Chapter 1: Borrowing a Brain

The rain poured down heavily.

At the edge of a low shrubbery, two men in conical palm bark hats were digging a hole.

Dirt flew off the shovel with each swing, splashing into a muddy puddle beside the hole, sending sprays of water into the air.

“Third Uncle, we’re almost ready.”

Chen Luo stopped moving, shoving the iron spade deep into the dirt. With one hand on the spade’s handle, he addressed the older man beside him.

Third Uncle also stopped. In the brief time they had been digging, a pool of water had already formed in the shallow pit.

“Go ahead and lay them in.”

Third Uncle glanced at the row of muddy straw mats beside his feet.

These were corpses whose names were unknown, killed by unknown assailants. The government, in order to prevent the spread of disease, had tasked this uncle-nephew duo with handling them.

This was their profession: corpse collectors.

To put it plainly, their job was to clean up the messy mess for the government and various jianghu organizations.

Chen Luo hadn’t wanted to live like this. When he had just transmigrated, he never would have imagined he’d end up digging holes and burying people. But people needed to live!

This world was very strange.

It was chaotic outside, and the current era wasn’t an era he recognized. At night, there were even roving jianghu assassins who came and went, ready to take heads at any moment. To survive and fill his stomach, Chen Luo had turned to his uncle in the city, living a life of ‘luxury’ envied by those still in his village. It was then that he began digging graves, a task he’d performed for three years straight.

In another year, he would be twenty years old.

“Good.”

Chen Luo grabbed the straw mat with one hand and dragged the corpse into the pit.

Any other person would have kicked the body down, but Chen Luo wouldn’t, and neither would his uncle.

Third Uncle had told him this was a rule of the trade: respect every corpse.

Chen Luo had learned and adhered to this principle. He didn’t know why Third Uncle had taught him this, but he assumed there was a reason for it—every profession had its own wisdom. Chen Luo didn’t believe that merely transmigrating into another world and bringing his knowledge with him made him more capable than those who had spent their entire lives in this strange new world.

The first body was soon submerged in the muddy ground, blending seamlessly with the clay soil. The torrential rain ensured that the murky waters quickly inundated the corpse. Fortunately, these were nameless vagabonds, so the bodies weren’t whole, and they weren’t terribly important either.

They could be left to the earth.

After putting down the first body, Chen Luo climbed back up to retrieve the second. Third Uncle watched him closely, paying attention to every movement, occasionally reminding him of something.

Burying corpses was no easy task.

There was no need to worry about beggars who had died of natural causes, but these jianghu wanderers were different. Most of them had died as a result of murderous conflicts, and some carried fatal poisons even in death. Many young corpse collectors had died after coming into contact with these poisonous bodies. Aside from jianghu wanderers, another type of corpse required extra care: those of plague victims. Many such corpses were still infectious, even after death, and could easily pass on the plague to others.

Poison and plague. These were the natural enemies of all corpse collectors.

“Xiao-Luo, you’ll be twenty soon, won’t you?” Third Uncle watched Chen Luo deftly handle the corpse, his eyes filled with approval.

He was quite pleased with this nephew of his.

Honest and diligent, the young man possessed an attention to detail, a trait difficult to find in the youth of today. Since taking him as an apprentice, Chen Luo hadn’t made any grave mistakes and quickly picked up the trade. At this point, Third Uncle didn’t have much left to teach; a few more months and his nephew would be ready to work on his own.

“That’s right,” answered Chen Luo, turning around after placing the corpse down. He didn’t quite understand why Third Uncle had brought this up.

“It’s about time you got married too. After the new year, Third Uncle will go to the matchmaker on the outer street and find you a fat one with wide buttocks so you can help our old Chen family branch out.”

Third Uncle grinned widely.

People of his generation loved women who could bear children, and those who were thin and frail were not highly regarded.

“I’m not in a rush,” Chen Luo said, his expression unwilling.

He simply couldn’t fathom the aesthetic standards of the older generation. The thought of spending the rest of his life with a woman like that filled him with the urge to dig his own grave.

“Stupid brat. You’re still reluctant? Just wait until you get hitched—you’ll understand the benefits of having a wife with wide buttocks!”

This wasn’t the first time Third Uncle had brought this up to Chen Luo, who chose to ignore the comment altogether. After laying down the corpse, he crawled out of the pit once again, preparing to carry down the last body. The rain poured even harder, accompanied by strong winds that stung the face. A muddy ditch beside them overflowed from the torrential rain, creating a small stream that dyed their pants yellow. The rush of water also loosened the straw mat wrapped around the corpse, and Chen Luo accidentally touched the body’s head through the gap.

“Careful!” Third Uncle’s expression shifted as he quickly grabbed Chen Luo’s wrist, then swiftly pulled out a red string and tied it around the vein.

If the man had indeed been poisoned, tying off his blood vessels would give Chen Luo a chance to sever the arm and save his own life.

Chen Luo paused, then instinctively glanced at the corpse. His pupils contracted slightly, but before he could take a closer look, Third Uncle’s voice rang by his ear, and a red rope tightened around his wrist, biting painfully into his skin.

“I’m fine, just a poor man. There’s no poison.”

Once Chen Luo came back to his senses, he responded, glancing at his unharmed palm before letting out a breath of relief. He had been frightened, too.

Ever since he started working, he’d heard rumors of people accidentally touching the bodies of jianghu wanderers and dying from poison, or catching an illness and coughing up blood until they died.

Poison in this world was unreasonably potent; even a touch of a corpse carrying it could kill a person. Under normal circumstances, corpose collectors would never open the straw mat, and would certainly never handle the bodies with their bare hands.

“You little brat! Do you want to die?!” Third Uncle sighed, then slapped the back of Chen Luo’s head in anger. “Get lost, watch from over there! One mistake in this job can cost you your life.”

After chasing away Chen Luo, Third Uncle wrapped the body once again, then bowed respectfully to the corpse. He carefully carried the body over and placed it at the edge of the muddy pit, which by now had filled with water halfway up the body. The corpse disappeared beneath the surface as soon as it was lowered.

The murky water gathered more and more, and muddy water from the sides of the pit began flowing into it.

Seeing there was no need to delay further, Third Uncle climbed out of the pit and called on Chen Luo to begin filling it with dirt. Working together, the two quickly filled the pit, then added more soil on top to form a small mound. They placed the nameless stone tablet on top, completing the makeshift grave.

“Rest in peace.”

Once the grave was finished, Third Uncle retrieved a jar of watered-down liquor and poured it over the nameless stone tablet. This was a corpse collector’s custom, a way to bid farewell to the dead and ward off their lingering spirits.

After the offerings were made, the scriptures were recited.

The rainstorm had already passed, so Third Uncle checked one last time on Chen Luo’s hand. Only after confirming that everything was fine did he untie the red string and put it away.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Third Uncle packed up his things, putting the bottles of wine and some other cheap ceremonial props back into the coffin, then led Chen Luo down the mountain. Their job for this trip was done, and now it was time to collect their payment.

Chen Luo followed behind, then suddenly stopped after about a hundred steps and turned to look back.

Within his field of vision, a gray text had appeared.

Corpse brainwave detected, 92% damage, retrieve data?

He focused his attention there, and soon, a line of text appeared.

“Retrieve!” Chen Luo muttered.

The text above changed quickly, and a strange wave entered his mind, as if he’d connected an external device. A second later, a string of broken words and phrases appeared in his mind.

“Orchid Withering Sphere, Iron Thread Grass, and White Flower Fruit, when boiled, simmered, and consumed together, can increase one’s strength.”

As soon as Chen Luo finished reading, he understood the nature of his ability.

This information had originated as the residual consciousness of the corpse he’d touched not long ago, and it was something the man had remembered until his last breath.

“Is this the recorded neural activity of that jianghu wanderer? In other words, I can read the neural activity of the deceased?”

Chen Luo immediately grasped the implications of this ability.

This world wasn’t purely an ancient setting; it resembled a hodgepodge era of multiple intermingling ethnicities and influences.

At the top was the government, but underneath, the sprawling jianghu and local crime organizations each had their own territories. On the surface, everyone maintained the court’s dignity and upheld societal norms, but at night, the jianghu called the shots.

When Chen Luo first arrived in this world, he had considered learning martial arts.

Because learning martial arts was the only way to change his fate.

Doing business alone in this chaotic world would get him nowhere.

Chen Luo tried many methods, but he was unable to make contact with the martial arts community. More precisely, among all the people he knew, not a single one had ever truly been exposed to martial arts. This was not strange; the monopolization of martial arts by the elite class was inherent, rarely ever allowing for exceptions. The society of his previous life served as the clearest example: everyone knew those who played with finance earned a fortune, but how many could actually partake in such games? At most, one might be a “fool’s gold” or a “puppet,” only to be promptly exploited. Those who truly manipulated finance were completely disconnected from the lower classes.

“None of these medicinal ingredients are difficult to find. If these are the final words of a dying man, they must have some effect.”

On the second day after burying the corpse, Chen Luo received his reward and purchased some of the ingredients mentioned in the formula.

They were inexpensive; a whole set of medicines cost no more than three large coins.

The sky was still dark, yet to lighten with the break of dawn.

Inside a stable, Chen Luo boiled the medicine in a broken ceramic pot, its pungent scent lingering in the air.

If Third Uncle hadn’t gone out drinking last night, he would surely have come out and whipped Chen Luo right then and there.

Third Uncle’s courtyard wasn’t large; there were only two rooms total. Cooking something in the courtyard meant the scent permeated throughout the rooms inside.

After a quarter of an hour, the medicine was ready. The medicinal ingredients had boiled down into sludge, leaving a pitch-black liquid in the ceramic pot that looked nothing like something humans could drink.

Chen Luo picked up the clay jar and lifted its lid, inhaling deeply through his nose. The acrid scent was so strong it nearly made him cry. There was also a foul stench, similar to rotten eggs, which nauseated him so much he nearly retched up last night’s dinner. It was difficult to imagine that blending a few ordinary medicinal herbs could produce such a terrifying smell.

“Is this stuff really edible?”

Chen Luo stared at the clay jar suspiciously, his face etched with disbelief. He’d already spent the money, though, so he couldn’t just waste it now.

His gaze darted toward Third Uncle’s dog, which had been hiding in the corner from the awful smell. When Chen Luo first came to live with Third Uncle, this mangy mutt had torn a hole in one of his pants. Sensing something ominous, the dog’s tail stiffened, alerting it to the possibility of impending doom.

“Da Hua, come here, today we’re treating you to a snack.”

Clutching the jar, Chen Luo extended a hand toward the mangy mutt with a friendly grin.