Chapter 53: The Method and Possibility of Resurrection

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In the square, everyone who had been there before had reappeared. The four men, those corpulent figures who had strangled themselves with their own limbs, their bodies gradually returned to normal amidst the spasms of muscle. The old man gently stroked the Flesh of Immortality with both hands, pressing his forehead against it. He murmured words of gratitude, his emotions sincere.

“Thank you... Thank you. You have saved us once again...”

He spoke softly, and the robust men behind him knelt down. They reached out their hands, their eyes filled with greed.

“Don’t you want the Flesh of Immortality?”

But in front of them, the old man kept his eyes closed, his face pressed close against the sacred flesh. Lifting his hand, he tore off a piece of meat from it and handed it to the men behind him.

“Do you not need it?” he asked again, making Chen Qing realize that the question was directed at him.

“Why would I need it?”

“She can be revived.”

He continued, eyes still closed, distributing piece after piece of the sacred flesh. Chen Qing approached, shaking his head, paying no mind to whether the old man could see him or not. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Why?” The old man was truly bewildered this time. He turned, his gaze full of confusion. “Why doesn’t it matter! When she died, you were clearly reluctant to let go!”

“Because it doesn’t matter...”

“Then what does matter?”

Before his words finished, Jiang Wan’s headless corpse stepped out. She leaned against the wall, arms folded, her clothes stained deep purple with blood. Though she had no eyes, it felt as if she was still gazing at Chen Qing’s body, asking, word by word, “What does matter then? Even if I have died, even if I died because of you, does none of it matter?”

He considered for a moment, and slowly shook his head. “What matters is truly living again.”

“But if you never leave this place, then that world becomes reality!”

Chen Qing’s expression remained unchanged, but a smile curled at the corner of his lips. “That world doesn’t hurt.” He laughed softly, tilting his head, a hint of carefree abandon in his smile. “Even if I could live a lifetime in a false world, even if I could stay there forever, the you in that world would never have your own consciousness. And the me in that world would never feel pain from separation or loss. Fake things are always fake; desires should not be satisfied without limit.”

He took a deep breath and looked at the corpse by the wall, smiling. “Injecting a placebo does make patients recover faster. But if only placebos are given, the patient will never truly be cured. Numbing the nerves to pain means never knowing where the real wounds lie.”

He was about to say more, to tell Jiang Wan’s corpse not far away that he had another way, a way to truly bring her back to life here. But as he contemplated, he simply smiled and shook his head. “Forget it. Why should I explain anything to my own hallucination?”

As he spoke, not far away, the old man’s face had turned slate gray. His trembling fingers pointed at Chen Qing, his expression as if a disobedient son had abandoned the family legacy. His lips quivered as he spoke, word by word: “How dare you! How dare you so disdainfully reject the gift of the Flesh of Immortality!”

He advanced step by step, the dangerous feeling like a beast approaching emanating even before he reached Chen Qing.

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He was right in front of him, and the sensation of imminent death lingered relentlessly in Chen Qing’s mind. This sense of peril made Chen Qing once again pull out the wooden spike from his pocket.

At that moment, he aimed the spike forward.

“Heh. Do you think you can challenge me with that? Just a stick barely longer than my little finger?” The old man laughed, his contempt obvious. Likewise, Chen Qing was keenly aware of the disparity between them; the old man’s disdain was justified, he had every reason for pride.

Yet Chen Qing looked at him and wore a mocking smile. “If the force is applied correctly, even an ant can slay a dragon.”

He didn’t wait for the old man to speak further, nor did he care for the man’s serene arrogance. Raising the wooden spike, in the next instant, he turned its sharp end.

The old man was momentarily taken aback, his steps stalling. With a press of his hand, the sharp spike pierced through his chest. He gritted his teeth, the searing pain in his chest nearly suffocating him. He breathed with effort, forcing his spasming lungs to keep working, twisting his chest, biting back the blood now pouring from his mouth.

The blood was seeping from his stomach, but in the next second, his chest began to heal. Even as the wooden spike remained embedded in his chest, his muscles started to mend.

Chen Qing looked down at his chest and knew at that moment he had won his gamble.

“The Flesh of Immortality... truly worthy of its name.”

Laughing, he twisted the spike again in his heart. The pain, beyond nerve sensation, blinded him, but his hand did not stop. The wooden spike, stained with dried blood, kept turning in his chest.

His heartbeat grew ever faster, the trembling in his muscles speeding up with each cycle of damage and repair. In that instant, the flesh of his chest turned to a slurry of rotten meat.

A writhing lump of flesh.

He gritted his teeth, and when his mental countdown ended, he pulled the spike out from his chest.

He tried to look at his hand, but the dizziness from pain hadn’t faded, his vision awash in white. Squatting for three or four seconds, he waited until his sight gradually returned, then looked at his hand.

In his palm, a half-finger-sized piece of the Flesh of Immortality lay quietly, pierced on the spike. Its original pristine white and gloss were gone, turned yellow and parched.

“You... the Flesh of Immortality sacrificed itself to save you! How can you repay kindness with betrayal!” The old man’s voice was filled with heartbreak. He knelt on the ground, his face ashen, stumbling forward, crawling a few steps before his expression turned dark and grim.

“What did you do to it?”

Chen Qing listened to his questioning, his gaze falling to his own palm.

He looked at the piece in his hand, smiled, then waved the fragment.

“Let delusion return, let reality reclaim the earth.”

He whispered, his trembling legs straightening as he stood. Swaying, his figure unsteady, he walked up to the old man. The old man’s fist struck at Chen Qing’s face.

But this time, his fist was no longer powerful or unstoppable.

Chen Qing caught the punch in his palm, looked at the old man, patted his shoulder, and pointed behind him.

Behind the old man, the obese natives with emaciated limbs lay collapsed all over the ground, scratching at their necks until blood soaked the earth.

He glanced at the investigators, their eyes vacant, ten fingers digging into their own chests, tearing at themselves. After brief cries of agony, a tremendous explosion erupted from within them.

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That pitch-black liquid burst through their chests, extinguishing their lives in an instant.

They were all dead, leaving only two others in the square...

Perhaps three.

Jiang Wan’s headless figure still stood beside Chen Qing, arms folded, as if she was smiling. Somehow, Chen Qing felt it so; yet he knew, with her head gone, how could she possibly smile?

He stepped before the old man, looked down at him. The elder was even more gaunt, kneeling and oblivious to Chen Qing’s actions.

So Chen Qing stepped past him, walking up to the Flesh of Immortality.

“You want to monopolize it for yourself?” The old man’s voice was chilling.

“No.” Chen Qing fell silent for a moment, then took out the file from his coat.

He glanced at the shrine before him and wrote in the document:

“The pollution of the Flesh of Immortality will dissipate among those remaining in the tulou when they raise their middle fingers.”

He wrote thus, then looked up at Jiang Wan’s figure standing beside the old man.

He gazed at her body, slowly closed his eyes, and raised his finger.

“Damn this world.”

He murmured, and as he opened his eyes again, all traces of chaos on the ground had vanished.

Only the old man remained, thin and tattered, his hunched body filthy, twisting and writhing so the blood and sugar on the ground covered him further.

His lips, already cracked from hunger and thirst, were now bloodier than ever.

He looked at the Flesh of Immortality before him; it remained, but had shrunk by two sizes and continued to diminish.

Chen Qing sighed, took out a clean silk handkerchief from his pocket.

He tore off a piece of the Flesh, moistened the handkerchief in the shrine, and slowly placed it in his pocket.

He returned all the way to his old room, but Jiang Wan’s corpse no longer sat upright.

Or rather, he could no longer find her body at all.

In that room, only her remaining clothes were left.

He closed his eyes, pondering for a long time, then pulled out the file from his pocket: “The woman who died fleeing the hunchbacked old man will come back to life the second time she enters the tulou.”

He wrote the words in his notes, but the scene he hoped for did not appear.

Chen Qing’s heart skipped a beat; he pinched his brow, thought for a while, then took out the file again: “The female investigator named Jiang Wan, who died fleeing the old man and whose corpse cannot be found, will come back to life.”

He wrote again, the handwriting now reaching the fourth line.

But the result? Still nothing.

He looked at the blood-stained garment before him, anxiety welling up in his heart.