Scattered silver snowflakes, collected ownerless corpses.
The corpse from the Government Office's prison in front of him was only wrapped in a piece of rag. According to the constable, this person died out of fear and committed suicide in the jail at night.
But when Xu Qing unfolded the rag, he found that the corpse inside was stark naked, without even a shred of cloth to cover the navel.
Looking at the death posture again, with hands clutching his knees and body curled up, it was clearly a death from cold and hunger, not a suicide out of guilt!
With the intention of uncovering the truth, Xu Qing reached out to touch the individual, attempting to summon the Immortal Scripture and read its life.
But to Xu Qing's immense shock, the Sutra of Salvation in his mind had no reaction at all.
Where exactly went wrong?
Could it be that this corpse was fake?
Xu Qing immediately dismissed this possibility, as fabricating a human body was something impossible to achieve with just a few taels of silver, and it was clearly impossible to sell it to him!
Then it could only be the posture for salvation was incorrect.
Recalling the process of redeeming corpses in the past, Xu Qing suddenly had an epiphany.
He remembered when he redeemed the corpse workers at Cui's Mill, those corpse workers looked no different from common corpses on the outside.
The only difference was that to refine a complete corpse worker, it had to go through multiple processes of layering Rebirth Spells and Corpse Awakening Spells. Finally, special Corpse Walking Talismans had to be inscribed on the body, so that the corpse would possess a working program consciousness.
Whereas ordinary corpses, if left untreated for a while, would have their souls gradually dissipate out of the body.
When he transcended Liu Youdao, it was because the latter had not been dead for long, and the soul had not yet left the body, thus allowing the transcendence to succeed.
As for Landlord Liu a few days ago, it was because Liu Youdao had planned to dig up and refine the body into a corpse worker for secondary profit even before setting up the funeral hall.
By the time Xu Qing arrived at the Liu Mansion, Landlord Liu had already been subjected to the Corpse-Driving Spell, and was in a state of Rebirth Preservation...
Reviewing his past experiences, Xu Qing seemed to have identified the issue.
The corpse before him, having died of cold and hunger, had clearly exceeded the period in which the soul wandered restlessly.
In other words, he needed to summon the soul before he could proceed with the transcendence.
With a solution in mind, Xu Qing felt inexplicably excited.
This might be the first time he would practice the Corpse Awakening since becoming a corpse driver!
Closing the shop door, lighting a stick of Spirit Incense, after calming down, Xu Qing gathered the necessary items for driving corpses. After putting on fish-skin gloves as protection, he laid them out one by one at the side of the pallet.
Soul-Driving Bell, Corpse-Driving Whip, Ink Box and Ink Line Eight Trigrams mirror, and a Vermillion brush, a Purple Smoke Incense Burner...
No matter if they were useful or not, just at a glance, whether expert or novice would shout "authentic!"
Take a look at these tools, probably the only treasures a corpse driver might gather in their lifetime, and here they all were!
"Green guards the soul, white serves the spirit, red nourishes the Qi, black connects the blood. Other souls stay away, dead souls remain, silently listen to my spell, broken spirits enter dreams... Heaven's gate opens, earth's gate opens, the golden bird morphs into a spirit body, wandering souls return to the body, a thousand miles to bind the soul, quickly come into this form!"
Taking out the Soul-Driving Bell, Xu Qing chanted the Rebirth Spell from the Thirty-Six Corpse-Driving Spells. When the bell and the chanting reached a certain frequency, a gust of cold wind burst in through the windows and door cracks of the Funeral Shop, spiraling and targeting the position, landing on the ownerless corpse.
In the next moment, the corpse curled up rigidly on the pallet suddenly started to tremble, emitting clear sounds of bones stretching and relocating.
When the sounds stopped, the fully stretched out corpse suddenly opened its grey-white eyes, and from its mouth came a hoarse, creaky voice as if a winch was turning.
"Cold, so cold! Lend me your skin to wear..."
Sudden events arose, Xu Qing, utterly unprepared, was almost scared stiff, as the Thirty-Six Corpse-Driving Spells had never mentioned that the corpse would speak after the ritual!
Watch as the corpse on the pallet suddenly extended its arms, about to crawl and strip his skin, Xu Qing almost instinctively threw a punch!
Followed by a second punch, a third punch, then a flurry of punches!
Not until the pallet shook and the 'ghostly posing' terrifying corpse was beaten into convulsions did Xu Qing stop.
"Is this all?"
Pressing the spasming frozen corpse beneath him, Xu Qing's mind started flipping through the Sutra of Salvation.
...
The corpse was named Qu Zhicai, originally a debauched man proficient in eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling. He spent his days either on the way to a gambling den or gallivanting among brothels and courtesan houses.
At the age of twenty, right at the time of coming of age, Qu Zhicai set an ambitious goal: to roam through all the casinos and brothels of the Dayong Dynasty, then write a book and become a revered founder-like figure.
In truth, he just wanted to gamble and whore, a good-for-nothing scoundrel!
After setting his grand ambition, Qu Zhicai borrowed a round of money donations from relatives and friends under the pretense of going to the County Town to diligently study and achieve scholarly honor, then disappeared.
Did he really go to the County Town to study hard?
Believe it or not, he did go to study!
But what he studied was not the classics or the scripture of books, but how to throw dice and visit brothels!
When he ran out of money in the County Town and got bored, Qu Zhicai would borrow some money from his shady friends in the County Town, saying he would repay in a few days.
But when the appointed repayment day came, the creditors found out——
Guess what! The whole County Town couldn't even find a hair of Qu Zhicai!
By this time, Qu Zhicai had already pocketed the money and moved to another town to enjoy himself!
In the following half year, he repeated this method, and his grand ambition seemed to be hopeful!