Corpse Poison

After daybreak.

At the side gate of Blackwater County Office.

Liu Quan, the middle-aged constable in charge of registering odd jobs, had a face full of bulging flesh. When he saw Lin Guanhuo and Zhou Kai return, he couldn't even be bothered to raise his eyelids.

"Steward Liu, we've taken care of Widow Sun's matter." Lin Guanhuo stepped forward and clasped his hands. "Someone really did die. It was awful. Two people, both reduced to skin and bones. From the looks of it, demons did it."

"Oh?" Liu Quan took a sip of tea and glanced at the two shriveled human shapes wrapped in sheets on the handcart. "How long have they been dead?"

"Looks like it's been a while."

"Then take them to the charity cemetery and burn them." Liu Quan waved his hand as if shooing away flies. "A widow and a wild monk—there's no profit to be made there. Record it as sudden death and close the case."

In this world, two people dying was as commonplace as two chickens dying.

Unless something happened to one of the city's wealthy masters, the county office couldn't be bothered to investigate.

"Yes."

Lin Guanhuo answered and turned to pull the handcart.

Zhou Kai, standing nearby, looked troubled. He kept scratching his left arm with all his might.

That was where the gray fox had clawed him. It was only a few bloody scratches, but now it itched so badly it felt like it was drilling into his bones.

"What's wrong?" Lin Guanhuo asked quietly.

"I don't know. It itches like crazy, like bugs are burrowing into my flesh." Zhou Kai gritted his teeth and rolled up his sleeve to take a look.

The area around the wound wasn't swollen or red. Instead, it had turned a strange blue-gray, and the granulation at its edges twitched faintly. It was unsettling to see.

"Go to an apothecary and get some powder to put on it," Lin Guanhuo said with a frown.

Zhou Kai gave a bitter smile. "Where would I get the money? I sent those few reward coins home. That beast's claws were probably filthy. I'll bear with it; it'll pass."

The White Servants weren't formal employees of the Government Office, and they had no salary or stipend.

The county office only gave them a little reward money during the holidays, and even that amount was pitifully small.

The two men hauled the bodies to the charity cemetery in the west of the city and handed them over to the corpse keeper there. Then they rushed back to the county office and spent the whole day doing odd jobs.

By dusk, they finally dragged their weary bodies back to Miscellaneous Room Courtyard.

The autumn night wind was bone-chilling.

Lin Guanhuo drew a bucket of warm water in the kitchen and poured it over himself from head to toe.

It felt as though the weariness of the day and the ill luck he'd picked up at Widow Sun's house had been washed away.

"Ah... that hits the spot!" Lin Guanhuo cried out in relief.

Dinner was still a basin of thin gruel that looked like slop.

After eating, Lin Guanhuo returned to his room.

He felt the hard book tucked inside his robes. It was the martial art he had obtained earlier, the Precept Breaking Saber Art.

Just as he was about to sneak a few glances at it by moonlight,

"Ahhh—!!!"

A shriek, sharp enough to rend the air, suddenly burst from the room next door!

A moment later came the crash of tables and chairs overturning.

"What happened?!"

"What's going on?"

The White Servants in Miscellaneous Room Courtyard jolted awake one after another. They rushed out with their pants half on, carrying clubs.

Lin Guanhuo was startled by the sound. He recognized it—it was Zhou Kai.

He hurried out of his room.

The door to the room next door had been flung open. Zhou Kai stumbled out and rolled wildly in the middle of the courtyard, howling like a beast.

"Help me! Help me! It itches! It hurts!!"

By the light of the lanterns in the courtyard, everyone drew in a sharp breath and instinctively backed away, leaving a wide-open space.

Zhou Kai's left arm, which had only been scratched earlier, had now turned completely black!

His flesh was rotting and dissolving at a visible pace, with great chunks of blackened meat falling away.

White bone gleamed beneath the ruined flesh!

It was horrifying beyond words!!

Worse still, the rot was spreading from his shoulder, moving toward his neck and chest like a living thing.

"My arm! My arm is gone!" Zhou Kai cried in terror, holding up the arm with its bones exposed as he begged the others for help. "Save me!!"

"Save me!"

At that moment, one of the White Servants seemed to notice something strange about Zhou Kai.

"Don't go near him! It's corpse poison! It's contagious!" an older White Servant shouted in terror, gripping his companion tightly to stop him from stepping forward.

"This isn't corpse poison... It's demon poison! He's been cursed!" someone else said in a trembling voice.

Demon poison!!

At those two words,

the crowd was filled with fear and cold indifference, everyone desperate to keep their distance.

Just then,

"Make way! Move!"

A booming shout rang out.

The crowd parted, and a burly man in an official clerk's uniform, his face thick with flesh, strode over.

He was Zhao Sihai, the deputy foreman of Miscellaneous Room Courtyard.

In this little patch of land, he was the one in charge.

Zhao Sihai frowned and covered his nose as he glanced at Zhou Kai on the ground. There wasn't the slightest hint of pity in his eyes, only deep disgust.

"Damn it, what rotten luck! Why the hell are you screaming in the middle of the night?" Zhao Sihai cursed.

But...

When he saw Zhou Kai's condition clearly, his expression changed at once. "This is... demon poison?"

In the next moment, Zhao Sihai's face changed drastically. He hurriedly covered his nose and mouth, as if he'd seen the God of Plague.

He waved his hand and ordered, "There's no saving him! Someone, throw him out! Don't let him die in the courtyard!"

"Rotten luck! Damn it, what rotten luck!!"

"What?"

Lin Guanhuo frowned when he heard that. "Foreman Zhao, he's still alive! He's one of our own, at least try to save him!"

"Save him my ass!" Zhao Sihai glared fiercely at Lin Guanhuo, then said, "Do you know how much silver it takes to cure this kind of demon poison? You could sell his whole family and it still wouldn't be enough!"

"And if this thing spreads, everyone in this courtyard will be buried with him! Are you trying to get us all killed?"

Though Zhao Sihai's words were cold-blooded, the White Servants around them, who had been hesitating, all lowered their heads.

Better a fellow than yourself. No one wanted to get infected.

In the end, they were just ordinary people trying to eke out a living in this demon-haunted world.

Today it was Zhou Kai who died. Tomorrow, it might be them.

No one would pity anyone else. They had long since grown numb.

"What are you standing around for? Throw him out! Far away!" Zhao Sihai shouted impatiently.

Two of the braver White Servants fetched a pair of long bamboo poles and hooked them beneath Zhou Kai's waist and legs as if he were a dead dog. Ignoring his howls and struggles, they lifted him up and dragged him toward the gate.

Seeing this, Lin Guanhuo was about to say something, but Zhao Sihai shoved him aside. "Lin Guanhuo! You don't want to work here anymore? I'm warning you, if you don't, get out along with that dead man!"

"Damn it, I lost several taels of silver playing cards today, and now this rotten luck in the middle of the night. What a damn awful day!!"

To Zhao Sihai, Zhou Kai's death mattered less than the silver he'd lost that afternoon. After grumbling a few times, he went back to his room.

Zhou Kai, tossed into the street like a dead dog, soon fell silent.