Chapter Eighty-Five: Once Again, the Dead Rise

A bitter wind swept through the night. In that instant, time itself seemed to come to a complete standstill. The river of years disappeared from sight, pain could no longer be reached, even breathing ceased, and the scent of the beginning was lost.

Cheng Suer trembled all over. Her eyes widened to their limit, and her pale face twitched faintly from sheer terror.

They waited for a long while, yet not a sound came. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

The mother and daughter finally gathered the courage to lean toward the grave and take a look. That glance was enough to turn their blood cold.

Aaaaaah!

There, before their eyes, a headless corpse lay sprawled behind the grave, its shoulders a mangled, blood-soaked ruin, a sight too horrible to bear.

Cheng Suer's mother was so terrified that her soul seemed to fly from her body. She cried out once and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Cheng Suer also went limp and collapsed beside her, her only thought to flee as far and as fast as she could. But her limbs no longer seemed to belong to her; it was as if she had sunk into a pool of rotten mud, unable to move.

Then, with a sudden surge, a pair of monstrous hands slick with blood shot up. With a few casual pushes, they smashed the newly built grave mound into disarray. The yellow earth crumbled beneath the headless corpse's grasp like fragile tofu, and in the blink of an eye it had dug out a pit large enough to hold a person, exposing a small section of pinewood board.

The headless corpse paused for a moment. After groping about in the pit with its swollen, thick hands, its movements became even faster. Its arms flailed wildly through the air, lacking any apparent method, yet each strike carried terrifying force, beyond anything a normal person could withstand.

A loud crack rang out from the pit.

A pine coffin lid split into three pieces in the headless corpse's hands, sharp splinters of wood stabbing into its flesh.

Yet it seemed to feel nothing at all. It thrust one huge hand into the coffin at random, and with a powerful leap of its legs, sprang from the pit and landed to the side, still dragging a stiff, rigid object in its grip.

The moonlight was eerie. Pale white light spilled over the ground, chilling the heart of anyone who looked upon it.

Cheng Suer stared at the creature before her, neither man nor ghost, her mind reduced to a blank haze. She felt her whole body go cold and could not stop trembling.

When she finally made out the object clutched in the giant hand of the headless corpse, terror struck her so hard it felt as though her heart and lungs were splitting apart. The name burst from her lips before she could stop it.

Father!

Yes. It was Cheng Jicai, dead for seven days.

In truth, Cheng Jicai had been terribly unfortunate. He had never enjoyed a single good day in his life, and had only hoped that the road to the underworld might be a little smoother, that he might be reborn into a better fate.

It was said that the dead should be laid to rest in peace.

But who could have known that even in death he would not be spared? The headless corpse had actually dug the long-dead Cheng Jicai out of his grave by force.

By now Cheng Jicai’s face was a ghastly blue-purple, his body rigid as wood. The new burial garments put on him the night he died were wrinkled and torn in several places, stained through with mud. It was said the dead should rest in peace, but in the hands of this headless corpse, there would likely be nothing left of him at all.

The atmosphere was terrifying and strange. What the eye saw was so far beyond reason it sent a chill straight through the bones.

With a casual lift, the headless corpse held Cheng Jicai horizontally in the air, then reached to the corpse’s jaw and twisted and yanked.

A sharp crack rang out, the sound of bone breaking making one’s teeth ache.

The dead man’s tightly shut mouth now gaped open at a shocking angle. Stranger still, the eyes that had been closed were suddenly wide open, the pale gray pupils staring fixedly at Cheng Suer.

Cheng Suer nearly fainted. She could no longer hold herself up. Darkness flooded her vision and she fell to the side, crying out:

“Father! Father, let go of my father, you—this evil ghost!”

The headless corpse paid no heed at all. It did not care what Cheng Suer was saying. In truth, it could not hear her. Nothing remained upon its shoulders; its obedient head had long since been blown to pieces by Cui Yue.

The headless corpse pressed the bloody hollow where its shoulders should have been against the dead Cheng Jicai’s mouth and nose, as though it wished to bury itself inside him. Its two giant hands clamped down on the corpse’s torso, and before long Cheng Jicai’s body, crushed by immense force, began to deform like a length of withered rotten wood. His bones cracked and dislocated with a series of explosive pops, his body twisting so horribly it scarcely looked human.

Even stranger, Cheng Jicai’s already emaciated body was now visibly shrinking and contorting, as if it would soon be reduced to half its former size. At his mouth and nose, threads of white vapor could be seen being drawn into the bloody hollow of the headless corpse.

Seeing her father’s remains abused in this way, and even after death reduced to such a miserable state, Cheng Suer felt as if a knife were cutting through her heart. Fury and unwillingness surged through her chest at once, igniting her whole being in an instant.

Ha!

She did not know where she found the strength. Snatching up the filial mourning staff beside the grave, she rushed forward.

“You evil ghost! Let go of my father! Let go, let go!”

With her teeth clenched, Cheng Suer swung the mourning staff like one possessed, striking wildly at the headless fiend before her. Fear no longer mattered. Her fair face was now stained with a fierce, unyielding red, while tears burst from her eyes and fell one by one into the yellow earth beneath her feet.

As the old saying among the people goes, on the seventh day after a person dies, on the day of the first soul’s return, the spirit wanders back. When a person dies, it is like a lamp going out; but after the lamp is extinguished, the last breath remaining in the corpse is called the spirit’s lingering breath, and it is also one of the seven spirits. Once this breath leaves the body, it becomes baleful force, also known as the spirit of calamity. The living avoid it, for any encounter may bring either death or grave illness. If this breath does not leave the body after death, then the three souls and seven spirits cannot gather and take form, nor can they be reborn into another life.

What is formed from that lingering breath is shunned by every household, for fear of colliding with the spirit of calamity and losing one’s life for nothing. That breath is also the final trace of a person’s soul. It is of no use to the living, but to the evil things born of the yin world, it is a great tonic indeed, a rare and precious elixir.

The headless corpse before them was the blood corpse that had escaped from the video hall. Though it had been refined by the old painted-skin demon, whose ghostly power was profound, it had only recently become a blood corpse and was still weak. Worse, it had already fought Cui Yue on the way and lost more than half of its strength. Thus, it desperately needed yin energy to nourish itself, to devour essence and baleful spirit to replenish what it had lost. That was why such a grave-digging, corpse-exhuming horror had come to pass.

Now that the headless blood corpse had fed on a spirit, the blood energy and ghostly power around it had recovered somewhat. Unfortunately, Cheng Jicai had been worn down by illness in life and had died of disease. His spirit and vigor were already greatly diminished, and because he had not been wrongfully slain, the baleful force formed after death was weak as well.

“You give me back my father! Let go!”

Cheng Suer shouted at the top of her lungs. The mourning staff had already been broken in two, yet she still would not let go.

The headless corpse was in the grip of its frenzy and could not care less about Cheng Suer. Besides, such injury was no more than an itch to it. Seeing that the frail Cheng Jicai could no longer be squeezed for more, and that all his lingering breath and soul essence had been drained dry, it casually hurled the twisted corpse aside beside the shattered grave mound.