Stranger Danger

“Just look at him… he’s so beautiful, so gorgeous, so perfect…”

The voice continued to speak, passionate yet twisted. It was as if he was watching a flawless piece of art, not a corpse.

“It’s too bad it doesn’t have a head. A shame. It truly is its one and only flaw!”

“Have you seen my head?”

Suddenly, a new voice came from in front of the four women.

It was the headless Sage. No one knew when or how he appeared, only that conflict was inevitable.

As the headless Sage spoke, dark, terrible resentment washed out to the surroundings.

“Looks like he was beheaded while bearing a deep-seated obsession. No wonder his resentment is so great,” The first voice spoke up again.

“Have you seen my head?”

The headless Sage asked a second time as his resentment took on a tangible form and enveloped both heaven and earth. For a moment, the world fell as silent as death.

“Truly, your resentment is something. Corpse Binding Rope, go!”

As soon as the voice said this, the four women’s hair stretched longer and formed four ropes in the air. Then, they flew toward the headless Sage from four different directions.

The four ropes were dark yellow in color and glowing ominously. It almost looked like it was made from human skin.

When the four ropes intersected one another around the headless Sage, they formed the shape of a talisman and caught him in a bind.

If there was an outsider at the scene, they would immediately identify the talisman as a famous Taoist talisman known as the Corpse Suppressing Talisman.

When the ropes wrapped around the headless Sage’s body, they shone bright and somehow suppressed his terrifying resentment.

It only lasted a moment, however. Just a few seconds later, the resentment surrounding the headless Sage thickened once more.

“His resentment is like the mountains, and his obsession the heavens… but so what? All things have limits, much less a beheaded Sage!”

The first voice harrumphed from the shadows. “When Man occupies the Four Spirits, he may borrow the power of the land. When the ropes bind the Eight Directions, they may suppress an evil corpse. Rise!”

As soon as the order was given, the four women immediately scattered and took up a cardinal direction each. At the same time, countless eerie, twisted runes and incantations appeared on their bodies and made them look much more sinister and disturbing than before.

The four ropes shone brightly, and the Corpse Suppressing Talisman at the center of his chest burst into flames. The headless Sage’s resentment immediately began to sizzle earnestly, and the headless Sage abruptly sank all the way up to his knees as if he was bearing an unimaginable weight.

However, the headless Sage responded by grabbing the ropes binding his body and pulling them hard. As soon as the ropes snapped, the headless Sage’s resentment immediately regained its previous vigor.

“He’s strong enough to snap my century-old Corpse Binding Ropes? Kekeke… as expected of a Sage. He’s unbelievably strong even when he’s long dead. Wonderful! Just wonderful!”

The voice coming from the shadows did not lament the loss of his precious Corpse Binding Ropes, however. If anything, he sounded happier than ever before.

“The sky is clear, the ground is bright. The White Bone Stakes shall suppress even gods and celestials!”

All four women pulled out a bony hairpin the size of a finger from their hair each and threw them at the ground. As they sailed through the air, they rapidly grew into three-meter-tall stakes the size of a tree trunk. Brimming with death qi and covered in reverse hooks, the White Bone Stakes gave off a tremendous amount of energy.

Rumble!

The next moment, the White Bone Stakes sank into the ground and shook the four directions. As if the sky itself was about to tip over, brilliant light illuminated the entire area, and countless runes popped into existence. Like an ordinary mortal who was caught in a quicksand, the headless Sage found himself incapable of moving a muscle.

“Celestial Suppressing Nails, go!”

It looked like they had succeeded, but the person hiding in the shadows wasn’t done yet. After he gave another command, the four women opened their mouths and spat out four rusted, square-shaped nails.

As soon as the square nails appeared, unholy screams and yin wind immediately filled the world. Before this, the headless Sage were still putting on a weak struggle despite being caught by the White Bones Stakes. But after the square nails sank into his limbs, he immediately fell still like a corpse.

“Kekeke… it doesn’t matter how strong you were when you were still alive. Once you’ve passed on, all must submit to I, the Mortician.”

Eerie laughter filled the air as the coffin lid slid open slightly. Then, a man being supported by countless fair, slender hands slowly sat up.

The man was in his thirties, but unlike most thirty-year-old men, he was tall, slender, and fair-skinned. His face in particular possessed both the rugged handsomeness of a man and the delicate features of a woman. He looked like a living celestial who had descended to the earth, perfect and flawless in every way imaginable.

The Mortician? I’ve heard of this guy!

Hidden within the shadows, Ye Qing was hugging Giggle tightly and watching the young man in silence. Even as a man, he had to admit that the Mortician was one of the most handsome men he had ever seen. However, he did not put two and two together until the man introduced himself as the Mortician.

Cui Qiuyuan, the “Mortician” was the forty-fourth named warrior on the Earth Champions Ranking. This meant that the beautiful, frail-looking man before his eyes was really a powerful Grandmaster.

Not only that, he was a top fifty Grandmaster on the Earth Champions Ranking. Everyone in the top fifty of the Earth Champions Ranking was either a gifted genius, a famous warrior, a champion strong enough to found a sect or command a corner of the world, or all of the above.

Cui Qiuyuan was one such person, and his background was even more extraordinary. Cui Qingyuan was a direct descendant of one of the Eight Aristocratic Families of Yan, the Clear Spring Cui Clan, and the Clear Spring Cui Clan was a clan of scholars who had been nobility for over a century.

A direct descendant of the Clear Spring Cui Clan, Cui Qiuyuan was naturally gifted in every way. He was proficient in music, poetry, calligraphy, art, literature and etiquette. There was no knowledge he couldn’t grasp; no skill he couldn’t master. For a time, the Clear Spring Cui Clan held high hopes for him.

Unfortunately, all geniuses seemed to be born with a touch of insanity, and Cui Qiuyuan was not an exception. Despite his incredible gift, Cui Qiuyuan turned out to be a necrophilic who was particularly fond of stitching corpses. It did not matter how genius he was, few people could tolerate a man with such an unusual “hobby” so to speak.

Not only that, Cui Qiuyuan intentionally devalued himself by throwing away his shot at becoming the top scorer in the imperial examination. It was because he wanted to join the Morgue of the Bureau of Punishments as a mortician and gain access to even more corpses.

There were thirteen Offices in the Bureau of Punishments of Yan, and the Morgue was one of them. A mortician was an official position in the Morgue, not a nickname.

A mortician sounded like a fancy post, but in reality, it was one of the lowest class occupations out there. After all, a mortician’s scope of work included collecting the dead, applying makeup to the cadaver and more, and it was anything but a glamorous job. Society’s opinion of the post was so poor that even some commoners were deathly averse toward it, much less the aristocratic families.

And yet, that was the field of work Cui Qiuyuan had chosen to join despite all opposition. Such was the Clear Water Cui Clan’s rage that they expelled him from the family and severed all familial ties with him.

Cui Qiuyuan cared naught for their opinions, however. He took to the work like fish to water. Over time, the people slowly forgot about the handsome scion Cui Qiuyuan, and the Morgue of Yan gained a new mortician no one gave a damn about.

If Cui Qiuyuan’s story ended here, then he wouldn’t be half as famous—or rather, infamous—as he was now. Not too long after he joined the Morgue, a serial-killing case took the Yan capital, no, the entire country by storm.

The first victim had died a violent death where their limbs were dismembered. Not long after that, a flawless corpse had been found in a famous restaurant in the capital.

At first, the inspectors responsible for investigating the case thought that they were two separate cases. Later, they discovered that it was really one serial-killing case. And how did they know that? It was because the missing limbs of the first victim had been sewn to the second victim’s body perfectly.

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