Immortal Way Values Life

The Duren Sutra could deliver the dead from suffering and give an overview of their lives.

At that moment, more than a dozen zombies were still working in the courtyard where Xu Qing found himself. Judging by their clothes and appearance when alive, most of them had probably been local Corpse Laborers.

In Xu Qing's eyes, their life stories were undoubtedly real history books laid out before him, and could help him quickly and effectively understand this world.

But all of that rested on one condition: the Duren Sutra really had to be capable of delivering them from suffering.

Thinking without acting was the mark of a poseur. The moment the thought arose, Xu Qing rolled up his sleeves, rose onto his tiptoes, and began edging toward the nearest zombie.

Although he was a zombie himself now, he was still somewhat apprehensive. If the zombie in front of him suddenly lunged up and bit him, it would probably hurt quite a bit, right?

Xu Qing followed close behind the zombie pushing the millstone, waging an inner struggle.

To hell with it! We're all dead. What am I afraid of?

After a brief calculation, he made up his mind. With evil rising to his guts, Xu Qing reached out and placed a hand on the other party's shoulder.

The zombie did not react at all and continued doing the work before its eyes.

Even a donkey had a stubborn streak, yet these zombies were more obedient than donkeys!

Seeing this, Xu Qing grew even bolder. Taking advantage of the moonlight, he hurried forward a few steps and got in front of it. Only then did he finally see its true appearance.

It was a zombie in ragged clothes, its face smeared with grime. From its attire, it had not looked like an upright sort when alive; it looked more like a beggar who had begged on the streets.

The clouds veiled the moon, and besides the sound of the millstone turning, the entire courtyard was silent. Xu Qing gave the area a rough look-over and, seeing no one around, retreated behind the zombie before him. Then he suddenly crouched, wrapped both arms around its legs, and yanked it straight up from the ground!

The down-and-out zombie toppled with a thud. Xu Qing took advantage of the momentum to stride over and straddle its back. Even so, the zombie beneath him still managed to wrench one arm free and stretch it toward the mill handle, as though apart from pushing the mill, it had no other thoughts at all.

After finally pinning down the zombie in front of him, Xu Qing faced another serious problem.

"How do I deliver it from suffering again?"

He had never studied Buddhist teachings when alive, nor did he understand Daoist philosophy. Other than physically delivering people from suffering, he truly had no idea how to do it!

As though sensing his thoughts, the Duren Sutra in Xu Qing's mind suddenly blazed with light. Once again, ethereal immortal music and hazy scripture verses rang out.

"The Human Way is distant and dim, the Immortal Way vast and boundless, the Ghost Way joyful.

When life enters the gate, the Immortal Way values life, the Ghost Way values endings."

As the Duren Sutra turned its pages, the dead man's memories bloomed along the road leading to the netherworld like frozen Lycoris Radiata.

They said the Three-Life Stone could reveal the memories of one's three lives across three incarnations. Xu Qing lacked such ability, but at that moment, he truly saw the traces and past events of the dead man's life.

The zombie was named Feng Chunlai. When alive, he had been a disciple of Yao Men—in plain terms, a beggar who went about begging for food.

The Jianghu had eight sects: the Outer Eight Sects—thievery, poison, smuggling, phoenix, thousand, witchcraft, theater, and killing; and the Inner Eight Sects—shock, fatigue, drifting, books, wind, fire, Jue, and Yao.

Of them, Yao Men had the deepest learning. It focused on the Way of the Down-and-Out and was the most difficult of the eight great sects to master completely.

Feng Chunlai was gifted with insight. Even after becoming a beggar, he always upheld the professional creed that "excellence comes from diligence, while idleness ruins the craft." In the beggars' den, he was always the first to go out begging and the last to return—a true oddity among them.

People said that old wine grew richer with age, and that old people had broader experience.

After laboring in the trade of begging for several decades, Feng Chunlai finally grasped the true meaning of Yao Men one night!

It was: "Take and give with men; ask without malice unless there is enmity."

Those ten short words were the creed the old beggar had pursued and explored throughout his life.

That night was New Year's Eve. Snow fell heavily. Happy, Feng Chunlai drank himself drunk and danced in the street. Within the high walls, the Zhao family's dog provided his accompaniment.

The next morning, someone rose early to sweep the snow piled before the door. That was when they discovered the old beggar's corpse.

He had gone smiling.

Feng Chunlai had no parents, no children, and no grandchildren. The authorities collected his corpse in public, then tossed it to a Corpse Driver behind closed doors.

Corpse Drivers were also known as Corpse Drivers. They collected silver from families and sent those who died far from home back to their hometowns, believing that fallen leaves should return to their roots. If a corpse had no owner, they drove it to a Yi Zhuang or placed it in a fixed shop.

Some less scrupulous Corpse Drivers would refine ownerless corpses into "Corpse Laborers" and sell them secretly.

This Corpse Driver clearly belonged to the latter kind. After refining the old beggar into a zombie, he sold him to this mill to work.

As it happened, the Corpse Driver who had refined the old beggar was none other than the "black middleman" who had picked up Xu Qing's corpse, refined it, and then sold it off.

Making money off the dead without paying a cent—what a vile bastard!

While Xu Qing cursed inwardly, he had already seen the beggar's entire life.

Afterward, the Duren Sutra gave its evaluation of the corpse: Human Grade Low.

At the same time, he received the reward for delivering a corpse from suffering—

Two song verses for singing "Beating the Lotus Blossoms" and "The Rat Comes to Treasure," along with several exquisite clappers strung together from golden bamboo slips.

The verses were not recorded on paper but had instead merged directly into his mind. As for the clappers—

Xu Qing bit them with his sharp, keen corpse fangs. His teeth left marks behind.

They were actually made of real gold and silver!

But could clappers with such high purity really help anyone beg for food?

Xu Qing found them utterly useless. Food sustained the living; what use did a zombie have for clappers? If he had still been alive, perhaps they could have eased the pressure of his mortgage.

Coming back to himself, Xu Qing looked down at the zombie he had subdued. At some point, the old beggar's hand, which had been stretching toward the millstone, had fallen. Its face now wore a smile, its eyes were closed, and it looked just as satisfied as it had before death.

Xu Qing stood and shook the old beggar's corpse. It was cold and rigid, without the slightest response.

Unwilling to accept it, he placed the corpse back in front of the millstone and set both its hands on the mill handle.

Still, there was not the slightest movement.

Xu Qing's heart gave a jolt. If the mill overseer discovered this tomorrow, wouldn't that spell trouble?

But then he thought it over and relaxed.

What did the old beggar's strike have to do with him?

Once he finished delivering all the zombies in this courtyard from suffering, he would grab his bucket and run through the night. Then the rotten mill could stew in its own misery!

At that thought, Xu Qing instantly filled with vigor. He rolled up his sleeves and headed for the next workstation!

Zombies grew plumper by night and thinner by day, hiding during the day and coming out at night. The zombies in the Corpse Labor Mill were no exception.

By day, the mill's actual workers would come to clean the stone troughs and add the grain, medicinal ingredients, and other materials to be milled on the second night. The zombies in the mill, meanwhile, acted as donkeys and mules. Nurtured by moonlight, they tirelessly performed the mill's hardest labor, practically existing as perpetual-motion machines.

In the blink of an eye, Xu Qing had reached another circular trough roughly one zhang in diameter. He followed the same method, subduing the Corpse Laborer before opening the Immortal Book of Salvation.

One scroll of the Duren Sutra revealed the affairs of a person's life.

The zombie beneath him had been in the same trade as the old beggar, but was a junior and younger generation.

On the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, he and a group of beggars had holed up in an abandoned residence, drinking wine and gnawing on chicken legs. Who could have known that a group of masked brutes would suddenly barge in and clean out the entire beggars' den in three quick strokes?

After reading through the beggar's life, Xu Qing received a reward: an iron rice bowl and a Dog Beating Staff.

As for why the young beggar had attracted disaster and how he had ended up losing his life, Xu Qing simply could not figure it out.

Why would these brutes leave wealthy merchants and rich landlords alone, only to swagger into a beggars' den during the New Year?

By the fourth watch, Xu Qing had delivered another seven or eight zombies from suffering. Without exception, every one of them had been a beggar who begged for food in the prefectural city while alive.

Looking at the string of Golden Clappers, Silver Clappers, and Iron Clappers hanging around his waist, Xu Qing finally lost his composure.

What kind of drop rate was this? Never mind princes, generals, ministers, and nobles—could there really not be a single rich landlord, wealthy squire, bandit, or powerful thug in this entire courtyard?

The watchman had already struck the fourth watch. There was not much time left, yet Xu Qing had delivered less than half the courtyard's zombies from suffering.

"I'll pick a few more at most. Whatever the rewards are, I'll stop in time!"

After that, Xu Qing picked the best-looking one from among the short ones. Unexpectedly, this time he really did get lucky.

When alive, this person had been a poor scholar from a declining household. Although he was alone in the world, he could read and write. He set up a stall on the street, composing letters for others and doing odd jobs involving writing and drawing. He could just about live peacefully that way.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last. The scholar fell in love with a woman of the pleasure quarters named Su Hongxiu. She had grown up in brothels and pleasure houses, with a thousand faces and ten thousand schemes. How could a mere scholar hope to control her?

In her daily life, Su Hongxiu either pretended to suffer from headaches and fever and asked him for money to see a doctor, or demanded money for rouge and powder to doll herself up. Toward the end, she seemed to decide that the scholar really would do anything for her. She simply stopped racking her brains for excuses and began demanding money openly.

An ordinary man would certainly have refused, but this scholar was no ordinary man!

When Su Hongxiu asked him for money, he not only met the requested amount but even eagerly asked whether it was enough and offered to earn more if it was not.

Even a dog would not lick a person this shamelessly! And even a dog needed its master to fill its belly before it had the strength to wag its tail.

Su Hongxiu was the star courtesan of the pleasure house. She told everyone that she sold only her art, not her body. The scholar earned money every day and poured it into her, yet in the end he did not even get to lick her feet—and still he chased after her eagerly.

Not far from the scholar's stall, an old fortune-teller could no longer stand watching. He used his hands to shape a lump of mud, laid a bamboo stick across it, and hung a mud-carved dog from one end and a mud-carved rabbit from the other.

As long as the bamboo stick was turned, the dog would chase the rabbit around.

But it could spin for an entire lifetime—even until the mud lump collapsed—and it would still never catch that rabbit.

And that rabbit was just like Su Hongxiu.

The scholar became furious from shame. Pointing at the old man, he gave him a thorough tongue-lashing, saying that the fortune-teller was a dog meddling in a rat's business and sticking his nose where it did not belong!

More than half a year passed like this. Su Hongxiu, whose price had been driven sky-high by the pleasure house, was ransomed by a wealthy squire and bought as a concubine. When the scholar heard the "bad news," he hurried straight to the squire's home, thinking that even if he had to throw away his life, he would take his beloved away from this sea of misery.

At the squire's home, the scholar planned to climb over the wall. As luck would have it, from atop the wall he happened to see Su Hongxiu flirting and acting intimately with the old squire in the rear garden.

That was an old bastard over sixty years old! How could she lower her head and put her mouth to him?

The scholar refused to believe what he had seen and heard. Instead, he consoled himself, thinking that Su Hongxiu was enduring humiliation for his sake, that she was beneath another's roof and had no choice but to bow her head and do such things.

Only after the old master left the garden, trembling as he supported his waist, did the scholar have time to climb over the wall into the compound.

Facing Su Hongxiu's astonished expression, the scholar's eyes had already reddened with tears before he could speak.

"Hongxiu, let's elope. I'll take you away from this wretched place and never let anyone bully you again!"

Su Hongxiu pulled free of the scholar's hand and rubbed her wrist. "You hurt me."

"And besides, we shouldn't see each other anymore. I'm afraid the master will misunderstand!"

A girl who was quite beautiful had now spoken words more decisive than a thorned knife carving out his heart.

The scholar forced a smile, then gave Su Hongxiu the only money he had on him—the money he had prepared for their elopement. Afterward, he did not know how he had left the squire's home. He only remembered that the sun that day had been cold, cold as if he had fallen into an icy cavern.

He had spent all his savings. Every coin he earned had been sent away with his whole-hearted devotion, yet he had not managed to get himself back intact.

As he passed the riverside, the scholar suddenly remembered a saying—

"Whores have no feelings; actors have no loyalty."

And he was a fool—a complete and utter fool!

After that, another corpse drifted with the current through the ice-choked river of midwinter, until a Corpse Driver fished it ashore.

"What a deep resentment. It'll be perfect for making a Corpse Laborer."

The scholar's former life ended there.

As Xu Qing sighed and shook his head, the Duren Sutra also gave him the corresponding reward.

A Human Grade Medium Book Scripture, and a single Heart-Clearing Pill.