

Mo Chen chuckled. “Of course not.”

Under his control, the scissors slowly opened, then snapped viciously toward Yun Jianyue!