Rules of Horror: Survival Begins in the Haunted Harem - Chapter 58

Xie Nuange instinctively started to take a fighting stance.

Then she remembered she was only a soul and dropped the idea in embarrassment.

“Don’t be nervous…”

Only after Jiang Yanzhou spoke did Xie Nuange realize that, if she listened closely, their voices were slightly different.

“Are you the real Jiang Yanzhou?”

His voice was almost identical to the one she had heard herself use.

If there was any difference, it was that his sounded more relaxed.

“Yes.”

He turned toward Xie Nuange and smiled. “Or, as you call me… the Banyan Tree monster.”

Xie Nuange studied him. His face was whole, his eyes intact, and he looked exactly like the man in the mural.

The jade pendant hung at his waist, engraved with the Jiang family crest.

Jiang Yanzhou’s corpse rose. Protecting the seed pouch inside its clothes, it walked step by step toward the raft.

“This is my obsession,” he explained softly. “My obsession drove my body to carry the seed back to my homeland.”

Xie Nuange and Jiang Yanzhou stood side by side, two souls upon the gravel beach, watching the ruined body.

Cradling the pouch of seeds, it moved one step at a time toward the boat.

“It wants to take the seed home,” Xie Nuange whispered.

“I want to take the seed home,” Jiang Yanzhou corrected her. “That is my obsession, and it is also me.”

“How old were you then?” Xie Nuange asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jiang Yanzhou said, “I never kept count. You lived through everything I did.”

A corpse did not need to rest, eat, or even breathe.

But the seeds were growing dim.

“Their light is almost gone…”

Xie Nuange could not name what she felt.

“Yes,” Jiang Yanzhou said. “The seeds are dying.”

“Aren’t you anxious?” she asked.

“I was.”

Jiang Yanzhou chuckled. “I was frantic back then. So frantic I wished I could jump down and help my body row.”

He paused. “But not anymore. All of this has already happened.”

“Besides, I succeeded, didn’t I?”

Jiang Yanzhou turned to her with a smile.

Xie Nuange fell silent. Her chest still felt tight. She wanted to ask if it had truly been worth it.

At last, the seeds went completely dark and died.

But Jiang Yanzhou’s corpse did not know that. His obsession did not know.

It continued stubbornly toward home as the body began to rot.

One piece of flesh after another sloughed away.

“Your body…”

“A dead body rots. Of course it does.”

Jiang Yanzhou spoke calmly, as though stating the most ordinary fact in the world.

Xie Nuange remembered the murals Su Ye had seen in the side hall.

The deity had cut off and eaten its own flesh to survive the journey home.

By the end, even its bones were exposed.

So it had not been cutting away its flesh.

It had been rotting.

The corpse trudged ashore, still protecting the seed pouch inside its clothes.

The seeds had long since lost every trace of light, but the corpse did not know. It continued toward its homeland, guarding a pouch of seeds already dead.

Xie Nuange’s eyes stung.

She remembered Mother Jiang’s final words.

“You must find the seeds of plants and trees, bring them back, and plant them in this land.”

Jiang Yanzhou had done it. Even though he was dead. Even though the seeds were dead.

He still had to bring them home.

Xie Nuange saw the city wall.

Beneath the gray sky, black flags flew atop it, each embroidered with the character for “Guard.”

The city gates were closed.

The corpse raised its head as though looking at one of the flags.

Its eye sockets were empty. The eyes had rotted away at some point, leaving only two black holes.

Yet its face remained turned toward the city gate. It stood there for a long time without moving.

It approached the gate and lifted the one hand that could still move. Then it knocked.

Bone struck wood with a hollow sound.

Someone leaned over the battlements.

Then more heads appeared. More people.

The gate opened.

City Lord Zhou stood inside the gate tunnel, far older than he had been in Xie Nuange’s memories.

His hair was entirely white and his back stooped. He stood within the city, looking at the corpse outside.

The entrance was deathly still.

No one spoke. No one moved.

City Lord Zhou took one step forward.

He stopped before the corpse and lowered his head, looking into the face that had mostly rotted away.

“Yanzhou.”

His voice was rough as gravel. “You’re back?”

The corpse opened its mouth.

No sound came.

But it raised the seed pouch from inside its clothes and offered it to City Lord Zhou.

The pouch was covered in corpse fluid and fragments of flesh, too filthy for its original color to be seen.

City Lord Zhou looked at the seeds, then at Jiang Yanzhou’s face. He looked at the cavity in its abdomen, the leg stripped to bone, and the two black holes in its eye sockets.

His lips trembled. His nostrils flared. He reached out and gently rested a hand on Jiang Yanzhou’s shoulder.

“Good,” City Lord Zhou rasped.

“Good. You brought them back.”

He turned. Tears finally ran down his face as he shouted to the people inside the city, “Yanzhou brought the seeds home!”

City Lord Zhou stepped aside, opening a path for Jiang Yanzhou.

Behind him, people filled the entire street. Xie Nuange did not know when they had gathered.

No one spoke. Every eye rested on the corpse in the gate tunnel.

Only one leg remained. One hand. Half a face.

Nothing remained within the cavity in its abdomen. The seeds were gone. The intestines were gone. There was only an empty shell through which the wall behind it could be seen.

The corpse continued along the road.

People stood packed on both sides.

A little girl clung to her mother’s leg, frightened enough to bury her face in the woman’s skirt. Her mother’s shoulders shook.

A burly man stood behind the crowd with his fist stuffed into his mouth, biting until his knuckles turned white.

An old man leaned against a wall, cloudy tears tracing the wrinkles down his face.

No one spoke. There was only weeping and the dull knock of bone against the ground each time the corpse hopped.

City Lord Zhou walked beside it, at once a companion and a guard clearing its path.

Xie Nuange and Jiang Yanzhou watched the corpse enter City Lord Zhou’s residence.

It went to the courtyard where it had once lived, crouched, and began digging in the soil.

It opened the seed pouch and poured the seeds into the hole.

They were shriveled and black. Its movements were gentle, as though it feared damaging something precious.

Every seed fell into the hole.

It pushed the soil back over them and pressed it down.

The corpse remained kneeling before the freshly buried seeds, one hand resting on the earth in the same posture it had used to firm the soil.

Its head hung low, its two empty eye sockets facing the ground.

Motionless.

City Lord Zhou stood behind it for a very long time.

Then he crouched, reached out, and gently closed Jiang Yanzhou’s eyes.

There were no eyelids. They could not close. His hand simply remained over Jiang Yanzhou’s face for a long, long time.

“Yanzhou,” he said, his voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible. “You’re home.”

That night, City Lord Zhou buried Jiang Yanzhou beneath the withered tree by himself.

Together with the seeds.

After an unknown length of time, wings fluttered overhead.

An owl.

A dropping fell to the earth without disturbing City Lord Zhou as he covered his face and wept.