“Corpse revival—!”
Someone started screaming.
The doorway was already packed with people, and now, everyone scrambled to push their way out, each caring only for themselves. The result? No one could get through.
Some were so terrified by the resurrected corpse that they lost all reason, convinced they had fallen into a ghostly trap. Another scream rang out.
The scene spiraled into even greater madness and chaos.
Gan Tang instinctively pulled his grandmother close, thinking of nothing else but shielding the elderly woman.
But in the frenzy, the jostling crowd knocked into him so hard that he nearly lost his footing.
“Hiss… hiss… huhh…”
Gan Tang didn’t look back.
But suddenly, the hollow wailing of the dead grew louder, carried on a suffocating wave of rot.
If he had turned, he would have seen—
Uncle Xijiao truly looked as though he had come back to life.
Though his half-liquefied limbs could no longer support his bloated, decaying body, he was moving.
He couldn’t stand or walk, only crawl, dragging himself forward.
By now, Xijiao’s wife had stopped screaming. Perhaps she had fainted.
But Uncle Xijiao didn’t seem to care about such a “small matter.”
His clouded eyes held no trace of human awareness, only a vast, empty void. Tiny, wriggling worms still poured from his sockets like a living fountain.
Yet, just then, as if sensing something, he slowly lifted his head—
And his gaze locked onto Gan Tang’s back.
“Hiss… hiss… Tang…”
He uttered a whisper so low, so eerie, that the panicked crowd would never hear it.
Then, with slow but unwavering determination, he crawled toward Gan Tang.
Fortunately, he had only made it a few steps before his body suddenly froze in place.
“…Hhh…”
From deep within his throat, he forced out a final, resentful gurgle—
And then he collapsed with a heavy thud, utterly still.
A thick, black-red sludge of putrid flesh spilled from his skin.
The nauseating swarm of worms still covered the ground, writhing and bouncing.
But—
Between Gan Tang and Uncle Xijiao, an invisible boundary had formed, as though someone had drawn a precise, transparent line of protection.
The worms continued their frantic dance—yet not a single one could cross that line to reach Gan Tang.
Still, a shiver ran down his spine.
A chilling gaze was fixed upon him.
The revived corpse chasing him hadn’t made him turn back—
But at that moment, compelled by some unexplainable force, he did.
And then—he saw them.
Uncle Zhang Er and his group, standing beneath the eaves.
How strange…
That was the first thought that surfaced in Gan Tang’s mind.
Uncle Zhang Er and the others…
They were acting far too strangely.
A corpse had just risen before their eyes, something so terrifying, so unnatural—
Yet they showed no reaction at all.
They stood frozen in place, their expressions blank, their faces devoid of any emotion.
They didn’t move to help.
But neither did they flee.
Amidst the panicked crowd, they stood in eerie stillness—so out of place, so unnervingly out of sync with the chaos around them.
And most disturbing of all—
Though their faces remained blank, their red eyes, set deep in their sockets—
Those eyes were rolling wildly.
And now—
Those unblinking, bloodshot eyes were all locked onto Gan Tang.
A frigid chill shot up from his ankles, straight to the top of his skull.
He couldn’t quite explain why, but in that instant, his mind buzzed loudly, and an overwhelming sense of danger surged through him, sending a sudden burst of strength through his body. He grabbed his grandmother and forcefully shoved his way through the crowd, dragging her out with sheer brute force.
And just as they escaped from Uncle Xijiao’s house—
The door of the Xijiao residence let out a slow, creaking sound—
Someone from inside had quietly closed it.
…
…
…
Everything that followed was a blur.
Gan Tang couldn’t remember a thing. He only knew that he had stumbled all the way home with his grandmother, barely managing to shut the iron gate behind them.
The moment the latch clicked into place, his grandmother suddenly collapsed onto the ground.
Her face was ashen yellow, her wrinkles carved so deep they looked like they could reach her bones. She muttered under her breath, her voice trembling.
“Grandma?”
Still panting heavily, Gan Tang’s legs felt weak as he half-crawled, half-stumbled toward her to help her up.
But as he got closer, he realized—
She wasn’t speaking to him.
She was murmuring to herself, repeating the same phrase over and over.
“I told them already… I told them long ago… Don’t borrow flesh… Borrowing flesh only brings disaster… I warned them… I said not to borrow flesh…”
Borrow flesh?
Did that have something to do with Uncle Xijiao’s condition?
Gan Tang’s chest tightened sharply, his heartbeat falling into chaotic disarray.
Because in Fengjing Village—
Uncle Zhang Er wasn’t the only one who had borrowed flesh.
Oh, wait. No. Uncle Zhang Er wasn’t even real. He was just a disguise.
The one who had truly performed the flesh-borrowing ritual—the one who had defied death and returned—
Was Gan Tang himself.
The very moment this thought crossed his mind, a sickeningly cold, sticky sensation of being watched crept over him.
He watched, wide-eyed, as the fine hairs on his arm stood on end.
He looked up—
And sure enough, standing right at the doorway—
Was Cen Zibai.
The tall young man stood stiffly beneath the shadow of the eaves, utterly motionless.
His posture was as rigid as a corpse, not even the slightest tremor to betray the presence of life.
And in that moment—
His figure overlapped eerily with the memory of Uncle Zhang Er and the others, standing frozen, their bloodshot eyes locked onto Gan Tang.
Cold sweat seeped from Gan Tang’s pores.
Terror seized his body.
His breath caught in his throat as he stared at Cen Zibai in horror.
For a fleeting second, he was convinced—
That at any moment, worms would begin pouring from Cen Zibai’s eyes, nose, and mouth.
But—
Unlike what he had imagined, the eerie stillness lasted only a moment.
Then, Cen Zibai’s eyes moved.
And in the next breath, his face softened with visible concern.
He quickly walked toward Gan Tang. “What’s going on? I heard a huge commotion outside, people screaming… Grandma? Grandma, are you okay? My god, what happened?”
His voice was filled with worry, his demeanor pure and harmless.
…But Gan Tang was absolutely certain—
That the ominous darkness he had glimpsed just now was no illusion.
This “Cen Zibai”—
Was nowhere near as harmless as he seemed.
But at this point—
His grandmother was shaking so violently she looked as if she might fall apart, her complexion worse than ever.
There was nothing Gan Tang could do except hold his breath and pretend he had noticed nothing at all.
At least for now, that was all he could do.
As for what happened later at Uncle Xijiao’s house—
Well, Gan Tang only heard about it from others.
Apparently, the scene was an absolute mess.
But Fengjing Village was deep in the mountains, and the villagers had a wild, untamed brutality in their bones.
Not long after the corpse revival, the village chief went knocking on doors.
The elderly, women, and children were ordered to stay indoors.
But any household with able-bodied men had to send them out to help.
More screams, cries, and those strange, incomprehensible shrieks filled the air…
Gan Tang pushed his grandmother into the house to rest, then stood in the courtyard, listening in silence for a long time.
Before long—
A putrid, unbearable stench drifted toward him, carried by the wind.
He tilted his head back, staring blankly into the distance—toward the direction of Uncle Xijiao’s house. A thick column of smoke was rising into the sky.
“Ah, they burned him.”
A quiet voice spoke behind him.
Cen Zibai.
It was strange. Cen Zibai had only said a few words, yet Gan Tang instantly understood his meaning.
If his guess was right, the villagers must have cremated Uncle Xijiao right there in his own courtyard.
…
But the real question was—why did Cen Zibai, who had never even been to the scene, seem to know more about what had happened than Gan Tang himself?
That night, not a single soul in Fengjing Village dared to step outside.
Even Gan Tang’s grandmother, having suffered too many frights during the day, fell asleep rubbing her temples just as the sky turned dark.
Of course, before she slept, she didn’t forget to remind Gan Tang over and over—stay inside, no matter what sounds he heard outside, don’t go out.
“It’s not safe… It’s not safe out there right now… I’ve said it before, borrowing flesh is something that must never be done… never…”
She was warning him, yet her eyes looked empty, as if she had fallen into some distant nightmare.
And now, that nightmare had come back to life.
Gan Tang murmured a quiet agreement.
He carefully tucked his grandmother in, but when he left her room, his steps felt as heavy as lead.
So quiet.
The moment his grandmother fell asleep, the entire village became eerily silent—so silent that it sent shivers down Gan Tang’s spine.
This place, once his peaceful safe haven, now felt suffocating under the weight of something unseen.
Somewhere in the distance, faintly, he could hear the soft cries of a woman—perhaps from Xijiao’s wife, or maybe from Zhang Er’s house.
The darkness had become an invisible curtain, severing Fengjing Village from the rest of the world.
“Creak—”
Holding his breath, Gan Tang stepped out of his grandmother’s room.
Even though he was in his own home, he moved cautiously, as if afraid to make a sound.
He had planned to slip out quietly, without disturbing anyone, to go find Yu Huai.
But—
“Aren’t you going to sleep?”
A voice suddenly rang out.
At some unknown moment, Cen Zibai had already appeared at his bedroom door, standing there silently. As he pulled the door open, a sliver of light spilled into the darkness from the gap.
Backlit, Gan Tang couldn’t see his face at all.
His heart instantly began pounding in his chest.
“I… I just wanted to sit in the living room for a while,” Gan Tang forced himself to answer as calmly as possible, using every ounce of effort to steady his voice.
But Cen Zibai was no longer as “obedient” as before.
Upon hearing Gan Tang’s words, he tilted his head slightly—then, step by step, he began walking toward him.
He lifted a hand—cool fingers resting directly on Gan Tang’s shoulder.
“But you look exhausted. You should rest early.”
Before Gan Tang could respond, the boy leaned in—lowering his head and sniffing lightly at the side of Gan Tang’s neck.
“…You’re terrified.”
His voice was soft.
“So pitiful, shaking like this.”
Then came a damp, chilling breath against his skin.
“There’s really no need to be so afraid. You’ll be just fine.”
