Chaos at the Refugee Camp (Part One)

Qin He had clearly celebrated too soon.

As the saying went, there were seven things needed when opening the door: firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea. Firewood came first. Without it, the other six were useless.

Burning corpses consumed an enormous amount of fuel.

After thinking it over, there was no other way. He could only gather some nearby.

He had considered transporting the corpses back to the Corpse Burning Facility, but that simply would not work.

The coal used by the Corpse Burning Facility was accounted for, with no surplus to spare. Besides, transporting corpses in broad daylight would easily attract attention.

The Mass Grave had terrible feng shui and was bare as a bone, so Qin He could only go farther afield to gather fuel.

This took more than two hours. By the time he had gathered enough firewood and returned to the Mass Grave—

Good heavens, the pack of wild dogs had returned and was feasting all over the hills.

Qin He roared, tossed down the firewood, and charged over.

The wild dogs had gone red-eyed from fighting over food. Seeing Qin He rush at them, who knew which dog had issued the order, but they all pounced on him.

Man and dog clashed in an instant. Empowered by inner strength, Qin He swung his shovel up and down. The dog pack was numerous, and having fed on human flesh, they had undergone some mutations. Their teeth were iron, their fangs steel, and their claws like eagles' talons. Some were as sturdy as Little Calves—even wolves might not have measured up to them.

After a fierce battle, Qin He emerged victorious at the cost of three or five tears in his clothes.

The dog pack was forced to abandon the corpse pit and retreat.

When Qin He checked again, good heavens—only two corpses remained in the pit, buried at the very bottom.

Had he arrived any later, not even a hair would have been left.

Still, two corpses were quite a haul. Qin He first cleaned them, arranged their appearance, and checked for anything missing.

These were indispensable steps in corpse burning. Every one of them had to be done properly, even here at the Mass Grave.

Fortunately, both corpses had died of illness and hunger. Their limbs were intact, so they were fairly quick to handle.

Once everything was ready, Qin He stacked the wood, lit the fire, and began burning the corpses.

The heat from burning wood was ultimately inferior to coal. By the time the two corpses had burned through, the sun had already slanted westward.

The Shadow Play Performance showed that one corpse belonged to an outsider refugee, while the other had been a local beggar driven onto the streets by bankruptcy.

There was nothing new about the refugee from elsewhere: a famine victim who had fled disaster and begged for food. The local beggar, however, taught Qin He quite a bit about the area. At the very least, he could now recognize all the roads between the Capital City and Tongzhou.

The scales of judgment weighed their sins. The Black Robed Man rose slightly. The refugee was rewarded with an Earth-Digging Technique, while the beggar was rewarded with a Wind-Following Ear.

Earth-Digging Technique: When you dig through earth, nothing will stand in your way.

Wind-Following Ear: Within a hundred paces, you can hear the dream-murmurs of field mice.

The rewards were excellent. Once he used the Earth-Digging Technique, the surrounding ground lay entirely within Qin He's grasp—he knew where it was easy to dig and where the earth would not yield. The Wind-Following Ear was even more incredible. Within a hundred paces, every sound entered his ears.

After filling in the corpse pit, Qin He shouldered his shovel and returned to the Corpse Burning Facility. By then, nightfall was near.

The Marshal's Office had delivered corpses, and the convoy had actually formed a long dragon of carts.

The constables on duty were busy distributing corpses. When Xu Changshou spotted Qin He, he waved him over.

"Sir." Qin He walked up.

"A riot broke out at the Refugee Camp. Many people died. We have a heavy task tonight, so be especially careful," Xu Changshou warned.

The moment Qin He heard the words "heavy task," he failed to grasp the gravity of them at all. Rubbing his hands together, he asked, "Sir, then how many can I burn tonight?"

"At least two, at most three," Xu Changshou said.

"Great! Give me three." Naturally, Qin He would not yield.

Xu Changshou looked at Qin He as though he were looking at an idiot. "Which screw came loose in your head? I was figuring out how to assign you one less corpse. A Corpse Burning Furnace can burn two at most in one go. Three means two rounds, and the longer the night, the more trouble can arise. That's gambling with your life."

"Sir, actually, I..."

Naturally, Qin He was unwilling. He would be losing a corpse for nothing.

And this was a corpse that required no firewood gathering, while also earning him another fifteen copper coins.

"Stop talking nonsense. No one knows how many people will die tonight. Use your head." Xu Changshou cut him off directly and turned away to make arrangements.

Qin He's heart ached. Fine, after working hard all day to earn two corpses, he was giving back half of that at night.

Not gaining was the same as losing.

That was simply how strange Qin He's arithmetic was.

With so many corpses, the burning time was moved up considerably. After all, the saying held true everywhere: rules were dead, people were alive.

Once night fell, the gates were shut and locked. To prevent the corpses from causing trouble, the Flying Fish Guard had even dispatched an officer to oversee things. The leader was none other than Hundred-Household Officer Chang Wen.

Two corpses were carried onto the Corpse Purification Platform. Qin He examined them. One wore ragged clothes and was a refugee. The other wore a black uniform and was likely a soldier tasked with maintaining order in the Refugee Camp.

The refugee had been stabbed to death, a single blade piercing straight through his chest. The soldier had been bludgeoned to death, his brains splattered over his head and face.

Both had died violent deaths. Judging by the bloodstains, they had been dead for quite some time, yet their skin had hardened while their limbs were not stiff. They had clearly mutated.

There was no doubt that tonight would be a trial for the Corpse Burning Facility. No one knew how many people would survive.

But that was everyone else. Qin He naturally did not count among them.

Mutated or not, he would hammer in the Corpse Suppressing Nails first.

Clad in mourning hemp and white, he purified the corpses with clean water, stitched up the wounds that needed stitching, patched what needed patching, and once he had finished arranging them, carried them into the Corpse Burning Furnace.

He lit the fire, worked the bellows, opened the furnace, and burned the corpses.

Amid the roaring flames, the soldier mutated and tried to rise from the corpse and pounce on someone. But the instant Qin He heard it make a sound, he drove in another twenty Corpse Suppressing Nails.

It immediately became obedient as could be.

An hour later, Qin He saw what had happened at the Refugee Camp through the dead men's Shadow Play.

Four words: too horrible for human eyes.

In recent years, the north of the Great Li Dynasty had been ravaged in turn by natural disasters, war, and human calamity. More and more refugees had appeared. The Emperor issued an edict ordering relief for them, scraped through the already ruined national treasury, allocated some silver to build a large Refugee Camp outside the city, and distributed porridge to provide aid.

At first, it produced some results. Although after layers of embezzlement, less than one-tenth of the relief silver remained, there were not many refugees yet, and they could still drink a few mouthfuls of thin porridge. Gradually, word spread in all directions, and more refugees began arriving.

Too many monks, too little gruel. People began starving to death in the Refugee Camp, and the situation worsened with terrifying speed.

Hungry and numerous, the refugees became an unstable mass. Several incidents later occurred in which crowds gathered to rob, kill soldiers, and rebel. Only after suppression did they fail to grow into a full-blown catastrophe.

The authorities became deeply alarmed and sent soldiers to surround the Refugee Camp on all sides. Entry was permitted, but departure was forbidden. Violators were beheaded.

Yet the news did not spread. Refugees from every direction continued to gather at the Refugee Camp, because it was their last hope.

And so, that hope became a hell on earth.

Nature had a law: when food became critically scarce, animals began eating their own kind.

Humans were no exception.

Cannibalism began.

No one knew who had started it. Then more and more people followed suit. At first, they ate corpses that had only just breathed their last. When the dead were no longer enough, they began eating the old and weak. In the end, even strong young adults became targets.

Under an atmosphere of terror, the refugees inevitably banded together at a rapid pace. Divided by region, they began slaughtering one another.

Today, those from the Yu Region killed those from Jinxi. Tomorrow, those from Southern Shaanxi killed those from Northern Jin. The day after, Northern Jin joined hands with the Yu Region and slaughtered Southern Shaanxi... The living ate flesh, and the dead were eaten.

In the end, things were bound to spiral out of control. The refugees, who had begun to form rudimentary organizations, turned their weapons around. Chaos became riot.

The refugees seized the armory. There were far too many ghost soldiers on the rolls, and the officials had filled the ranks with hooligans and ruffians to make up the numbers. They were quickly thrown into disarray by the charging refugees. Only when the authorities urgently deployed troops to counterattack was the situation suppressed.

Qin He could not learn the exact number of casualties from the Shadow Play Performance, but judging from the number of mutated corpses, it had surely been a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.

The probability of a corpse mutating was around one percent. Today, the East City Corpse Burning Facility alone had received roughly sixty mutated corpses.

That worked out to six thousand people. The Marshal's Office had four Corpse Burning Facilities, while the Flying Fish Guard had two Corpse Burning Halls. Calculated again, that came to thirty-two thousand people.

At the very least, more than half had died.