The corpse-soldier raising method rewarded by the Duren Sutra was far superior to the one Shi Jiulu had practiced. Or rather, this was the true corpse-soldier raising method of the Zongwu Prefecture in Shu Land.
"Close the doors and windows. Guard against fire and thieves—"
At the second watch of the Hai hour, after sitting motionless for a full shichen, Xu Qing suddenly opened his eyes. Countless talismans and incantations took shape before him.
He had grasped the true essence of raising corpse soldiers.
Taking out the White Seal Soldier Token that governed the Dao soldiers, Xu Qing forced out a wisp of pure yin energy and sent it into the token. Then he took a cinnabar talisman brush from the cloth bag he carried and began sweeping it freely across Shi Jiulu's body.
Before long, all kinds of bizarre runes began crawling outward from Shi Jiulu's chest, then grew and spread wildly across his entire body.
At a glance, they looked just like the taboo curse patterns carved onto the bodies of shamans and spirit mediums.
The moment Xu Qing's hand stopped moving, the corpse before him moved!
Shi Jiulu opened his murky gray-white eyes and looked around. In the end, his gaze landed on the person who had inscribed the talismans.
Xu Qing stood up and retreated two steps. The Shi Jiulu who had been refined into a corpse soldier also rose stiffly and followed him step by step.
One foot, then the other. Left and right. Right and left.
Well, it turned out he hadn't refined a corpse soldier. He had refined a tango partner.
But Xu Qing understood that this phenomenon wasn't caused by a problem with the raising method. It was because he had used the Duren Sutra to transcend the other man.
The Cat-faced Corpse soldier refined by Shi Jiulu had retained a fragment of its soul, which was why it seemed more agile.
The Shi Jiulu before him, however, had been completely transcended. He was now nothing more than a mindless walking corpse, controllable only through corpse-driving techniques. He was of little use.
Xu Qing thought it over, then simply went to where the tools were kept and took out the hoes, iron shovels, and other implements needed to bury corpses and dig graves.
Behind him, Shi Jiulu continued following step by step, his dead-fish eyes rolling.
Xu Qing came to the middle of the courtyard and chose a place to dig. He then demonstrated for Shi Jiulu, making him imitate his movements and dig a pit alongside him.
After all the pits had been dug, Xu Qing came to the first one and bared his gums at the not-too-bright Shi Jiulu.
The latter tried to bare his teeth as well, but his facial skin merely quivered faintly, and he failed.
Xu Qing scratched his head, pondering what he should do with this stupid thing.
Unexpectedly, the other man tilted his head and actually raised a hand to scratch it as well.
"..."
Could this blockhead really become a corpse soldier who charged into battle and slew enemies?
Xu Qing silently jumped into the pit. When he saw Shi Jiulu jump in after him, he casually raised the hoe in his hand and slammed it into the other man's forehead with a clang, sending him straight into the earth.
The Zombie King's first lackey couldn't be a fool. Otherwise, if word got out in the future, how embarrassing would that be?
Beneath the moon's pale crown, a diligent gardener was covering fresh soil.
After using the iron shovel to tamp down the last bit of loose earth, Xu Qing thought for a moment, then opened two more pits nearby.
It was midnight now. The clouds overhead were growing denser, and the entire courtyard was gradually filling with mist.
Xu Qing opened the courtyard gate and pushed the empty handcart into the night along the street.
He had never forgotten that two clients in Linhe Fang were still waiting for their funeral procession tonight. He couldn't keep his clients waiting.
Following Shi Jiulu's memories, Xu Qing crossed Shuimen Bridge, passed the vegetable market entrance, and wound his way to the gate of a household.
The courtyard gate wasn't tall. It consisted of two short doors, each about a person's height, fitted together with a gap roughly a foot wide above them—a typical defense against petty men, but not against gentlemen.
Was Xu Qing a petty man?
Not entirely.
Was he a gentleman?
Not entirely either.
He was merely a living corpse, someone unrecognized by worldly conventions.
So Xu Qing put on his knuckle dusters and politely knocked on the courtyard gate.
Inside, he could vaguely see candlelight glowing from the windows through the thin mist.
"Shuangxi, go out and take a look. Maybe Old Nine has finished his work and come back."
"You're closer to the gate. Why don't you go?"
"How about we play rock-paper-scissors? Whoever loses goes to open the gate."
"To hell with rock-paper-scissors. It's just a lousy gate. Could we really run into a ghost?"
"..."
Listening to the sounds from inside, Xu Qing suddenly felt a stir in his heart and came to a sudden realization.
They were human, while he was a zombie. Since he was an evil spirit or monster, shouldn't he go with the local customs and learn how ghosts and monsters behaved?
The more Xu Qing thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.
With that thought, he turned his back and faced the courtyard gate with only the back of his head exposed.
Inside the courtyard, Li Shuangxi had just finished drinking. His head spinning, he tottered over on his heels to the gate.
"Hey, Old Nine, why did you take so long—"
When he pulled open the gate, Li Shuangxi saw a person standing before him with his back turned.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
The moment he finished speaking, he was waiting for the other person to turn around. Instead, he saw the back of that person's head twist and contort, as if several loaches were hidden beneath the scalp. In the blink of an eye, a face filled with a sinister grin emerged.
"Do I look human to you, or do I look like a ghost?"
In the dead of night, a face suddenly growing out of the back of your head asked whether it looked human or ghostly. Tell me, wouldn't your heart turn cold?
Li Shuangxi had once been a Corpse Driver and had heard and witnessed some bizarre things. Otherwise, he would probably have been scared into shitting himself on the spot.
Even so, most of the drunkenness in his body was startled away.
Almost without thinking, he twisted around and tried to run back into the courtyard. But how could Xu Qing give him the chance? The Hidden Blade Technique from Two-Faced Deception flashed out, and Li Shuangxi's head dropped to the ground with a thud!
Xu Qing tilted the back of his head to one side. The Corpse Drivers of this era really weren't much. Their skin was too fragile. They could control corpses from a distance, but once someone got close, they were like a father beating his son aboard a fishing boat—there was nowhere to run.
After dealing with Li Shuangxi, Xu Qing turned around fully, his face returning to normal as he looked toward the main room of the courtyard.
Another son, reeking of alcohol from head to toe, had already heard the noise and emerged with a blade in hand.
When Qiu Ping saw his brother's corpse lying in the courtyard with its head separated from its body, as well as the cold-faced, pale young man standing there, his entire body shuddered. A chill shot straight from his coccyx to the crown of his head.
Who was this person? The brothers had only recently arrived in Linhe. They had caused little trouble along the way and hadn't had time to make enemies.
Could this be someone from the Zongwu Prefecture pursuing deserters all the way here?
"Who are you, exactly? Why did you kill my brother?!"
Xu Qing smiled. "Me? I'm a Corpse Driver from the same underworld trade as you."
"If we're in the same line of work, why did you commit murder in the middle of the night? We never offended you."
As Qiu Ping spoke with the blade in hand, his other hand reached toward his waist to remove his Dao-soldier yin talisman.
How could Xu Qing give him the chance to perform the wind-up and summon a Dao soldier? He dug his heel into the ground, and his iron-skinned body shot forward like a human cannonball, appearing before Qiu Ping almost instantly. Then the Tiger Seal Dragon Elephant Fist came one blow after another, roaring out with savage force!
In the next moment, the other man flew far away like a torn rag sack and slammed solidly into the wall of the house!
Not to mention reaching for the Dao-soldier yin talisman, that blow had probably shattered every bone in his body. How could he have the strength to do anything else?
When he reached the man, Xu Qing added two more punches. Only after seeing that he had completely stopped breathing did he speak:
"Where there are no enemies, there's no meeting. Who can blame us when we're in the same line of work?"
Before you continue