Skin

Lin Guanhuo furrowed his brow. The voice behind the door was hoarse and strange, unpleasant to hear.

Lin Guanhuo said in a low voice, "I'm not here to buy tofu. I'm from the yamen, here on official business. The neighbors said there was a foul smell coming from your courtyard and feared something had happened to you, so I came to check. Since you're home, open the door."

As soon as he finished speaking,

silence fell inside the door for a moment.

Just as Lin Guanhuo and his companion were starting to grow puzzled,

"Creak—"

the two tightly shut doors slowly swung open.

Then the two of them caught a whiff...

A thick, nauseating stench of decay wafted out from the courtyard.

"Ugh..." Zhou Kai was caught off guard. He hurriedly covered his nose and mouth, then muttered, "What kind of hellhole is this..."

Lin Guanhuo furrowed his brow. "Should we just go back?"

At that, Zhou Kai gritted his teeth. "We have to find the person if they're alive, and the body if they're dead. We can't report back empty-handed. If they kick us out of the yamen, we'll starve to death anyway."

"A White Servant's life is still a life. Let's just hope there aren't any ghosts in there..."

With that, Zhou Kai gripped his saber and steeled himself to enter the courtyard. Lin Guanhuo followed cautiously behind him.

The main room stood a short distance ahead. The stench seemed to be coming from inside.

Lin Guanhuo gave him a signal. The two carefully pushed open the door to the main room.

Creak...

The door swung open.

By the light of their lantern, they saw the square table inside piled neatly with slabs of prepared tofu.

But the tofu...

seemed to have been sitting there for ages. It had gone bad and grown moldy, giving off a suffocating stench of rot.

"Th-this tofu's so moldy it must've been sitting here for at least seven or eight days, right?" Zhou Kai stared at the roomful of rotten tofu, his face ashen.

Lin Guanhuo said nothing, only looking around.

Though the room was filled with everyday household goods, it had an indescribable air of lifelessness.

Strange. Very strange.

Unusually strange.

Just then,

creak...

The door to a side room suddenly gave a faint groan, as if the wind had blown it open—or someone inside had gently pushed it.

A moment later, the faint sound of footsteps came from the side room.

That was Widow Sun's bedchamber.

The unexpected noise snapped Zhou Kai to attention. He shouted without thinking,

"Who's there?!"

No one answered.

After a moment, Zhou Kai, though frightened, took courage from the saber in his hand.

He rushed to the side-room door in a few quick strides and shoved it open.

Lin Guanhuo followed right behind him.

But the instant the lantern light fell into the room, both men froze!

There...

This had to be Widow Sun's bedchamber. Pink curtains embroidered with mandarin ducks playing in the water still hung around the bed.

But what lay on the bed left Lin Guanhuo and Zhou Kai stunned.

Two "things" lay there. They weren't living people.

They were...

Two human skins.

Two complete, shriveled skins, stripped of all clothing, as if every scrap of flesh and bone had been sucked out of them!

They lay against the bed like two limp garments.

"Th-this..."

Both men were dumbstruck.

One of the skins had heavy makeup painted on its face. Though it was shriveled and distorted, they could still make out the features of a mature, alluring woman. It was Sun Sanniang.

The other skin wore a loose gray monk's robe. Its bare scalp was wrinkled and collapsed. It must have been a monk.

Judging by the scene, the monk must have been up to some unspeakable business with Sun Sanniang before he died.

"Th-what kind of Unclean thing is this?!" Zhou Kai stumbled back a few steps, terrified. "H-human skin?!"

As White Servants, they often carried corpses and collected the dead. They'd seen their fair share.

But seeing this with their own eyes still sent a chill down their backs.

The two skins were extremely dry, their edges already brittle. They looked to have been dead for at least five or six days.

"This monk... seems to have been close to Sun Sanniang," Lin Guanhuo said in a low voice, forcing down his fear as he pieced it together. "They met in secret at night, then ran into an Unclean thing. It drained their vital essence, blood, and flesh, leaving only their skins."

"What a lecherous monk."

In this Chaotic World of demons and monsters, this kind of death was nothing unusual. They'd probably encountered some kind of demon that fed on vital essence.

Hmm?

Lin Guanhuo studied the dead monk. Something seemed to bulge beneath his robe.

While Zhou Kai wasn't looking, Lin Guanhuo stepped forward and lifted the monk's robe with his scabbard.

An ancient book appeared.

Lin Guanhuo had assumed it was some kind of scripture, but when he looked closely,

he saw four large characters on the cover:

Precept Breaking Saber Art!

Lin Guanhuo's heart stirred.

A martial art?

In this world, martial arts manuals were incredibly precious resources.

Most were monopolized by Noble Families, sects, gangs, and the Imperial Court.

To learn martial arts, one either had to buy a manual at a steep price or join the Demon Suppressing Division, a martial arts school, or a Martial Dao Prominent clan.

Ordinary people clearly had little chance of doing any of that.

Though the name Precept Breaking Saber Art didn't sound like any orthodox Buddhist teaching, any martial art—even the most basic farmer's fighting techniques—could fetch a few Taels of Silver on the black market. That would buy him enough food to eat his fill for a while.

And if he could learn it... it might even give him a chance to defy fate!

Lin Guanhuo moved with lightning speed, snatching up the book and slipping it into the inner pocket of his robe in one smooth motion.

Then he said, "Let's go. We'll carry this thing to the cart and report back."

His fellow White Servant, Zhou Kai, had finally calmed down a little.

He fought down his nausea and nodded.

"Wait!!"

But then Zhou Kai seemed to realize something, his voice trembling as he said, "Brother Lin..."

Zhou Kai stared fixedly at Lin Guanhuo and spoke each word as if forcing it out. "Have... have you thought about it?"

"If these two people were already dead..."

"Then who answered us at the door just now? Who opened it?"

"And who was walking around in the room?"

His question plunged them both into silence.

Could it be... one of the human skins had opened the door for them, then floated back into the room?

This...

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...

A cold wind swept through the old, gloomy house.

"Don't let your imagination run wild. We shouldn't stay here!" Lin Guanhuo said grimly. "First, let's get these... two corpses out of here. Then we can report back and be done with it!"

The two steeled themselves, fighting back their nausea and fear as they wrapped up the two weightless human skins.

But just as they carried the bodies out of the main room and prepared to load them onto the cart outside,

Yowl—

A shrill cry, halfway between a cat's wail and a baby's sob, suddenly rang out.

Then—

A gray blur shot down from the rafters and lunged straight at Zhou Kai, who was walking in front.

"Ah! What the hell is that?!"

Zhou Kai screamed, his hand shaking!

The creature still managed to claw several scratches into his arm.

Lin Guanhuo reacted in a flash, swinging his saber back at it.

The blade cut through the air, but the creature was incredibly fast. It leaped straight onto the wall.

Only then did the two of them get a good look at it.

It was a fox.

It crouched on the wall, its narrow eyes fixed coldly on them.

"You filthy beast! How dare you scratch me!" Zhou Kai snarled in pain, cursing furiously.

The fox seemed to understand him. It let out a "giggle," like a human laugh, then turned and slipped into the darkness.

"Don't chase it. Move! There's something evil about this place." Lin Guanhuo urged him on. The house had clearly been plagued by demons; it was far beyond what two White Servants could handle.

At that, Zhou Kai let it go. The two men tossed the human skins onto the cart.

They also slapped a seal across the gate of Widow Sun's house before leaving.

A long while later,

the house once again sank into deathly silence.

No one knew how much time passed before,

inside Widow Sun's house,

the gray fox silently crept out again.

It stood in the middle of the courtyard, staring coldly at the empty, dark house.

It opened its mouth and spoke in a hoarse voice. "Eat... eat tofu... make, make tofu...?"

"Ha ha ha ha..."

But...

Beneath the fox's head was a human face.