Nine Provinces Wind and Thunder Sword Sect, That Fluttering Banner

Since they were going ghost-catching today, Liu Chang'an inevitably thought of Zi Bu Yu, which he had idly flipped through during the second semester of his senior year. "Zi Bu Yu" came from "The Master did not speak of the strange, the powerful, disorder, or spirits," while Yuan Mei's Zi Bu Yu was filled from beginning to end with all manner of tales about ghosts, monsters, evil spirits, and supernatural phenomena.

Liu Chang'an glanced at the zombie old lady beside him. She was trying hard to maintain a proper posture, staring straight ahead without letting her gaze wander. Only Liu Chang'an could notice her tilting her head slightly to the left, then slightly to the right, looking very pleased with herself.

"Why are you looking at me?" Sensing Liu Chang'an's gaze, Shangguan Dandan stopped her little movements, turned toward him, and met his eyes with great majesty.

"You spent so long in that coffin. Did you never crawl out to scare scholars staying overnight in graveyards because they couldn't afford an inn? Or climb out for meat buns, donkey-meat flatbread, or big-plate chicken, only for passersby to mistake you for a zombie eating people?" Liu Chang'an asked curiously.

He had always suspected that some of the zombie tales in unofficial histories and miscellaneous notes might have had something to do with Shangguan Dandan.

This thought was also related to how he himself had once been mistaken for a zombie. Faking his death, being buried in a coffin, then climbing back out himself—such experiences were hardly rare, and they happened in the human world often enough.

The origins of zombies were mostly connected to cases of suspended animation, though some people attributed them to bioelectricity, viruses, bacteria, and so on.

The most widely known zombie creature was the praying mantis controlled