A Person Inside the Corpse

Father and son finished tending to the coffin together, then immediately set off for the Chen residence.

White mourning banners had long since been hung in the courtyard. When the wind blew, the black elegiac couplets on either side of the doorframe snapped and fluttered, and the remnants of Spring Festival couplets torn down only recently could still be seen.

The mourning hall had been set up in the main house. An eternal lamp burned before the offering table, its candle flame wavering.

Faint, intermittent sobs from grieving relatives drifted out from the inner room. Meanwhile, two tables of funeral fare had been laid out in the side room. Seven or eight constables sat around them, their cups emptied and refilled again and again. No one spoke; they merely drank in silence.

Ren Qing stood at the doorway for a moment and heard hushed discussion coming from the side room.

"Head Constable Chen just died like that? The day before yesterday, he was still joking with me about buying his son a wooden sword."

"I heard he got up in the night and accidentally fell into the backyard well, where he drowned. Fucking strange."

"Rubbish! His external martial arts were solid—among the best in the yamen. How could he just fall into a well for no reason? Besides, the well railing came up to the waist. Unless he was..."

Before he could finish, someone beside him shot him a fierce glare. In the end, only a heavy sigh remained.

"Madam Zhou, please restrain your grief." Ren Shanshi stepped forward awkwardly.

A haggard-looking woman came out to receive them. She was Zhou, Chen Qi's widow.

Madam Zhou's hair was disheveled, her swollen eyelids like walnuts, tears streaking her face. Yet she still forced a smile at the corners of her mouth. "Shopkeeper Ren, I'm sorry to have troubled you with this trip."

Ren Shanshi took a cloth bundle from his robe. "This is a small condolence gift, to show our feelings."

Madam Zhou hurriedly waved her hands. "It is already a great kindness for Shopkeeper Ren to bring the coffin. How could I accept another gift from you?"

"The proper customs must not be neglected."

Unable to refuse any longer, Madam Zhou said, "Shopkeeper Ren, why don't you have some funeral fare at this humble home before you leave?"

"We'll pass on the funeral fare. Madam Zhou, may we see Head Constable Chen?"

Madam Zhou immediately nodded. "My husband is in the mourning hall. Please, make yourselves at home."

With that, she stepped aside to clear the way.

Ren Qing and the other entered the mourning hall, where the heavy scent of incense and candles rushed over them.

Chen Qi's corpse lay on a bier in the center of the mourning hall, covered by a white sheet.

"Ah Qing, you haven't married yet, so there's no need for you to pay respects."

Ren Shanshi murmured the reminder, then took three sticks of incense himself. Facing the corpse, he bowed respectfully and muttered wishes for a safe journey on the road ahead.

Ren Qing stood to one side, seemingly with lowered eyes, yet he quietly activated his divine sense and carefully swept it over the corpse.

Chen Qi's flesh was stiff and swollen. Faint purplish livor mortis could be seen around his neck, typical signs of drowning. If there was anything at all worth suspecting, it was only the small split wound in the middle of his forehead.

But the corpse had fallen into a well. A few bumps and scrapes were perfectly normal.

"Could it really have been a coincidence?"

Ren Qing's brows drew together slightly, doubt sprouting thickly in his heart. "Three constables died one after another within a month, all from accidents? The more I think about it, the less reasonable it seems."

Just then, he sensed a strand of unfamiliar divine sense emerging outside the door.

Someone from the Immortal Ascension Sect?

Ren Qing gave nothing away and secretly signaled Sparrow Dao Child to move closer to the source of that divine sense.

Through Sparrow Dao Child's blurry vision, he saw a middle-aged peddler standing across the street, a scissors-sharpening pole balanced on his shoulder as he shouted loudly.

"Scissors sharpened!"

The peddler leaned casually against a wall corner, his eyes constantly darting toward the Chen residence's courtyard.

It was the bitter cold of winter, yet he was dressed unusually lightly. His exposed skin was covered in sweat, and he repeatedly wiped himself down with a grimy black rag.

An indescribably greasy odor wafted from the peddler, mixed with the stink of sweat. Passersby instinctively covered their noses and mouths and detoured around him.

Ren Qing narrowed his eyes. This man's cultivation was only at the threshold, roughly equivalent to Sun Zu's.

Yet his method of becoming immortal was utterly unfamiliar. There had to be an immortal-to-be cultivator standing behind him. Only, unlike Zhou Can, that person was far more cautious. Even when making an appearance, he had merely tossed out a pawn to serve as a lookout.

Ren Qing shook his head slightly. He had the distinct feeling that this man's purpose was much the same as his own.

He simply wanted to determine whether there was anything suspicious about Chen Qi's death.

"Could it have nothing to do with the Immortal Ascension Sect?"

Just as Ren Qing hesitated, a burst of tables and chairs crashing together suddenly came from the side room, along with panicked cries that shattered the silence of the funeral.

"What happened?!"

"Someone come quickly! He's... he's choking!!"

Hearing this, everyone rushed over. Ren Qing followed them into the side room as well.

Two constables who had just been drinking in silence now had flushed red faces. Both clutched their throats tightly with their hands, their bodies bent like shrimp.

"Ghk... ghk."

As the sounds they made grew fainter and fainter, their eyes had already become bloodshot and bulged out.

The companions beside them sweated anxiously, pounding hard on their backs and reaching into their throats, but nothing worked.

"What are they eating? How... how could this happen?!"

"Just one mouthful of rice!!"

Ren Qing stared in stunned disbelief. His divine sense clearly saw that there was indeed only a small mouthful of rice lodged in their throats. An ordinary person could cough it out after a few heaves, yet these two constables, who had trained their external martial arts year-round, were utterly helpless.

Thud!!

Their strength spent, their legs gave out, and they collapsed to the ground.

After only a few spasms of their limbs, every trace of life had utterly vanished.

Once they had become corpses, the unchewed rice in their throats was instead coughed back out.

Everyone stood frozen where they were. After a deathly silence came Madam Zhou's devastated wailing, along with the terrified faces of several fellow constables.

Ren Qing noticed that the peddler across the street had already slipped into an alley amid the chaos, leaving behind only his retreating back.

"Sparrow Fairy, stay on him!!"

The peddler's actions were highly suspicious, yet from beginning to end, there had been no trace of sorcery in the constables' deaths. It was more like the law of causality from the film Final Destination.

"Ah Qing, go! Hurry, go!"

Ren Shanshi came to his senses and grabbed Ren Qing's arm, dragging him outside. "This is too damn sinister! So many constables are involved—if they take us to the yamen for questioning, we'll be in deep trouble!"

Ren Qing followed him out of the crowd, though his steps could not help but hesitate.

Death by illness, by falling, by drowning, by choking.

Each death was too absurd, utterly contrary to reason, steeped in strangeness.

Before stepping out through the Chen residence's gates, Ren Qing could not help turning back for one last look.

The two bodies had already been moved outside. Bloody fluid streamed from their noses and mouths, trickling down their chins and dripping onto the snow, where it spread into small, dark stains.

"What kind of ghost is this?"

Ren Qing murmured under his breath. If not for the strange phenomenon accompanying his divine sense, he would have dearly wished to project it outward and get a clear look.

Suddenly.

Without any warning, a tiny wound appeared on the foreheads of the two corpses, identical to Chen Qi's wound.

The wound was no bigger than a grain of rice, yet it nearly pierced through flesh and bone.

"That spot..."

Ren Qing froze. Further inward from between the brows—wasn't that the Niwan Palace?

Then, as he concentrated, he caught sight of an unbelievable scene.

Within the hole of the wound, an eyeball was rolling about wildly. How to put it? It was as though another person were hidden inside the corpse, trying to break free.

The flesh around the edges twitched faintly with the eyeball's movements, as if it might split open at any moment.

The surrounding crowd continued to cry and shout, their naked eyes completely unable to notice.

Ren Qing's heart turned cold.

That was absolutely not an Immortal Ascension Sect technique!!!