Chapter Eighty-Eight: Can You Get Up?

"Get up!"

"I can’t!"

"Move it!"

"I really can’t!"

"I said get your ass up, now!"

At that, Cui Yue flared up too. You little bespectacled bastard, do you think I was born a freak like you? We’ve already trekked more than ten miles through these mountains, and you’ve been hounding me all the way like a debt collector from hell. It’s this late already and you still want to trick me into chasing on? As if I’d believe that.

"I’m not getting up, not for all the speeches in the world, Specs. I’m done walking."

"Whether you walk or not doesn’t matter, but could you maybe stop sitting on somebody else’s grave?!"

The mild-mannered Specs was nearly driven mad by Cui Yue and even cursed out loud.

May the heavens forgive me.

A grave?

Cui Yue stood there, dumbfounded, his mind refusing to turn over for a long moment.

"W-what did you say? A grave? Where’s the grave?"

He looked around and saw the ground in utter disorder, with broken mourning staffs scattered everywhere and yellow paper offerings strewn about. Then he glanced down beneath himself. The little mound under his backside looked like freshly turned earth, still damp and sticky.

Sweet mercy—wasn’t this exactly the grave Specs had meant?

Cui Yue shot upright as if scorched, springing a great distance away in one bound.

Specs looked as if he couldn’t be bothered to deal with him and turned to examine a charred black stump beside him.

Cui Yue kept looking around nervously for a good while, afraid the one in the grave might crawl out and have a word with him.

"All right, no need to keep chasing. That blood corpse has been found."

The moment Cui Yue heard Specs say that, his whole expression changed. He tensed as though facing a great enemy. It was the middle of the night; there was no need to scare people like that.

"Where? Where is it?"

"There. Isn’t that it?"

Specs pointed at the half-burnt lump of charcoal at his feet.

Cui Yue stared hard for a long time before finally making out that it was the headless, perverse blood corpse. It was still giving off heat. At that temperature, it looked as though it had only just been burned.

Cui Yue scrutinized it from top to bottom and only then confirmed it was indeed that thing.

"Well, well, well. Would you look at that—it really is this bastard. Strange. Could it be he finally came to his senses, felt guilty, and set himself on fire to cleanse the world and leave it a bright tomorrow?"

Qingquan shot him a glance. Some people really do live by their brains.

"Someone subdued it, and whoever did it was no amateur."

Specs carefully examined the surrounding area and deduced that the headless blood corpse had come to this grave to feed on spiritual essence. It had then run into a few experts and been taken down in one stroke, reduced to a heap of charcoal. But the footprints and other details at the scene still left him uneasy. It seemed as though something else had happened in between, yet with only these scattered clues, he couldn’t draw any firm conclusion.

Cui Yue had no mind for Specs’s misgivings. All he cared about was confirming that the headless maniac was truly dead. That was enough. At least for now, he was safe and could enjoy a few peaceful days.

"Hey, where are you going in this dark, windy night?"

"Back to sleep!"

"Hey, Specs, is this how all you cultivators handle things? So half-hearted?"

"There’s no advantage in lingering here!"

"My calves are cramping like crazy. Can we rest a bit before we go?"

"Fine!"

With that, Specs turned and left without another word.

A bitter wind rose in gusts. Cui Yue felt the back of his neck go cold. He bowed toward the grave, then took off like a shot and vanished without a trace.

At the fertilizer plant, in the security office.

Cui Yue was perched on top of a metal locker with one leg crossed over the other, spittle flying everywhere as he talked.

Zhang Hao and Da Zhuang sat on a long wicker bench with their heads tilted back, their expressions shifting between tense and astonished as they endured a full, no-angle-left-behind shower of his saliva.

"Zhang Hao, I’m not bragging to you, but back then, if you’d been the one standing there, you’d have pissed your pants for sure. The thing looked so damn ghastly, I honestly can’t even describe how terrifying it was!"

"How terrifying could it be? I never even blinked in front of that skin-painting old ghoul, let alone some underling of its."

At that, Cui Yue and Da Zhuang both looked sideways at him. Had their ears gone bad? Or had their eyes simply been off duty at the time? If you, Zhang Hao, weren’t a coward, then there really wouldn’t be many cowards left in this world.

"So I made one clean sword stroke—listen, I really did go all in that time. One slash, one drop of the blade, then a flying kick. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Before it even had time to cry out, the thing on its shoulder got blasted apart by my kick. That scene, tsk, tsk, it was just too miserable."

Zhang Hao and Da Zhuang said nothing.

Fine. We’ll just watch you brag in silence. Would it kill you not to?

Cui Yue was waving his arms and legs, acting out the whole thing with great enthusiasm when a hand suddenly smacked him from behind and knocked him clean off the locker.

It was lucky the window had been shut, or the slap would have sent him flying straight out of it.

"Where do you think you’re climbing off to? No respect for your elders, and not a shred of decency. Is your backside made for the ground or what?"

A booming voice came from behind him.

"Section Chief Zhang, I was just kidding. When did you get here?"

Cui Yue grimaced in pain. The moment he saw Zhang Hu, he snapped to attention at once, like a cat confronted by a tiger, not daring to breathe too loudly. He knew very well what this old fellow was capable of. He was the fertilizer plant’s living hell.

"You three troublemakers. Whenever you get together, nothing good comes of it."

Hearing that, Zhang Hao put on a wronged expression.

"Section Chief Zhang, you’re really wronging me there. In the whole fertilizer plant, I rank second among the most honest men, and nobody even dares claim first place. Cui Yue and I have the sort of relationship you’d expect between a weasel and a chicken."

Da Zhuang was clumsy-tongued and was just about to show his loyalty, but he couldn’t get a word in after waiting half a day, so anxious he kept scratching his head.

"Forget it, cut it out. If you’re an honest man, then I’m the ancestor of honest men. Not one of you is a lamp that saves oil."

"All right, all right, enough of that. What are you standing around for? Hurry up and offer me a cigarette."

Zhang Hao shot Cui Yue a look. Cui Yue didn’t hesitate either. He reached into Zhang Hao’s pocket, fished out a pack of Daqianmen cigarettes, and quickly lit one for Zhang Hu.

Zhang Hao clicked his tongue. That shameless Cui Yue really didn’t hold back at all—just reached over and took my cigarettes.

"All right, all of you stop standing there like wooden posts. What are you putting on for me?"

The moment Cui Yue and the others heard that, they immediately resumed their usual grinning, easygoing manner.

"You’re on the day shift today. Shouldn’t you be in the workshop? What are you wandering around for? Be careful old Qin doesn’t kick your ass."

"Uncle Zhang, I wasn’t slacking off. Master Qin asked me to contact the technical department today and bring back the documents for the imported machine tools."

"Documents for imported equipment? Those old ancestors that Feng Tao’s father brought in after the technical inspection?"

Cui Yue nodded. This time, for those few imported machines, everyone from the provincial machinery bureau all the way down to the fertilizer plant took it very seriously. In the end, the factory really did bleed itself dry to fight tooth and nail for those treasures.

"Well, now—fortune turns in circles. Even the Japanese’s junk has become precious."

"If you ask me, there’s no guarantee the Japanese stuff is all that impressive. Leaders always think the grass on the far bank is greener."

Zhang Hao looked utterly unconvinced. The Japanese had rotten hearts to the core—what good could they possibly make?