Chapter 24

During Xu Qing's seclusion, there was no shortage of guests coming to the Mortuary Shop to inquire about feng shui, geomancy, and funeral services. These were all small matters to him; if they couldn't find him, the shopkeeper, they would naturally go to someone else.

The only thing worth his attention among them was the coroner from the guard station who had suddenly visited.

"I thought that since Liu Youdao had left his hometown and come to Linhe, no old acquaintances would come looking for him, but I didn't expect someone to find him after all."

"I just don't know what kind of background this so-called old friend has."

After sending Wu Yaoxing away, Xu Qing returned to the shop and began to ponder and deduce the events of the past few days.

He had no connection with that old acquaintance of his master who worked as a coroner in the patrol office, but Xu Qing was not worried.

As early as when he inherited the Mortuary Shop, he had already prepared his story. It is not easy for people to tell lies, but if what is said is seventy percent true and thirty percent false, even ghosts and gods would find it hard to distinguish.

His apprenticeship was fake, but his learning of the craft was real. As long as he had the corpse-driving techniques inherited from the "master's sect," if he said he was a disciple taken in by Liu Youdao halfway, who wouldn't believe it?

In addition, the fact that Liu Youdao died at the hands of the evil people of the Heavenly Heart Sect was also true, so even on the surface, he would be irreconcilable with the Heavenly Heart Sect!

Because this is the reaction and mindset a disciple should have after their benefactor dies.

Only by being wise and acting upright can one avoid mistakes. After Xu Qing reviewed and deduced all the possible problems he might encounter and thought of corresponding solutions, he finally put the matter aside.

The eighth day of the second lunar month; today is the first day the Mortuary Shop has reopened for business.

After Xu Qing finished eating two candles and about ten pounds of raw eggs, and his stomach was full, he sat on the recliner in front of the counter and comfortably smoked a stick of spiritual incense.

"The Corpse Nourishing Scripture says that once an Iron Armored Corpse is refined, the whole body will be as tough as copper and iron, impenetrable by knives and guns, and difficult to be harmed by ordinary weapons. I wonder if it's true or false?"

After eating and drinking his fill, Xu Qing, whose abundant energy had nowhere to be released, suddenly had his eyes light up. He immediately got up and went to the kitchen, took out a kitchen knife forged from refined iron, and drew the sharp blade across his palm, but it only left a faint white mark.

Rubbing his palm lightly, after a moment, even that white mark disappeared without a trace.

Seeing this, Xu Qing became even bolder. He simply placed his hand on the cutting board and kept testing his strength. The kitchen was immediately filled with the sounds of metal and leather clashing and colliding.

After a burst of cutting, chopping, and hacking, the sharp kitchen knife that Xu Qing had bought for three hundred wen was completely rolled and ruined. Looking at his own hand, besides having white marks, his skin and flesh were not harmed in the slightest.

He estimated that with his current physical fitness, he was probably no worse than those martial artists who practiced external arts, and even compared to those who practiced internal arts, he was not inferior.

After testing his physical strength, Xu Qing felt the power contained within his body and couldn't help but go to the backyard to practice a set of Tiger Seal Dragon Elephant Fist.

After breaking through to the Iron Armored Corpse, the Tiger Seal Dragon Elephant Fist he performed was exceptionally fierce. Every time his fist broke through the air, the sound of tigers roaring and dragons chanting would ring out, as if there were truly dragons and tigers lurking between his fists, feet, and sleeves.

The pomegranate tree that had just sprouted in the courtyard was affected by the fist wind, and the branches on the entire crown of the tree trembled incessantly until he finished the entire set of fist techniques, at which point they finally stopped shaking.

Feeling the tangible improvement in his strength, Xu Qing felt it was time to settle some long-standing old accounts.

Back when he was pushing the mill at the Corpse Worker Mill, the other party hadn't settled a single wen of wages with him!

Xu Qing's heart is neither small nor large. When God thunders and rains, he won't point at the sky and curse; when the sky is clear and the sun is warm, he won't give a thumbs up to the sky, because these are all cycles of heaven and cannot be influenced by mortals.

But besides the laws of heaven, the affairs of human society are not so easy to just let go.

That night, when the night was deep and quiet, Xu Qing put on brass knuckles and hid a knife at his waist. At this moment, his state was completely different from when he fled the Cui Mill.

Back then, he was a novice, had nothing, and in his haste, he only cared about running for his life. But now, he was armed with sharp weapons, and his hard-training foundation was comparable to a martial artist practicing internal arts.

It was just the right time to go back and explore the black workshop at night to liberate those souls who could not rest in peace after death.

The Cui Mill was quite large. Besides the residence where the managers and servants lived in the front, there were workshop courtyards in the back divided according to the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.

Following the route in his memory, Xu Qing navigated the familiar path to the C-grade assembly line where he used to work.

Ever since the corpse worker refined by Liu Youdao was returned, the vacant position in the C-grade line had been replaced by a corpse worker refined by another corpse-driver.

Xu Qing climbed over the high wall. Deep in the night, the courtyard where these corpse workers were located was not watched by servants or guards.

It seemed the mill itself wasn't afraid of thieves coming to steal; after all, anyone who climbed over the wall and saw a bunch of walking corpses pushing mills in the middle of the night would be scared to death, and would have no leisure to think about dark, thieving matters.

Not crapping their pants on the spot and running home to hide under the covers would already be considered brave!

There were ten corpse workers in the C-grade courtyard, and the A and B courtyards adjacent to it went without saying; together, there were at least thirty or so.

Xu Qing saw the night as day. At this moment, under the moonlight, his eyes were practically glowing green. The way he looked at those walking corpses was like a great monk who had been eating vegetarian food and chanting Buddha for decades arriving at the Cuiyun Pavilion for the first time.

It was really hard to hold back!

Tonight was destined to be a sleepless night.

Silently reciting the scriptures of liberation, the *Scripture of Liberating People* turned page by page. Before long, the human hearts, ghostly realms, kindness, evil, and grudges of this courtyard all emerged one by one.

After evaluation, the ten corpses in the C-grade courtyard were all rated as "Human" grade, and the rewards from the *Scripture of Liberating People* were varied:

A volume of palace secret techniques, a pitch-black, shriveled wine worm, as well as some gold and silver, a bottle of cooling powder, and a True Word Pill.

Among them, the palace secret technique was called "Thirteen Methods of Discerning Female Chastity," which described thirteen ways to identify female chastity. It was a palace secret technique learned by a eunuch when he was young and responsible for recruiting and checking whether palace maids were chaste.

Later, when the eunuch was old, he was sent out of the palace. After many twists and turns, he moved to the Jinmen Prefecture. Unfortunately, his luck was bad. One day, his good friend took a fancy to a marriage, so he asked him to help identify whether the woman was still chaste. The day after the identification result came out, the eunuch was beaten to death on the street by the woman's family.

Xu Qing, with a learning mindset, discovered that this kind of palace secret technique was very similar to the "look, listen, ask, and feel" in medical science. However, what it looked at was posture and physique, what it listened to was the scent of a virgin, and what it asked about was the boundaries between men and women. As for "feeling," it was not the pulse, but a practical method in the chastity technique, similar to the method used by the maid accompanying a wealthy family's young lady to test the husband's ability when she gets married.

However, the maid here was replaced by other methods or objects, and the techniques involved were only passed down in the palace, so naturally, they were not to be told to outsiders.

Besides "look, listen, ask, and feel," there was also a bottom-of-the-box secret technique in the palace secret arts, which was the technique of preparing and applying the "chastity mark."

As long as it was a virgin body, one could use the method of applying the chastity mark to monitor chastity over a long period.

After learning the miscellaneous arts of discerning female chastity, Xu Qing's expression was strange. What kind of messy things was he learning day after day?

The secret technique in front of him might be useful for young people of marriageable age, but for him, who only wanted to seek immortality and ask about the Dao, it was too niche.

Shaking his head, Xu Qing took out another reward, which was a pitch-black wine worm that looked like a shriveled plum.

It was called a wine worm, but it was not any kind of insect; it came from the body of a drunkard.

Its function was that if placed in water, the water would have a mellow wine flavor.

Xu Qing thought to himself that he didn't drink, and besides, what kind of proper zombie would hold a wine jar and bounce around drunk all day?

Besides the wine worm, he also had a bottle of cooling powder obtained from the night watchman, which was used to dispel fatigue and refresh the mind.

Well, it even came with after-sales service; it could just be used to sober up!

Xu Qing was almost amused to anger. These two things, which were unimportant but closely matched, couldn't be said to be very helpful to him; one could only say they were of no use at all.

(End of chapter)