The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 24

The men of the Jingning Guard stood in a line.

The crouching figure’s scalp drooped over its face, hiding its features. Two rasping wheezes like a bellows came from its chest.

Then it toppled backward with a thump.

The fall made the scene seem almost comical.

But no one present could laugh.

Once it hit the ground, the man floundered twice like a turtle overturned onto its shell.

The scalp draped across his face slumped back into place, exposing a blue-purple countenance.

With nothing left to hold it in place, his dark-purple tongue hung over his lips like a dead snake.

He flailed again, but his limbs were too uncoordinated to turn him over.

And so…

He remained flat on his back and used his elbows to drag himself toward them.

“Aah—!”

Old Yi’s scream echoed through the mountains.

He did not flee like cannon fodder in a movie.

He was not even as good as cannon fodder.

His legs turned to noodles, and he clung desperately to Lu Jianxing’s thigh.

At that moment, the difference between battle-hardened men of the Jingning Guard and ordinary civilians became apparent.

Although none of the Jingning Guard agents had ever seen such a sight before, not one of them fled.

They immediately formed a defensive formation. Every saber came free of its sheath, and every hand reached for the leather pouch at its owner’s waist.

Several men faced the approaching creature. The others naturally turned their blades toward the rear, watching for an ambush from behind.

“Stay sharp, all of you.”

Lu Zhao reached into his leather pouch and pulled out a handful of glutinous rice soaked in rooster blood.

When danger truly arrived, the courage and composure of an imperial secret-police officer took over.

After his initial shock, Daoist Xuanxu became ecstatic. “Catch it!”

“Quickly, quickly! Catch it!”

Daoist Xuanxu sounded like SpongeBob inviting Patrick to go jellyfishing, his voice climbing to a piercing pitch.

A creature capable of strolling about in broad daylight was an exceptionally rare specimen.

As he shouted, he pulled a rope he had prepared from his cloth sack.

Daoist Xuanxu was an eminent figure in the Imperial Astronomical Bureau. Lu Zhao could do nothing about him.

Besides, the creature truly was as slow as Zhao Li had said. Even a ninety-year-old grandmother could have escaped it.

So Lu Zhao accepted Daoist Xuanxu’s rope, expertly tied a noose, and cast it.

The loop settled around the corpse’s neck. With a pull and a jerk, he dragged it over.

Then, with astonishing familiarity, he trussed it up from head to toe.

Scenting the yang energy of the living, the creature stretched its neck like a turtle and tried to bite.

Its mouth reeked of decay.

Lu Zhao could not evade it forever. He grabbed a handful of wet mud from the ground and stuffed it into the creature’s mouth.

The smell improved, but its scalp flopped down again with another wet slap.

Forced to see it from close range, Lu Zhao squeezed his eyes shut in disgust. He wiped his hand on the muddy ground and passed the end of the rope to Daoist Xuanxu.

Daoist Xuanxu was as delighted as a child with a new toy.

He kept touching and prodding the corpse and pasted several yellow talismans of unknown purpose onto it.

The party resumed its journey.

After that encounter, they began to feel that these things truly were not so frightening.

Along the way, they dealt with two more using glutinous rice soaked in rooster blood, and morale soared.

Even Old Yi, whose legs had gone limp as noodles moments earlier, now strode along at the front with a spring in his step.

Only Daoist Xuanxu lagged behind, tugging the slow-moving creature with one hand and coaxing it endlessly. “Walk faster. Come now, walk faster!”

When all his urging failed, he finally gritted his teeth and tied it to a roadside tree, planning to collect it on the return journey.

Noon was approaching, and Lu Zhao was growing anxious. At last, Old Yi, walking in front, cried out happily, “We are here! We are here!”

He pointed excitedly at a crooked tree.

The party quickened its pace. Before long, they reached a grave buried beneath wild grass.

Lu Zhao stepped forward and swept the weeds aside, revealing a small gravestone.

The inscription was blurred, its vermilion paint faded. Only a few characters remained faintly legible:

**The Grave of Our Beloved Daughter, Lin Yu.**

A smile immediately appeared on Lu Zhao’s face.

They had found it!

“Dig!”

At Lu Zhao’s shout, more than a dozen sturdy young men immediately untied the peachwood branches from their backs, hefted their hoes, and set to work.

This time, Daoist Xuanxu proved reliable. He stopped wandering about and stood beside the grave with a compass in hand, monitoring the changes in the yin energy.

The small grave had endured years of sun and rain without anyone maintaining it. Most of the earth sealing the mound had long since collapsed.

Soon, the gravestone was pushed aside, and the wet soil was dug away to reveal a thin, cheaply made coffin with peeling paint.

Raising coffins was precisely Old Yi’s trade as a veteran corpse bearer.

Under his direction, they quickly lifted the flimsy coffin, mud and all, completely out of the grave.

“Daoist Xuanxu, may we open it?”

Leaning on his hoe, Lu Zhao turned toward Daoist Xuanxu.

Daoist Xuanxu held his compass, raised his head to check the sun, and rapidly calculated with the fingers of his free hand.

“You may!”

“All right!” Lu Zhao untied a cloth dusted with medicinal powder from his belt and fastened it over his face. Then he called, “Brothers, time to work!”

Several hoes slid into the gaps around the coffin lid and pried with force.

No one had expected the poor-quality wood, already rotted through underground, to give way at once. Half the coffin collapsed with a crash.

As it caved in, a foul, icy gust spread in every direction.

Even through the cloths over their faces, the men surrounding the coffin smelled a fishy stench mixed with the tang of rust.

They all retreated a step.

Once the stench had dispersed, Lu Zhao shot a look at a thin-cheeked young man beside him whose eyes were remarkably sharp.

The young man, Zheng Lian, nodded. He stepped forward and carefully used his hoe to clear away the broken pieces of the coffin.

A flash of brilliant red appeared.

The corpse lay motionless inside.

Fifteen years had passed. The coffin had rotted, and the grave had collapsed.

Yet the bright-red wedding robes on the body remained as vivid as ever.

The golden dragons and phoenixes embroidered on the bridal veil looked as though they had been stitched only yesterday.

Lu Zhao swallowed. He extended the hoe and gently lifted the veil.

The corpse’s face was revealed, and another chorus of sharp breaths sounded around them.

Fifteen years had passed, but the melted-looking face showed no sign of decay.

Layer upon layer of translucent pustules covered it. Yellow crusts of pus had formed beneath them, and they looked ready to burst and ooze at any moment.

Even Lu Zhao, who had seen every variety of filth and rot inside the Imperial Prison, suffered an instinctive wave of nausea when he first saw that face.

He swallowed hard.

Old Yi turned his back and muttered, “No offense meant. No offense meant.”

“Daoist Xuanxu.”

Lu Zhao averted his gaze, unwilling to look directly at the corpse, and called to the old Daoist.

Daoist Xuanxu was nauseated too, but remembering Zhao Li’s request before they left, he moved closer to examine it.

He picked up a branch and prodded the corpse’s protruding tongue.

After a long moment, he raised his head thoughtfully. “There is indeed something wrong.”

Just as Zhao Li had predicted, the corpse had not decayed.

Beneath its tongue was a black tumor the size of a thumb.

Trying his best not to look at the corpse’s face, Lu Zhao drew a dagger, cut into the tumor, and flicked it open.

The membrane of flesh surrounding it split, revealing a black worm slick with mucus.

Lu Zhao and Daoist Xuanxu exchanged a look. Each saw the same horror in the other’s eyes.

Lu Zhao lifted the black worm, no larger than the tip of his little finger, into a bamboo tube and sealed the opening with wax.

“Stack the peachwood!” he shouted.

Thick smoke billowed upward. The corpse’s brilliant red wedding robes were the first to catch fire.

Soon, roaring flames engulfed the entire body.

The blaze grew higher and higher, spreading a fishy, sickening stench in every direction.