Chapter 20: Oh My God! The Corpse Has Come Back To Life

“Master, we’re back!”

Two hours later, Li Chaosheng was exhausted. The two paper figures had finally returned. Rubbing his eyes, Li Chaosheng asked them, “Where did you go?”

“We went next—”

“Oh, Master, we went around nearby and didn’t find anything suspicious!”

The little white paper man opened his mouth to say “next door,” but the little black one quickly clamped his mouth shut and jabbed in with the answer. Li Chaosheng was too sleepy, so he waved his hand. “You two play by yourselves for now. Don’t cause trouble. Keep an eye outside. If anything stirs or bad guys come, wake me up.”

Li Chaosheng pulled the quilt over himself to sleep and quickly drifted off.

The little black one released the little white one. The little white one exhaled, sat on the table and was about to speak when the little black one made a shushing gesture. The little white one immediately shut up and no longer discussed where they had gone.

The room was silent. The two little paper figures were bored and their eyes landed on the turtle lying on the rag. They exchanged looks and wore smiles not befitting paper figures, but more like two mischievous children.

Cock-a-doodle-doo~

After a night of ruckus, morning came and the rooster crowed. Hearing the rooster, the two paper figures instantly went limp and lay unmoving on the table. Drowsily, Li Chaosheng rubbed his eyes, turned over, and went back to sleep.

He slept another two hours and woke up. Seeing the two paper figures lying on the floor, he put them back in his pocket. The art of paper figures had a flaw: they only moved at night. By day, when yang energy pervaded the earth, the paper figures fell into dormancy.

This was explained in the technique, so Li Chaosheng wasn’t surprised. But as soon as he got up, he found Turtle Son flipped over, and someone had painted a small turtle in cinnabar on his belly. Beside the little turtle someone had written, in two painfully conspicuous characters: Asshole!

The turtle had its head retracted into its shell and couldn’t be coaxed out. Seeing it like that, Li Chaosheng couldn’t help picturing the two paper figures acting like little devils, humiliating the turtle until it hid in its shell, enduring even the insulting words written on its shell. The word ‘asshole’ didn’t do much physical harm to a turtle, but its insult was severe!

Li Chaosheng smacked his forehead in annoyance. He wanted to scold the paper figures, but they were sleeping now, so he could only wait until night to avenge the turtle.

Li Chaosheng gave a bitter laugh, got up to draw water, washed his face and brushed his teeth, and used the well water to rinse the cinnabar off the turtle’s shell. Just as he finished cleaning the turtle, he suddenly heard his neighbor Old Lin, the leather-worker, shout loudly from the next yard, “Oh my God, the corpse has come back to life!”

The shout was piercing, so high that even a young man like Li Chaosheng couldn’t reach it, as though someone had stomped on the old man’s kidneys. With a startled yelp, Li Chaosheng’s hand trembled and the turtle nearly fell into the well. It served as a warning: next time when scrubbing a turtle, stay farther from the well.

But with the neighbor shouting that a corpse had resurrected, it would be odd not to at least go and take a look. As precaution, Li Chaosheng grabbed his ghost-head blade from inside the house before running next door.

By the time he arrived, the paper crafter Old Qian was already in Old Lin’s house. Old Lin’s legs had gone weak from fear, and there was a puddle on the floor. Perhaps with age his bladder control was poor and the fright had simply been too much.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing!”

Old Qian helped Old Lin the leather-worker sit down. Old Lin, trembling, pointed to the corpse-sewing table not far away and blurted, “Evil spirit! Evil spirit!”

At those words, Li Chaosheng and Old Qian both looked over and were stunned. On the corpse-sewing table lay the naked body of a big fat man in an extremely bizarre pose: butt raised, one leg lifted, tongue sticking out…like, like a dog peeing!

The pose was indeed peculiar. Placed on an ordinary man it might be somewhat comical, on an ordinary woman it might be somewhat provocative.

But on a dead body, it was damn bizarre! Not just Old Lin, but even Li Chaosheng, who had seen a lot, felt his scalp tingle. A suspicion formed in his mind: it was probably the work of those two little bastard paper figures. How else could one explain this? After all, if a corpse had really come back to life, who would choose to put themselves in such a pose?!

Besides, didn’t corpses that came back to life usually mean a zombie of sorts hopping about and chasing after the living? If this thing had really come back to life, Old Lin wouldn’t be alive right now. Also, this sort of thing matched with the painting on the turtle. It was the same sort of prank! The antics of naughty children!

“Ahem… Uncle Lin, are you all right?”

Li Chaosheng snapped back to the moment and looked at the leather-worker Old Lin. Bathed in sunlight, Old Lin regained some composure and said, “I’m fine, just got frightened.”

Li Chaosheng added, “Don’t worry, Uncle Lin. This guy doesn’t look like he’s come back to life. Maybe someone’s playing a joke on you.”

“A joke? Who jokes like this? This, this must be the work of an evil spirit!”

The old man pondered a long time before blurting the claim again. Li Chaosheng didn’t want to contradict him, so he asked, “Whatever it is, let’s go over this from the start. Who is this guy and how did he end up here?”

The old man, perhaps trying to lighten the mood, said, “That’s Zheng, the butcher from the slaughterhouse outside the city.”

“And what happened to him?”

Li Chaosheng looked and saw that Butcher Zheng was otherwise intact, but his neck had been slashed, his windpipe cut open with a big gash. Old Lin had already sewn it up.

The leather-worker, still shaken and wanting someone to talk to, explained, “This Zheng guy is the butcher who slaughters pigs outside the city. His family is wealthy. He relies on his brute strength to bully people at the market. He’s not completely evil, but he’s done plenty of immoral things and used to being overbearing.”

“Yesterday he was having an affair with Widow Wang from the neighboring village and ended up quarreling with Old Zhang from the same village. Old Zhang’s a bachelor in his thirties who couldn’t find a wife. Someone introduced him to Widow Wang and they hit it off. She’d lost her husband and Old Zhang couldn’t marry anyone else, so they were the perfect match. He’d already sent the betrothal gifts and was waiting to marry her. But Widow Wang had been seeing Butcher Zheng on the side and wanted one last tryst with Zheng before marrying.”

“As luck would have it, Old Zhang caught them. He considered Widow Wang his future wife, so seeing the naked Zheng with her, blood filled his eyes. He wrestled with Zheng, but he couldn’t win. Desperate, Old Zhang grabbed a cleaver and shouted, ‘I’ll fucking chop you up!’”

“Hearing that, Butcher Zheng laughed, tilted his neck, gestured to his own throat and said, ‘You know how to use a knife? Watch closely. Here’s the windpipe, just one slash and half the head comes off, the person dies. Let me see your guts! Look at how cowardly you look! And you think you deserve to marry Wang Lian? You’re only worthy of being a cuck!’”

“‘Ah, I’ll chop you to pieces!’ Old Zhang’s hands trembled as he held the knife and Zheng kept taunting him. Furious and panicked, Old Zhang gritted his teeth, stamped his foot, and decided to hell with everything.”

“With a swish, the knife came down at the spot Zheng himself had indicated. Zheng gave a thumbs-up as if to say, ‘Alright, you’re a man now.’ Then with a thud, the corpse collapsed.”