Goldclad Corpse King

The message had been sent last night, and the man was gone today.

Even Xu Qing had not expected Fifth Master Chang to be so efficient!

Looking at the fresh corpse delivered to his door, Xu Qing first bound it tightly with the Five Grains Cycle Rope soaked in Holy Spirit Water, as was customary. Then he called back its soul, raised the corpse, and turned the pages of the Duren Sutra.

There was nothing praiseworthy about the Two-Faced Three-Blade Art user's life, much less any so-called shining moments.

Since childhood, the man had liked to loaf around Linhe Fang with a gang of ruffians and scoundrels. In the first half of his life, he had committed petty theft and peeped at widows bathing more times than anyone could count.

Later, his courage grew while his conscience withered. He had bullied men, preyed on women, and committed several acts of devouring entire households.

Whenever Xu Qing saw such scenes, he could not help lashing the Corpse Driving Whip across the man's body.

That bastard dying so cleanly had truly been letting him off easy!

Just as Xu Qing was growing sick of watching and preparing to fast-forward to evil meeting its due, he saw a familiar figure in the scene of Liao An secretly colluding with the Jinmen Gang.

Wasn't that the fiend of the Tianxin Cult who had borrowed the road outside Linhe Fang to ask for directions, only to later double back and cut off Liu Youdao's head?

How had he ended up mixed in with the Jinmen Gang? And judging from appearances, his standing in the gang was not low.

Xu Qing's heart jolted. If the Tianxin Cult had infiltrated the Jinmen Gang, what were they trying to do by mobilizing so many people to seize the Linhe dock?

In the past, the Jinmen Gang had connections in the prefectural city behind it, while Fifth Master Chang had relied on the connections he had cultivated in Linhe over many years to stand against them.

Now that the Tianxin Cult had become an unpredictable variable, Fifth Master Chang might truly be unable to hold on to his position at the dock!

Thinking back to how Linhe Fang had suddenly built city defenses to block large numbers of refugees fleeing disaster, Xu Qing faintly felt that something unknown even to him might be hidden beneath it all.

The sky over Linhe Fang was perhaps about to change.

Xu Qing shook his head. These matters had little to do with him. He was merely an ordinary commoner who ran a funeral shop, and he could not meddle in whether Heaven struck with thunder or sent down rain.

Continuing to watch, Liao An took the silver ingots awarded by the Jinmen Gang back home and buried them beneath his rice jar.

Next came the scene of him following Fifth Master Chang in a night raid on the Jinmen encampment and stabbing Li Fan in the back.

Xu Qing had seen all this before. It was merely being shown from a different perspective now.

He quickly skipped through those scenes, and at last, in the final days of Liao An's life, Xu Qing saw the scene he had been longing for.

It took place in the main hall of a residence. Fifth Master Chang sat in a Grand Tutor's Chair, rolling iron walnuts in his hand. Below him, Liao An, whose crimes had been exposed, was being subjected to a righteous beating by a group of his former brothers.

As Liao An lay dying, he still gurgled through his blood and asked, "I hid it so well. How did you find it? Can you let me die knowing the truth?"

Someone nearby spat out a mouthful of thick phlegm and snarled, "When Brother Li Fan died, you didn't give a damn. And now you want to die knowing the truth? I refuse to give you what you want!"

With that, the man planted one foot on Liao An's neck and avenged Li Fan on the spot.

The Two-Faced Three-Blade Art user's life ended there.

Afterward, the Duren Sutra gave him a Human Grade Low evaluation. The reward was a Jianghu technique called the Two-Faced, Three-Blade Art.

The essence of this technique lay in having two faces on one person—hiding a blade behind a smile and killing without form.

Xu Qing carefully comprehended its mysteries. Once he had fully understood them, the flesh at the back of his head began to twist and change. In roughly the time it took to draw a breath, beneath the loose black hair at the back of his head, another face had appeared out of thin air!

It was a face that wore a cheerful, sinister smile, yet its brows, eyes, lips, and nose were exactly the same as his usual face!

Xu Qing's perspective suddenly shifted. Through the second face, he could actually see the things behind him.

What kind of Evil Technique was this? Eyes growing on the back of his head?

He lowered his head and saw his own back, along with his buttocks and heels.

When he came before the bronze mirror, he saw that the reflection also had two faces. The face in front had its eyes closed, as if it had fallen asleep.

The face at the back of his head, meanwhile, maintained a perpetually cheerful expression, as though saying, "I'm very easy to get along with."

Xu Qing could not help propping a hand against the back of his head and gently rubbing the face.

Why did he feel that he was becoming less and less like a normal person?

Xu Qing tried closing the eyes on the face at the back. In the next moment, his viewpoint returned to the front.

He turned sideways to look at the mirror. The face at the back of his head had closed its eyes, then, as if performing a magic trick, sank into his thick hair and vanished.

That was not all. Behind the strange and uncanny two-faced technique came another complementary art, called the Three-Blade Art.

On the surface, the Three-Blade Art had three forms: the Soft Blade, the Hard Blade, and the Perilous Blade.

The Soft Blade killed without shedding blood, the Hard Blade killed without mercy, and the Perilous Blade killed with no defense against it!

With softness and hardness applied together, danger was piled upon danger, making it most suitable for striking from the shadows.

Though it was called the Three-Blade Art, after practicing it repeatedly until he had mastered it, Xu Qing discovered that it actually consisted of a single blade.

It was simply that this one blade encompassed momentum, technique, and method, making it impossible for anyone to guard against.

It was like someone standing with his back to you, carrying no weapon at all, suddenly drawing a sharp blade and driving it into your heart. After stabbing you through with a chill that reached your very core, the back of his head would suddenly rise, his waterfall of hair parting to reveal a smiling face. Wouldn't that leave you with a lifelong psychological shadow?

Forget whether being stabbed through the heart would kill you. Just that sinister grin would be enough to scare someone half to death!

Xu Qing smacked his lips thoughtfully. He felt that the Two-Faced, Three-Blade Art was better than nothing and might be useful for winning through surprise.

After all, who would normally have nothing better to do than move their face to the back of their head to look at people?

Wouldn't that be a clear sign of a serious illness?

The hidden-blade technique included in the Three-Blade Art, however, was somewhat useful. Normally, he could hide a blade at the small of his back, and it might come in handy at a critical moment.

At the very least, he would no longer have to fear dropping the soap at the bathhouse, right?

Whoever dared come over, one sweep of the blade and they would fall like ripe fruit from the stem!

After dealing with the corpse, Xu Qing glanced at the sky. The moon had climbed above the willow branches, and pedestrians were gradually disappearing. He closed the shop door, hid a blade on his person, and made his way through the darkness toward Liao An's residence.

When he reached the residence, his nostrils flared. Only after confirming that he could not smell any living stranger did he climb over the wall.

After finding the rice jar, Xu Qing removed the bluestone brick pressing down on the bottom. A medium-sized clay urn appeared before his eyes.

He did not open it directly. Instead, he wrapped it in cloth and returned by the way he had come.

Once he reached the shop, Xu Qing lifted the urn's lid and immediately widened his eyes!

He had never expected Liao An to be so wealthy!

The urn contained not only strings of copper coins, but also gold, silver, and other valuables spread between every layer of coins as dividers.

Xu Qing made a rough estimate. Converted into silver, the contents of this urn were worth at least three hundred taels!

He currently charged three taels of silver to collect one government corpse. These three hundred-plus taels would be enough for him to collect more than a hundred corpses!

However, after Xu Qing's joy settled, he came up with a new plan.

Collecting corpses required some money, but he could not spend all of it on that. With these three hundred taels, along with the savings he had in gold, silver, and Silver Clappers, it was time for him to make a trip to Miscellaneous Goods Street and see whether he could gather all the materials needed for a corpse's advancement.

Of the three types of Wandering Corpse, the easiest to advance was the Ironclad Wandering Corpse. As for the Silverclad and Goldclad Wandering Corpses, they required more time and materials.

Time, however, was the one thing he lacked least.

The "Corpse Sayings" stated that in ancient times there had been an immortal tree called the Great Chun. Eight thousand years were its spring, and eight thousand years were its autumn—such was its great longevity.

Among the wondrous spirits and strange treasures whose lifespans could rival the Great Chun's, there was also the name of the corpse.

Xu Qing possessed a body comparable to immortality. If ten years were not enough, then he would cultivate for a hundred. By then, even if he could not become a Corpse Immortal, he could at least forge the foundation of a Goldclad Corpse King!