Chapter 248
Chapter 248
In the underground ancestral hall, lit only by their phones, several Tooth Corpses sat on wooden lotus pedestals atop the Altar Table that had once held memorial tablets.
After being electrocuted by the Thunderbird, the teeth growing all over their bodies showed little visible change. However, wisps of foul-smelling blue smoke rose from the gaps between the teeth. The flesh underneath had been cooked medium-well.
A nauseating stench filled the ancestral hall.
Ever since the Wet Nurse had gotten close to him and he had taken the ashes from the black jar, Xie Shao had been drowsy and out of sorts.
The acrid smoke made him dry-heave several times, but it also cleared his head a little.
“Don’t leave me behind.” As he spoke, he pinched his own face hard.
It wasn’t some dainty little pinch for show. He genuinely intended to use the pain to keep himself awake.
His thick fingers clamped onto the flesh of his cheek, pulled it up, and gave it a vicious twist.
His face was covered in black bristles, making it impossible to see the color of his skin, but the pinched spot visibly swelled at once.
Beside him, Qin Ying was prodding a Tooth Corpse with the toe of her shoe. Her right eyelid twitched as she watched.
Xie Shao’s pinch certainly worked. His tear-filled eyes immediately grew much clearer.
Only then did he look around as though finally waking from a dream.
When he saw the Tooth Corpse Han Lie had slammed to death on the floor, the tusks protruding from Xie Shao’s lips quivered slightly. “Why does this thing look so disgusting?”
He crouched down for a closer look.
Most of the teeth on the Tooth Corpse lying on the floor had been knocked out, and fresh blood seeped from the exposed sockets.
Even though Xie Shao didn’t have trypophobia, the sight still disgusted him so badly that a chill ran down his spine. At least it cleared his head further.
As his mind sharpened, the intelligence that had briefly deserted him returned as well. “The Hu Family uses corpses to cultivate Ancient Corpse Teeth?”
“Just to make money from dental work?” He and Qin Ying had reached the same conclusion.
Han Lie had been examining the Tooth Corpse on the floor the entire time. Only after Xie Shao came over did he rise to his feet.
He stepped between Qin Ying and Xie Shao, keeping them apart.
He had to make sure Xie Shao, who had once been controlled by an evil entity, couldn’t get close to Qin Ying.
“It isn’t just about money.” Qin Ying had figured it out now as well.
She said, “In Ancient Corpse Teeth buried deep underground, the dental pulp has carbonized and decayed, leaving only the enamel and dentin.”
“But after being treated with the Hu Family’s secret art, the teeth are reactivated and their pulp regenerates.”
“This involves complex processes such as the directed differentiation of stem cells and the reconstruction of vascular networks, problems that even modern medicine can’t solve.”
“What if this technology were applied to other parts of the human body?”
“Regenerating severed limbs? Regenerating the brain?”
As Qin Ying continued, a fine sheen of sweat formed on Xie Shao’s forehead.
His Monstrous Beast Transformation into a Dang Kang hadn’t literally turned his brain into a pig’s.
The possibilities Qin Ying described gave him goosebumps the moment he considered them.
“If it really could be applied to other parts of the human body…” Xie Shao swallowed. “Then couldn’t someone use slices of Einstein’s brain to regenerate a brand-new superbrain?”
“Or keep a brain active, choose a corpse, transplant the brain into it, and reactivate the body to achieve immortality?”
“Whenever one part wore out, you could simply regenerate it from its cells?”
Xie Shao wiped his face, having thoroughly frightened himself.
Han Lie didn’t know who Einstein was, but he knew that everything Xie Shao had described was entirely possible.
Qin Ying stared expressionlessly at the Tooth Corpse on the floor and delivered a cold conclusion. “If the inevitability and irreversibility of death were overturned, just how rotten would this world become?”
By then, everyone on the streets would be nothing more than spare bodies for the privileged.
As soon as she finished speaking, Xie Shao’s expression grew even uglier.
Han Lie said from beside them, “It is likely some ancient art of immortality.”
He paused, hesitating for a moment. “And then there are the corpses outside.”
The bodies of ordinary soldiers had been bound together to form walls, while the corpses of the generals had each been placed in a separate black jar.
Han Lie continued, “If this art truly succeeds, the corpses outside will become a living army.”
“With an army that can come back to life, the Hu Family could accomplish a great deal.”
He was all but saying outright that the skeletons outside might all be reserve forces for the Hu Family.
His words left both Xie Shao and Qin Ying silent.
Xie Shao sucked in a sharp breath.
Qin Ying lowered her lashes, thinking of the mysterious No. 3 Agent at the Cultural Preservation Bureau, the one that had caused someone to shed an entire layer of skin.
She crouched down and asked Han Lie for a piece of cloth, then collected two broken teeth from the Tooth Corpse.
Next, she used the short knife Di Shang had transformed into to carve out a piece of its tooth socket.
She handled the entire process much as she would prepare ingredients for cooking.
Qin Ying silently thanked herself for being a decent cook.
Watching from the side, Xie Shao’s eyelids twitched. “Fine knife. Fine knife work!”
Without looking up, she replied, “Thanks for the compliment.”
She handed the teeth and crimson flesh to Han Lie for safekeeping, along with the wooden token that had fallen from the Wet Nurse’s corpse.
The weapon Di Shang had transformed into was incomparably sharp, making this kind of work remarkably easy.
“Let’s keep going,” she said.
Xie Shao looked from side to side before stepping forward. “I’ll take point.”
“That way, if I go crazy again like I did just now, you’ll notice right away.”
He said it without the slightest evasion, rolling his shoulders until his joints cracked and popped.
Qin Ying followed behind him with the Thunderbird, while Han Lie stayed half a step behind her.
The Hu Family Manor covered an enormous area, and there was a local story about it whose truth no one could verify.
According to the story, an expert had instructed the Hu Family to build exactly one hundred rooms in their home.
Yet when the Cultural Relics Bureau later restored the manor, they found that no matter how they counted, there were only ninety-nine rooms.
At last, they discovered a tiny passage built of bluestone in the ancestral hall.
The purpose of that passage had been hotly debated. Some believed it was a warding chamber designed to repel baleful forces.
Others argued that the ancient city had a tradition of keeping cats and dogs to control its rat population, and that the passage had been built for those animals.
It would allow cats and dogs to enter and leave to hunt rats even when the ancestral hall’s main doors were closed.
In the end, the arguments never produced a definitive answer, but everyone agreed on one thing: that passage was the hundredth room of the Hu Family Manor.
Now, however, it seemed this underground replica of the ancestral hall was the true Room No. 100.
Of the three of them, both Qin Ying and Xie Shao had visited the Hu Family Manor before. Xie Shao carefully scouted the way ahead while Qin Ying walked in the middle, comparing the details here with those of the Hu Family Ancestral Hall.
Suddenly, that deeply unpleasant sensation returned.
It was the Wet Nurse.
“Be careful,” she warned.
As soon as the words left her mouth, she followed the disturbing presence to its source.
At the entrance to the narrow passage encircling the Hu Family Ancestral Hall, filthy strands of black hair lurked within the darkness.
The Wet Nurse’s tooth-covered face nestled among the black strands.
The thing was actually peering at them from inside a passage no wider than a sheet of A4 paper.
Qin Ying had no idea whether it possessed human intelligence or what sinister plan it might be hatching. The instant she spotted it, she raised Di Shang.
Han Lie rarely spoke, but he had been watching Qin Ying’s every movement.
Almost the moment she reacted, he followed her gaze toward the narrow bluestone passage in the ancestral hall.
He couldn’t see the Wet Nurse, but that did nothing to stop him from attacking.
He tore open the cut in his palm and snapped his hand, flinging out a spray of blood. At the same time, the toe of his shoe flicked several broken teeth off the ground.
The blood and pointed teeth flew toward the invisible Wet Nurse inside the passage.
Tap, tap.
The pointed teeth missed, ricocheting several times through the bluestone passage. Many shattered or snapped from the impacts.
But the droplets of blood Han Lie had flung out landed squarely on the spying Wet Nurse’s face.
To an evil entity, the touch of hot Qilin blood was like contact with burning coals.
The tooth-filled holes across the Wet Nurse’s face writhed. Then Qin Ying watched it slither backward like a snake, retreating into the darkness.