Chapter 83

Chapter 83

Xiao Mao and his wife listened to Li Miao’s instructions, nodding repeatedly and thanking him.

At midnight that night, Xiao Mao and the relatives who had come to help brought a set of clothes Xiao Sheng had worn, his favorite toy, and a handful of earth from the threshold. Following Li Miao’s instructions, they handed everything to him.

“All right. Wait here for me. I’ll be back within an hour at most.”

With that, Li Miao boarded his small wooden boat and rowed toward the middle of the river.

Under the watchful eyes of Xiao Mao and the others, his lean figure soon vanished into the black night.

A thin white mist drifted over the river, like a gauzy veil spread across the water at midnight.

A wooden pole stood at the bow of Li Miao’s boat. Hanging from it was a gently swaying kerosene lamp with an open-topped, gourd-shaped glass cover.

This was the rule for nighttime travel on the Chuan River: erect a pole at the bow and hang an oil lamp from it.

A large battery lantern hung beside it. In the countryside of Sichuan and Chongqing, people called this square rechargeable flashlight a “battery.” It had nothing to do with the batteries used in electric vehicles.

The lantern provided stronger illumination. Retrieving a corpse by the light of a single oil lamp would have been far too difficult.

As soon as Li Miao’s little corpse-retrieval boat reached midstream, the light from the oil lamp and battery lantern revealed numerous bodies bobbing in the water around him.

They were invisible during the day. By late at night, most had risen from the riverbed.

Male and female, old and young, the corpses drifted in the current. The sight was eerie enough to terrify an ordinary person out of his wits.

But Li Miao was a corpse retriever and had long grown accustomed to it. Calmly, he threaded his way among the floating corpses toward the eastern side of the river bend.

Now and then, a corpse abruptly floated against the current toward his boat. Each time, he thrust his bamboo pole at it from a distance and fixed it with a steely gaze.

“Your family didn’t hire me to retrieve you, so I have no duty to take you ashore. Move along, or I won’t be so polite.”

The floating corpse would then slowly drift away.

Before long, the boat reached the eastern bank.

The current slowed here, where the river turned at nearly a right angle. Corpses, debris, and all manner of other things accumulated in this spot.

All Li Miao needed to do was find the body of Xiao Sheng and return it to his parents.

Xiao Mao and his wife were decent, generous people, and Xiao Sheng’s drowning had been a pure accident. Li Miao considered the job extremely simple.

“Little one, your uncle is here to bring you out for your parents. Be good and don’t cause any trouble.”

Murmuring to himself, Li Miao stuffed the threshold earth into a pocket of Xiao Sheng’s clothes. Then he wrapped the clothing around the child’s favorite toy, a stuffed tiger, and threw the bundle into the water.

Both the clothes and the cloth tiger were highly buoyant. Even with the handful of earth inside, they floated on the river.

“Xiao Sheng, come out. Xiao Sheng, come out… Let your soul return to its place and your body rise from the water. Come back!”

Li Miao called in a shrill voice across the mist-covered river.

The next instant, the clothes floating on the surface suddenly plunged, as if an invisible hand had yanked them violently underwater. They vanished from sight.

At this, Li Miao knew the rite had probably succeeded.

Sure enough, about half a minute later, the body of a little boy, its skin bleached white by the water, slowly surfaced less than three meters from the boat.

It floated faceup, eyes tightly shut.

The boy had supposedly drowned nearly half a month ago. Yet his body remained perfectly intact. Apart from deathly pale skin and slight swelling, it showed no other changes.

The relaxed expression vanished from Li Miao’s face, and his gaze grew grave.

Under normal circumstances, a body submerged for that long should have been horribly bloated and its skin badly damaged, even if fish and shrimp had not eaten it and a breath of corpse qi had kept it from rotting away entirely. Its features should have been nearly unrecognizable.

The condition of this child corpse defied common sense.

Could it have transformed?

Li Miao did not rush to haul it aboard. Instead, he examined it closely.

As a test, he scattered a handful of rice aged for more than five years over the child corpse and the surrounding water. Nothing happened.

“That means it hasn’t transformed or become a baleful entity. Fine. Perhaps its corpse qi never dispersed, and some unusual circumstance preserved it better than normal.”

Reassured, Li Miao took a long hook from the cabin, fitted it to the end of his bamboo pole, and drew the child corpse toward him.

Thud!

The corpse struck the side of the boat with a muffled sound.

Li Miao picked up a hemp rope threaded through with strands of black dog hair.

Black dog hair warded off evil. Braided into hemp rope, it could suppress a corpse.
This was another secret art passed down among corpse retrievers since ancient times. Its principle somewhat resembled the coffin bearers’ phoenix rope.

Li Miao flicked his arm.

The black-dog-hair rope twisted around the child corpse’s waist like a nimble snake, pulling it from the water and into the cabin.

Li Miao covered it with a piece of white cloth he had prepared and spoke softly.

“If you’d lived to grow up, you might have enjoyed a rich and happy life. Sadly, that wasn’t your fate in this lifetime. Don’t let resentment take hold. Reincarnate peacefully, and perhaps your next life will be better.”

He said this partly to soothe the child, though it might also have been true.

Once everything was settled, Li Miao rowed slowly back.

After reaching shore, he lifted Xiao Sheng’s cloth-wrapped body and jumped out of the boat.

“Where is the coffin I told you to prepare?” he asked solemnly.

Xiao Mao and his wife stared at the child corpse wrapped in white cloth, devastated and sobbing too hard to speak.

One of their relatives hurried forward. “Mr. Li, it’s here! Right over here!”

He led Li Miao to a fine little coffin nearby, perfectly sized for a five- or six-year-old child.

Li Miao placed the child corpse inside, removed the white cloth covering it, and turned around.

“Mr. and Mrs. Xiao, come take one last look. Then we must close the coffin, carry it home, and find a coffin bearer to make the arrangements.”

At those words, Mrs. Xiao could contain herself no longer. She rushed forward, collapsed over the coffin, and wailed.

“My baby, what a horrible death you suffered! Why couldn’t you listen? Why did you sneak away to play in the water? Oh, my baby…”

Xiao Mao wiped away his own tears, gazing at his son in the coffin with deep self-reproach.

Li Miao remained relatively composed. It was not that he was heartless. As a corpse retriever, he had simply witnessed scenes like this too many times.

Retrieving a victim’s remains and returning them to the family was the greatest mercy he could offer.

“Mr. Xiao, if there is nothing else, I’ll be going.”

Once Li Miao confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the child corpse, his task was complete and he prepared to leave.

As for payment, reputable corpse retrievers like him were paid in advance. The Xiao family had already paid the full fee of two thousand yuan.

“Thank you, Mr. Li. Thank you. Fourth Brother, prepare another red envelope for Mr. Li.”

Xiao Mao gave the instruction to his fourth younger brother, but Li Miao refused.

Corpse retrievers had rules of their own. They charged a stated price and took nothing more.

But just as he turned to row his boat home–

Bang!

A noise came from inside the coffin.

Mrs. Xiao cried out immediately afterward.

“My baby moved! He’s–he’s still alive!”

What?!

Li Miao’s heart clenched. He spun around and strode quickly toward the coffin.

“Everyone, stand back.”

He shoved Xiao Mao and his wife aside and ordered everyone away from the coffin.

Xiao Sheng had drowned nearly half a month ago. His body had been submerged all that time. How could he possibly be alive?

If the corpse was moving, it had definitely transformed.

Yet apart from its unusual lack of decay, none of the other signs suggested a transformation.

Li Miao stared at the little boy in the coffin, utterly perplexed.

Without warning, the child corpse’s eyes snapped open and it sat bolt upright.

The surrounding members of the Xiao family stumbled back several steps in fright. The more timid among them screamed outright, their legs trembling.

Only Xiao Mao and his wife reacted differently. They too recoiled instinctively at first, but grief outweighed their fear when they saw their son sit up in his coffin.

This is bad. It really did transform!

Li Miao watched the wide-eyed child corpse warily, his right hand tightening around the black-dog-hair rope coiled at his waist.

Corpse retrievers did not possess many methods for dealing with corpse-fiends, but their methods were far from weak. A man of Li Miao’s ability was confident that an ordinary child corpse would pose little difficulty.

What he never expected was that after sitting up, Xiao Sheng’s corpse did not attack.

It spoke.

“Daddy, Mommy, where are we? What are you doing? Why won’t you come hug me?”

What in the world was happening?

Even the experienced Li Miao froze in shock.

How could a corpse speak like a human being?

According to legend, a Corpse King, an existence beyond even a baleful corpse, might be capable of human speech. Such beings had absorbed the essence of heaven and earth and transformed their bodies anew.

But no matter how Li Miao examined this child corpse, it could not possibly be at the level of a Corpse King.

He could sense that it might not even qualify as a vicious corpse. At most, it was a somewhat stronger walking corpse.

If he hardened his heart and destroyed it, that should not be too difficult… right?
But regardless, why could it speak? Why had it retained all of its memories and mannerisms from life?

Li Miao could not make sense of it, and for the moment, he dared not attack rashly.

It was too bizarre.

Dead silence descended around them.

While everyone else stood mute, Xiao Sheng, sitting in the coffin, began to cry out.

“Daddy, Mommy, are you angry with me? I’m sorry! I promise I’ll never disobey you or sneak away to play by the river again. Please don’t be mad. Come hug me!”

The child corpse began to sob, wiping its tears with an aggrieved little hand.

But the drops rolling from its eyes were tears of blood.

It seemed completely unaware of this and truly resembled a wounded child who believed its parents no longer loved it.

Mrs. Xiao could no longer restrain herself.

The instant her husband let his guard down, she tore free of his grasp and rushed forward, crying as she ran.

“My baby! My baby! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Mommy didn’t watch you. If you really are a ghost, then take Mommy with you!”

Xiao Mao and the rest of the Xiao family were at a loss.

Li Miao silently cursed and spun around to stop her. But a woman in such a state possessed astonishing strength. Before he could prepare himself, she slammed into him and sent him staggering back several steps, nearly knocking him over.

Mrs. Xiao reached the coffin and flung her arms around the sobbing Xiao Sheng.

Only one thought remained in Li Miao’s mind.

It’s over. That foolish woman is going to be killed by the corpse-fiend.

What happened next astonished him yet again.

The child corpse, still weeping blood, threw its arms around its mother in return. It stopped crying, pouted unhappily, and mumbled, “Mommy, I want to go home. It’s so dark here. I’m scared.”

If one did not know that it had drowned nearly half a month ago, one would have taken it for a living child.

Xiao Sheng’s vivid expressions and tone were beyond anything even a Corpse King should have been capable of.

Strange. Far too strange.

Li Miao had retrieved corpses for over a decade and had never brought up anything so uncanny or unnatural. For the moment, he had no idea how to respond.

Mrs. Xiao lifted the child corpse from the coffin and cradled it as she had when Xiao Sheng was alive.

“Come on, baby,” she whispered. “Let’s go home.”

Only then did Xiao Mao recover from his daze. He looked anxiously at Li Miao.

“Mr. Li, what should we…?”

Li Miao came to his senses, hurried several steps forward, and blocked mother and child.

“Mrs. Xiao,” he said in a low, grave voice, “you understand your son’s condition better than anyone.”

Mrs. Xiao was no fool. On the contrary, she was a university graduate and Xiao Mao’s capable partner. Together, they had built their traditional livestock farm into a thriving business. For that era, she could rightly be called a strong career woman.

Hesitation flickered across her face at Li Miao’s words.

How could she not know that her son had drowned more than ten days ago?

“Mommy, why aren’t we going? And Daddy, why won’t you come over?”

Xiao Sheng’s childish voice now carried an eerie undertone.

“I…”

Xiao Mao faltered, not knowing how to answer his son.

Mrs. Xiao clenched her teeth. “Mr. Li, I know Shengsheng’s condition. But whatever he is, he can speak normally, so he’s my son. I’m taking him home!”

“No!”

Li Miao stood in her way, his tone severe. “Your son has become a corpse-fiend. No matter how human it appears, it is still a corpse-fiend. You cannot take it home.”

“But he hasn’t hurt anyone!”

“Just because it hasn’t hurt anyone yet doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. It may be an immensely powerful evil being, and this entire appearance could be a disguise. Whatever the truth, you absolutely cannot take it home.”

Li Miao’s position was unyielding.

Strictly speaking, one could argue that this was a family matter. But as a corpse retriever faced with so bizarre and unnatural a corpse-fiend, he could not simply stand aside and allow it to leave.

Seeing his attitude, the other members of the Xiao family chimed in.

“He’s right, Sister-in-law. Little Sheng is… that now. He isn’t alive. You can’t bring him home.”

“Sister-in-law, listen to Mr. Li. Let him handle this.”

“Eldest Daughter-in-law, this is unnatural. You can’t let it cross the threshold of the Xiao family home.”

The child corpse in Mrs. Xiao’s arms did not seem to understand their words. It had no idea why its normally kind uncles had suddenly become so fierce.

Frightened, it burrowed deeper into its mother’s embrace and asked whether it had been naughty and disobedient, and whether that was why no one liked it anymore.

The scene was strange beyond description.