Corpse Burning Hall

Qin He had only been out of the city for a little over two hours when he returned.

Though he had seen the Imperial Prison in the Shadow Play, it was nowhere near as real as experiencing it in person.

Great Li had stood for several centuries. No one knew how many lives this place had swallowed.

There were corrupt officials, loyal ministers and capable generals, as well as common folk struggling for every scrap of grain. As for which kind was more numerous, no one could say.

The so-called Imperial Prison was a prison where the emperor issued an edict to directly arrest and apprehend someone. It bypassed the Three Judicial Offices and could interrogate suspects directly.

At first, it had merely been a private interrogation room established by the emperor to improve judicial efficiency.

With an edict, suspects could be summoned for questioning; without one, it lay idle.

But as time passed, the Imperial Prison gradually became a permanent institution. Without needing an imperial edict, the Flying Fish Guard could fabricate evidence at will and arrest officials or civilians. Once imprisoned, they were tortured into confessing and their confessions turned into "ironclad evidence." In the end, there were only two paths: those unwilling to "confess" were tortured to death, while those willing to "confess" were executed at the execution ground.

The later it became, the more the Imperial Prison slipped beyond the emperor's control and became a tool for powerful eunuchs to impose terror and intimidation.

Qin He entered with his face covered. He turned left and right for a full quarter hour, then they began descending underground and walked for quite some time more.

By the time the cloth was removed from his face, they had arrived at the Corpse Burning Hall.

Before Qin He stood an enormous stone door.

Beside him were five other Corpse Burners dressed in the same coarse hemp clothes as he was, all of them conscripted.

Rumble...

The stone door slowly opened, revealing a deep, gloomy corridor like a burial passage.

"Go in. Someone inside will assign you work. If you want to leave alive, keep your hands and feet diligent, your ears deaf, your eyes sharp, and your mouth tight." Chang Wen said this, then turned and left. Judging by his retreating back, he seemed somewhat hurried.

The Corpse Burners looked at one another, then finally turned their gazes toward the depths of the corridor. Dim fire lamps hung along the walls, and firelight flickered at the far end.

They shuffled inside timidly, frightened yet curious.

Unlike their unease, Qin He was much calmer.

An Baogu had come here before. Though several mottled patches in the corners had been washed, black stains that could not be fully concealed remained. They were dried bloodstains.

Looking upward, the corridor's ceiling was pitch-black.

But Qin He knew that was not the ceiling, but the underside of a massive boulder.

Should an emergency arise, this boulder would come crashing down and become an incomparably thick stone gate, cutting off the inside and outside of the Corpse Burning Hall.

An Baogu had nearly been trapped inside. Had he not been fast enough, he would have been.

The end of the corridor drew nearer and nearer, and the firelight grew brighter and brighter. Turning a corner, Qin He saw a river of flames that seemed to come from nowhere, flowing beneath room after room of corpse-burning chambers.

Unlike the corpse-burning rooms outside, the rooms here were neither closed nor locked. Strictly speaking, they had no doors at all.

Every corpse-burning room was plastered with Corpse Suppressing Talismans. More than twenty Corpse Burning Officials bustled about, purifying corpses, stitching corpses, carrying corpses into furnaces, cleaning furnace chambers, shoveling ashes. Their work was largely the same as a Corpse Burner's. The only difference was that they did not need to work the bellows. They only had to open the cover beneath the furnace, and flames would surge up from below.

Qin He recognized it. It was earthfire.

Fierce flames from the underground Dragon Vein, supremely yang and unyielding, were an ideal source of fire for cremating vicious corpses.

At the center of the Corpse Burning Hall stood a seven-pillared palace lantern, slowly rotating as it emitted a faint pearly-white glow.

Qin He's eyes brightened slightly.

The Soul-Capturing Lamp, ranked seventh among the Nine Corpse Suppressing Artifacts.

A person had Three Souls and Seven Spirits. The Three Souls governed the mind, while the Seven Spirits governed the flesh.

After death, the souls flew away and the spirits scattered. The souls went to the underworld, while the spirits dispersed throughout the world.

If a soul lingered behind, it became a Supernatural Incident. If the spirits had not dissipated, it became a Corpse Mutation.

The Soul-Capturing Lamp could draw away the lingering spirits within a corpse, thereby suppressing it.

For suppressing corpses, it was practically a divine artifact.

Though it was only ranked seventh, it was in fact the highest-grade object that could be made in the corpse-suppressing trade. The eighth, the Corpse Suppressing Pill, and the ninth, the Rebirth Seal, existed only in legend.

Even Qin He's Nine Corpse Suppressing Artifacts skill contained no detailed methods for making them.

A faint gleam flashed through Qin He's eyes.

Qi Gazing Technique.

In an instant, countless lingering spirits swirled around the Soul-Capturing Lamp like moths drawn to a flame, and those lingering spirits were precisely the lamp's fuel.

With the Soul-Capturing Lamp here, ordinary vicious corpses had no possibility of rising.

Even if they rose, the Soul-Capturing Lamp would suppress them and render their movements sluggish.

Looking again at the corpse-burning rooms, deathly qi and foul qi coiled everywhere. Compared with the East City Corpse Burning Facility, this place was worse in every way. Only the areas covered by Corpse Suppressing Talismans and those near the Soul-Capturing Lamp were relatively clear.

Beyond that, there were the people.

Every Corpse Burning Official wore a string of copper coins. The coins gave off a hazy yellow light, driving the deathly qi and foul qi to more than a foot away from their bodies.

Moreover, each of them had faint lights of various kinds emanating from their shoulders and the tops of their heads.

That was a phenomenon found only in people with special destinies and fortunes.

Without question, both the "hardware" and the people here were first-rate.

As expected of the Corpse Burning Hall under the Flying Fish Guard.

At the same time, Qin He noticed something else.

On one side of the Corpse Burning Hall stood an incomparably heavy iron door. Thread after thread of extremely dense deathly qi intermittently seeped from within, flowing into an inconspicuous clay jar in the corner.

The strands of deathly qi were as fine as hairs and hidden in the darkness. Had Qin He not possessed both the Night Vision Technique and the Qi Gazing Technique, he could never have noticed them.

Behind that heavy iron door seemed to lurk immense danger, and it appeared to be plotting something.

In only a few breaths, Qin He had roughly grasped the secrets of the Corpse Burning Hall through the Qi Gazing Technique.

When he withdrew the Qi Gazing Technique, everything returned to normal. Even the copper coins protecting the Corpse Burning Officials became plain and unremarkable.

"A bunch of idiots! You worked all day and only sent over this few filthy things? Offering white hemp paper at a grave—who are you trying to fool, the ghosts?" A one-eyed Corpse Burning Official with a face full of flesh viciously hurled the fire hook in his hand to the ground.

Even without using the Qi Gazing Technique, Qin He could sense the astonishingly dense Sha Qi on him.

He was the leader of these Corpse Burning Officials. The other officials wore three or four copper coins for protection, but he had the most: seven on a single string.

When people with unusual abilities traveled the martial world, they often used certain special markers to signify their identities.

Like the copper coins worn by Daoists, or the dharma rings on a monk's staff.

These markers were established by custom. Whoever overstepped them would be jointly attacked by Daoists and Buddhists throughout the realm.

What differed greatly from the world Qin He had come from was that the Daoists and monks in this world were exceptionally fierce. They fought demons and battled ghosts, and they had violent tempers too. At the slightest disagreement, they would draw their swords and start chopping. No one dared impersonate them to swindle others.

By comparison, the martial wanderers were the most chaotic lot. They came from every rank, high and low, with mud and sand mixed together.

That was beside the point.

Returning to the Corpse Burning Officials: the corpse-burning trade originated from Daoist arts. Though it had later incorporated teachings from various schools, it still followed Daoist customs, using the number of copper coins to represent status and rank.

"Wei Wu, give those seven wronged ghosts to them first, let them get some practice."

The one-eyed Corpse Burning Official gave another order, then casually untied the filthy apron around his body and violently flung it onto the Corpse Purification Platform.

The sudden loss of a batch of Corpse Burning Officials had cost him dearly. Corpses were already piled everywhere inside the corpse-burning rooms.

"Yes, Master."

A long-faced young man answered, set down the bucket and shovel in his hands, and walked toward Qin He's group. He first sized them up, then said, "For the next few days, I'll be assigning your work. It'll be about the same as what you did at the Corpse Burning Facility. You'll mainly handle corpses that aren't so vicious. Work hard. Those who perform well will be rewarded after the task is completed."

After speaking, he assigned each of the six people, including Qin He, a corpse-burning room, designated a corpse for each to practice on, and explained several precautions for lighting the fire before leaving again. As he went, he tossed out one final sentence. "There are no doors on the corpse-burning rooms. If a corpse rises, you can run. Someone will come deal with it."

The six Corpse Burners looked at one another again. Remembering Centurion Chang's warning, they did not dare speak and each headed toward the corpses Wei Wu had assigned them.

When they lifted the corpse cloths, they found seven headless bodies.

Looking closely, the heads had been shaved gleaming clean, with only several thin, rat-tail-like braids left at the back. They were clearly the seven "Di captives' spies" beheaded at West Market during the day.