Chapter 31 I have a way that might help you
In late April, several heavy rains fell in Beijing.
I heard that the rain in the outskirts of Beijing was even heavier, with thunder and lightning, creating a terrifying scene. It is said that a bolt of lightning struck a mountain and completely obliterated it.
It's been raining non-stop these past two days, so Achan hasn't opened her shop or gone out to buy food.
When evening came, she felt hungry, so she got out of bed and went to the cupboard to find some snacks she had bought earlier to eat.
The rain seemed to be getting heavier tonight; she wondered if it would let up tomorrow. Amid the cacophony of rain, she faintly heard a knock at the door.
Did I hear that right?
Achan hesitated for a moment, but still took the oil lamp and went downstairs.
Once we got downstairs, the knocking became even clearer.
In this kind of weather, who would come looking for her?
"Who is it?" she asked, standing in the doorway.
After a long while, a response came from outside: "It's... me..."
It was Chen Niangzi's voice.
Her hand, which was on the latch, hesitated for a moment, but she still removed the latch and opened the door.
As soon as the door opened, the rainwater from outside, mixed with an unpleasant earthy smell and a faint stench, wafted in.
Madam Chen stood in the rain, wearing a cloak. Although she had a hood on her head, she was soaked to the bone.
After only a dozen days apart, their reunion felt like a lifetime had passed; one stood inside the door, the other outside.
By the light of the oil lamp, Achan looked at Chen Niangzi, who stood silently in the rain, like a lifeless stone. After a long while, she sighed softly, "Chen Hui, come in."
Madam Chen stepped over the threshold and entered the house.
Achan closed the door, neither offering her a towel to dry herself nor inviting her to sit down, but simply saying softly, "Take off your cloak."
"It will scare you."
"Now that I've let you in, I'm not afraid."
Madam Chen untied the thin string on her cloak, and the cloak fell to the ground, revealing her current appearance.
Just as she said, it was terrifying.
Her exposed face, neck, and hands had many rotten black patches, and those rotten areas emitted a faint stench.
More precisely, it was the stench of a corpse.
From the moment Madam Chen entered until now, she hasn't breathed or felt a heartbeat.
A few days ago, she was bitten in the neck by a zombie and was already dead.
Her consciousness was plunged into eternal darkness, but it did not continue to sink into oblivion. At some point, she "awakened."
She gradually remembered her name, what had happened, and the fact that she had died.
She could even sense that she was buried in the soil, but the thick layer of earth pressing down on her had no effect on her, only that she was unable to move.
It wasn't until it started raining outside, and then thunder began.
The pit where she was buried was blown open by lightning, and she crawled out of it and left.
At first, she didn't notice, until she passed a small ditch and looked down to see herself in the water.
Her face was rotting.
Terrified, she stumbled onto the main road, grabbed a cloak from someone, and ran away.
Later, she pretended to have a serious skin disease and managed to sneak into the city. She thought that even if she were to die, she should die in her own home to avoid causing trouble for others.
But when she reached her doorstep, in the pouring rain, she smelled that fragrance that had sustained her through despair.
She didn't want to see Ji Chan because she thought it would frighten her.
But her body seemed to be out of control, following the scent to come here.
Ji Chan opened the door for her and invited her inside...
Seeing Chen Niangzi's current appearance, what is there not to understand? She is dead, and has become a living corpse, or rather, a living corpse that has not been completely zombified.
She retained her memories from her previous life and was more human-like than any zombie Achan had ever seen, but because she hadn't completely turned into a zombie, she would continue to rot.
If she can't control it, she will watch herself rot away.
"What happened?" Achan asked.
Chen Niangzi did not see fear in A Chan's eyes; she seemed to have easily accepted herself as she was.
"I..." Madam Chen opened her mouth, "If I were to tell this story from the beginning, it might be a bit long."
“It’s alright.” Ah Chan pointed to the chair behind her. “Sit down. We have all night. We can talk slowly.”
When should we begin recounting those past events? We should start from when Chen Hui was still a child.
At that time, her father was the head of Mingzhou Academy, one of the four great academies in the country, and a renowned Confucian scholar.
One day, her father returned home overjoyed and told her and her mother that he had taken on a very talented student. The student was good in every way, but unfortunately, both his parents had passed away, and his grandparents who raised him had also died.
The mother didn't mind and even encouraged the father to bring people home for meals frequently, which saved some money.
That's how Chen Hui met Yan Liru.
They met when they were young, fell in love, and eventually got engaged with their parents as witnesses.
Later, his father's former classmate recommended him to the court to serve as the Chancellor of the Imperial Academy. The whole family went to the capital. At that time, Yan Liru, who had already passed the imperial examination, also went to the capital.
On the way, Chen Hui rescued a girl who was on her way to the capital to find her relatives. The girl was about the same age as her, but she was thin and looked pitiful. So she begged her father to take the girl with her to the capital.
That was just one of the people she had helped casually over the years.
Chen Hui never imagined that this girl named Fang Yu would change her life.
Upon arriving in the capital, the girl searched for her father, and Yan Liru and Chen Hui left together.
Later, by chance, at a banquet, Chen Hui saw Fang Yu again. She had become the only daughter of the Marquis of Zhenbei and was the object of pursuit by many daughters of officials.
That once weak and easily bullied girl seems to have a different life now.
Chen Hui did not go forward, as she did not want to disturb the other party's current life, but Fang Yu called out to her.
She had only been in Beijing for a short time and had no friends. Fang Yu's appearance gave Chen Hui her first friend. They used to eat and live together, buy the same clothes, exchange beautiful jewelry, and share their little secrets.
Then one day, Yan Liru and Fang Yu came to her house together.
He knelt down and begged her father for forgiveness, saying that he had saved Fang Yu from drowning and had seen her body, so he had to take responsibility for her and marry her.
What about me?
Chen Hui still remembers how she felt when she heard the news; her heart was filled with despair and pain.
She couldn't understand why this had to happen to her, and why it had to be her.
The father was very angry, but he couldn't blame Yan Liru for anything; he was only trying to save people.
Later, the engagement was called off, and her fiancé became someone else's husband.
Later, his father was impeached by many court officials because of an article he wrote, and the emperor banished his father from the capital. On the way, his father encountered a demonic calamity.
Chen Hui's eyes were filled with deathly stillness. She said, "I only found out before I died that the deaths of my family members were not accidents, but were orchestrated by Fang Yu. The monster that killed my whole family was a living corpse she raised. In the end, I was also bitten to death by that living corpse."
After hearing Chen Hui's story, A Chan felt inexplicably depressed.
She seemed to understand how desperate Chen Hui must have felt after going through all of this.
"So, what role does Yan Liru play in this story?" Achan asked.
Chen Hui remained silent for a long while before saying, "Accomplice."
"He came before I died. I wasn't actually dead when the zombie bit my neck off. I heard him say, 'Find a place with good feng shui and bury me,' hahahaha..."
Chen Hui couldn't help but laugh, but she couldn't manage a smile on her face.
She laughed until she wanted to cry, but she couldn't shed any more tears.
"Why have you come to see me tonight?"
"I just smelled the fragrance and followed the scent here. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."
"A fragrance?" Achan asked, puzzled.
"I ate the sachet you gave me when I was captured because I was so hungry. I don't know why, but the smell was very appealing to me."
Achan got up and took a scented pill mixed with dragon bone powder from the antique shelf: "You mean this?"
"Yes." Upon seeing the incense charm, Madam Chen stared intently at it, as if she might pounce on it at any moment.
But she restrained herself and did not move an inch.
Achan handed her the incense pill, and Madam Chen put it in her mouth without hesitation and swallowed it without chewing.
After a while, she wondered if it was just her imagination, but she felt that the rotten patch on Madam Chen's face seemed to have shrunk a little.
Achan leaned closer to take a look and realized it wasn't her imagination.
"How could this happen?" she murmured to herself.
These incense balls don't use any special ingredients other than dragon bone powder. Besides smelling nice, they also have a small benefit: if you use them to scent your clothes, they won't get wet when it rains.
This strange effect has no impact on people; it's just a bit amusing.
After becoming a living corpse, Madam Chen would crave this incense pill, most likely because of the dragon bone powder.
She swallowed a fragrant pill containing dragon bone powder before her death, and was bitten to death by a zombie. After death, she turned into a zombie but did not completely become a zombie, which may not be an accident.
Perhaps, by chance, she absorbed the dragon bone powder, which prevented her from completely turning into a zombie.
The power of dragons is so great that it permeates every part of their bodies, including their bones.
The bones of the Four Realms Dragon Clan contain immense power, but it cannot be absorbed. It doesn't work on living people, but what about the dead?
Nobody has tried it.
No one would feed precious dragon bone powder to a dying person and then let a zombie bite him to death.
During the brief moment that Ah Chan was pondering the problem, a small patch on Chen Niangzi's face had disappeared.
"It really was absorbed." Achan was both surprised and annoyed.
To her surprise, her guess was correct. Chen Niangzi was indeed able to absorb the energy from the dragon bone powder. If she had enough dragon bone powder, she might be able to become like a normal person.
The problem is, there isn't enough dragon bone powder.
Even when she was still a fox demon, she never dared to even think of touching any of the dragons in the four realms.
Now, both the dragon and Bai Xiuming, who possesses dragon bones, are equally dangerous.
Bai Xiuming had just withdrawn the spies monitoring her. If he knew there were living corpses in her house, the first thing he would do would definitely not be listen to her explanation.
His attitude towards her when he first suspected she was a demon already spoke volumes; he would never show mercy to demons and monsters.
Achan never thought that just because Bai Xiuming was now treating her gently, she could tell him everything.
That is a righteous way to die.
Under Achan's surprised gaze, Madam Chen reached out and touched her face. When she stretched out her hand, she found that a rotten black spot on her finger had disappeared.
She looked at it over and over again; it really had disappeared.
What's going on?
"The incense pill contains dragon bone powder. The power of the dragon bone might temporarily restore your body to normal, but..."
"But what?"
“To maintain a normal state, I may need to keep eating dragon bone powder, which is extremely rare,” Achan said with a troubled tone.
"Oh, I see... then let's forget about it."
Chen Hui looked down at the skin on her hands, which looked normal, and tried to force a smile: "It's enough to see you again and say these words to you. I was already a dead person."
“If we do nothing and let things continue like this, you’ll die again. Won’t you feel resentful?” Achan asked.
Chen Hui said quietly, "Of course I'm not reconciled. My whole family was murdered, but they live a carefree and happy life. It's so unfair."
"But sometimes, you have to accept your fate. If you can't force something, then don't force it."
Achan looked at Chen Hui, who said not to force things. It wasn't that she didn't want to force things; she just didn't want to make things difficult for herself.
She couldn't help but recall how her grandmother had scolded her for being stubborn when they were in the mountains, saying that she was forcing things she could never have.
She just wanted to see her parents.
This idea never changed, not even as she grew up, not even as she died, not even as she was resurrected.
She may never be able to change what she shouldn't be forced to do.
“I have a way that might help you,” Achan said.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
