Borrowing Brainwaves

The torrential rain poured down in sheets.

Beside a patch of low shrubs, two men in straw raincoats were digging a pit.

The excavated mud flew from their shovels into a muddy hollow nearby, splashing water everywhere.

"Third Uncle, it's about enough."

Chen Luo stopped, viciously drove his shovel into the earth, pressed one hand against the handle, and spoke to the older man beside him.

Third Uncle stopped as well. In that brief moment, the pit they had just dug had already accumulated a great deal of water.

"Bury them."

Third Uncle glanced at the row of reed mats at his feet, all caked in yellow mud.

They were a group of corpses whose names no one knew, and no one knew who had killed them. In order to prevent an epidemic from spreading, the Authorities had sent the uncle and nephew to deal with them.

This was their profession.

Corpse Collectors.

To put it bluntly, they were lowly laborers who cleaned up after the Authorities and Jianghu Organizations.

Chen Luo did not want to live this kind of life either. When he had transmigrated here, he had never imagined that he would end up digging holes and burying people.

But people had to stay alive!

This world was utterly unfamiliar.

Outside, war and chaos raged. It was not any dynasty he knew, and at night, Jianghu Wanderers came and went over rooftops and walls, with heads liable to roll at any time. In order to survive and have a full meal besides, he had sought refuge with Third Uncle in the city and begun living the sort of life the villagers envied. He had started digging pits and burying corpses then, and three years had passed in the blink of an eye.

Once this year ended, he would be twenty!

"Alright."

Chen Luo grabbed a reed mat beside him with one hand and carried the body into the muddy pit.

Anyone else would have simply kicked the corpse down with one foot, but Chen Luo would not.

Neither would the Third Uncle who had taught him.

His third uncle said that was the Corpse Collector's rule.

Respect every dead person.

Chen Luo had learned it and committed it firmly to memory. He did not know why Third Uncle had made him do so, but there had to be a reason. Every trade possessed its own wisdom. Chen Luo did not think that merely because he had transmigrated, the knowledge in his head was more useful than experience others had accumulated over generations.

Once the first corpse was lowered in, it quickly mixed with the muddy water.

The rain was too heavy. Murky water submerged the corpse. Fortunately, these were nameless Jianghu Wanderers, and their corpses were incomplete to begin with, so no one fussed over such details.

So long as they entered the earth, that was enough.

After setting down the first corpse, Chen Luo climbed back up to carry the second one.

Third Uncle watched from the side, paying attention to Chen Luo's every movement and occasionally offering him a pointer.

Collecting corpses was not simple work.

There was naturally no need to worry about beggars who had died of old age, but these Jianghu Wanderers were different. Most had died in grudge killings, and some carried deadly poison even after death. Many young Corpse Collectors had been poisoned to death after touching such toxins while gathering Jianghu Wanderers' bodies. Aside from Jianghu Wanderers, there was another kind of corpse that required caution: disaster victims. Many had died from illness, and even after death, their bodies could still spread disease and kill people.

Poison and epidemics.

These were the Corpse Collectors' natural enemies.

"Xiao Luo, you're nearly twenty, aren't you?" Third Uncle looked at Chen Luo working briskly, his eyes full of satisfaction.

He had always thought highly of his eldest brother's son.

Steady and hardworking.

Most importantly, careful. Such a quality was already difficult to find in young people. Since learning the trade from him, Chen Luo had never made any fatal mistakes. He learned everything after being taught once. By now, Chen Laosan had little left to teach him. In some time, this nephew would be able to set up his own household and stand on his own feet.

"I'll be twenty after the New Year."

Chen Luo answered over his shoulder after setting down the corpse, not understanding why Third Uncle had brought it up.

"It's time for you to get married too. Once the new year begins, Third Uncle will go to the outer streets and find you a matchmaker. I'll find you a woman with a thick waist and big hips, someone who can help our Old Chen Family spread branches and scatter leaves."

Third Uncle grinned.

People of their generation liked women who could bear children. They did not fancy frail women.

"Isn't that a little early?"

Chen Luo's face was filled with refusal.

He truly could not accept the older generation's standards of beauty. Just imagining spending the rest of his days with such a wife made him want to dig a hole and bury himself.

"You brat, you're still unwilling? Once you get married, you'll know the benefits of big hips!"

This was not the first time Third Uncle had raised the subject with Chen Luo.

Faced with Third Uncle's teasing, Chen Luo simply stopped paying attention to him. After lowering the corpse, he climbed out of the pit again and prepared to carry the last body. The rain was even heavier now, mixed with wind that slapped painfully against his face. A muddy hollow nearby was washed open by rainwater, forming a small current of mud that dyed both their trouser legs yellow. The reed mat wrapped around the corpse was also torn open by the muddy current. With his eyes blurred by the rain, Chen Luo accidentally reached through the mat and grabbed the corpse's head.

"Careful!"

Chen Laosan's expression changed. He rushed forward and clamped Chen Luo's wrist in one hand, while swiftly taking out a red cord with the other and tying it tightly around his blood vessels.

If he had been poisoned, binding the blood vessels would give Chen Luo a chance to cut off his arm rather than lose his life outright.

Chen Luo froze, then instinctively looked at the corpse again.

His pupils contracted slightly. Before he could examine it closely, he heard Third Uncle's voice by his ear. Immediately afterward, the red cord was tied around his right arm, tightening until his wrist ached.

"I'm fine. He was just a poor man. There's no poison on him."

Coming back to himself, Chen Luo hurriedly replied. Seeing that his palm had not changed color, he sighed in relief.

He had given himself quite a fright as well.

Ever since entering this profession, he had heard plenty of rumors: people dying after accidentally touching a jianghu wanderer's corpse and getting poisoned, people coughing blood until they died after catching an illness, and so on.

The deadly poisons in this world were absurdly unreasonable. Even if they were merely smeared on a corpse, touching them could still kill. Under normal circumstances, they would never open a reed mat, much less touch a corpse with their bare hands.

"You little brat, are you tired of living?"

Chen Laosan sighed in relief, then angrily gave Chen Luo a slap to the back of the head.

"Get out of the way and watch carefully! A mistake in corpse collection can get you killed."

After driving Chen Luo away, Chen Laosan handled it personally. He first wrapped the corpse body back up in the reed mat, then bowed to it. Only afterward did he carefully shoulder it and place it at the very edge of the dug pit. By then, muddy water had already flooded half the pit. Once the corpse was put in, it soon disappeared from sight.

More and more turbid muddy water gathered, while the slurry washed loose from the surroundings began flowing into it.

Seeing this, Chen Laosan did not delay further. After climbing out of the pit, he called Chen Luo over to start filling it in.

Working together, the two soon filled the pit. Then they piled more earth over it and packed it down into a small mound. They planted the Wordless Tombstone the Imperial Court had given them on top, and this crude grave was complete.

"May you all go well."

After filling the grave, Chen Laosan took out a jug of cheap wine diluted with water from the box on his back and poured it over the wordless tombstone.

This was a Corpse Collector's habit, a farewell to the dead to keep their spirits from haunting them.

After offering the wine and reciting the prayers.

The heaviest rain had passed. Chen Laosan checked Chen Luo's hand once more, and only after confirming there was nothing wrong did he untie the red cord and put it away.

"Let's go."

Chen Laosan packed his things, returning the wine bottle and several cheap sacrificial items to the box. Then he led Chen Luo down the mountain.

This job was finished. It was time to return and collect their reward money.

Chen Luo followed behind him. After walking roughly a hundred paces, he suddenly stopped and looked back.

Within his field of vision, an additional gray gauge had appeared.

'Contacted Dead Person's Brainwaves. Damage: 92%. Read?'

He tried focusing his attention on it, and soon saw a line of familiar text.

"Read!"

Chen Luo muttered inwardly.

The words soon changed. A strange frequency entered his mind, as though he had connected to an external device. The next instant, a string of intermittent text surfaced in his thoughts.

'Cook Orchid Withered Ball and Iron Thread Grass until three-tenths done, boil them into juice, then consume with White Flower Fruit to increase strength.'

After he finished reading that sentence, Chen Luo instantly understood what his ability was.

The source of this information was precisely the lingering obsession left behind by the corpse he had touched not long ago—the content that had remained in that man's mind until death.

"Is this the content recorded in that jianghu wanderer's remaining brainwaves? In other words, I can read a dead man's brainwaves?"

Chen Luo instantly understood the use of this ability.

This world was not a purely ancient era. It was more like a chaotic age where many peoples had blended together.

The Authorities held things down at the top, but beneath them, Jianghu gangs and Local Gangs all possessed their own spheres of influence. On the surface, everyone maintained the Imperial Court's dignity and acted according to the rules, but what happened at night was up to the Jianghu Wanderers.

When Chen Luo had first arrived in this world, he had also considered learning martial arts.

Only by learning martial arts could he change his life.

Doing business alone was unworkable in such a chaotic world.

But Chen Luo had tried many methods and could not come into contact with the martial arts class. More precisely, among everyone he knew, not one person had truly come into contact with martial arts. This was not strange. The monopoly of the privileged classes was innate and rarely passed downward. The society from before his transmigration was the clearest proof. Everyone knew finance made money, but how many could truly play finance? At most, they were "leeks" or "tools," entering only to be harvested in that sort of "pseudo-finance." The real tycoons who controlled finance were cut off from the lower classes.

"These medicinal ingredients aren't hard to find. If they could become a jianghu wanderer's final obsession, they should have some effect."

The day after burying the bodies, Chen Luo collected his reward money and bought several medicinal ingredients from the obsession.

They were not expensive. One dose cost only three large coins.

Dawn was just beginning to break.

Chen Luo used a broken Pottery Pot in the stable to boil the medicine, and its pungent smell spread through the courtyard.

Only because Third Uncle had gone out drinking with courtesans last night did this work. If he had still been in the courtyard, he would certainly have come out swinging.

Third Uncle's courtyard was not large, with only two rooms in total. If something was being boiled in the yard, the smell would drift straight into the rooms.

A quarter of an hour later.

The medicine was done. All the herbs had been cooked into dregs, and the black liquid inside the Pottery Pot did not look like something a person could drink.

Chen Luo picked up the Pottery Pot and lifted the lid.

He brought it to his nose and took a sniff.

The pungent, spicy odor nearly made his tears flow. Beneath the spiciness was a foul stench, like rotten eggs left out for ten days or half a month, making him nearly vomit up last night's meal. It was hard to imagine that several ordinary medicinal ingredients, boiled together, could release such a terrifying smell.

"Can this thing really be drunk?"

After vomiting, Chen Luo stared at the Pottery Pot in his hands, his face full of doubt.

But he had already spent the money, so he could not simply waste it.

Chen Luo's gaze shifted toward the dog Third Uncle kept. He remembered that when he had first come to Third Uncle's place in the city, this Scabby Dog had bitten a hole in one of his trousers. In the corner, the Scabby Dog, driven there by the foul stench, tucked its tail tight and faintly sensed that something bad might be about to happen.

"Big Flower, come here, come here. I'm giving you an extra meal today."

Holding the jar, Chen Luo beckoned to the Scabby Dog with a kind smile.

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