What is life even about?
I could not help but have that thought as I dissected the corpse in front of me. The scalpel tore through the flesh like it was cloth and the viscera underneath became visible. Bit by bit, I began hacking away at the body, once full of vibrant life, now just a shallow husk. A glorious temple reduced to a mere brood hive for pest and vermin.
Staring at the pale skin that stretched taut over bone and the scant white hair over the old man's bald head, I had the strangest realisation.
One day, everyone would die.
Me, you, that annoying neighbour(everyone has one), the president, your cat, the cockroach crawling under your kitchen tiles. Everything was bound to meet its inevitable end.
All those days lived and wasted. All the nutrients taken from the soil and excreted back to the soil again.
What a waste. What a waste indeed.
Would it not have been better to... not be born? Save oneself the trouble?
What am I supposed to do with a mind that thinks too much and a body not willing to do? And it comes coupled with a save quit prevention mechanism called fear. Terrible design choice.
I slowly dissected the chest cavity, punching through the sternochondral joints with a hammer and an osteotome. Without too much effort, I ripped the sternum out, leaving it connected to the clavicles still. I only needed to look at the heart and lungs.
I had ruined the lungs of the previous four by... well, I had hit a little too hard.
Staring at the thoracic cavity which was still relatively intact, with the viscera undamaged, I allowed myself a little imaginary pat on the back.
"I've decided. I'll just take you." Nodding to myself, I prepared to take the corpse back.
I stared around me after gathering up my equipment and wrapping the body up properly.
The air smelt of decay and a faint, yellowed fog hung low on the ground. The grass was wet under my feet - I had taken off my shoes as to not get them dirty (they were new so I couldn't help). Here and there were a few trees, scattered across a sea of stones that jutted out of the ground. Thats right. I was in a graveyard. I cracked my neck and unhurriedly put on my shoes.
Just then, a hallow croak rang in my ears.
My head snapped to the right. A crow was sitting atop the tree. It stared at me with its hollow red eyes, as if mocking me.
I still remembered when I was little. I had kicked a crow away in meanness. Well, tried to. The crow had flew away. And it brought its buddies back and annoyed me to no ends.
"Fuck you."
And so, I did the only thing any respectable man would do.
I took out my revolver - a black Pepperbox with the words 'Fuck off' imprinted on the side in bright white - and shot the accursed creature.
Bang!
The result was instantaneous. The crow fell down in a flurry of destroyed feathers, drifting in the wind.
The sound was loud and crisp and rang out like a bomb in the quiet graveyard.
I wasn't alarmed still.
The graveyard was at the edge of town. No one would come to investigate such a sound. I hoped at least.
I shook the gun and placed it back on my belt. Then, I placed the body on the wooden cart and began to move.
The night was unusually cold today. The fog scraped at my clothes, like unseen fingers wanting to keep me close. Keep me here, in the graveyard.
Before exiting the graveyard, I adjusted the mask on my face. It was a large, big mask that seemed to be made out of leather. It covered my whole face and even my head, looking to be like an executioner's mask from the middle ages. A giant two handed sword lay sheathed at my back, its pommel gleaming in silver.
With such a get up, no one would recognize me. And considering how eccentric I looked, carrying a dead body out of a graveyard with such a mask, I would no doubt be mistaken for a member for a demon sect.
Now that I think about it, wasn't the giant sword a dead giveaway? I carried the thing practically everywhere...
As that thought came to mind, I stopped. And then face palmed.
"I'm an idiot." I said softly, the voice getting muffled through the mask.
...
The night stretched long and dark, like a blackened canvas blanketed over the world. It was winter right now, and so the fog was like an ever present screen.
It gave me plenty of cover so I wasn't complaining.
Being a Corpse Collector was a lot of work. Not only did I have to collect corpses in my basement, act out the principles of my role while also dissect and study them all day, I also needed to keep it all under wraps from the common populace.
Things like superstition about dead ancestors and angered spirits were pretty common in ancient China after all.
Moving through the towering bamboo forest, I could not help but sigh, thinking of everything that had happened till now.
I was a normal gas station employee at the edge of town. Not very talented in any respectable field and extremely addicted to novels, anime and manga of all sorts.
I remembered it vividly still. I had gotten an ad about a survey. It was an anime survey too.
And since I had recently finished reading Lord of the Mysteries, I thought to fill it out with powers from that series.
And lo and behold, next thing I knew I was in a new body.
Terrible customer service I tell you.
To make matters worse, the setting was of ancient China.
The only good thing that came out of it was that I was now a beyonder. I could feel it. Every change in my body, in my very bones and something more fundamental - the existence of which I had no idea about till now. Along with that, the body I possessed was a scholar who had just passed the imperial exams.
He had died en route to his posting - a magistrate for the Yan County, frontier province of the Gu Empire.
Against all odds, I had made it to Yan County and took office. Since then, it had been 6 months. 6 months of living in this world, trying to get used to my new abilities and to digest the potion.
Its had been quite eventful, I must say.
Yan County was quite a large city. Neatly paved stone roads lined the city like nerves and divided the city into 3 main districts. There was the residential, the commerce and the Imperial Offices district.
During the day there was always a bustle in the streets. But at night, it looked completely deserted. Even the vagrants who would wander around at night weren't visible in the biting cold weather.
I passed by the silent buildings, making my way into the commerce district.
I pushed the wooden cart along, and finally made it to my destination.
The estate for the Yan County Magistrate.
It was not small. The walls were high and the grounds were wide — wide enough that the sound of the city died somewhere between the gate and the main hall, swallowed by the cold air and the paved stone. Up front was a beautiful garden with many exotic flowers and a koi pond - though I had never seen any fish in it, it was merely stagnant water, gathering algae.
The previous magistrate — who had somehow been killed by a wandering swordsman — had cared a lot about aesthetics, but not enough about paperwork, considering the mess he had left for me to clean up.
I wheeled the cart around the outskirts of the estate and through the back gate which no servent was allowed to take, parking it beside the cellar door.
Stripping off the mask, I hung it on its hook beside the door with the particular satisfaction of a man removing uncomfortable shoes.
Then, I opened the cellar.
The door opened to a flight of stairs, unlit and leading into darkness. It smelt like something died in there, wafting with a thick, pungent odour of Formaldehyde and partially decay. I carried the body down and came upon my collection zone.
A series of metal tables rested here. 7 in total, 4 of which supported a body. Laying their new friend on another table, I left.
The embalming could wait until morning. It wasn't like it had to be anywhere.
...
Morning came quickly. Fingers of sunlight pierced through the curtained windows, engulfing my room in a dim ambience.
I got off from the bed and stretched my body, feeling lethargic.
Turns out, digging up corpses all night wasn't very great for your sleep health.
Rubbing my eyes, I called for the maids.
They strolled in with practiced ease, two women wearing pink robes - the kind you see maids wearing in historical chinese dramas - and began to help me change.
One poured the tea while another got me out of my sleep robe and put on my work clothes.
There's not much clothing variety... I thought to myself seeing the maid bring out another set of robes.
After changing and freshening up, I went to my office where I was going to sit on my ass all day again.
A sigh escaped my lips as soon as I sat down. The office was also built in a very cliche manner. It was the kind I'd seen loads of when I was addicted to C-Dramas.
Shaking my head, I got to reviewing the documents for today.
I was in the second batch of documents when Ye Hong arrived.
Ye Hong. That was the name he went by. He was my personal assistant and also functioned as a bodyguard. Bodyguards were a must on the frontier. The previous magistrate did not have a bodyguard. Evidently, it did not end well for him.
"Greetings, my lord!" He greeted with a loud, bellowy voice.
Ye Hong was a large man. He had a wide upper body rippling with muscle and carried a Jian sheathed at his hip. On his neck was a necklace, made out of silver and shaped like a battle axe. His hair was long and extended down his back, strapped into a pony tail and his eyes were an electric blue.
"Yo." I raised my hand and smiled. "Tea?"
Ye Hong smiled sheepishly and looked at the two cups already on the table.
"You knew I would come?"
"...You come every morning right?"
"Uh, yes but..." Ye Hong sat across the table and drank the tea in a single gulp. Keeping the cup back, he clasped his hands once again.
"My Lord is very perceptive, with a heart larger than the ocean!"
"Alright alright, stop bootlicking." I waved my hand at his antics. Ye Hong was an honest man... maybe a bit too honest. He liked to party and he liked women more than anything else in the world. He had made quite a reputation for himself in the brothels as far as I'd heard and well, he had taken to serving the magistrate with a wild fervor.
He sometimes reminded me of those lackeys every other young master would have by his side, constantly licking their asses and showering praises.
Ye Hong began to talk.
"My Lord, before I ask you of anything else, there is a matter."
"What is?" I raised a brow. Ye Hong seemed to visibly shrink under my intense gaze but soon cleared his throat and answered.
"The mines." He continued. "Three bodies were found yesterday, in the eastern shaft. Usually, these things are routine. They might have died from suffocation or cave ins. Perhaps some poisonous gas leaked into the cave... but the state these bodies were left in is the real problem."
"Go on." I leaned forward, my interest piqued.
Ye Hong's eyes turned a shade darker and wrinkles appeared on his forehead.
"Roots, my lord. Their lungs had sprouted roots and flowers. They were bursting out from their nose and mouth, chests covered in colour like a flower bed. The miners are so spooked that no one goes into the eastern shaft anymore."
I leaned back, letting out a long, drawn out hum.
"Damn." I muttered, imagining the scene. Flowers and roots sprouting out of the lungs? How does that even happen?
Just as that thought came to mind, another one emerged right after.
I needed one of those corpses.
As a Corpse Collector, it was only right.
I gave Ye Hong a thin smile and said, "Let's investigate then."
...
A/N: This is my new novel. Hope to continue it for more than 100 chapters.
I had like a gigantic writer's block that I just couldn't get past these couple of months and it had been preventing me from even starting new works since I had no energy or motivation to write it.
Chapter updates will be every 2 days, and although I do not have a sizable stockpile of chapters, I hope to write it out as I go along.