Kyushu · Endless Nagato

Chapter 16: Dance of the Dead (5)
Xue Huaiqing was wondering when two more people walked out of the room.The first was a beautiful woman who looked to be in her thirties, but the anger on her face made her face look horrible.She angrily walked up to the man and woman who were fighting fiercely just now, and unceremoniously pressed and pinched the woman's body a few times, as if testing an animal, and then turned her head to look at the bald man with a broken nose , suddenly stretched out his right hand.Xue Huaiqing's eyes blurred, and he saw that a short steel needle had been inserted between the eyebrows of the big man.With the insertion of this needle, the big man who was still in full swing immediately fell on his back and hit the ground heavily. What's even more incredible is that his face immediately turned black, his cheeks were sunken, and the skin exposed outside his clothes was also exposed. Quickly changes color and takes on a rotting texture.After a while, he had turned into a rotting corpse, and Xue Huaiqing could smell the pungent corpse stench from a distance away.

At this time, the second person came out.This is a handsome middle-aged scholar. Although there is a deep wound on the left cheek, which looks a little fierce, but the whole face still exudes a sense of elegance and gentleness.

"Actually, this corpse servant is just disfigured, and the broken arm can be reattached. The overall structure is not too damaged, so it's a pity to just waste it like this." He said unhurriedly, with a warm and pleasant voice.

Corpse servant?Xue Huaiqing realized it all at once, no wonder the two fighting men and women had no expression at all times, it turned out that they were manipulated walking corpses.Speaking of which, this woman was indeed the corpse dancer Jiang Qinyin she was looking for!She couldn't help feeling excited, but also very nervous.

"Don't abandon it, save it for me to continue to embarrass myself?" Jiang Qinyin said coldly, "Using a strong man who has just died as a corpse servant, but I can't defeat the walking corpse you cultivated with a woman's body. It's too far behind you. I admit defeat."

"It's not easy for it to persist for fifty rounds. Among today's corpse dancers, you can also be ranked first." The words of the middle-aged scholar sounded like consolation, but they also implied A kind of "none of you can compare to me" pride.

"This is what I hate the most about you," Jiang Qinyin shook her head, "You always speak in this tone: 'There are two kinds of corpse dancers in the world, one is Sumeru, and the other is other people.'"

"You are wrong, this is a fact, so I don't need to talk about it all day long." Xumizi shrugged, and then moved his fingers a few times.Xue Huaiqing was horrified to see that the corpse of the bald man who had been "destroyed" by Jiang Qinyin just now and had rotted beyond recognition began to move again.It stood up slowly and began to dance with a strange posture. Its body was constantly doing various extreme twisting movements, and its fingers, which had almost exposed bones, flexed and stretched flexibly.

"This is... the snake dance of the snake farmers in the southern part of the Great Thunder Lake!" Jiang Qinyin's face turned pale in an instant.At this time, Xue Huaiqing didn't know the technique of corpse dance, so she didn't see anything special about a rotting corpse dancing snake dance, except for nausea.After getting started, she realized that such a walking corpse that was once made into a corpse servant by the engraving technique but was abolished by the abandonment technique will not only rot quickly, but also be less sensitive to the corpse dance technique, which is different from ordinary corpses or corpses. Rotten corpses are so different that they are basically impossible to use anymore, and even a corpse dancer with average ability can't even make them move a finger.As for the current Sumeru, he can not only make it move, but also lightly make it dance a snake dance with complicated movements and a test of coordination and balance. This practice has reached an astonishing level.

Xu Mizi waved his hand, and the walking corpse fell down again, this time it really didn't move anymore.Jiang Qinyin stared at this ugly carrion, speechless for a long time.Xumizi walked up to her and patted her shoulder lightly.

"Don't mind too much," Xumizi still said softly, "I said, if you want to surpass me, there may be another way. You can try that way, it's your only chance."

After Xumizi left with a long smile, Jiang Qinyin stood there for a quarter of an hour, as if she had turned into a statue.Xue Huaiqing didn't dare to move, and kept shrinking behind the wormwood, only feeling stiff and uncomfortable.

Suddenly, without warning, a face appeared in front of her eyes, so close that she could almost hear her breath, it was Jiang Qinyin's face!Xue Huaiqing was so frightened that she jumped up and wanted to run away, but she squatted for too long, the blood in her legs was not flowing, and she fell to the ground just two steps away, and she could only let Jiang Qinyin hold her hand in despair. He stretched out his hand to grab her up and lift her up in the air.

Ruined!Xue Huaiqing's tears were about to flow down.In her imagination, Jiang Qinyin would first kill her alive, and then turn her into a corpse servant for her to drive.No, it seems that the selection of walking corpses depends on physical fitness. I am a skinny half-breed, and I don't have much strength in my hands. Practice...

Just thinking wildly, Jiang Qinyin said coldly: "You have been hiding there for so long, what is it for? Who sent you to find out about me?"

"No...I'm here...to...become...to be a teacher..." Xue Huaiqing stammered back.

"Apprentice teacher?" This answer was obviously beyond Jiang Qinyin's expectations.She casually threw Xue Huaiqing on the ground, stared at her for a while, and frowned: "Such a beautiful and fair girl, who is still a feathered figure, actually wants to ask me to be her teacher as a corpse dancer? Are you crazy?" right?"

"I'm not a feathered person, but a human-feathered hybrid," Xue Huaiqing struggled to get up, "and no matter who I am, I just want to be a corpse dancer."

Jiang Qinyin, who never liked to laugh, couldn't help but burst out laughing: "Just being a corpse dancer? This is not the ideal for a little girl of your age. Tell me, why do you want to be a corpse dancer? I guess you probably It is because you are carrying some difficult missions or deep hatred, so you want to learn a kung fu that can kill people as your tool. But you have many other choices, even if you are too thin to wield a knife and a stick, half The blood of the Yu family can also guarantee that you are talented in archery, not to mention that you can also be a mystic. Why is it a corpse dancer? A corpse dancer that most people hate and fear when they mention it?"

"Because I want others to hate and fear me." Xue Huaiqing replied softly.She has gradually calmed down.

"Why?" Jiang Qinyin still stared at her.

"My father is a Yuren, and my mother is a human being, but I am neither a Yuren nor a human being." Xue Huaiqing looked up at the gray sky, and bit her lips lightly, "I have been I lost my parents and was raised by my human adoptive father, but other people in the village hated me because the Yuren in Lanzhou killed many humans. Later, I followed my adoptive father to run a business outside and met a group of Featherman, I am very happy, thinking that I have met the same kind. But my hair color is not pure, my pupil color is not dark enough, and my figure is not tall enough. Disgusted. From then on, I understood that a mixed-race person like me would be the object of disgust no matter where I went.”

"So you want to break the jar?" Jiang Qinyin asked.

"I don't even have a jar, so where can I drop it?" Xue Huaiqing shrugged like an adult, "I just think that it's too tiring to stay with living people, and I can bring a feeling that I won't hate you or hate you." , beware of you, and hurt your corpse to live, it’s actually not bad.”

"You are wrong, you are wrong," Jiang Qinyin shook her head, "With the dead, you will be lonely forever, never happy, and there will always be an impenetrable barrier between you and the man you love. Paper... Forget it, you don’t understand these things now. I’ll accept you.”

"What?" Xue Huaiqing couldn't believe her ears at all.She used to think that even if Jiang Qinyin was willing to accept her, she would have to go through many severe tests like the stories in the Pingshu.Unexpectedly, Jiang Qinyin didn't even ask a few more questions, and agreed very lightly.

"Do you think you're taking advantage of this?" Jiang Qinyin shook her finger, "Then you're wrong again. There are very few people in this world who are willing to be corpse dancers, and those who take the initiative to come to apprentice like you are simply rare goods, please. You can't even ask for it. You are sending yourself to hell, do you understand?"

Xue Huaiqing was silent for a while, and finally gritted her teeth and said, "Even if this is hell, I will dance."

"Besides, this is the only way I can possibly defeat Sumeru," Jiang Qinyin said leisurely, "I will never beat him in my life, but my apprentice is younger than him and me, and there is still a chance Defeat him before he dies of old age... what's wrong with you?"

"It's just that your words made me feel strange," Xue Huaiqing smiled slightly, "I never thought that corpse dancers would also die."

Twelve years later, Xue Huaiqing sat silently in front of her master's grave, recalling that conversation back then.In fact, she knew that the master had another wish, which was to use her own corpse to become the apprentice's corpse servant, and then let the apprentice manipulate this corpse to defeat Sumeru, that would be considered as her defeating Sumeru "by herself".This is exactly what Xumizi said that day, "You can try that method, it is your only chance."

It is a pity that Master's neck bone was broken and could no longer be used. Her wish during her lifetime could only come to nothing in the end.Now she is just an ordinary corpse, trapped in eternal silence under the shallow soil layer, waiting to rot, waiting for the skin to be completely devoured by maggots until it turns into bones and dust.

"I'm really sorry, Master," Xue Huaiqing murmured, "but it's good, at least you can get a permanent sleep like a normal dead person now, can't you?"

(End of this chapter)