Chapter 4

In addition to the corpse-laborers who did hard labor, the Cui Family Mill had quite a few living public servants responsible for maintaining the daily operation of the workshop.

These people all came from the Linhe Cui clan, and the rare outsiders also owed favors to the Cui clan, so their sense of belonging was naturally strong.

Hearing that something had happened in Courtyard C, a group of people surrounded the courtyard gate, staring at the entering corpse-driver with scrutinizing eyes.

People rely on momentum; the reason why a clan is strong is because of this cohesive force.

A strong dragon does not suppress a local snake. With the current situation, if the corpse-driver in front of them dared to be the least bit deceptive, he would inevitably suffer some bitterness!

Arriving at Courtyard C, when he saw the corpses neatly arranged in a row, Liu Youdao, wearing a dark blue satin Taoist robe, immediately frowned.

"Finally invited Mr. Liu!" Manager Cui smiled and greeted him.

After asking about breakfast and exchanging a few polite words, Manager Cui got to the point.

"These are all new goods purchased from you, sir. Now that they have problems for no reason, I have to ask you for an explanation..."

"Of course, it's not that my Cui Family Workshop is making things difficult for you, sir; it's just that it's a small business and we can't afford the loss."

Liu Youdao was around fifty, tall and withered, with a pair of turbid eyes carrying the unique cunning of an old fox.

His gaze swept over the zombies in Courtyard C, but Liu Youdao said nothing. He took off the corpse-controlling bell tied to his waist and began to shake the bell and chant incantations.

"Old sparrow turns into a toad, controlling the nine corpses to the extreme, the body of the earth, obey my command, manifest quickly, show power and form..."

The old Daoist first used the large soul-capturing bell, chanting the Toad General Corpse-Driving Incantation.

"Rise!"

The soul-capturing bell swayed incessantly, and when Liu Youdao issued the incantation command, the rhythmic shaking bell sound came to an abrupt halt.

The courtyard was so quiet that a needle could be heard dropping. Those zombies on strike were still lying on the ground, without the slightest reaction.

Liu Youdao finally changed his expression. His voice was hoarse, as if he had a mouthful of iron sand, and he said: "Someone broke my technique. This is not my fault; it is because you didn't take good care of them."

Manager Cui's face clearly sank upon hearing this.

This Daoist Liu claimed to be a corpse-driver from Xiangyin, and his background was unclear from the start. When he first approached him to sell corpse-laborers, if it weren't for the fact that his asking price was much cheaper than other corpse-sellers, he wouldn't have facilitated this business.

He had thought that having a direct source of goods would save the commissions earned by those brokers. He never imagined that the new source would have quality problems in such a short time, and the other party's words carried the implication that they were not responsible after the sale.

The Cui clan had been doing business in Linhe Ward for so long and had never suffered such a setback.

Manager Cui was immediately unhappy and spoke directly:

"The walking corpses in this courtyard were all purchased from you. The walking corpses in the other courtyards don't have any problems. Before cooperating with you, sir, my Cui Family Workshop had never had such a thing happen!"

"Don't think that we are easy to fool, sir!"

As soon as the words fell, more than a dozen hired thugs rushed into Courtyard C. Looking at their appearance, they were ready to flip the table if there was any disagreement!

Liu Youdao's slightly hunched back slowly straightened. After looking around, he finally lowered his eyelids.

"I started driving corpses when I was twelve. Yin tracks, acupuncture points, white affairs, black affairs—who doesn't know, who doesn't understand? You say your business has never had a mistake; could it be that I've made mistakes for decades?"

Liu Youdao muttered to himself, his footsteps not stopping. He slowly walked to a stiff, upright corpse and looked at the collar that had been lifted by Manager Cui earlier.

On the corpse's chest, the vermilion walking corpse talisman had "Imperial Edict of the Sun and Moon Penetrating Spirit Feather" written on it, and below the talisman characters were various lines and patterns carved with a knife.

Reaching out to tidy the corpse's collar, Liu Youdao straightened up and turned to look at the group of people before him.

"However, Manager Cui is right. After all, people have slips of the hand and horses have slips of the hoof. Perhaps this time it was my fault." Liu Youdao sighed:

"If the goods have problems, it's because this old man's skills are not refined. I admit this."

Manager Cui's expression softened slightly upon hearing this, and he smiled: "Business may not succeed, but benevolence remains. My Cui family has been doing business for so many years and has made many friends in the Jianghu. Although the goods have problems this time, we won't really hold it against you, sir."

"As for the problem of these defective products, sir, just refund ninety percent, and I can make the decision for the rest. As long as there are no problems in the future, we will use them for now."

Liu Youdao waved his hand, his tone flat: "I dare not leave these defective products behind. Ruining my reputation is a small matter, but damaging your business—that would be a great sin."

Seeming not to understand the corpse-driver's subtext, Manager Cui chuckled and actually agreed.

As for whether or not to offend this old man...

Manager Cui didn't fear him at all from the bottom of his heart!

If it came to the tricks of the Yin Sect in the Jianghu, the Cui family was the number one old expert in Linhe Ward.

However, even in the Yin Sect trade, there was a clear chain of contempt.

Things like corpse-driving, funeral services, and "second-skin" craftsmen were things that couldn't be brought to the table. Manager Cui looked down on them from the bottom of his heart!

Xu Qing, mixed in among the corpse-laborers, watched the excitement in the courtyard, not daring to move at all.

I don't know if it was because of the purification by the Scripture of Salvation, but the static corpse talisman pasted on his forehead seemed to have no effect on him.

He could perceive this from his movable toes and his buttock muscles that could tighten and relax.

When Manager Cui and Liu Youdao finished their discussion, the zombies in the courtyard turned around and returned to the corpse-driver's hands.

Manager Cui at least didn't do things to the extreme; he called for a cart driver to load all the zombies in Courtyard C—whether they could move or not—onto the flatbed cart, and then pulled over a piece of burlap to cover them.

Xu Qing lay in the middle of a pile of corpses, not knowing what to do.

When the creaking sound of the cart wheels began, he looked outside through the holes in the burlap.

On the street paved with bluestone slabs, there were already traces of pedestrians. As the peddlers and laborers who got up earlier than roosters started to shout, the street that had been silent all night instantly came to life.

The aroma of steamed buns and meat buns was mouth-watering, and the hot tofu carried a unique bean fragrance.

A bean-milk seller used a bamboo ladle to scoop out bean milk. The bright white liquid drew a smooth ribbon in the air and fell into the soup bowl.

Xu Qing peeked at the bustle outside through the cracks. Perhaps the raw material for that bean milk was what he had ground the past two days, and perhaps the flour used for the steamed buns and meat buns also had a share of his contribution...

The corpse-transport cart rolled over the street rich with worldly atmosphere, but Liu Youdao, who was following behind the carriage, could not feel the slightest bustle.

He only felt it was noisy.

The dead are quieter.

Thinking of what happened at the Cui Family Workshop this morning, Liu Youdao felt more and more stifled.

Although he wasn't a very glorious figure in the Yin Sect trade, in the years he spent driving corpses in Xiangyin, who wouldn't give him face?

Who could have imagined that as soon as he arrived in Linhe, he would be suppressed by a group of local snakes and unable to lift his head!

Others might not know, but he knew very well! The corpse-laborers he refined, let alone three or five years, as long as they were used properly, wouldn't necessarily have any damage even in ten or twenty years.

The people at the Cui Family Workshop were clearly bullying him, an outsider.

"Hmph—ptui!"

Liu Youdao spat a mouthful of thick phlegm, only feeling that the local chamber of commerce had no manners at all.

In the final analysis, this matter was nothing more than one side feeling that outsiders were unreliable, and the other side feeling that the locals were not righteous. If there were no such prejudices, everyone could calmly find the root cause of the problem, and if they had talked about what happened this morning, they might have been able to follow the vine to find the "flaw" hidden in the corpse-laborers.

In front of a steamed bun shop, Zhao Zhonghe, the head constable who had been chasing the bare-bottomed youth last night, was eating breakfast.

Behind him followed several constables, chatting one after another.

When the carriage transporting the zombies passed by, Zhao Zhonghe subconsciously glanced at it, then withdrew his gaze and continued gnawing on the bun in his hand.

Behind the carriage, Liu Youdao's mouth was muttering, and his wide sleeves were shaking slightly.

This was the "Dog-Mute Incantation" in the corpse-driving method. Combined with some medicinal powder, it could prevent others from smelling the corpse qi of the zombies, and at the same time, it could control the zombies to block their seven hearts, making them look like stone sculptures or wood carvings.

Passing through several bustling streets, Liu Youdao followed the carriage to a storefront on Jingxia Street.

This was a storefront he had bought. Previously, it was a coffin shop. He thought the feng shui here was good, so he took out the gold and silver he had saved and bought the storefront along with the courtyard behind it, intending to do some small business here for his retirement.

However, his business hadn't even started when he encountered such a troublesome matter today.

Liu Youdao unloaded the goods returned by the Cui family. The cart driver who came with him didn't even look back, driving the empty carriage back to the mill.

"Bad luck!"

Closing the shop door and looking at the pile of corpses covered by burlap, Liu Youdao cursed in his heart.

By comparison, the people in Xiangyin were simple and honest, unlike the people in Linhe, each one as sharp as a ghost!

Under the burlap, Xu Qing couldn't see what the corpse-driver was busy with in the shop, only occasionally hearing spitting and cursing, as well as the sound of chiseling when knocking on bamboo poles and wood.

He didn't dare to breathe loudly. An ordinary zombie encountering a corpse-driver is like a mouse encountering a cat, and Liu Youdao was like an experienced old cat. If he were discovered to be abnormal, the consequences would be unpredictable.

Xu Qing had never felt time pass so slowly. Until the evening, when people's spirits were at their most relaxed, the burlap covering him was suddenly lifted by a withered, thin palm!

Dust filled the air, and Xu Qing's nerves were like a rebounding bowstring, instantly tightening.

"The sun is setting. You guys eat your fill, and then you'll have the spirit to go with the old man to the charity morgue..." Liu Youdao's voice was surprisingly gentle and calm, as if he were talking to an old friend of many years, or as if he were training his own cats and dogs.

Beside Xu Qing, those zombies he hadn't liberated slowly straightened their upper bodies, their nostrils flaring.

He followed suit. After straightening up, he saw Liu Youdao holding a handful of yellow incense. The thick white smoke was like the mist exhaled from a cow's nose in the middle of winter, emitting a soul-stirring, strange fragrance.

There were seven living corpses in the shop. Liu Youdao, from right to left, let the sitting corpses inhale the spiritual incense one by one.

Xu Qing looked with his peripheral vision and saw that the chests of the zombies who had inhaled the spiritual incense had all expanded a circle, looking like they had eaten protein powder and worked out for a whole year.

Before long, Liu Youdao came to him holding the incense.

Xu Qing was already attracted by the strange fragrance, and now, in order to muddle through, he followed the cat and drew the tiger, performing an epic "deep lung inhalation"!

"Look at how hungry they've made you. These unscrupulous merchants who won't move without profit really should have no descendants!"

Liu Youdao cursed, then put away the spiritual incense and began to shake the soul-capturing bell.

Guided by the soul-capturing bell, the seven zombies lifted the stretchers tied with bamboo poles, their movements as if they had been replicated, stepping in unison.

Xu Qing was at the end of the stretcher. On the stretcher lay the corpses he had liberated earlier.

There was the old beggar, the infatuated scholar, and some beggars who had begged in the prefectural city.

Liu Youdao came to the shop door, opened a crack, and looked outside. Seeing that the sky was dark and pedestrians at night didn't look at colors, he changed out of the satin Daoist robe he wore during the day and put on his corpse-driving gear.

Grass-head shoes on his feet, a blue cloth robe on his body, a blue cloth hat on his head, and a black belt tied around his waist.

This was the unique gear of a corpse-driver. If you encounter some Yin Sect disciples while driving corpses at night and they see this gear, they won't deliberately make things difficult for you.

After all, people in the corpse-driving trade are famous for being poor in the industry circle.

And it's the kind of poor that even ghosts would feel is shabby!

Driving corpses at night is the rule.

Liu Youdao packed his gear, put on the corpse-driving bell, and led a team of "dead people" toward the charity morgue.

Leaving Jingxia Street and turning past the vegetable market, the group chose to walk in places with little light.

Xu Qing followed at the very end, not daring to have the thought of leaving the queue along the way. Although the corpse-driver was at the very front, who knew if this person had a third eye growing on the back of his head.

After walking about five or six li, the bluestone road under his feet began to turn into a dirt road.

Another ten li or so, Liu Youdao suddenly took a different path, turning from the flat official road into the forest beside it.

Xu Qing listened to the rustling of the wind blowing through the leaves and the chirping of unknown night birds in the distance, only feeling his back go cold, as if countless eyes were staring at them.

Passing through a forest, the outlines of graves flickering with green light appeared before his eyes.

Xu Qing suddenly felt some admiration for the corpse-driver leading the way in front.

Not to mention that ordinary people wouldn't dare to walk through forests and graves at night, just leading a group of dead people following behind was not something an ordinary bold person could do.

Just as Xu Qing's thoughts were wandering, the mass grave he had just passed suddenly made a chattering sound, like mice, or like three or five young children playing in the forest.

The sharp, childish voices were a bit blurry at first, but after a few breaths, they became clearer, as if echoing right in his ear.

Xu Qing's neck felt a chill; that thing seemed to have come over!

He didn't dare to look down, only feeling something behind his butt crawling along his heels to his back, then to his shoulder, and finally to the top of his head.

Xu Qing shouted wildly in his heart; he had never hoped so much that Liu Youdao would turn his head and take a look!

Fortunately, the unknown creature on his head didn't stay long before jumping off, seemingly just to catch a free ride.

When the sky got darker, Liu Youdao at the front of the team took out an incense burner from somewhere and lit it with a fire starter. In an instant, wisps of misty smoke drifted from both sides of the queue, like two thin silk ribbons, protecting everyone inside.

In a daze, Xu Qing felt the wind under his feet, and every step felt like stepping on clouds, drifting three meters away.

Looking at Liu Youdao again, the old man was no longer leading the way, but sitting in front of the stretcher, holding the incense burner in one hand and the corpse-driving bell in the other, shaking out a strange rhythmic bell sound.

At this time, they were like clouds drifting in the mountains, a light breeze traveling through the forest, crossing the mountains and forests in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, and arriving on an unfamiliar dirt road.

(End of chapter)