Chapter 31 I Have a Method That Might Help…

Chapter 31: I Might Have a Way to Help...

In late April, the capital was drenched by several heavy downpours.

The rains were even fiercer in the outskirts, accompanied by thunder and lightning, creating a terrifying spectacle. It was said that a bolt of lightning struck a mountain peak, shearing it clean off.

For two days, the rain continued without pause. A Chan neither opened her shop nor ventured out to buy food.

By nightfall, hunger gnawed at her, so she rose from bed and rummaged through her cupboard for some pastries she had bought earlier.

Tonight, the rain seemed even heavier. Would it let up by tomorrow? Amidst the clamor of the downpour, she faintly heard a knock at the door.

Was she mistaken?

A Chan hesitated for a moment but eventually grabbed an oil lamp and descended the stairs.

Once downstairs, the knocking became clearer.

Who could be visiting her in such weather?

"Who is it?" she called out from behind the door.

There was a long pause after her question before a response came from outside: "It's... me..."

It was Madam Chen's voice.

Her hand paused briefly on the door latch, but she undid it and opened the door.

As the door swung open, the scent of rain blended with a foul, earthy stench and a faint, unsettling odor wafted in.

Madam Chen stood in the rain, wrapped in a cloak. Though her hood was up, she was drenched from head to toe.

It had been less than two weeks since they last met, yet it felt like a lifetime. One stood inside, the other outside.

By the dim light of the oil lamp, A Chan observed Madam Chen standing silently in the rain, still as a statue. After a long pause, she sighed softly. "Chen Hui, come in."

Madam Chen stepped over the threshold and entered.

A Chan closed the door behind her but neither offered a towel to dry herself nor invited her to sit. Instead, she said quietly, "Take your cloak off."

"It might... scare you."

"If I let you in, I won’t be afraid."

Madam Chen untied the strings of her cloak, letting it fall to the ground and revealing her current state.

Just as she had warned, it was horrifying.

Her exposed face, neck, and hands were covered in rotting black patches, which gave off the faint stench.

More precisely, the stench of decay.

From the moment Madam Chen entered, she hadn't breathed once, nor had her heart beat.

A few days earlier, she had been bitten in the neck by a living corpse and had died.

Her consciousness had plunged into endless darkness, but she hadn't stayed there forever. Then at some point, she had "awoken."

Bit by bit, she remembered her name, what had happened, and the fact that she had died.

She could even sense that she had been buried in the earth, the thick soil pressing down on her, though it didn't hurt her—only rendered her immobile.

Then came the rain, followed by thunder.

The lightning struck the ground where she was buried, blowing open the grave, and she crawled out, leaving that place behind.

At first, she didn't notice anything wrong—until she passed a small ditch and saw her reflection in the water.

Her face was rotting.

Terrified, she staggered onto the main road, yanked a cloak off a passerby, and fled.

Later, pretending to suffer from a severe skin condition, she sneaked back into the city. She thought that even in death, she should die in her own home, without burdening others.

But as she reached her doorstep, the heavy rain brought her a familiar scent—one that had once sustained her through despair.

She hadn't meant to find Ji Chan, fearing she would frighten her.

Yet her body moved on its own, drawn inexorably toward the scent.

Ji Chan opened the door and invited her in...

Seeing Madam Chen’s current state, there was no doubt—she was dead, transformed into a living corpse, though not completely.

She retained her memories from life, making her seem more human than any living corpse A Chan had encountered before. But because her transformation was incomplete, she continued to rot.

If this continued, she would watch herself rot away completely.

"What happened?" A Chan asked.

Madam Chen saw no fear in A Chan’s eyes—as if she had effortlessly accepted what she had become.

"I..." Madam Chen opened her mouth. "To start from the beginning... it could take some time."

"That’s all right." A Chan gestured to a chair behind her. "Sit. We have all night. No rush."

How to begin? Perhaps when Chen Hui was still a young girl.

Back then, her father was the head of Mingzhou Academy, one of the four great academies of the realm, a famous scholar.

One day, he returned home overjoyed, telling her and her mother that he had taken in an exceptionally talented student—one who excelled in every way, except for being orphaned, with even his grandparents, who had raised him, now gone.

Her mother didn't think much of it and even encouraged her father to bring the boy home for meals to help him save money.

That was how Chen Hui met Yan Liru.

They grew up together, grew close and fell in love, and eventually became engaged with their parents’ blessing.

Later, her father’s former classmate recommended him for the position of Rector of the National Academy, and the family moved to the capital. By then, Yan Liru, who had already passed the provincial exams, accompanied them.

On the journey, Chen Hui rescued a girl traveling to the capital in search of relatives. The girl, around her age, was thin and sickly-looking, a pitiful sight. Feeling sorry for her, Chen Hui pleaded with her father to let the girl accompany them.

She was merely one of many people Chen Hui had helped over the years.

Never could she have imagined that this girl, Fang Yu, would change her life forever.

Upon reaching the capital, the girl went to find her father, while Yan Liru and Chen Hui went on their way.

Later, by chance, at a banquet, Chen Hui encountered Fang Yu again. She had become the sole daughter of the Marquis of the North, the center of attention among many noble ladies.

The once weak and vulnerable girl seemed to have embarked on a different life.

Chen Hui did not approach her, not wanting to disturb her current life, but Fang Yu called out to her.

Having just arrived in the capital, Chen Hui had no friends. Fang Yu's appearance gave her her first friend. They ate together, lived together, bought matching clothes, exchanged beautiful jewelry, and shared their little secrets.

Then one day, Yan Liru and Fang Yu came to her home together.

He knelt before her father to apologize, saying he had saved Fang Yu from drowning and seen her body, so he had to take responsibility and marry her.

What about me?

Chen Hui still remembered the despair and pain she felt upon hearing this news.

She couldn’t understand why this had happened to her, why it had to be her.

Her father was furious, but he couldn’t blame Yan Liru—he had only been trying to save someone.

Later, the engagement was called off, and her fiancé became someone else’s husband.

After that, her father was impeached by many court officials over an essay, and the emperor exiled him from the capital. On the journey, they encountered an Evil Calamity.

Chen Hui’s eyes grew hollow as she said, "Only before my death did I realize that my family’s deaths were no accident—they were Fang Yu’s doing. The monster that killed my entire family was a living corpse she had raised. In the end, I was also bitten to death by that living corpse."

After hearing Chen Hui’s story, A Chan felt strangely unsettled.

She seemed to understand just how despairing Chen Hui must have felt after experiencing all of this.

"So, what role did Yan Liru play in this story?" A Chan asked.

Chen Hui remained silent for a long time before answering, "An accomplice."

"Before I died, he came. When the living corpse bit through my neck, I wasn’t dead yet. I heard him say, 'Find a geomantically favorable spot and bury her.' Hahaha..."

Chen Hui burst into uncontrollable laughter, though her face couldn’t form a smile.

She laughed until she wanted to cry, but she could no longer shed tears.

"Why did you come looking for me tonight?"

"I just smelled the fragrance and followed it here. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you."

"Fragrance?" A Chan frowned.

"The incense pill you gave me—I was so hungry when I was captured that I ate it. For some reason, that scent was irresistible to me."

A Chan stood up and fetched an incense pill mixed with dragon-bone powder from the display shelf: "Is this the one?"

"Yes." At the sight of the incense pill, Chen Hui’s eyes fixed hungrily upon it, as if she might lunge for it at any moment.

But she restrained herself, not moving an inch.

A Chan handed her the incense pill, and Chen Hui immediately stuffed it into her mouth, swallowing it without chewing.

After a while, whether it was her imagination or not, A Chan felt that one of the rotting patches on Chen Hui’s face seemed to have shrunk slightly.

A Chan leaned in for a closer look and realized it wasn’t her imagination.

"How is this possible?" she murmured to herself.

Aside from the dragon-bone powder, this incense pill held no extraordinary components. Besides its pleasant scent, it had one minor effect: if used to scent clothes, they wouldn’t get wet in the rain.

This arcane property had no impact on humans—it was just a curious odd quirk.

Chen Hui’s intense craving for the incense pill after becoming a living corpse was likely due to the dragon-bone powder.

She had swallowed an incense pill containing dragon-bone powder while alive, then was bitten to death by a living corpse. That she didn’t fully transform into a living corpse after death might not have been an accident.

Perhaps, through some alchemy of chance, she had absorbed the dragon-bone powder, halting her full transformation.

Dragons’ power saturated every part of their bodies—including their bones.

The bones of a Fourth Realm dragon contained primal power, but it was impossible to absorb—not for the living, at least. But what about the dead?

No one would dream of trying.

No one would feed precious dragon-bone powder to a dying person and then have a living corpse bite them to death.

In the brief heartbeats A Chan spent pondering, another small patch of rot on Chen Hui’s face had faded away.

"It really was absorbed," A Chan said, equal parts thrilled and apprehensive.

The pleasant surprise was that her guess had been correct—Chen Hui could indeed absorb the energy within the dragon-bone powder. With enough of it, she might even reclaim her humanity.

The trouble was, there wasn’t enough dragon-bone powder.

Even when she had been a fox spirit, A Chan wouldn’t have dared approach a Fourth Realm dragon.

Now, both dragons and Bai Xiuming, who possessed dragon bones, posed equal peril.

Bai Xiuming had only just recalled his surveillance. If he found out she had a living corpse in her home, his first move certainly wouldn’t be to listen to explanations.

His attitude toward her when he suspected she was a demon had already made his stance abundantly clear—he gave no quarter to demons and monsters.

A Chan never believed that just because Bai Xiuming was kind to her now, she could tell him everything.

That would be inviting execution.

Under A Chan’s wide-eyed scrutiny, Chen Hui reached up to touch her own face. When she pulled her hand away, she saw that a patch of black rot on her finger had disappeared.

She turned her hand back and forth—it was truly gone.

"What’s happening?"

"The incense pill contained dragon-bone powder. The power of the dragon bones may temporarily reverse your body, but…"

"But what?"

"To maintain this state, you might need to keep consuming dragon-bone powder. That stuff is vanishingly rare," A Chan said hesitantly.

"I see… Then forget it."

Chen Hui looked down at her hand, now bearing unblemished flesh, and struggled to form a smile. "Just seeing you again and talking to you like this is enough. I’m already deceased, after all."

"If you leave this untreated, you’ll perish anew. Don’t you feel bitter?" A Chan asked.

Chen Hui said with a hollow laugh, "How could I not? My whole family was slaughtered, while theirs flourishes unpunished. It’s so unjust."

"But sometimes, people have to bow to inevitability. If something lies beyond reach, then let it lie."

A Chan looked at Chen Hui, who said not to push too hard. It wasn't that she truly didn't want to push for it, but rather, she didn't want to put herself through that.

She couldn't help but recall the times on the mountain when her grandmother scolded her for being stubborn, saying she was always reaching for things out of her grasp.

All she wanted was to see her parents again.

Even as she grew up, even as she died, and even after she was reborn once more, that longing stayed the same.

Perhaps she would never change—always reaching for what wasn't hers.

"I have a way that might help you," A Chan said.