Chapter 944: Side Hustle

Zhang Shan held a torch and patrolled the entrance of the teaching building. From a distance, he saw a disturbance in the pile of corpses, and before long, a figure emerged and approached him.

"Hey!" Zhang Shan called out as a formality. "Where did you come from? An old member?"

The figure stopped not far away at the sound of Zhang Shan's voice. It was then that he sensed something was wrong. This seemed to be a dead person.

Zhang Shan took a few steps closer to get a better look. Sure enough, the person in front of him appeared to have been dead for some time. Her face was deathly pale, her eyes weren't even open, and a wound on her abdomen was still bleeding.

"I... damn," Zhang Shan muttered, scratching his head before raising the torch and stepping closer again.

Though the situation was strange, Zhang Shan was skilled and fearless. In a few strides, he reached the woman.

The woman seemed to sense something. Her eyes moved unnaturally—her left eye opened first, then her right. Her pupils were completely dilated as they met Zhang Shan's gaze, and then she blankly looked up at the sky.

"Damn, this is like seeing a ghost..." Zhang Shan frowned, holding the torch up to her face. "Hey, what are you? Can you speak?"

The woman's neck creaked with a "kacha kacha" sound as she lowered her head, her body twisting. She slowly backed away, fading into the darkness.

Just as Zhang Shan was about to lose sight of her, he saw the woman suddenly speed up, darting around him and running toward the teaching building.

"Damn!"

Zhang Shan immediately panicked. He didn't know what this thing was, but he couldn't let a dead body roam freely in Tian Tang Kou. He had to act fast and chase after it.

The figure's speed was beyond Zhang Shan's expectations. Even at full sprint, he could only watch it grow more distant.

It might have been the darkness playing tricks, but Zhang Shan thought he saw the woman's feet leave the ground, as if she were being pulled rapidly by something.

"Alert! Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"

Zhang Shan's booming voice stirred up the people inside Tian Tang Kou, and he followed the strange figure into the teaching building. Unfortunately, it moved so quickly that it had already vanished.

"This is trouble..." Zhang Shan muttered to himself.

People began emerging from their rooms, looking at him with confusion. "What happened?"

"Damn..." Zhang Shan said, a bit tensely, "A corpse flew in... I don't know what ability it is. Everyone, stay alert."

"A c-corpse?"

Zhang Shan thought for a moment, then lowered his torch to examine the bloodstains on the ground. Even if the woman had flown fast, her injuries would leave a trail.

"I'll go after her. You all just protect yourselves."

...

Qi Xia was sitting quietly in his room, deep in thought, when he heard some commotion at the entrance, followed by the loud cry of "Enemy attack!"

His train of thought was interrupted, and he recalled the time Tian Tang Kou was massacred by Mao. He turned toward the doorway, and though the light was dim, he could see it was empty, with no one around.

Before Qi Xia could figure it out, he heard chaotic banging sounds from outside the room.

He went to the door and opened it, peering into the hallway. What he saw was incredibly bizarre.

A woman was being dragged by something, crashing around the corridor—one moment into the wall, the next into the ceiling. Her fresh blood splattered everywhere.

Qi Xia furrowed his brow and stepped back inside the door.

A few seconds later, the woman's figure appeared at the doorway. She seemed to want to enter, but her body was out of control.

Along the way, she had apparently broken her arms and legs, and there was a massive wound on her abdomen—maybe even her spine was fractured.

She tried to "enter" several times, her left shoulder slamming into the doorframe, then her right into the door, before finally forcing her way in with a brute, violent motion.

Once inside, she didn't do anything else, just kept moving her broken limbs.

Qi Xia watched expressionlessly, growing puzzled. The ability to remotely control a corpse like this suggested the controller was a powerful Hui Xiang Zhe. But why was the control so crude? It looked like a skilled worker sloppily finishing a job.

"Are you in a hurry...?" Qi Xia asked softly. "Or are you in danger?"

The corpse's eyes were open, but her pupils had rolled up, showing mostly whites as they stared at him.

After fumbling with her limbs for a while, the corpse finally realized her left hand could still move properly. Her feet left the ground, and she slowly floated toward Qi Xia.

Qi Xia stood half a meter away, feeling only the metallic smell of blood.

She slowly raised her left hand and touched Qi Xia's clothes, leaving a bloody fingerprint.

At that moment, Qi Xia understood what the corpse meant. He stepped back, pulled over a desk, and gently guided her hand to the surface.

The corpse shuddered when she touched the desk, her bones creaking again.

She slowly moved her fingers, beginning to write on the desk.

"Tian."

Qi Xia took a deep breath and waited patiently. After all, someone was remotely controlling this injured left hand, so the writing was abstract and slow.

"Quan Tou!" Qiao Jia Jin burst into the room with a can of beer in hand. He looked like he'd had several, his face slightly flushed. "Enemy attack—did you hear that?"

As soon as he spoke, he noticed Qi Xia quietly watching a corpse write.

The corpse was covered in wounds, with a bloody hole in her back.

Qiao Jia Jin blinked, scratched his head, then turned around and left without a word, closing the door.

Qi Xia looked at the doorway in confusion. A few seconds later, he heard Qiao Jia Jin's voice again.

"Quan Tou! Enemy attack—did you hear that?!"

Qiao Jia Jin flung the door open and charged back in. He stared intently and realized there really was a corpse writing in the room—it wasn't just his imagination.

He stood there silently for a long time, glancing at the beer can in his hand and mumbling, "What kind of booze is this... so strong?"

"Quan Tou, what's wrong?" Qi Xia asked.

"Huh...?" Qiao Jia Jin was stunned. "Nothing, I must be seeing things. I thought I saw a corpse writing in front of you."

"There really is a corpse writing in front of me," Qi Xia said.

"Uh..." Qiao Jia Jin blinked again; it was easier to think it was a hallucination.

"Yesterday, Lou Yi was reading your palm, and today a corpse is teaching you... Quan Tou, do you have some side gig every night?" Qiao Jia Jin forced a bitter smile.

"I don't get it either." Qi Xia stared at the corpse. "She's writing, but after 'Tian,' it's just been a mess of bloody handprints."

Qiao Jia Jin stepped closer for a look and saw that after finishing "Tian," the corpse was just scribbling chaotically, leaving nothing but disordered blood marks.