Chapter 9: Dead End (9)

Chapter 9: Dead End (Part 9)

The donkey cart tumbled down the small hillside, rolling over brush and stones of all sizes. It screeched and groaned as it went, and the moment it hit the bottom, it shattered into a pile of wooden planks, coincidentally burying Zhaozhao and Xiaoduo underneath.

Zhaozhao pushed aside a plank and lifted her head. All she could see was darkness, and all she could smell was the stench of blood. Subconsciously, she reached out to her side: "Xiaoduo..."

As soon as the words left her lips, someone immediately gripped her hand, followed by a "shh"

"...Don't speak, listen!"

Zhaozhao pricked up her ears. Having hit her head hard, there was a constant rumbling in her ears. Vaguely, she heard the night wind, the chirping of insects, and the sound of tearing and chewing. Looking out through the gaps in the planks, she saw a dark shadow not far away, crouching over another dark shadow, eating with such vigor that it was shaking its head.

Zhaozhao’s eyelids twitched: "A wolf?"

Xiaoduo nodded. This beast had chased them relentlessly the entire way, and it had finally caught a meal.

He sighed in mourning for the poor donkey that had met such a miserable end, while simultaneously grabbing a wooden stick from nearby. Enduring the pain all over his body, he rushed out with lightning speed and swung the stick down with all his might.

With a few dull thuds, the wolf, caught off guard while gorging itself, had its skull cracked open and collapsed, eyes rolling back as it lost consciousness.

Xiaoduo didn't stop there; he continued to strike with the stick. It was only when Zhaozhao reminded him, "Don't ruin the pelt," that he stopped, panting heavily.

Though the wolf was dead, their hearts remained heavy—the donkey was gone, the cart was smashed to pieces; how would they answer for this when they returned? Mother Yu wouldn't care about natural disasters or human misfortune; she would only pin the costs on them and deduct even more from their wages.

The pittance they earned was barely enough for a bowl of thin porridge a day after buying medicine for Yaoniang. If they stopped working, they stopped eating. If they earned less, they would starve. How could they withstand Mother Yu’s torment?

Helpless, they had no choice but to tie up the dead wolf, hoping its pelt might fetch a good price. But the wolf had lived a rough life, and its appearance was quite ragged, so there wasn't much hope there. They made other plans, intending to drag the half-eaten donkey back to the county to see if the butcher shop would take the meat.

Just as they were tying up the dead donkey, a donkey’s bray—*hee-haw, hee-haw*—sounded above their heads. The two looked toward the sound and saw the old donkey standing alone on the small slope, limbs intact, jumping and braying.

The old donkey wasn't dead. Then whose unlucky soul had the wolf been eating?

The two took out their flint and lit a torch. Shoulder to shoulder, they cautiously approached the dark shadow. They leaned down to look, and their hearts immediately leaped into their throats... Damn it, it was a dead person!

Xiaoduo was so scared he fell onto his backside. The ground beneath him felt wet and cold. He thought he had wet his pants, but when he touched it with his hand, he realized the ground under him was sticky and soft.

What kind of soil was like this? When the torchlight hit it, it was blood that had frozen into a blackish-red mass.

Xiaoduo scrambled to his feet and held the torch up to look around. But tonight there was no moon and the wind was blowing; the night was so thick it couldn't be pierced, and he couldn't see beyond five paces. Who knew how many people had died here for the blood to have soaked the earth through!

"...Let's go!" His legs trembling, he pulled Zhaozhao backward. "There must be mountain bandits nearby, we have to leave now!"

The world was in chaos; where there were mountains and forests, there were bound to be bandits. The bandits who claimed the mountains were just common folk with no way to survive. They crouched in the woods like ghosts, robbing everyone they saw and killing them afterward.

Dead people weren't strange, but running into them was a terrible omen.

Xiaoduo was anxious to leave, but Zhaozhao held him back: "No rush."

She crouched down and felt the fabric of the corpse's clothing. It wasn't top-tier silk, but it was definitely something an ordinary family couldn't afford. After a moment of contemplation, as if she had made a decision, she reached into the corpse's clothes. Pressing against the cold, icy skin, she felt something heavy.

She thought it was silver, but when she pulled it out, it was a square iron plate with characters engraved on it, looking quite imposing.

She had never been to school, so she handed it to Xiaoduo: "What does this say?"

Xiaoduo was also illiterate. He shook his head and said, "I don't know, but looking at the craftsmanship, it must be from a wealthy family."

The two couldn't make heads or tails of it, and seeing that the plate wasn't worth much, they tossed it aside.

After discarding the plate, Zhaozhao didn't give up; she reached toward the corpse again. Heaven rewards the diligent—she really did find a few pieces of silver.

She wiped the blood off the silver, and it shone brightly. Her spirits were instantly lifted; the bruises on her body no longer hurt, and her foggy ears cleared up.

She took two deep breaths. The wind blowing toward them carried a thick, bloody stench. She concluded that there must be plenty more dead bodies ahead. Without a second thought, she waved her hand and said to Xiaoduo, "Let's go, we're going to get rich tonight."

Xiaoduo was startled by her twisted idea: "Taking money from the dead is unlucky. You'll face retribution. At best, you'll be plagued by illness; at worst, your family will be destroyed..."

Zhaozhao had been a little afraid at first, but hearing his grand lecture, she became fearless instead. She laughed: "What a coincidence, isn't my mother already plagued by illness? I have no family, so what is there to fear about a family being destroyed? I have a worthless life, so what is there to fear about death? Retribution from the underworld is nothing more than this; I'm already suffering it now."

As expected, the path ahead was littered with corpses lying in every direction.

Greed had clouded Zhaozhao's heart. To her, these corpses no longer looked like dead people; they were like wheat in a field, gathered here just waiting for her to harvest them.

She took off her shoes, rolled up her sleeves, and hiked up her skirt. She tidied her clothes in one fluid motion and walked barefoot into the pile of corpses. As she stepped forward, her foot sank into the bloody mud. She froze for a moment, then bent down to rummage through the corpse in front of her.

There was another plate in the corpse's bosom, but she couldn't even be bothered to take it out and look at it; with a flick of her wrist, she pulled out the silver.

Under the torchlight, the white silver bloomed with a golden glow. Before she could even be happy, she heard Xiaoduo say in distress: "Zhaozhao-er, let's not do such immoral things, let's leave quickly..."

Zhaozhao disagreed. If she could live a decent life, why would she need to be immoral? "Opportunities like this are once in a lifetime. If you want to leave, go ahead." With that, she tossed the silver to Xiaoduo and turned back to continue searching the corpses.

As for Xiaoduo, he really didn't want to take money from the dead, but his hands wouldn't listen. Not only did he catch the silver steadily, he even subconsciously brought it to his mouth to bite it.

He stopped his teeth, but his heart began to itch. Dead man's money or living man's money, wasn't it all just money? Finding silver on the dead was easier than flattering customers.

Xiaoduo feared retribution, but fear was fear; it didn't stop him from closing his eyes and reaching out to touch the corpses. The bandits who had robbed this group seemed very careless and hadn't scraped everything clean. He easily found silver, jade pendants, and all sorts of pouches and sachets.

He only took the silver, not the jade pendants, because he often heard elders say that jade objects held the souls of their owners. He also didn't take the pouches or sachets; these people had parents, wives, and daughters when they were alive, and he couldn't take ill-gotten gains from them and trample on the sentiments of their loved ones.

Xiaoduo was getting rich with his eyes closed while silently mourning in his heart, when he suddenly heard Zhaozhao scream: "Xiaoduo, there's a ghost!" He snapped his eyes open.

He looked toward the sound and saw that in the night, so thick it couldn't be pierced, Zhaozhao was standing in the pile of corpses, her lower leg gripped tightly by a blood-stained hand. It was truly a haunting!

(End of chapter)