The person on the ground lay motionless. Only warm blood flowed slowly through the cracks between the flagstones.
"Wang Wu, go take a look. Is this bastard playing tricks on me?" Xiao Yuxuan frowned and took half a step back in disgust.
"Yes, my lord."
Wang Wu, the guard behind him, stepped forward and crouched down. In the dim evening light, he first held two fingers beneath Chen Xuan's nose, then felt the artery in his neck, which had long since gone cold. The blood on the ground had spread into a thick smear. Chen Xuan lay facedown, the coarse cloth on his back torn beyond recognition, his flesh peeled back until he barely looked human.
Wang Wu withdrew his hand in disgust and vigorously wiped the blood on the hem of his robe. Rising, he cupped his fist. "My lord... he's stopped breathing. He's well and truly dead."
"Dead? He couldn't even take that little beating?" Xiao Yuxuan's frown deepened. He casually tossed the bloody whip into Wang Wu's arms, then pulled out a silk handkerchief to wipe his hands. "What fucking rotten luck! Get two menial slaves from the rear courtyard to drag this pile of rotten meat out to the mass grave and throw it to the wild dogs. Don't leave it here to dirty my carriage!"
"Yes! I'll see to it right away!"
Xiao Yuxuan straightened the slightly disheveled collar of his sumptuous robes, put on a gentle smile, and turned to lift the carriage curtain. "Miaoyin, let's go. Once we're back at the manor, I'll have someone stew some blood bird's nest for you. Don't let this lowly thing spoil our mood."
Chu Miaoyin sat inside the carriage, her face somewhat pale. "Thank you for your concern, my lord," she replied quietly.
While Xiao Yuxuan turned to give the driver instructions, she held the wooden rail of the carriage window and quietly glanced back.
On the street, enclosed by the gathering dusk, that mangled corpse lay all alone. The fingers of its right hand, covered in mud and blood, still held the posture of clawing at the ground and desperately begging, even in death.
She stared fixedly at that hand for three seconds. A stinging pain came from her palm, and she pressed her lips into a bloodless white line.
"Miaoyin, why haven't you lowered the curtain yet? It's windy outside. Mind you don't make yourself ill," Xiao Yuxuan urged from outside the carriage.
She abruptly withdrew her gaze and lowered her long lashes, her voice as faint as a wisp of smoke. "Yes, my lord. I'll lower it now."
The instant the heavy brocade carriage curtain fell, Chu Miaoyin closed her eyes. A scalding tear rolled down her cheek and fell onto her rose-pink skirt, quickly spreading into a small, dark wet patch.
Clop, clop, clop-
The carriage rolled away over the blue flagstones, leaving behind only a glaring spread of dark red and a corpse that was slowly growing cold.
Before long, two menial slaves in ragged gray clothes came running breathlessly out of the marquis's manor's back gate, carrying a tattered straw mat. Taking one side each, they lifted Chen Xuan's corpse and laboriously dragged it into the manor.
"Damn, he's heavy as hell... Brother Zhang, Chen Xuan was always such an honest, meek fellow. How did he end up offending the heir?" the younger menial slave asked, wiping away sweat as he panted.
"How else? Couldn't keep those eyes of his in check!" The old slave called Brother Zhang spat on the ground. "I heard he was leading a horse at the street corner and took a couple of extra looks at the courtesan queen the heir recently took as a concubine. Got whipped into this pile of rotten meat right there."
"Hiss-just for a couple of extra looks? Isn't that way too vicious?"
"Vicious? You've barely been in the manor any time at all. You don't know shit!" Brother Zhang looked around and, seeing no one nearby, lowered his voice to a near whisper. "Let me tell you, the heir's been married to his wife for almost a year, and they've already replaced three whole batches of bedchamber maids serving in their bridal chamber! They say every maid carried out was covered in bruised bite marks and whip wounds. Each batch that gets replaced is more afraid to say a word than the last, and the heir's temper keeps getting more brutal..."
"Huh? Why? With a wife and maids as lovely as flowers and jade to sleep with, why whip people instead?"
"Have you got a pig's brain? He can't get it up in that department, so he's all pent up. Who else would he vent it on but us servants?" Brother Zhang suddenly glared at him in warning. "Shh! Let those words rot in your belly! Keep your voice down! If your loose tongue spreads this around, don't drag me down with you just because you want to die!"
"Yes, yes, Brother Zhang, I understand. I won't breathe half a word of it!"
Carrying the corpse through turn after turn, the two kicked open the wooden door of the most secluded, disused woodshed in the rear courtyard and flung Chen Xuan onto a heap of rotting straw in the corner as though dumping rubbish. They tossed the tattered straw mat over his back.
"Whew... I'm dead tired. Brother Zhang, aren't we taking him straight to the mass grave?"
"Like hell we are. It's pitch-black already, and the city gates were locked ages ago. Going to the mass grave now would just be feeding ourselves to the wolves." Brother Zhang dusted off his hands. "Steward Zhao gave the word just now. He's drinking and playing finger-guessing games with a few guard captains in the front courtyard tonight. He told us to dump this fellow in the woodshed overnight and drag him out for disposal once the city gates open tomorrow morning."
"All right, let's get going, then. This woodshed reeks of dead rats. Staying too long is bad luck."
"Come on, come on. Back to our room to sleep."
With a bang, the woodshed's wooden door slammed shut, and a wooden bar dropped into place outside.
Everything instantly sank into deathly still darkness.
Thick cobwebs hung from the moldy rafters, and rotting, blackened straw lay piled in the corners. The air was thick with the pungent stench of urine, damp mold, and the heavy reek of blood coming from Chen Xuan's body. Only a faint sliver of pallid moonlight barely made its way through a gap in the broken window lattice.
An unknown amount of time passed-
"Aaargh-!"
Beneath the straw mat, Chen Xuan's eyes flew open. His chest heaved violently as he let out a cry of pain suppressed to its utmost limit.
Pain!
Agony that pierced to the marrow!
From the Baihui acupoint atop his head to the soles of his feet, every inch of torn flesh across his body screamed madly, as though someone had thrown him into a meat grinder, ground him to pieces, then forcibly pieced him back together.
"Hiss... I... where am I?"
Chen Xuan sucked in a sharp breath and instinctively tried to push himself up from the ground. But the moment he put weight on his arms, his whole body creaked like a broken windmill falling apart. He could not muster the slightest strength.
"Wasn't I working thirty-six hours of overtime straight at the advertising agency when my heart suddenly stopped while I was revising the eighth version of the proposal? How am I still alive?"
The moment he finished speaking, a muffled thunderclap seemed to explode inside his head.
Boom!
Countless unfamiliar fragments of memory surged brutally into his mind like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
"Ah... my head hurts..."
Chen Xuan clutched his head tightly and curled into a ball in the rotting straw. Only after almost half an incense stick's worth of time had passed did he fully digest those memories, his head drenched in cold sweat.
"So... I'm already dead. More precisely, this body's original owner died, and I've taken the magpie's nest like a cuckoo, my soul transmigrating to this other world where martial prowess reigns supreme..."