Dead and Reborn

"Mo-ge, Mo-ge, what's wrong?" Ma Cai called softly, patting Chen Mo's body.

"Nothing!" Chen Mo swallowed and forcibly suppressed the unease in his heart.

Everything before his eyes was truly horrifying, making it difficult to accept.

A man who had been killed more than half a year ago was now standing alive and well before him. Such a thing completely defied common sense.

Although after encountering Gray Mist, Chen Mo had known that this world was not as simple as it appeared on the surface, the sight before him was still far too strange.

Chen Mo was certain he had not mistaken the man. He remembered it clearly—the other party was the very person he and Zhao Yu had killed together back then.

Even if the other party had survived being stabbed, and had somehow managed to stay alive for more than half a year in this lifeless Qing Province,

there was still one thing that could not be explained: the other party's eyes remained completely intact, without the slightest damage.

There were only two possibilities for such a situation. Either the other party possessed the ability to rise from the dead, or he possessed some kind of ability to rapidly heal his own injuries.

The latter should have been impossible. If he had possessed such an ability, Chen Mo should have noticed it when he attacked him back then.

Then only the former possibility remained.

"Friend, do you still recognize me?" Chen Mo walked forward, put on a smile, and called out from a distance.

"I ain't never seen you before. Did we know each other?" The man wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth and asked curiously.

"How long have you been here? Why haven't you gone looking for a way out?" Chen Mo asked from afar, not daring to approach him rashly.

He could sense the other party's malice toward him with extreme clarity. It was the gaze of someone who regarded him as food.

"Yeah, why is that?" After hearing Chen Mo's words, the man fell into thought as well.

But he did not remain confused for long. He soon stopped thinking about the matter, his eyes filling with hunger as he excitedly charged toward Chen Mo.

Only, his running speed amounted to little more than brisk walking.

"Don't come any closer!" Ma Cai shouted, tightening his grip on his weapon.

The other party looked like an incomparably frail refugee, but with Qing Province reduced to a thousand li of scorched earth, all the refugees should either have died or fled. For him to still appear here was strange no matter how one looked at it.

Even if he was not the bandit they were searching for, he certainly could not be any sort of kind soul.

"Grrr!" An extremely strange, hoarse growl came from the man's throat. It sounded like a beast, nothing like a human voice.

The other personal guards also came forward with their weapons, surrounding him. Chen Mo remained fully alert, staring fixedly at the man.

The man appeared very weak. When Chen Mo and Zhao Yu had joined forces to kill him back then, he had not been very strong either—he had merely been an ordinary refugee.

But the fact that he could rise from the dead and appear before them again proved that he was strange in himself.

Therefore, at the slightest sign that something was wrong, Chen Mo would flee without hesitation.

He inconspicuously took a step back, leaving the other new recruits room to act.

The man's strength was very weak, and his movements could only be described as slow.

"Attack." Chen Mo spoke without hesitation.

Even if the other party had risen from the dead, he still had to try killing him once more and see whether he would revive again.

He also wanted to see exactly by what means the man had revived, and why he no longer recognized him afterward.

Ma Cai poured his strength into his entire body and suddenly thrust his spear forward.

The man indeed did not look like a bandit, but under these circumstances, after being shouted at by Ma Cai, he had not retreated and still intended to attack them. Thus, he deserved to be killed.

"Chk!" Ma Cai's spear pierced straight through the man's chest and abdomen, and countless streams of blood flowed outward along the spearhead.

The other new recruits also stabbed forward. They had practiced this move tens of thousands of times in the recruit camp, so when they used it now, it was as smooth as flowing clouds and running water.

In the span of a few breaths, several bloody holes had appeared in the man's body.

"Chk!" The new recruits simultaneously pulled out their spears, sending another spray of flesh and blood flying.

The man's entire body was drenched in blood as he gradually went limp. With unease and longing in his eyes, he slowly fell.

Ma Cai's breathing was very heavy, and his expression was extremely complicated. There was panic and nervousness, as well as excitement and anxiety.

Looking at the mangled organs on the ground as countless waves of blood stench rushed into their nostrils, they also felt nausea surging through them.

This was not a major problem, however. The sight before them was indeed somewhat brutal, but it was not beyond their ability to accept. They had once had the chance to witness the execution of condemned prisoners by beheading.

They simply needed time to slowly adapt and calm themselves. They had plenty of time to adapt now, but they might not have any on the battlefield.

On the battlefield, what they saw would be ten or even a hundred times more savage than what lay before them.

If they could not even adapt to this, there was no need for them to go to the battlefield.

It did not matter if they were excited, nervous, or nauseated now. But if they became overly excited and nervous on the battlefield, they would not only lose their own lives, they would also get many of their comrades killed.

When an army was defeated, it collapsed like a landslide. As long as a single point in the momentum of a charge went wrong, it would quickly spread across the entire formation.

Looking at the fallen refugee before him, Chen Mo told several of them to bring the carriage over while he himself took several steps back and watched the man from a distance.

Ma Cai and the others soon brought the horse carriage over, and they each went to rest inside the shacks.

After roughly a quarter of an hour, the man sprawled on the ground began to slowly sit up. The blood and organs on the ground were still there, but his body was completely unharmed.

His eyes were filled with bewilderment as he stood up straight from the ground.

Although Chen Mo had expected this, he still could not help feeling horrified when he truly witnessed the sight.

Ma Cai and the other new recruits were even more deathly pale, their bodies beginning to tremble.

The man they had just killed with their own hands had now stood alive before them once again. The shock this brought them was simply too great.

"This, this..." One of the new recruits opened his mouth repeatedly, but could not say a word.

They were even beginning to suspect that the man's vengeful ghost had come to claim their lives.

Chen Mo said nothing more. He walked forward and killed the man once again with a single thrust of his spear.

Judging from the current situation, the other party was very easy to kill. His strength was even inferior to that of an ordinary commoner; he was merely a frail refugee.

But there was one thing unique about him: he could not be killed—or at least, not by conventional means.

"Go get the carriage. We're leaving." Chen Mo dragged the man's corpse into the shack.

The months of training had ultimately borne fruit. Ma Cai and the others were afraid, but under orders, they could at least move. They had not been scared stiff and collapsed to the ground.

After tossing the man's corpse into the shack, Chen Mo tore down part of the thatch and used the fire starter he carried with him to set it alight.

The entire shack, along with the corpse and the clothes on it, quickly caught fire.

Qing Province was dry, and the thatch, along with the wooden posts supporting it, contained not the slightest trace of moisture. Now, with dry wood meeting a raging fire, it was reduced to ashes in the blink of an eye.

The five new recruits were still trembling. They truly could not understand why everything before them had happened.

They had only heard storytellers speak of rising from the dead before; they had never truly witnessed it.

Chen Mo did not mount the horse and leave immediately. The new recruits indeed wanted to leave, but since Chen Mo did not, they could only wait.

After roughly another quarter of an hour, the collapsed shack and the thatch reduced to flying ash gradually disappeared. Even the ground, scorched black by the flames, returned to its former appearance.

The entire shack had returned to its original state, without the slightest trace of having burned. The man who had been killed twice in succession earlier was now still sitting inside the shack, without even the slightest sign of having been burned on his body.