Walking Corpse

When I turned my head, I discovered it was Yu Xiaoxue. Not only had she not dared to burn the incense, she had grabbed hold of me instead.

"Brother Tian... the incense... there's not enough incense left. What do we do?" Yu Xiaoxue looked at me with a miserable face, pointing at the empty incense boxes piled all over the floor and the few remaining sticks in the last bundle.

Yin ghosts were wandering spirits left behind after death for all sorts of reasons, not taken away by the underworld's ghostly officials. They absorbed yang energy and incense candles just as people ate food and dishes—it was only natural.

Ordinary wandering spirits only needed to absorb a little yang energy and incense from the realm of the living. But those with greedier hearts or heavier resentment not only absorbed the living world's yang energy and incense, but also the energy from living people. Someone like me, born with heavy yin energy and weak yang energy, was especially beloved by yin ghosts.

Once I failed to feed the wandering souls outside, they would immediately latch onto me.

That was why, the moment I entered Little Yi Village, they had known I was here. The Ghost-Passing Talisman still had some effect, but once the incense burned out...

The thought sent me into a panic.

"I'll go check Grandma's bedroom and see if there are any spare incense candles," I said, trying to reassure her.

"I... I already went. I took all the incense outside from in there. Who would have delivered more incense over the past two days?" Yu Xiaoxue told me shakily.

Incense had always been something Grandma kept stocked. There was usually a large box full of it in her bedroom. But Yu Xiaoxue had been here alone for two days, and with the way she had been burning it, it was normal for it to be gone by now.

My heart rose into my throat. It was not even the latter half of the night yet. Without incense candles, wouldn't a pack of wandering souls swallow us alive and tear us apart?

"I'll take a look first..."

When I reached Grandma's bedroom door, Wife suddenly tugged at me. I sighed. With no road left to retreat down, even if I had been neither arrogant nor impatient before, I was beginning to lose my cool. I pushed the door open directly.

The moment the door opened, a bluish-green face nearly slammed into mine!

My hairs stood on end, and I fell flat onto the floor in fright. Once I saw clearly, I realized it was Granny Wu, the neighbor who had often chatted with Grandma about old tales when she was alive!

At that moment, Granny Wu's face was expressionless, wrinkled all over, and her pupils were completely white. She stared at me without blinking, making it hard not to suspect that she would pounce on me with a ferocious face the next instant.

Besides her, several other wandering souls were drifting through Grandma's bedroom.

Even ghosts had entered Grandma's room!?

I immediately scrambled and rolled back to Yu Xiaoxue's side.

After recovering my senses, I looked at the open window in Grandma's bedroom. The shock in my heart was no less than when I had first seen a ghost. It seemed the door gods at the entrance had lost their effect too; they could not even stop wandering souls anymore!

That was the conclusion I had reached after some thought. Wandering souls were not like people, with so many twists and turns in their hearts. They merely clung to something from before they died, or things they had often liked to do.

For instance, visiting someone they had once loved, or places they had once liked to go. It was only reasonable that Granny Wu was here.

This time, I had really made a fool of myself. I had actually left Yu Xiaoxue with such a pathetic impression of me.

I was a normal man too. Whenever I was around beautiful women, I always wanted to show my bold side. Now that I had embarrassed myself, of course I had to explain things a little.

I turned back awkwardly toward Yu Xiaoxue, intending to say some nonsense, only to discover that she had already fainted.

I hurriedly patted her face and called to her several times before finally waking her.

After Yu Xiaoxue woke up, her face was deathly pale. Not only could she not say a word, she threw her arms around me and began whimpering as she cried.

When she did not know, she was not afraid. But once she learned that those things had long ceased to be people and were wandering souls instead, she knew fear. I really had no idea what this girl's brain was made of.

But then again, she had eaten the Ghost-Passing Talisman, so wandering souls did not dare approach her. It was inevitable that she had gotten the mistaken impression that people were merely avoiding her on purpose. Now that she knew the real reason and had suddenly been frightened, she had simply fainted from the scare.

Especially since Granny Wu had already looked ghostly while alive. She would often walk up behind people without making a sound. Now, with both eyes completely white, she had scared even me badly, let alone Yu Xiaoxue.

To get into Grandma's bedroom, I had no choice but to imitate what Grandma used to do. I picked up several sticks of incense, bowed toward the front, and muttered, "Yin and yang stand divided. With burning incense, I borrow a path. I ask you all to make way."

Incense connected ghosts and gods. Sure enough, the moment my words fell, Granny Wu moved aside and opened up a path. I immediately wedged the incense into the crack of the door and entered the bedroom with Yu Xiaoxue.

Yu Xiaoxue was genuinely frightened now. She clutched my clothes and would not let go, practically becoming a second Wife. The air around me was constantly filled with gusts of yin wind. It seemed Wife was a little angry too, but what else could I do?

After searching with Yu Xiaoxue for a long time, I found that there truly were no incense candles left. There were, however, several packs of the cheap cigarettes Grandma smoked. That made my heart leap with joy. Cigarettes and incense candles both had the word "incense" in them; perhaps cigarettes might work too.

There was nothing else left, only Grandma's locked leather trunk. I carried that out as well. After all, I did not know when the incense wedged in the door crack would go out, and I did not dare linger.

Back beside the coffin, I opened a pack of cigarettes, lit three of them, and stuck them into the ash basin. Wisps of smoke rose up after them.

And though no one was sucking on the cigarettes, they burned without going out as if someone were smoking them. It was extraordinarily eerie, but it meant they were effective.

However, cigarettes burned far faster than incense candles. In less than a minute, the three cigarettes were finished, and the wandering souls outside began to stir restlessly.

It looked like cigarettes were not much use either.

I looked at the wandering souls drawing closer and closer, nearly reaching the threshold. In the cool night, sweat covered my forehead. Left with no other choice, I sat with my back to the ash basin and concentrated on lighting cigarettes.

Yu Xiaoxue sat beside the coffin without the slightest idea what to do, watching me with a mournful face.

I kept lighting cigarettes. Even at a time like this, Wife had no intention of settling down. She kept tugging at the corner of my clothes. I figured there was a huge mass of wandering souls behind me, all things that could kill me, so there was nothing wrong with her warning me. Besides, Yu Xiaoxue's actions earlier had made her angry. Who knew, maybe she was still throwing a tantrum.

By three or four in the morning, Wife had played the "wolf is coming" fairy tale too many times. I gradually stopped believing her. I felt that even if she tore my clothes to shreds now, I would be too lazy to turn around and look at those gloomy things.

After all, weren't there still several packs of cigarettes left?

Rip—speak of the devil, and the devil appeared. Wife really tore my clothes.

I immediately raised my head and looked at Yu Xiaoxue. The girl's hands were trembling now, and she shakily pointed behind me, as if she had seen something terrifying.

Only then did I realize something was wrong. I whirled around. Outside, the yin wind howled, and even gods and ghosts fled from it.

At some point, the wandering souls nearby had all moved far away, leaving a clear path. In the middle of that path stood a woman covered in blood at the doorway.

The woman was gaunt as a skeleton, her hair disheveled. Aside from being covered in blood, her eyes were hollow. Several maggots streaked with blood plopped out from within them. Her appearance was utterly horrifying.

"B-Blood Corpse..." I trembled. If it had only been a wandering soul, with cigarettes in hand, I would not have been particularly afraid. But before me stood a Walking Corpse without a doubt!

What was a Walking Corpse? As the name implied, it was a corpse that could walk.

Usually, Walking Corpses were formed when someone who had died with overwhelming resentment and unresolved grievances underwent a corpse transformation after death.

Of course, that alone could only be called a corpse transformation, not a true Walking Corpse. A real Walking Corpse was made by a "corpse walker" refining a corpse that had previously transformed. Without a corpse walker, a corpse absolutely could not become a Walking Corpse.

As for a Blood Corpse among Walking Corpses, it was a type of corpse formed after baleful energy had been refined within a Walking Corpse. It was incredibly difficult to refine, yet once completed, it was immensely powerful.

The night wind blew, tossing the Blood Corpse's black hair. Through the gaps in her hair, I saw the Blood Corpse's face clearly, and my whole body froze on the spot.

"Sister-in-law Zhou Xuan!" Yu Xiaoxue cried out instinctively, then covered her mouth as two streams of tears came pouring down.

She was my good younger brother's wife, Zhang Yidan's wife, Zhou Xuan!?

How had she, perfectly fine, been refined into a Blood Corpse? Terror rose in my heart, but a nameless fire began burning within it.

I remembered the days before Zhang Yidan got married, when I was still far away in another city. Over the phone, Zhang Yidan had tried his hardest to suppress the profanity pouring from his mouth as he exaggeratedly described just how virtuous and gentle his wife was, and how exhausting it had been while they prepared for their wedding.

Even I had been infected by the happiness overflowing from him.

After I saw their wedding photos, I had been sincerely happy that my childhood friend had finally found the love of his life. Though Zhou Xuan was not especially beautiful, she truly looked kind and virtuous.

I did not know much about the details of refining a Blood Corpse. But after reading so many of Grandma's books, I knew the horrifying records of how a Walking Corpse was refined into a Reanimated Corpse, requiring its ferocity to be awakened. That method was utterly inhuman: one had to repeatedly torment, before the Reanimated Corpse's eyes or upon its body, the things, events, and people it had cared about most while alive, until its obsessions, murderous ferocity, and killing intent were aroused.

That was why Grandma had said that Blood Corpses existed only to kill. Once unsealed by a corpse walker, they would seek out living people and tear them alive, limb from limb.

I had once asked Grandma whether she had ever seen a Blood Corpse in her life. Grandma had shaken her head with a bitter smile and said frankly, who could be so cruel as to turn a person into a Blood Corpse?

I did not know how much inhuman torment Zhou Xuan had suffered while alive, but "Zhou Xuan," now a Blood Corpse, had already given me the answer.

"Zhou Xuan" looked at me and revealed a shudder-inducing smile. Her once-small mouth split all the way to the roots of her ears, and the teeth someone had deliberately ground sharp glinted coldly.

She lunged at me. Before I could even see how she moved, she instantly seized my throat!

I only felt my neck nearly cave in beneath her withered fingers. But it was not over yet. She opened her split mouth and bit down at my shoulder!

I knew that one bite was enough to kill me!

By then, I had even forgotten fear. I immediately shoved her head away, my fingers even plunging into her eye sockets. Countless maggots and rotten flesh fell into my mouth, and I wanted to vomit from disgust.

Yet Zhou Xuan was so strong that she did not even give me the chance to spit out the filth. With overwhelming force, she lunged and bit at me again!

Bang!

In that critical moment, Yu Xiaoxue came to my rescue. Zhou Xuan's head was smashed hard by a small stool, and even brain matter splattered out. But it seemed useless against the Blood Corpse. She still pounced on top of me and pinned me down!