A Corpse

"Creak!"

The chair let out a teeth-grating squeak, then settled upright. Ren Ye straightened instinctively and asked, "Was that important character a Taoist priest?"

His dad, who had been rambling about the plot, paused in surprise. "Why are you so worked up?"

"I'm asking you, was the important character who got killed off a Taoist priest?" Ren Ye pressed urgently.

"Yes, a Taoist priest." His dad nodded.

Ren Ye sprang to his feet and asked again, "Was the prince in the princely estate a total waste of space?"

"Yes." His dad stared blankly at Ren Ye.

"Was the main plot about an old emperor dying, his two sons fighting for the throne, and the vassal prince losing?" Ren Ye's voice trembled as he spoke.

"How did you know?" His dad looked astonished.

"Holy shit!" Ren Ye slapped his thigh in excitement.

"Huh? What did you just say?" His dad frowned and scolded him. "Watch your language."

"Quick, let me see the outline. I'll help you work on it." Ren Ye immediately urged him, "I think this story's really interesting... hurry, I want to read it."

His dad slowly stood up and adjusted his glasses out of habit. "Why do you look so pale? And why are you so jumpy? Son, did someone beat you up a lot inside? If there really was some prison bully, we can use the law to protect ourselves. We can sue him for every penny he's got...!"

"No, no. Haha, I just thought it sounded interesting..." Ren Ye pushed his dad along by the back, heading into the bedroom with him.

Ren Ye's home had originally been a two-bedroom apartment with a living room and less than seventy square meters of usable space. Many years ago, that would have counted as a luxury home, but now it felt a little cramped for a family of three.

Once both children grew old enough to understand things, sharing a room became inconvenient. Their dad also wanted each of them to have a separate space to study, so he gave up his master bedroom and took over a little of the living room, turning two bedrooms into three.

The rooms with good light and ventilation went to his son and daughter, while he took the smallest room, the one that got the least sunlight. As he put it, all he needed was a bed and a bookshelf. As long as the internet was fast and his porn didn't buffer, he could put up with any working conditions.

But Ren Ye knew his dad had spent years writing and was somewhat withdrawn by nature. He needed the lights on even when he wrote during the day, and he hated dim, cramped spaces. They made him feel stifled and oppressed.

That was why, back when Ren Ye still worked at his former workplace, he had dreamed of getting a bigger home. But the requirements for housing allocations were stringent these days, and the crackdown on corruption was strict... he'd been born in the wrong fucking era, you know?

As everyone knew, a shut-in's room had a distinctive smell. It wasn't unpleasant, just faintly salty... and in that respect, his dad was no exception, even in his fifties.

Father and son entered the room. Ren Ye dropped onto the bed and urged, "Quick, hurry up."

His dad pulled out his chair and extracted a stack of printed draft pages from the heap of contracts, documents, and books beneath his computer desk. "Here, take a look."

"Why is it on paper?" Ren Ye asked, puzzled.

"My neck's been killing me lately. Sitting too long leaves me feeling half-dead. It's more comfortable to read lying down." After handing him the draft, his dad propped his chin on his left hand, moved the mouse with his right, and opened a messaging app.

Inside the app, red unread-message dots marked the upper-right corners of a whole collection of profile pictures belonging to women who still retained their mature charms. One glance brought a happy, satisfied expression to his dad's face, and he began clattering away at the keyboard.

After sneaking a glance at his dad, Ren Ye sat on the bed and read the draft and outline. The more he read, the deeper his frown grew.

Morgue No. 2, Thousand Lakes Island Hospital, Suhang City.

Under the bright lights, a row of mortuary trolleys reflected a silvery gleam. Two iron doors stood tightly shut, and a sinister chill permeated the room.

"Thud... thud...!"

Suddenly, several muffled knocks came from the left, as if something alive were striking a metal panel, shattering the peace and quiet of this final stop in life.

"Thud, thud, thud...!"

Rather than dying away, the sounds came faster.

Had anyone been there, they would surely have pissed themselves on the spot, because the entire bank of mortuary cabinets on the left was... was visibly shaking.

"Bang."

With a sudden, dull crash, a large drawer containing a corpse slid out without warning.

"Rustle...!"

The pale blue plastic sheet covering the corpse first rustled, then flew off as a figure abruptly sat up.

Under the lights, the face of the corpse that had suddenly sat upright was clearly visible. He was a man of about forty, his remains well preserved, with no external injuries. A personal identification tag still hung from his right ankle. The cause of death read-sudden cardiac arrest.

"He" radiated an icy chill. A thin layer of frost coated his eyebrows, cheeks, and sparse hair. Clear patches of lividity had already appeared on the corpse's limbs and torso.

Silence returned. Less than thirty seconds later, the corpse sitting in the large drawer suddenly opened his eyes. At first, they were vacant and unfocused, but they quickly regained their alertness.

A few more seconds passed, and the sound of a heartbeat returned...

"Crack..."

He turned his stiff neck, his vertebrae making a teeth-grating noise. His eyes swept the area behind him before stopping on a wall where several white coats hung.

There were no surveillance cameras here. He tried bracing himself with both hands, slowly moved his legs, and climbed down from the large drawer.

Only after spending a full two or three minutes adjusting did he push the drawer shut and walk stiffly toward the wall. He took down a white coat and slipped it over his naked body.

"Creak!"

The door to Morgue No. 2 opened. Wearing nothing but a white coat, the man strode quickly down the corridor, muttering to himself, "Buh, puh, muh, fuh... ah, oh, uh... hewwo, hallo... hello... mm... zis... this body still works."

He slipped through the second basement level and into a stairwell with a surveillance blind spot, then actually sneaked out of the hospital in broad daylight. A few people did notice his odd attire and bare feet along the way, but no one would suspect that a corpse had climbed out of a mortuary drawer on its own.

About ten minutes later, the "corpse" flagged down a taxi on a small street beside the hospital and got into the back seat.

The driver was stunned by his complexion and clothing. "...Sir, what... what... what happened to you?"

He glanced at the driver and replied calmly, "I got caught during my lunch break... had to leave in a bit of a hurry."

The driver stared for a while, then instantly understood. "Your wife showed up?"

"No, her husband did," he replied, pressing the white coat closed with his arms.

The driver nodded knowingly, turned back around, and asked, "Where to?"

He thought for a moment before replying, "Minxing Residential Compound, behind Double Prosperity Garden Restaurant."

"Sure." The driver started the meter and drove off.

"I... I don't have any money on me. Come upstairs with me when we get there, and I'll get it for you. I'll give you an extra fifty."

"Haha, sure." The driver smiled and chatted casually. "Buddy, come on... if you're going to do that, at least get farther away from work!"

"Can't help myself." He turned toward the window, watching the street sweep past with an unfamiliar look in his eyes.

Shijiapu, Shanghai.

Ren Ye spent nearly two hours skimming through the draft. "Dad!"

"Finished?" His dad turned and picked up his teacup.

"Yeah." Ren Ye nodded and asked curiously, "Why isn't this story complete? The old Taoist priest's avatar dies... and that's it. Where's the rest?"

"I haven't written the rest yet. I'm revising a commissioned story for an editor. The plot direction and ideas are theirs. I'm just responsible for polishing the outline, fixing plot holes, and working on the opening." His dad took a sip of tea.

"So you wrote the opening?" Ren Ye asked.

"More or less, but the editor gave me some suggestions too." His dad nodded.

"Where did you get the inspiration for this story?" Ren Ye blinked and pressed him, looking utterly serious.

His dad crossed his legs and adjusted his glasses out of habit. "Borrowed bits and pieces from stuff online."

He spoke of outright plagiarism without the slightest embarrassment. Ren Ye watched his eyes but detected nothing unusual.

"Hey, son, what do you think of the premise? Pretty interesting, right?" His dad sounded eager to improve. "I'm telling you, if this gets approved, I'll make thirty thousand! That's a lot... it's been years since I landed a thirty-thousand-yuan job."

"...!"

Ren Ye studied his dad carefully, an indescribable sense of horror rising within him.

When his dad had described the story idea in the living room, Ren Ye had already felt that it resembled the plot of the Qingliang Prefecture Star Gate he had just experienced.

Now that he had read the opening's outline and text, that feeling had not diminished...

His dad's draft and the Qingliang Prefecture Star Gate plot differed greatly in their settings and details... for instance, his dad's story had no characters like the Princess Consort or the guards.

But!

The overall direction, structure, and core of the two stories were practically identical!

Both involved an old emperor dying, his two sons fighting over the realm, the vassal prince ultimately losing, and his useless son being imprisoned... even the vassal prince's fief was roughly the same size and type.

Most importantly, both plots stopped at the point where the avatar of the emperor's adviser, the old Taoist priest, died.

What was going on?

Had the story Dad copied just happened to share the same idea as the Qingliang Prefecture plot?

Wasn't that too much of a fucking coincidence?

Suhang City.

After the "corpse" returned home, he took out a hundred yuan and gave it to the driver. True to his word, he did not take the change.

He changed clothes at home, then went to the café downstairs.

Seated before a floor-to-ceiling window, the patches of lividity on his body slowly faded, and his complexion grew much more normal.

He took out a phone that had gone on sale at least seven years earlier, plugged it into a charger, turned it on, and opened a messaging app.

After searching for a long time, he placed a voice call to a friend.

"Beep, beep...!"

After a long wait, the other person answered and asked softly, "Who is this?"

"Heh, I'm a friend of Yang Feng's," the corpse said with a smile.

"...Yang Feng from Suzhou-Hangzhou?" the other person asked.

"Yes."

"He's been missing for over six months."

"I wanted to buy a stack of unregistered SIM cards from you. Nothing else." He sipped his coffee, his tone perfectly calm.

"Oh, you're buying cards?" After a brief silence, the other person asked, "Then what should I call you?"

He turned to look through the floor-to-ceiling window. After a short pause, a smile curled at the corners of his mouth as he replied, "My friends... call me Little War Wolf."