Chapter 85
Chapter 85
I sniffed and frowned.
“The smell of river water is mixed with corpse qi. It’s definitely a corpse-fiend.”
Corpse-fiends that came from water were considerably more powerful than those buried in earth.
That was why Wang Fei had become so troublesome after transforming into a vicious water revenant and killing his own parents.
People said ignorance made a person fearless.
Only now that I had entered the esoteric world and learned some magic did I understand how terrifying Wang Fei’s transformation had been.
If a mysterious expert like Master had not happened to live in our village at the time, we truly would have been doomed.
Even Old Cao, Yuan Fei, Li Miao, Big Bull, and my present self combined could not have defeated Wang Fei as he was then.
The aura I smelled now, however, was no stronger than that of a walking corpse.
Everything Li Miao had judged and told us appeared accurate.
He deserved his reputation as the most famous corpse retriever for dozens of li.
Old Cao said, “Xiao Wu, switch on both battery lanterns. Give us more light.”
“All right.”
I immediately turned on the two high-powered battery lanterns I carried and placed them on a wooden table nearby.
The dark cellar brightened at once.
In one corner sat a rather adorable little boy with black-dog-hair rope wound around his waist and wrists.
His skin was deathly pale and swollen, his eyes blood-red, and obvious patches of death covered the backs of his hands and his neck.
He was unquestionably a corpse-fiend.
The light from the two lanterns made him uncomfortable. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, then asked Li Miao in a childish voice, “Uncle, why didn’t Daddy and Mommy come?”
The question caught Li Miao off guard. Not knowing how to answer, he looked at Old Cao.
He probably thought that an older man who had encountered more strange, sinister events would possess greater experience.
Old Cao stepped forward with his hands clasped behind his back and answered warmly.
“Little one, it isn’t light outside yet. Your parents are sleeping. You don’t want to disturb them, do you?”
“Oh, I see.”
The child corpse nodded hard, then asked in confusion, “Grandpa, why did you and this big brother come?”
Old Cao continued calmly, “You fell into the water and caught a chill, so you must be sick. We came to treat you.”
As he spoke, the hand behind his back crooked a finger, signaling Li Miao and me to approach.
The three of us stood in a triangle around the child corpse.
I set down the food containers I carried and first took out the serving of cooked food.
I placed it on the little table before him.
“Little one, these are all foods you like, aren’t they? Are you hungry? Eat a little.”
I spoke as gently as I could, using a tone meant to coax a child.
The child corpse rubbed his belly with one little hand and looked embarrassed.
“I think I’m a little hungry. Thank you, big brother.”
He opened the food container.
Inside were three dishes and a soup: twice-cooked pork, fish-fragrant shredded pork, steamed pork belly with preserved vegetables, and sliced pork with cucumber soup.
The child corpse stared blankly at the meal, a peculiar expression appearing on his little face.
All three of us watched him.
He pouted. “Big brother, this food looks awful.”
“Try some first.”
Obediently, he picked up a piece of twice-cooked pork and placed it in his mouth.
The next instant, he spat it out violently.
“Ptooey! Ptooey! It tastes terrible. It’s rotten! Big brother, did you bring the wrong food?”
Just as I expected.
I pushed the other container toward him and opened the lid.
Inside lay a slab of raw pork belly and freshly cut strips of meat.
The child corpse’s eyes brightened.
He grabbed the raw pork belly and began gnawing it.
I could see that his teeth had become somewhat sharp, no longer resembling those of a living person.
Crunch, crunch…
The sound of the child corpse chewing raw pork echoed throughout the cellar.
Pig’s blood ran from the corners of his mouth. Unconcerned, he wiped it away with the back of one hand.
Now and then, he looked up and smiled at me.
“Delicious,” he mumbled through the meat. “I love twice-cooked pork best. Thank you, big brother.”
Li Miao, Old Cao, and I all looked grave.
Old Cao turned to me. “Xiao Wu, did you already guess that the child corpse would eat raw food?”
I nodded. “He isn’t alive anymore. It’s normal for a corpse-fiend to eat raw meat. But judging by his behavior, he doesn’t realize the difference. His basic perception may have changed too. It’s certainly very strange.”
“Exactly!”
Li Miao nodded and looked at me with considerable admiration.
“A hero truly can emerge in youth. When Coffin-Bearer Cao said you were formidable, I didn’t entirely believe him. Now I see that every one of your guesses was correct.”
“In this child corpse’s awareness, he doesn’t believe himself dead. He thinks he’s still alive. But in reality, he died more than ten days ago and his body became a corpse-fiend. Some of his perceptions have already changed.”
Wait!
Li Miao’s words suddenly awakened something in me.
At last, I grasped the memory that had remained vague until now.
Alive. Corpse-fiend…
Understanding dawned, and I slapped my forehead.
“I remember! I finally remember!”
I stared at Xiao Sheng, who continued gnawing the raw pork belly with his head lowered.
“Not long ago, while Master and I were chatting, she mentioned an extremely rare type of corpse-fiend called a living corpse.”
“A living corpse?”
Old Cao and Li Miao stared.
The name alone offered some idea of its meaning.
I continued explaining.
A living corpse was exactly what the term suggested: a corpse that was alive.
A person’s body and soul were closely united, yet in a certain sense, they also possessed some independence.
After death, the three hun souls and seven po souls began to disperse while the body decayed. Both vanished together.
If an accident disrupted that process, the deceased became an evil being.
A transformation centered on the soul generally produced a ghost.
A transformation centered on the body generally produced a corpse-fiend.
Of course, people sometimes used the word “ghost” as a general term for every evil being that originated from a human.
But another, exceptionally unusual condition existed.
The body could transform into a corpse-fiend while the soul failed to disperse.
It might even retain all three hun souls and seven po souls, remaining inside the already decaying and altered body.
For some special reason, the deceased person’s memory and thought also became distorted, making him believe he had never died.
This condition was called a living corpse.
My explanation helped Old Cao and Li Miao understand.
Li Miao frowned. “So, Young Mr. Wu, according to your master, this child corpse Xiao Sheng still possesses a complete soul?”
I answered hesitantly. “Master only mentioned it in passing while we discussed different evil beings and monsters. But I think that’s what she meant.”
Li Miao looked at Xiao Sheng, whose hands and face were smeared with blood, and frowned more deeply.
“If all three hun souls and seven po souls are intact, then from that perspective, shouldn’t he count as living?”
Old Cao shook his head with absolute certainty.
“Of course not. According to legend, some powerful ghosts begin cultivating with incomplete souls. At the peak of their power, they restore all three hun souls and seven po souls and become beings like Ghost Kings. Their souls are complete too. Does that make them human?”
Li Miao nodded. “That’s true.”
Old Cao continued, “As Xiao Wu said, the body and soul possess a degree of independence, but they are also closely linked. In the living, body and soul cannot be separated. Unless someone has attained profound cultivation, a serious problem with either side means an ordinary person can be considered dead. Besides, a complete soul may still have undergone other changes.”
I strongly agreed.
Complete and normal were two different things.
Xiao Sheng’s physical body had obviously become a corpse-fiend. His entire soul might remain within it, but some kind of mutation had probably occurred there as well.
I said softly, “We still need to examine his soul with some method before deciding anything.”
“Agreed.”
Old Cao and Li Miao both nodded.
As a corpse retriever, Li Miao dealt mainly with floating corpses in the water and had few methods involving souls.
Naturally, Old Cao and I would make the attempt.
Old Cao took out his scissors and a stack of spirit money. On the spot, he cut one sheet into the shape of a plum blossom.
He explained, “This is called a Soul-Probing Coin. It can determine whether a person’s soul is complete and normal.”
He tossed it forward.
The plum-blossom-shaped spirit money drifted through the air toward the child corpse.
It stopped three feet above his head and began burning without a sound.
Strangely, burning paper normally produced heat.
But the Soul-Probing Coin released none at all. Its flame felt icy cold, creating a deeply unnatural sight.
The spirit money soon burned completely.
Its ashes remained suspended instead of scattering. Several seconds later, they divided into ten small clusters and flew back toward Old Cao.
He opened his broad, calloused palm.
The ashes settled into it, and he studied them carefully.
After watching for some time, he frowned and spoke in a very peculiar tone.
“The three hun souls and seven po souls of this little corpse-fiend are far too strange.”
My heart jumped, and I hurriedly asked what was strange about them.
Li Miao listened with equal curiosity.
Old Cao explained that the child corpse’s three hun souls and seven po souls were indeed complete.
But they were also extremely powerful.
Unnaturally powerful.
Judging by both Xiao Sheng’s bazi and his present condition, his soul should not have possessed such strength.
Something unusual had definitely happened.
Old Cao guessed that precisely because Xiao Sheng’s soul had not dispersed and was abnormally powerful, it remained firmly lodged inside his body.
Xiao Sheng may also have lived a very happy life and found the fact of his death impossible to accept subconsciously.
Those factors combined to turn him into a living corpse–the condition we saw before us.
After considering this, Li Miao said, “Coffin-Bearer Cao, Young Mr. Wu, we now understand part of the child corpse’s condition. But whatever else may be true, how should we handle him?”
Exactly.
That was the truly difficult problem.
Even if we understood that he currently existed as a living corpse, the important question was what to do with him.
Should we let him continue “living” while confined in the cellar?
That hardly seemed appropriate.
None of us had experience with such a condition. We did not know what might happen if we let him persist.
If he eventually became a vicious corpse or even advanced into a baleful entity, we would face terrible trouble.
But what if we destroyed him immediately?
All three hun souls and seven po souls remained intact.
Destroying him would amount to forcibly scattering the complete soul of a living being.
Setting aside whether the act was excessively cruel or morally wrong, it carried a more immediate danger.
Such an action had a great chance of creating enormous karmic debt.
It could cause trouble during one’s future cultivation or even after death.
A rogue occultist would not fear that. Such a person might even feel proud of destroying a living being’s complete soul.
But righteous cultivators feared becoming entangled in such things more than almost anything else.
All three of us followed the righteous path.
None dared attack a complete soul directly.
And so we reached another impasse.
The affair truly was troublesome.
The three of us fell silent and watched Xiao Sheng continue eating.
I racked my brain and carefully searched my memory of everything Master had said, hoping to find useful information.
And I truly remembered something.
I slapped my forehead in delight.
“I remember now. Master seemed to mention that under ordinary circumstances, a living corpse almost never forms naturally. Some external factor must catalyze the change. In other words, Xiao Sheng simply refusing to admit his death wouldn’t be enough. Something else must be helping him.”
“I see!”
Understanding appeared on Old Cao’s face as well, and he slapped his thigh.
“That explains everything. This child corpse’s three hun souls and seven po souls are far too powerful for their natural state. While drowning, or perhaps afterward, he may have accidentally encountered something capable of strengthening the soul. Only then could his soul have become powerful enough to remain in the body.”
That made sense.
Li Miao and I both considered Old Cao’s theory extremely likely.
I said, “Then we need to inspect the stretch of water from where Xiao Sheng drowned to where his corpse was discovered. Perhaps we’ll find a clue there.”
Old Cao looked helpless.
He patted Li Miao on the shoulder.
“Young Brother Li, I thought this would be a simple job. Never did I imagine it would become so complicated. The boy is a living corpse and exceptionally difficult to handle. Now we must search the river for the cause as well.”
Li Miao looked equally exasperated.
“Coffin-Bearer Cao, I’m helpless too. Besides, I’m the one who will do most of the work when we search the river.”