Chapter 139: Encountering an Old Acquaintance in the Coffin

Incredible miracles always seem to happen in this world. When six eyes locked onto one another, I wondered if somehow I had returned to a certain day in the past, back in that place called Scholar Village. Overwhelmed with joy, I practically lunged straight into the stone outer coffin. The inner coffin had already been forced open by someone, and a man was sitting up inside it, yet he was not my target.

Garment after garment, piece of fabric after piece of fabric, was tossed out by my hands. These textiles had long since rotted away. "Where is it? Where are you!" I roared as I frantically rummaged through the debris. Zha Wenbin kept telling me, "Calm down, you need to calm down."

"Nothing! Still nothing!" I grabbed the man sitting up inside and yelled, "Ye Qiu, tell me, where is he? Where in the world is that damned fat man?!"

I felt as though I was losing my mind, shaking the stark-naked Ye Qiu back and forth without pause, while he remained as vacant and expressionless as a puppet, leaving me to handle him as I pleased.

*Smack!* A heavy blow landed across my face. A burning sting flared on my cheek, and a trace of sweetness instantly filled my mouth. I extended my tongue to gently taste it, then I laughed, and then I wept, sitting down on the ground and wailing aloud.

No one could have ever anticipated that the person inside this coffin would be Ye Qiu. That's right—the very same Ye Qiu who had gone together with Zha Wenbin, myself, and the fat man to that Scholar Village. I knew nothing of this man's origins. He and the fat man had entered that coffin one after the other on that day, and neither of them had emerged since. Yet today, in a most theatrical twist of fate, he had reappeared right here!

Three people: one standing, one sitting, and one lying down. No one could have foreseen such an outcome.

Zha Wenbin took off his own outer garment and draped it over the shivering Ye Qiu in the coffin, asking softly, "Where is he? And where did you go?"

A shake of the head... Ye Qiu's gaze was so hollow it was chilling. Had he not still been clutching an ancient, jet-black saber in his hand, I would have assumed it was merely another coincidence. For that weapon was peerless—the legendary Spring Moon saber of the Warring States period! A legendary arm whose value had long since transcended the physical, one that no person had been able to draw since the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, submitting only to beings akin to celestial deities, such as Jing Ke and Liu Bang.

Staring blankly at Zha Wenbin, he asked, "My name is Ye Qiu?"

"Yes, you are Ye Qiu. Do you... no longer recognize us?"

Ye Qiu shook his head. Slowly, he hoisted himself up from the coffin. The robust man furrowed his brows deeply, eyeing his surroundings and then sizing us up. Suddenly, he swept the blade in his hand horizontally, pressing the edge against Zha Wenbin's throat with a gaze so frigid it seemed ready to kill.

This sudden turn of events caught us completely off guard. I immediately jumped to my feet, aiming my gun barrel straight at his head, and shouted, "Listen here, pal, I don't care if you're a living man or a ghost—if you dare make another move today, I'll blow your brains right open!"

He seemed to pay my words no mind whatsoever, nor did he care about my actions. Yet in the very next second, his blade swept away from Zha Wenbin's neck, and with a crisp *snap*, a matchstick-sized centipede on the ground was sliced cleanly into two. Looking down at the writhing body, I stood dumbfounded. Was he just striking at that bug a moment ago? How on earth had he executed that draw and sheathing of the blade in one fluid motion? At last, I truly believed that he was indeed that same Ye Qiu.

Then, a split second later, I watched the corners of his mouth twitch slightly. The next moment, his entire body toppled backward, and with a heavy *thud*, his head slammed violently against the wooden floorboards of the coffin, the impact even causing his frame to bounce slightly.

"What is this?" Before I could figure out what was happening, Zha Wenbin let out a loud shout: "Quickly, help him up! There are venomous bugs in here!" Zha Wenbin hauled Ye Qiu to his feet, and it was only then that I noticed another centipede—no larger than a matchstick—clinging to Ye Qiu's abdomen, its pair of wicked fangs deeply embedded in his flesh. Raising my gaze, I saw that goodness knows when, our entire overhead had become blanketed by these creatures. Across the ground all around me, centipedes of the exact same size were wriggling out from everywhere, twisting their ugly bodies as they slowly converged upon us.

These tiny centipedes moved at a snail's pace, barely faster than a crawling snail, yet every single one of them possessed a pair of sharp, formidable pincers on its head that accounted for nearly a third of its entire body length. There was no doubt that once pinched by one of these things, shaking it off would be utterly impossible!

Zha Wenbin and I each grabbed one side of Ye Qiu and dragged him out of the coffin. Regardless of the details, judging by the situation, he must have been bitten himself just moments ago while saving Zha Wenbin. And thus, the scene depicted in the mural came to pass: three people truly were "hugging" one another. These insects continued to gather above our heads, appearing ready to launch themselves in an airborne dive. Seeing Ye Qiu's lips rapidly turning black, everyone knew this place was no place to linger, and the two of us hurriedly retreated outward.

We had just stepped out of the main burial chamber when we slammed on the brakes, daring not take another step forward. The painful lesson of falling down earlier was still fresh in our minds. Fortunately, Zha Wenbin's quick wit saved the day: I carried Ye Qiu on my back while Zha Wenbin held my hand, and together we tested the path forward in small, cautious steps, hugging the edges of the corridor where load-bearing walls remained, ensuring it wouldn't be completely hollowed out beneath us.

And so, with him leading and me bringing up the rear, the three of us carefully made our way out at last. Upon reaching the threshold, we realized dawn was already breaking, while our poor dog Daidai was down to its last breaths, barely exhaling any air at all.

Three men and a dog: two heavily injured, two having narrowly escaped the jaws of death in wretched conditions. When we stumbled back home, my father happened to be getting up, and at the sight of our battered appearance, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Zha Wenbin stood on no ceremony; the moment he laid Ye Qiu down, he said, "Uncle, hurry and boil some water. Help me get a large cauldron of water heated up, and go find camphor leaves, dandelions, and houttuynia cordata. Also, a large rooster, if you can manage it."

While pulling on his shirt and stepping into the backs of his cloth shoes, my father—whom I had never seen cooperate so readily before—nodded repeatedly and said, "Alright, the stove is right over there."

In the rural areas of northwest Zhejiang, we had a unique earthen stove specifically designed for bathing, something rarely seen anywhere else. A separate room was built housing a massive stove range, upon which sat the largest possible iron cauldron. Just how big was this cauldron? I reckon if it were used for cooking rice, it could easily feed our entire village for a meal. Water was poured inside, and firewood was burned directly beneath the hearth. The heat of the iron cauldron would rapidly raise the water temperature. The advantage of bathing with this contraption was the steam effect, and the water heat didn't dissipate easily, making it especially ideal for winter. When catching a cold, tossing a few slices of ginger into the water, soaking for half an hour until you broke out in a heavy sweat, and then going to sleep meant you'd be right as rain by morning. Of course, the faint-hearted might never dare step inside, particularly city folk like Yuan Xiaobai. Upon seeing this contraption for the first time and hearing it was meant for bathing, she had bolted away in terror, convinced it was meant to boil a human alive.

I stoked the fire in the stove until it burned fiercely. Zha Wenbin only instructed me to submerge Ye Qiu in the water and toss in the ingredients my father had gathered shortly after, while he himself vanished in a flash of motion. When my mother laid eyes on Daidai, she burst into tears, shouting and scolding me at the top of her lungs, though she immediately fell silent the moment she spotted a man with a blackened complexion soaking in the cauldron. Daidai was promptly rushed off to the hospital—yes, an actual clinic for treating people. A local barefoot doctor in our area ran a village health station; the man had formerly been a veterinarian, possessed immense daring, and would take on any medical case before eventually transitioning into a human physician.

Roughly an hour later, Zha Wenbin returned, panting heavily. Ye Qiu was still soaking in the cauldron with his brows tightly knitted, his lips as dark as if he had swallowed printer ink. I muttered prayers incessantly: "Brother, you cannot possibly kick the bucket just like this; I still have too many things to ask you."

Where had Zha Wenbin gone? He had hurried back to his own home to fetch a carrying case. As soon as he arrived at my place, he tipped out all sorts of miscellaneous bottles and jars onto the floor, alongside numerous thread-bound books. He sat right on the rim of the cauldron, flipping through the pages while searching through those containers, extracting items one by one and shoving them into Ye Qiu's mouth.

Putting aside the fact that Ye Qiu was poisoned and unconscious, the scene was undeniably comical: a naked man lying inside a boiling cauldron, the water surface littered with various green leaves and roots, alongside random concoctions Zha Wenbin kept dumping in from his jars just like a cook scattering seasonings. To any outsider dropping by, the two of us would undoubtedly have looked as though we were brewing human stew—and a whole, clear-boiled one at that!

In this manner, the pot of water was boiled down until only half remained before we finally fished Ye Qiu out. This kind of iron cauldron bath required someone experienced like myself to operate; otherwise, a momentary lapse in temperature control really would have boiled the person inside. One had to constantly test the water temperature by hand.

It was already three hours later by the time Ye Qiu was hauled out. Hearing that we had returned, over a dozen members of the Gao family arrived in waves, eager to get to the bottom of the matter. Zha Wenbin and I simply kept our mouths shut. We hadn't even sorted this mess out yet; what were you people in such a rush for when your relative was already thoroughly dead?

At this point, Ye Qiu's complexion looked considerably better than before. Zha Wenbin grabbed the speckled rooster, holding it upside down with one hand gripping its claws and the other pinching its beak. Applying pressure with two fingers, he forced the rooster's beak open, and before long, viscous saliva began to drip from its mouth. In the countryside of the past, this was the traditional remedy for centipede bites: first using a small blade to slice open the wound and squeeze out the venomous blood, followed by applying this secretion. Ye Qiu's venom had already been squeezed out back at the mouth of that damned cave, so Zha Wenbin only needed to apply the saliva.

With that done, the next step was slicing the rooster's throat with a blade, catching the flowing blood in a bowl that had been primed with a pinch of salt for sterilization. The steaming hot rooster blood was poured straight down Ye Qiu's throat without delay. I watched as he coughed violently several times, hacking up blood as well, though the color was significantly darker than the fresh rooster blood that had just been administered.

Only then did Zha Wenbin cover Ye Qiu with a quilt and step outside the doorway to let out a long sigh of relief. I knew that with this treatment of rooster blood, Ye Qiu would likely pull through just fine. Now, it was time for us to go fish that corpse out for the villagers...