Corpse Retriever

Tan Wenbin walked over, crouched down, and looked at Little Yuanhou’s already reddened eyes.

Then he picked up the thick stack of finished drawings from the ground.

He did not care whether interrupting now might break Little Yuanhou’s train of thought. He said, “Little Yuanhou?”

Without even lifting his head, Li Zhuiyuan kept drawing as he replied, “Talk.”

“The workload’s pretty heavy. We could probably mobilize the ghosts and dead people here.”

Li Zhuiyuan looked up at Tan Wenbin. “How?”

“I acknowledged a godfather here. He’s basically the highest-ranking chief eunuch on the palace side, so I can ask him to organize the ghosts to help...” Tan Wenbin then smoothly explained to Little Yuanhou how he had come into contact with that chief eunuch.

“That works. Go do it. We need to move fast.”

“Alright, I’ll go talk to Godfather now.”

Tan Wenbin went off to find the chief eunuch. By now, calling him “Godfather” rolled right off his tongue.When it mattered, the old guy could help you, had left you gold, silver, jewels, and was nearly two thousand years older than you. What was wrong with calling him “Godfather”? Not a loss at all.

Li Zhuiyuan finished the drawings, and from there, the entire project entered the phase of ghost-only construction.

Ghosts without physical form could not touch the real world, but they could lead the way, point out directions, and hold mechanisms in place so they could be dismantled more easily.

As for the eight corpse retriever teams, they could serve as porters. They were dead people, but they had physical bodies.

In short, the work proceeded very efficiently.

Even after finishing the drawings, Li Zhuiyuan still could not rest. The delicate parts of the formation still had to be laid out by his own hand.

Fortunately, the original formation had only been damaged and tampered with. Its overall framework still remained. Since they were merely patching it up and had no intention of using it long-term, the construction time could be shortened even further.

Lihua tossed the child into the fist-shaped hole in the stone gate steps. Even with only one hand left, she still worked with terrifying speed and ferocity.

In that regard, she was exactly like those strong mothers in the ordinary world who had no choice but to leave their children back home while they went out to earn tuition and living expenses for them.

Xiong Shan wanted to join in too, but Li Zhuiyuan ordered him to rest.

The time when he would be needed was later.

There was no helping it. If it had been any other method, Xiong Shan could have simply shown the boy that damaged scroll. Li Zhuiyuan would have learned it after reading it once or twice at most, and then could have helped share the burden of weaving the straw corpse retrievers.

But unfortunately, Li Zhuiyuan had no natural aptitude at all when it came to talismans.

If anyone else on the team wanted to learn the Chenzhou talismans, it would likely take years, and even that would already count as astonishing progress.

When Li Zhuiyuan inserted the formation flags that would temporarily serve as the formation core into place, the Dragon-Eye Locking Gate Formation was finally complete.

This formation would directly connect to the power of the lake’s tides. It would no longer be a single eye, but a pair of eyes; no longer ghostly, but dragon eyes.

Li Zhuiyuan even felt he ought to thank those people from the three families. Through “Old Second and Old Third,” they had brought in a huge amount of specially made corpse oil and drained this place’s reserves dry.

Otherwise, just crippling the old formation alone would have taken a very long time.

Still, that sort of gratitude was not something suitable to say aloud. It would only upset Xiong Shan and his wife, even if they would not show it now.

Once the work was done, Li Zhuiyuan’s entire field of vision had turned red.

He was already at the edge of total exhaustion. If he did not want to spend another stretch of time blind, then from now on he had to avoid using his brain as much as possible.

Next came the task of transporting those Unseeables out through the stone gate one by one and placing them into the formation.

Everyone arrived in front of the palace. Runsheng carried Li Zhuiyuan on his back.

The eight local corpse retriever teams were already waiting nearby.

But Li Zhuiyuan intended to send the “outsiders” in first. A small number of locals could relay midway, letting Xiong Shan get some breathing room.

“Xiong Shan.”

“Yes!”

There was now an added note of respect in Xiong Shan’s tone.

Dust returned to dust, earth to earth. After coming down from the river, spirit and pride no longer mattered. Faced with the mountain of reality, one ultimately had to bow one’s head.

Xiong Shan knelt on the ground and formed eight piles of straw. Immediately, the first straw corpse retriever team appeared and headed inside.

Nearby, Jie Shunan had been brought over tied up.

Li Zhuiyuan had not killed him, and Jie Shunan was not afraid of death.

Because Li Zhuiyuan had promised the Xie family ancestor that he would arrange an ending for him.

And that ancestor of the Xie family had also told the boy that the Dragon King Qin of those years was Qin Kan.

Even though Jie Shunan could not see, he could sense the orderly movement throughout the entire underground palace from earlier.

That meant this boy really did have a way to solve the accumulated curse power problem.

There was no faking the panic on his face. From earlier until now, he had been shouting the same thing over and over:

“Great-Grandpa, I’m begging you, hurry up and die! Old bastard, why are you still alive? Die! Die! Old beast, why aren’t you dead yet!”

His throat had long since gone dry and hoarse from all the shouting. Gradually, he could barely make any sound.

Li Zhuiyuan glanced at Lin Shuyou, who stood beside Runsheng. Lin Shuyou looked back at Little Yuanhou.

Seeing this from farther away, Tan Wenbin took out a bottle of water, walked over to Jie Shunan, and fed him a few mouthfuls.

“Here, wet your throat. Keep yelling. The background music continues.”

Like a madman, Jie Shunan shouted in Li Zhuiyuan’s direction:

“If your Qin family was coming, then why didn’t you come back then?

Since I was little, I heard my grandma tell stories about Dragon King Qin and the four families of old Tianmen joining hands to suppress evil. Do you know how much I revered Dragon King Qin from the time I was a child?

I once dreamed that when I grew up, I could go enter the Qin family, even if only as a servant!

Before my Xie family ancestral home was burned down, the ancestral hall enshrined Dragon King Qin’s spirit tablet in the foremost place, generation after generation!

Before my grandma burned herself to death to help me escape, the only thing I took from home was Dragon King Qin’s spirit tablet.

All those years, while I hid and fled from the pursuit and slaughter of those three families, I never failed to prepare offerings for that spirit tablet every single day, crying and pleading for the Qin family to show its power, to remember that my Xie family had paid a terrible price back then to help Dragon King seal the evil, and to shelter my Xie family, to win justice for us!

Even when I was starving to death myself, I still saved the offerings for him!

How many nights did I cry myself to sleep before Dragon King Qin’s spirit tablet!

And now here you are pretending to be compassionate, pretending to love the common people. Bah. It makes me sick!

If your Qin family was coming, why didn’t you come before I lost hope? Or better yet, don’t come at all!

Could it be that back then,

your Dragon King Qin family had all died out!”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Slap his mouth.”

Tan Wenbin set the water bottle on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, and struck Jie Shunan across the face with all his strength.

Smack!

Smack!

Smack!

Tan Wenbin did not hold back. Every swing came full and hard.

Jie Shunan’s face swelled up. His lips split, and teeth fell out.

But he still kept his mouth open, grinning savagely through blood.

“Hahahahaha, did I hit a sore spot? What Qin family, what Dragon King? Hypocrites, thieves of fame, frauds deceiving the world. Bah!”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Tan Wenbin, help him walk the shade. Even without his eyes, I want him to witness with his own eyes how his plan is broken.”

“Understood!”

Tan Wenbin placed his hand on Jie Shunan’s head. The resentful infant on this arm slowly slid down and touched Jie Shunan, forcibly opening the path for him to walk the shade.

And at that very moment, the straw corpse retrievers received the first Unseeable.

Two straw corpse retrievers crouched down and lowered the carrying pole. The Unseeable climbed on. They stood and lifted.

Crack!

The straw pole snapped. The straw figures collapsed apart. The Unseeable fell, then walked back into the palace on its own.

This sudden change stunned everyone present.

Yin Meng stepped forward and asked, “Did you hold back?”

Xiong Shan’s face turned utterly ugly.

He immediately wove another new straw corpse retriever team and sent them to the palace entrance. Another Unseeable walked out and climbed onto the pole.

Crack!

The same thing happened again. The straw pole broke, the straw figures fell apart, and the Unseeable walked back inside.

Xiong Shan began to panic. He hastily made a third team, but the result was the same.

“I... I... I...”

Xiong Shan opened his mouth in disbelief. Everything was ready, yet at the most crucial link in the chain, he had failed.

This was not merely the failure of this one attempt. If the matter here was not dealt with and disaster followed, he would bear an overwhelming karmic backlash.

Tan Wenbin said, “I think something like this happened before. Last time, after they formed seals, cast the curse, and dispersed the curse power back onto themselves, the straw pole cracked too. I thought Xiong Shan had seen things were over and cut off the technique himself.”

Xiong Shan said, “I... I thought I was just tired back then.”

In truth, when he wove the first team, he had already been fully focused and had not dared slack off in the slightest. He had wanted to start things off with a strong first success.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Change teams.”

The local corpse retriever team entered the palace.

At the entrance, they crouched, angled the pole, and one Unseeable came out and climbed on.

They straightened up.

Snap! Boom!

The bamboo pole shattered, and the two corpses carrying it exploded on the spot.

In fact, in terms of short-term results, the straw corpse retrievers woven by Xiong Shan were of better quality than the local ones and could bear more weight.

“Hahahahaha!!!”

Jie Shunan burst into laughter.

“Do you know why it won’t work? Because the last time, that last seal and curse, pushed them past the critical point! They can’t be carried anymore, not at all!

I won. In the end, I still won!

It was that final wave of my command flag that broke past the threshold. All your work was for nothing. Completely for nothing. Hahaha!”

Li Zhuiyuan closed his eyes.

Lihua immediately stepped forward and said, “My husband and I will carry them ourselves!”

The boy said nothing.

Tan Wenbin said, “The problem is the carrying pole’s capacity.”

Lihua said, “Then we can carry them in our arms!”

Xiong Shan grabbed his wife, signaling for her to stop talking.

Lihua shook off her husband’s hand. “What, I’m not afraid of dying!”

Her voice had turned shrill. She was utterly frantic. If the matter here was not resolved, her son would be dragged down and destroyed too.

Tan Wenbin said, “They’re already Unseeables, and you still want to touch them with your own hands?”

Lihua fell silent.

Xiong Shan immediately pushed his wife back down and said helplessly, “Even if we could pick them up, even if we could carry them into the formation and burn there, how many times do you think you can die?”

Hearing that, Lihua collapsed to her knees in despair.

Jie Shunan kept shouting, “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you saying anything? Say something! Weren’t you very capable? Why are you silent now?

This natural disaster is going to erupt in the end. Not one of the people who deserve to be buried with me will be spared. They’ll all die, all of them!”

Li Zhuiyuan opened his eyes.

At this moment, his eyes were already a deep crimson. Everything in his sight was red. He could only vaguely make out blurry shapes.

He had just reviewed every contact he had ever had with the Unseeables, focusing especially on details in the banquet hall and the palace.

When Tan Wenbin and Runsheng had moved the Unseeables, they could not enter the banquet hall with their eyes open, so each time they simply dumped them at the doorway like unloading sacks of cement. The Unseeables would then crawl or roll on their own to their seats, following the directions of the maidservants and eunuchs.

At the palace entrance too, during every handoff, those Unseeables had actually walked out in line by themselves.

Which meant they were capable of moving on their own.

Just as Tan Wenbin had told him, most of the eunuchs and maidservants here did not know they were already dead. Only the chief eunuchs and old nannies knew they were dead.

But even so, not even Tan Wenbin’s godfather could specifically think through something like what year it currently was.

So the reason those Unseeables had to be fetched and carried by corpse retrievers every single trip, with their feet off the ground, was not because they truly could not touch the ground, but because as tiger-spawn spirits, their existence came with limitations.

Since there was no way now to transport them to the formation, then they could only be made to...

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Brother Runsheng, put me down.”

“Alright.” Runsheng bent down, and the boy slid off his back.

“Brother Runsheng, go to the banquet hall and bring that statue here. Quickly.”

“Understood!”

“Understood!”

Everyone except Yin Meng went, including Xiong Shan and Lihua. The husband and wife had no idea why they were doing this, but at least there was finally something they could do again.

Yin Meng took out tissues and wiped the blood still flowing from the corners of Li Zhuiyuan’s eyes.

The statue was not actually heavy. Runsheng alone could have carried it over in his arms. With this many people going together, it was even faster.

Very soon, Qin Kan’s statue was brought here.

Jie Shunan mocked him, “What, now you’re copying me and setting up a dead man’s spirit tablet too? Hahaha. I’m telling you, don’t bother. It’s useless. Give up already!”

Li Zhuiyuan pointed ahead. “Move it to the palace entrance.”

“We’ll do it, let us do it!”

With their eyes closed, Xiong Shan and Lihua carried the statue to the palace entrance.

“You can come out now,” Li Zhuiyuan said as he himself walked inside.

Xiong Shan and Lihua went back out with their eyes closed.

The closer one got to the palace, the more cracks there were in the seams. By the time he reached the entrance, he could actually see the Unseeables standing neatly inside. It was just that they were all turned sideways to the main entrance, which meant sideways to him as well.

Li Zhuiyuan walked to that point. His eyes were crimson now, infinitely close to blindness, so he no longer needed to worry about whether he could see or not.

The boy stood before the statue, facing the palace entrance.

He tried several times to speak, only to press his lips together and stop himself.

Cold sweat poured steadily down his forehead, and his breathing grew more and more ragged.

He was in great pain.

It was like when Ah Li had left home and saw crowds as though they were monsters. Li Zhuiyuan had no problem when he was acting, but outside of a performance, whenever he had to use genuine emotion toward the outside world, except with a few specific people, it caused him unbearable suffering.

Especially now, when he had to face so many at once. Even if they were all dead, they still retained part of their own consciousness. Strictly speaking, they still counted as alive.

Li Zhuiyuan’s body trembling, he slowly crouched down and braced both hands against the ground.

Sweat mixed with the blood flowing from his eyes and dripped unceasingly onto the floor.

The people outside watched him, but no one dared step forward. Other than Jie Shunan, who was still barking madly, no one even dared make a sound.

Xiong Shan and Lihua prayed for a miracle, for the river’s blessing.

Tan Wenbin, Runsheng, and the others did not believe in miracles, but they knew that once Little Yuanhou had stepped there, the matter would definitely be resolved. What worried them was whether Little Yuanhou’s body could hold out.

“Hss... hss... ngh...”

Countless images flashed through Li Zhuiyuan’s mind: his entrance ceremony, himself holding hands with Ah Li, Taigong handing him pocket money, and himself in Ah Li’s dream, looking at the rows and rows of densely packed cracked spirit tablets on the altar.

At last, it fixed on the sentence once spoken to him beneath the peach tree:

“Be careful Heaven itself doesn’t strip that human skin off your body with its own hands.”

Li Zhuiyuan reached up and touched his own face.

No one else gets to peel off my human skin.

Some things were simply his responsibility. No matter the circumstances, he could never run from them.

With difficulty, the boy stood back up and once more took his place before the statue, facing into the palace.

Li Zhuiyuan lifted his chest. Though slow and halting, he still performed it with utter solemnity, carrying out the Qin Clan’s Rite of homage toward all the Unseeables in the palace, toward the forebears of the four old Tianmen families who had died in battle to suppress the general that year.

Even during his own entrance ceremony, Li Zhuiyuan had never imagined that one day this set of rites would become so heavy.

But the farther he went into the rite, the smoother the boy’s movements became. The aura of his entire being also began to rise, surging forth with growing force.

Even the statue behind him seemed to sway gently at that moment, as though stained with a faint red glow.

Inside the palace, the Unseeables, who had all originally stood sideways to the boy, slowly turned around and collectively faced him.

Within the giant pit at the center of the palace, the coffin lid burst open.

With no one controlling him, the Corpse Retriever Daoist stood up once more.

At that moment, green light flickered in his eyes. Though two souls inhabited the same body, both now recalled the same old friend from the past.

The rite complete, Li Zhuiyuan raised his head. In his sightless eyes was solemn gravity.

The boy’s voice rang out, falling before the palace gate and echoing throughout the entire hall.

“Li Zhuiyuan, the only surviving heir of the Qin Clan of Dragon King Qin in this generation, with shameless audacity, asks all of you, for the righteous path, for all living beings, today, to die once more!”

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