YM778.TV Chapter 338: 338: You woke them up!
Among the walking corpses, women overwhelmingly outnumbered men; some were wearing qipaos, some short skirts, and some were even stark naked. Intuitively, these were all dead bodies, but it wasn’t hard to discern a trace of the worldliness lingering on their decaying faces.
‘They’re all mostly prostitutes…’ Huang Xiaolong thought. ‘It appears that the owner of this Night Fragrance Club has been exploiting vulnerable women in Binhai, turning them into walking corpses to help him serve customers and drain their vital energy.’
Although the invisibility talisman made Lin Jing appear transparent, and effectively shielded any scent of life from her, she still felt her scalp tingle with terror at the sight of so many walking corpses. She held onto Huang Xiaolong’s hand tightly; it was icy cold and she was breaking into a cold sweat.
After a full ten minutes of waiting, all the walking corpses eventually shuffled down through the central entrance of the room.
“Sister Jing, there’s a secret tunnel over there leading underground. The walking corpses have all gone down, we should follow and see what’s happening.” Huang Xiaolong said with some excitement.
“Ok, Little Long, we’ll go down too.” Lin Jing gathered her courage to reply.
The two of them, hand in hand, arrived at the entrance of the secret tunnel, a steep stone staircase extending downward, dim light filtering up from below, along with the smothering scent of corpses.
“Right, Sister Jing, it seems that most of these walking corpses were prostitutes in their previous lives. Have many prostitutes gone missing in Binhai these past few years?” Huang Xiaolong curiously asked.
“Little Long, well, there is a very high rate of turnover among those in sex work. They typically move from one place to another frequently. The precarious and often stigmatized nature of their work unfortunately also gives way to a high rate of murder cases involving sex workers, with a very low rate of these cases being solved,” Lin Jing explained to Huang Xiaolong in a professional manner. “Little Long, here’s the thing, local women wouldn’t typically engage in this line of work, for the fear of being discovered by family and friends. This means that those who serve as sex workers in Binhai are mainly from other places. These women often have no choice but to hide their real occupation from their families and thus usually don’t inform their family about their whereabouts. They even often adopt false names. Under these circumstances, even after they are mysteriously killed; their families have no way of knowing and thus unable to report their disappearance. This greatly complicates the job of investigating such cases…”
“Ah, how pitiful,” Huang Xiaolong said sympathetically. “The owner of the Night Fragrance Club is absolutely heartless… He specifically targets sex workers to raise his zombies…”
“Little Long, why does he specifically target sex workers to make zombies?” Lin Jing wondered, puzzled.
“Sister Jing, according to an old saying, ‘three pure and one toxic’, if a woman has sexual relations with more than three men in a single day, her body will be extremely defiled and will even produce a toxic substance within, causing internal injuries. To put it in modern terms, it can cause cancer. Only sex workers can have sexual relationships with over three men within a day. Therefore, zombies raised from the blood of a sex worker will contain strong traces of the Evil Qi, and their bodies are extremely poisonous,” Huang Xiaolong elaborated.
“That’s terrifying…” Lin Jing had never encountered such knowledge before. After hearing Huang Xiaolong’s explanation, she felt both fear and anger. “But regardless, sex workers are also humans. This owner of the Night Fragrance Club treats human lives as grass and he must be punished by law!”
“Let’s go, Sister Jing. We’re going down now,” Huang Xiaolong said, pulling Lin Jing’s hand and leading the way down the steep stairway.
Reaching the bottom,
It opened up into a broad view.
They found themselves in a cavernous basement about half the size of a professional football pitch. It was both wind and light-proofed; the space thickly permeated with shadowy, hostile energy and the stench of decayed bodies. Everlasting lights hung on the four walls.
The basement was filled with coffins.
The coffins were placed in a precise pattern, and at their centre was an ancient well.
Black flags were inserted in the gaps between coffins, with red tapes tied to them, on which bronze bells were attached.
Huang Xiaolong could see that the coffins were arranged in alignment with the Bagua chart, and the ancient well was located right at its core.
At that moment, the row of walking corpses marched up to the ancient well, gaping their mouths wide to spew into it.
Slurp
Mouthfuls of golden-yellow gas were spat out from the corpses and fell into the ancient well.
From within the well, there was a gurgling sound, as though a kettle was boiling.
Huang Xiaolong spoke to Lin Jing telepathically. “Sister Jing, look. The walking corpses are spewing the vital energy they have absorbed into the well. There must be a highly ranked zombie nourished in that well…”
Each walking corpse, after releasing its Yang energy, obediently walked over to the coffins, climbed in, settled down, and even closed the lids themselves.
The scene was both hair-raising and utterly baffling.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
With the infusion of Yang energy, a bright red liquid began to boil inside the ancient well, producing bubbles that exploded one after another.
It was blood! Boiling and roiling blood, just like boiling water!
Even from a distance, Huang Xiaolong could feel the malevolent aura emanating from the well, like a lurking beast, inspiring a sense of impending doom.
In no time, all the walking corpses had spat out all the Yang energy they had absorbed into the well, then got inside the coffins and closed the lids.
The basement suddenly became eerily quiet, eerily like a graveyard.
Only the sounds of a water-like gurgle emanating from the ancient well broke the silence, making the atmosphere all the more creepy.
“Hehe, all the corpses have gone to rest,” Huang Xiaolong said to Lin Jing through a secret sound transmission, “This is just too hilarious… they’re just like living people working regular hours… hahahaha…”
Lin Jing didn’t dare to speak, fearing that she would wake the corpses in their coffins. She squeezed Huang Xiaolong’s hand, as if to say, ‘Little Long, how can you be joking around in such a creepy place?’
“Hahaha, okay, Sister Jing, don’t be so nervous. Didn’t all the corpses go to sleep? Let’s go take a look at that ancient well and see what kind of corpse it’s nurturing… The people nurturing the corpse haven’t arrived yet, so let’s kill the corpse before it wakes up…”
With that, Huang Xiaolong pulled Lin Jing along and began to walk towards the eerie ancient well step by step.
As they were about to reach the well, suddenly
Lin Jing, not paying attention, tripped over a red string.
Ding-dong! Ding-ding-dong! Ding-dong-dong!
The brass bells tied to the red string began to ring abruptly!
This truly was a case of a single move setting off a chain reaction; as one bell rang, it caused the other bells to be triggered too, producing a continuous chorus of ringing sounds due to the swaying of the red string.
In an instant, the entire basement was full of intermittent, never-ending bell sounds!
Lin Jing was both surprised and scared, and blurted out, “Little Long… I’m sorry… I didn’t watch my step…”
The next second!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
All the coffins sounded off in unison, and every coffin lid was thrown off. From each coffin, a dry and ghastly arm extended!
Then, one after the other, the walking corpses began to crawl out of the coffins!
“Uh… Sister Jing, you’ve woken them up…” Huang Xiaolong said with a grin.