Chapter 1: The Land of Withered Corpses

  Night rain and yellow dust, before the raindrops fall to the ground, they have been swept away by strong winds into scattered yellow dust. Accompanied by the sound of raindrops created by the strong wind, it occasionally brings people an unparalleled desolation.

  A beam of dim yellow light shone directly on a patch of withered grass, several cars stopped in the wilderness, their doors wide open, and several black umbrellas stretched out, followed by several men wearing black windbreakers getting off.

  "Boss, this is the wasteland that Leopard Brother was talking about."

  "Uh, not bad, it's really a good place, but that small building over there is quite in the way. Tear it down and we'll finalize the deal tomorrow. Let Brother Leopard prepare the paperwork and we'll start construction next week."

  The next few people took a glance at the desolate land, and the guy called boss gestured with his hand before getting on the car. These cars quickly left.

  I don't know why the autumn rain won't stop, it's been a week already. In the wasteland, several old bus carriages have appeared, and more than a dozen workers have moved in. It seems that these guys are waiting for the weather to clear up before starting work.

  Two workers with pickaxes and shovels on their backs are preparing to dig a hole in the center of the wasteland.

  A worker muttered to himself: "This is abnormal, can we still work in this kind of weather?"

  "Hey, it's not like we're making a fortune here. If they tell us to dig, we dig. It's just burying a stone slab, what's the big deal?" A younger worker muttered.

  After a while, several people walked from the entrance of the wasteland, trudging through the muddy puddles, holding umbrellas in their hands, and walking towards where several workers were talking. The leader was a big brother who could wear sunglasses on a rainy day with dim light.

  He walked up to the young worker, looked at several workers on the scene through the upper edge of his sunglasses, revealing a row of big yellow teeth, and said with phlegm in his throat: "Cough, you guys, give yourself two hours, dig the foundation pit for me, the foundation stone will be transported over soon, can't let this foundation stone be exposed outside, affecting our luck."

  "Boss, it's still raining outside, I'm afraid the soil is too wet to dig." said an older worker.

  The young worker glanced at the older one with disdain: "You're not going, I'll go. Anyway, it's just idle time, two hours isn't it? One hour is enough for me."

  I don't know what young people are thinking, maybe it's for his future, but after all, he still has the upper hand and forced that older worker to be stuck in the house.

  The foreman nodded and smiled, his big yellow teeth seeming to explain something to someone. But when he turned around to look at the older worker, he snorted coldly: "Hey, you little kid don't understand anything. If you want to make money and go home without losing face, then do what I tell you to do. But now it's too late for you to think about doing things your way. You only have one choice: either I'll deduct this month's wages from you, or you can pack up your bedroll and get out of here. I won't raise someone like you."

  The old worker's careless remark had provoked the foreman, who had him fired on the spot. On a rainy day that followed, in the middle of the deserted field, the iron-blue hoe was flying up and down. The young man was digging a hole while muttering to himself: "These stupid birds, if I don't come out to work, you'll all be drinking northwest wind this month." As he muttered away, the foreman was grumbling nearby.

  Suddenly, the wind seemed even stronger, and the yellow dust and raindrops on people's bodies made them feel extremely uncomfortable, which was simply a kind of torture.

  The young worker's pickaxe suddenly shook, the iron-blue pickaxe flew far away, fell to the ground with a loud thud, and the yellow mud splashed far away.

  When the crowd saw the young man, they found that his forehead seemed to have more stains. These stains were not yellowish, but bright red blood color, and this color had flowed all over his face with the rain washing.

  But behind the blood-stained back, his originally very energetic face also turned pale and lost its color. His legs seemed to be disobedient, his knees softened, and he sat down on the ground.

  The foreman saw the young worker sitting on the ground from a distance, and he was also very different: "You little devil, are you going to slack off? I don't buy your nonsense, get up for your grandfather, do you think this is some kind of place?"

  That young man pointed to the place where he dug a hole with his finger, and muttered: "Just now, just now I, one shovel down, after, I!" As he spoke, he seemed to have fainted from excessive fright.

  The people present helped lift the young man, but when they were too loud, the foreman seemed to be pulled by something and suddenly realized that a series of inevitable things were about to happen. He didn't see anything himself, but his feet were firmly locked in place.

  When everyone's eyes were cast into the pit, they suddenly discovered that there was actually a coffin in it!

  "Ah!" One of the younger brothers, frightened, turned and ran away. Another younger brother was born fearless, so he didn't believe in ghosts or gods at all. He curled his lip: "What's the big deal? It's just a coffin, who knows what treasure might be inside? If we don't take action now, when will we?"

  He said, and then went down to the bottom of the pit along the edge of the yellow soil. Although it was not deep, there was too much yellow soil, which could have risen a grave. He took out a steel knife from behind his back, which looked like a military dagger. He inserted the dagger into the gap in the coffin and pried it open with force. The coffin instantly flowed out of bright red blood, which slowly flowed down along the gap in the coffin under the rain's irrigation, dyeing the younger brother's pants legs red.

  "This time this little brother was shocked: 'What's going on, how is it possible? Someone must be playing tricks, I don't believe this coffin can still bleed.'"

  As soon as he finished speaking, he exerted himself with one hand, and the coffin was opened. At the moment when the lid was lifted, a thick black blood spurted out from the coffin, mixed with strong winds and yellow dust particles, falling on everyone's body, sticky and seemingly accompanied by a stench of corpses.

  But when the young man came to his senses and looked into the coffin, there was not even a piece of bone in it. Where did the blood in the coffin come from? Was this some special burial method where the body wasn't in the coffin but somewhere else? But the stench of death was only faint, which left everyone at the scene baffled and terrified.

  The leader of the workers was also stunned, he didn't know how to deal with this matter, his flustered expression, his yellow teeth constantly knocking against each other: "Brothers, let's leave quickly, this place, we'd better not have it."

  "Brother, who has the final say between us when we are with Lao Da? Can Lao Da listen to you?"

  "Bang!" A burst of thunder, as if right next to everyone's ears, shook and pained their eardrums.

  "Hurry up, go to that broken building across the street to take shelter from the rain, let's drop it here for now." The foreman seemed to understand these things very well. As he walked, he thought about it more and more, his face getting worse and worse. He muttered to himself: "It's over, this is a desolate land of dead bodies. Generally speaking, a desolate land of dead bodies is because there are many lonely souls and wild ghosts, and there's no way to buy so many coffins for them. To save money, those unclaimed corpses are buried together near the coffin. For fairness, the coffin won't be used for the corpse."

  These guys really have a different view of this foreman, after they entered the small building, something unexpected happened, the door of the small building was tightly locked, probably because of the heavy rain, everyone here has been on holiday and gone home.

  The foreman shone his flashlight into the small building, and he was fine until he did so. This time, he really stood still in front of the tightly locked door of the small building.

  In the central hall of the house, a corpse was hanging, its body had rotted away, and its tattered clothes were stained with acid on the cotton fabric. Looking at the face of the corpse, it suddenly burst out laughing at the worker, every time it laughed, the skin on its face would be broken by the yellow pus underneath, and a finger-long corpse worm would crawl out from inside.

  The next morning, the weather was fine. Two of the people in the wilderness died from acute stress and heart overload that night. The rest all suffered from amnesia, with some developing mental illness, crying and screaming uncontrollably.

  Only the old worker, in this fine weather, puffed on his tobacco pouch, gazed at the desolate land, spat coldly, and walked away with his bundle.

  Later, it is unknown what happened to the land here, but it was indeed sold to someone.