Chapter 1 A Corpse

Inside the lonely little mud house,

Xu Qinglang fell into deep thought.

Before him,

lay the corpse he had just dragged back from the vegetable garden outside.

He recognized the body. It was the third son of Aunt Xu in the village, not yet thirty years old, unmarried, and usually working at the shipyard. He had a good reputation in the village because he was always willing to help.

Whenever any of the neighbors, east or west, needed him, he would come to help, like when someone needed to repair a house, or another couldn't harvest wheat in time. The reward was nothing more than a meal and some wine.

This was the kind of neighborly mutual aid that only the older generation had. It was rare among the younger generation, but he had always maintained it. Many of his peers thought he was simple and foolish.

Of course, no matter how good his relationships were, it didn't have much to do with Xu Qinglang. Although he was born in the village, he had left a long time ago.

Now was not the time for grief, remembrance, or holding a memorial service.

He had to figure out how to dispose of this corpse first.

Xu Qinglang remembered that when he watched *The Deer and the Cauldron*, Wei Xiaobao had that bone-dissolving water. He just dripped a few drops on a person, and they would immediately be corroded clean. Xu Qinglang didn't know if that stuff existed in reality, but he knew he didn't have time to find it now.

Or,

dismemberment?

Could he break down the corpse bit by bit and even stir-fry some of it?

That seemed a bit perverted.

But why did he suddenly feel a kind of eager anticipation in his heart?

He must have been infected by Zhou Ze, that pervert.

Shaking his head, Xu Qinglang decided to use the most stupid method first:

dig a hole,

and bury the body first.

Later, he would burn some paper money, and this matter should be over. After all, although the person was killed by Zhou Ze, he was already a walking corpse when he was killed. He was already dead. Zhou Ze killing him was like giving him a relief.

Xu Qinglang took a shovel from the house, walked to the vegetable garden in front of the house, and began to dig a hole.

Actually, the mud house didn't have any tiles or cement on the floor. It was also mud, but after being walked on for so many years, the mud was already trampled solid. It was impossible to dig.

As he dug, Xu Qinglang leaned on the shovel with both hands, panting. For someone who didn't usually work the land and had recently started taking care of himself, doing this kind of work was really too much.

"Wuwuwu………………"

In the distance, there seemed to be a faint sound of sobbing, like someone was crying, but on closer listening, it didn't sound like crying. The tune was a bit melodious and winding.

The countryside was still very quiet at night, especially at this hour. Where did this noise come from?

Xu Qinglang reached out and subconsciously touched the heart-protecting mirror in his pocket. To be honest, with Boss Zhou not by his side, Xu Qinglang felt a little uneasy and insecure.

The sound of sobbing grew closer. Xu Qinglang suddenly raised the shovel. Although he only heard the sound and didn't see anything, the sense of crisis was so strong that it stimulated his adrenaline to be secreted like crazy.

"Huff huff... huff huff..."

Take a deep breath,

keep taking deep breaths.

Xu Qinglang held the shovel in one hand and pinched the heart-protecting mirror in the other.

Could it be that Lao Zhou didn't catch the zombie, and as a result, that zombie came back for a second attack?

The atmosphere

became very tense.

The cold sweat on Xu Qinglang's forehead began to drip down.

Stalemate,

confrontation,

continued.

About twenty minutes later,

several naughty crows that weren't sleeping flew overhead in the dark night,

making "caw... caw... caw..." sounds.

A gust of wind blew,

and a few fallen leaves swirled and blew past him.

Xu Qinglang and the air

confronted each other for twenty minutes.

The sobbing slowly became lower and lower, until it was almost imperceptible.

After listening for so long, Xu Qinglang at least confirmed one thing: it was definitely not someone crying. It sounded more like someone was leisurely playing the xiao (a Chinese vertical end-blown flute) late at night.

Who the hell was so idle!

After waiting vigilantly for a while, until the sound completely disappeared, Xu Qinglang breathed a sigh of relief. The alarm was lifted.

He continued to dig for a while. He originally wanted to dig deeper, but Xu Qinglang was already feeling exhausted. He dug to a very casual depth. Anyway, he still had to rely on paper money to avoid trouble later. Burying the body now was just to prevent it from being discovered by the villagers in the near future.

Walking into the house, the corpse was still lying there quietly, with a clear depression in the chest area, surrounded by five small holes.

Zombies must be very hard.

In fact, if a dead person's body is well preserved, it will indeed be "stronger" than when they were alive after rigor mortis sets in. And zombies are formed by the accumulation of resentment, making their bodies even more solid.

But no matter how solid the body was, it was still pierced directly by Zhou Ze's fingernails.

Xu Qinglang took a sip of water, took out his phone, and prepared to send a message to Zhou Ze to ask him where he was now and whether he had found Old Man Cui.

The wild goose gets pecked by the goose it hunts all day long. (Even the best of experts can make mistakes.)

Neither Xu Qinglang nor Zhou Ze expected that Old Man Cui, whose temper was so bad, would actually play a trick of "crossing the sea without the enemy knowing," first pretending to be asleep and secretly cutting the rope with something, and then taking advantage of the appearance of the walking corpse when he and Zhou Ze rushed out of the house to deal with it, he decisively escaped through the tunnel with his granddaughter.

The reason why the old man wanted to escape was simple: because he and Zhou Ze were using his precious granddaughter as bait, and Zhou Ze also planned to send his granddaughter to reincarnation after the matter was over.

It can only be said that Zhou Ze was right before: a person born with yin-yang eyes, who has lived to such an old age, if he really doesn't have any hidden skills, it's hard for others to believe.

"Why is there no signal?"

Xu Qinglang tapped his phone.

At this moment, the corpse that had been lying there, completely dead, actually slowly sat up.

Silently,

without making the slightest sound.

Xu Qinglang continued to fiddle with his phone. He wanted to contact Zhou Ze as soon as possible, completely ignoring the situation behind him.

It wasn't that Xu Qinglang was careless. In fact, even Zhou Ze himself wouldn't think that the walking corpse he had killed with his fingernails could still cause any trouble.

But unexpectedly,

it got up.

And it slowly opened its mouth,

revealing two sinister fangs.

"Huh?" Xu Qinglang sniffed. Why did he suddenly smell a pickled garlic smell?

Because he used to be a chef, Xu Qinglang's natural sensitivity to smells made him subconsciously look back at this moment.

Then,

their eyes met!

The corpse lunged forward, its fangs directly piercing Xu Qinglang's neck.

Xu Qinglang frantically pushed and hit the thing in front of him, but it stuck to Xu Qinglang like a caterpillar.

Enduring the intense pain in his neck,

Xu Qinglang took out the heart-protecting mirror from his pocket,

and said in a low voice:

"Heaven and earth are boundless, profound heart is the true law! (a Taoist incantation)"

A layer of light blue ripples rippled on the surface of the heart-protecting mirror.

The next moment,

Xu Qinglang directly smashed the heart-protecting mirror onto the thing in front of him.

The thing's body trembled constantly, as if in great pain, but it still bit Xu Qinglang tightly and began to climb up with its hands and feet, like an octopus, trying to force itself on him!

With a "plop,"

Xu Qinglang was actually knocked to the ground by the opponent.

The opponent's body trembled and squirmed constantly,

rubbing Xu Qinglang on the ground!

Disgusting,

nauseating,

uncomfortable,

painful,

aching…

Xu Qinglang knew that unless Zhou Ze could arrive at the last moment like a policeman in a Hong Kong movie, he would probably die here today.

But this thing,

was obviously ice-cold,

how could it move again?

That's right,

the xiao sound!

It must be related to that xiao sound!

But it was too late to think about the xiao sound at this time, and it was meaningless.

For the first time,

Xu Qinglang felt that the village where he was born was so unfamiliar and panicked, as if a curtain had always been covering it, and he had never really walked into it.

Struggling desperately with both hands,

Xu Qinglang touched a recessed spot,

the spot where Zhou Ze's fingernails had pierced through before.

"Heaven and earth are boundless, profound heart is the true law!"

Xu Qinglang recited the mantra for the last time,

gritted his teeth,

and directly inserted his heart-protecting mirror into the walking corpse's chest through that wound.

"Hisssssssssssssss………………"

Black mist kept coming out of the walking corpse's eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. It jumped up from Xu Qinglang's body, then fell to the ground and rolled around frantically, like a worm being sprayed with insecticide, making its final struggles.

The heart-protecting mirror kept emitting blue light inside the walking corpse, constantly burning it.

In the end,

the walking corpse lay motionless on the ground again, and its body slowly began to rot, turning into a pool of pus.

Soon,

when the water stains were absorbed by the mud,

only a clear human-shaped imprint was left on the ground.

The bone-dissolving water of Wei Xiaobao that Xu Qinglang had been thinking about actually came true this time.

Bending down, Xu Qinglang wrapped his hand in his sleeve and lifted the dark thing in the middle of the human-shaped imprint. It was his heart-protecting mirror, but it was now completely black charcoal.

Xu Qinglang's family was poor, and his xuan shu (Mysticism) was only half-baked. This little magical artifact was one of the few things he could take out, and now it was completely ruined.

However,

this was not the most difficult thing.

Xu Qinglang picked up his phone and came to the broken mirror in the hall.

He turned on the phone's rear flashlight and pointed it at his neck.

In the mirror,

on the left side of his neck,

there was a very clear pair of teeth marks.

The surrounding flesh was also torn open, but no blood was flowing out. Instead, small black particles were constantly rolling inside, which looked extremely disgusting.

Xu Qinglang gently stroked his wound with a trembling hand,

a bad premonition

slowly came over him…