Chapter Thirty-Six: Corpse in the Shade

  Just as Qin Feng was about to ask about the snake, "Ding ding ding!" "Ding ding ding!" Qin's phone suddenly rang wildly, and he immediately extinguished his cigarette and answered the call.

  While making a phone call, Qin Feng noticed that Grandpa Qin was acting abnormally. After Grandpa hung up the phone, he asked: "Grandpa, what's wrong?"

  Qin Ye lit another cigarette and said, "Do you have anything on your minds now?"

  "What's wrong, Master Qin? Nothing serious, right?"

  "Oh, it's like that, since you don't have anything important, just follow me for now. I've received something here that you guys specifically like."

  Grandpa Qin's words were quite ambiguous, and Qin Feng didn't know what Grandpa was intentionally hiding. Anyway, it was what they wanted, so they decided to go take a look, maybe they would find something. Having made up their minds, Qin Feng and Zhou Qin followed Grandpa Qin to the mortuary.

  "It seems Grandfather wants us to take a look..." Qin Feng didn't say the word "corpse", but everyone already understood. Master Qin said, "Go inside, there's something new."

  As soon as they entered, there were still a few people standing inside. One of them was Qin Feng, who recognized him as the director of this funeral home. The other four people didn't know each other, but judging from their rough appearance, they should be migrant workers or farmers from nearby areas.

  "Qin Lao Han, this matter is now left to you." The director instructed and then turned around and left the mortuary.

  Qin Feng always felt surprised and curious, walking to the front of the hearse, only to discover a corpse with a gruesome face. The scratch marks on the body still had bloodstains, looking like they were caused by being scratched or stabbed by some sharp object.

  "Grandpa, how did you manage this?"

  "I don't know." Qin Ye rolled up his sleeves and walked in front of the corpse, turning around to face the four men and saying: "You are..."

  At this time, the bald and sturdy man on the far left among the four men said sorrowfully: "We are all migrant workers from Sichuan, and he is also a fellow villager who came here to work with us." "This kid is so pitiful, just over twenty years old and was killed. How can I explain this to his mother? I really wish I could throw away my own life to exchange for his..." The middle-aged man next to him, whose hair was already graying, wailed and knelt beside the body, grieving for his son.

  。

  Looking at the scratches on the corpse, Zhou Qin asked Qin Ye: "Qin master, these scratches are so long and deep, I'm afraid they can't be made by ordinary sharp objects."

  "Hmm." Qin Ye nodded in agreement, "It should be caused by the fingernail."

  "Fingernails? Grandfather, it's unlikely that a murderer would use fingernails to kill someone for no reason, unless the murderer is crazy."

  At this time, the father of the deceased couldn't help but say: "Don't talk about it anymore, the person is already dead, just help with the cremation."

  But Qin Feng wanted to ask: "Since it was a murder, shouldn't you investigate the truth of the matter? Have you reported it to the police?"

  "The victim's father complained: 'The person is already dead, what's the point of reporting it?'"

  The father of the deceased wailed, looking like he wouldn't recover for a while. Master Qin ordered them to go out and wait for a moment, saying that he would clean up the body himself, but when they went out, Master Qin immediately left the mourning hall in a daze, only to return with a handful of millet after a while.

  "Grandpa, where are you going?" Qin Feng asked in confusion.

  "Xiao Feng, don't ask too many questions for now, I'll tell you later. Quick, draw a Nine Phoenix Purification Symbol." At this moment, Qin Ye, who was originally calm and collected, suddenly became tense and flustered, not knowing what had happened.

  Zhou Qin noticed that this corpse seemed to have something that shocked Master Qin, so he asked: "Master Qin, what's wrong with you, why are you rushing around like this?"

  Soon, Qin Feng drew a nine-phoenix-breaking-filth symbol, and then, Master Qin put the millet on the wound of the deceased. What was shocking was that white smoke actually emerged from the original wound of the corpse. "Grandpa, is this a zombie?" Qin Feng had never seen such a thing with his own eyes, only in movies where wounds scratched by zombies would smoke after applying glutinous rice or millet. The scene before their eyes made both Qin Feng and Zhou Qin think that it was indeed a zombie's scratch wound, and from this perspective, it was easy to understand why the deceased had so many scratch marks on his face and body.

  "It's not a zombie yet, the corpse must have been scratched by a ghoul and died from the poison. The relative also judged that the killer was not a zombie but a ghoul based on the scratch marks on the corpse and the degree of rice smoke."

  Jiangshi, also known as nourishing corpses, refers to the phenomenon where a corpse does not decompose after burial. Some may remain intact for ten or twenty years without decaying, while others can last for centuries (such as mummies or flesh-bodied Buddhas). In some cases, the skin remains intact but the skeleton has decayed, and in other instances, water enters the coffin and the corpse floats on top of it, rotting but not decomposing.

  Generally, there are two types of yin corpses: dry corpse and wet corpse. The dry corpse is a hateful eight killings, while the wet corpse is an evil eight killings.

  Here is the translation:

  (In this section, I will explain the concept of "Ba Sha". Simply put, Ba Sha refers to the suppression of the energy used by the gods. In the context of the Five Elements, it means Metal suppressing Wood, and Wood suppressing Earth. In the context of Qimen Dunjia, it refers to the suppressive relationship between the Nine Palaces and the Eight Gates, such as the opening gate belonging to Metal, and the falling palace belonging to Fire suppressing Metal, which is a form of Ba Sha. In Feng Shui, Ba Sha is the condition for forming a "Yin Corpse". To form a Yin Corpse, one must satisfy the conditions of the eight Ba Sha in Feng Shui. As I don't want to delve too deeply and confuse readers, I will only briefly explain the conditions for Ba Sha. To form a Yin Corpse, one must bury the eight Ba Sha in the tomb, taking into account the orientation of the grave, the flow of mountain and river energy, as well as the selection of auspicious days, burial time, and other factors to find a time and place that suppresses the deceased's energy. Only then is it possible to form a Yin Corpse.)

  Listening to Master Qin's explanation, Qin Feng felt uneasy for a moment: "Then Grandpa, we should find out where the hidden corpse is as soon as possible, otherwise it will harm more people."

  But Master Qin shook his head and said, "It shouldn't be like that. A jiangshi is different from a zombie, it usually won't harm people, unless..."

  "What if not?" Zhou Qin asked hastily.

  "Unless the Eight Trigrams are extremely severe on the corpse, the evil spirit of yin can't take advantage of it and enter the body, putting the corpse in a half-zombie state. But who would understand these mysteries to make the corpse become a zombie?" As he spoke, Master Qin pasted the Nine Phoenix Purification Symbol drawn by Qin Feng onto the deceased's forehead.

  "At this time, Qin Feng said: 'No matter what, let's go take a look first, as long as we find the location of the hidden corpse, we can stop him from becoming a zombie.'"

  Out of the morgue, Qin Feng directly walked towards the four peasant workers and asked them with a very serious expression: "Excuse me, where did you find him?"

  These peasant workers told Qin Feng that they were workers from the First Construction Company of Jingchuan City, and were building a suburban residential area near Liuyue Village. However, this morning, they suddenly discovered that Xiaoguang had gone missing, so they hastily searched for him in the vicinity and finally found him by the pond in the village, but he had already met with an accident.

  Listening to the accounts of these four people, Qin Feng initially didn't feel that anything was amiss. He had also heard about Liu Ye Village, but hadn't been there before. However, when he learned from these four workers that the residential area they were building was on the waist of Town Demon Mountain, a glimmer of light suddenly appeared in the darkness, and Qin Feng's mind was suddenly enlightened. He immediately put down his work with Zhou Qin and handed it over to Grandfather to handle, while he himself drove to Liu Ye Village with Zhou Qin.