Chapter 12: - Do You Desire Power?

After changing clothes and washing the sticky disguise materials from his face, Zheng Fan followed Feng Siniang back toward the inn.

They entered through the rear.

By the time they reached the courtyard, Blind Man Bei was already waiting there.

Xue San stood beside him, small and compact.

He had probably only just returned from stealing the documents.

Blind Man Bei addressed Zheng Fan with unusual solemnity.

“Master, that tongue will still need to be interrogated. I ask Master to handle it.”

Xue San immediately added:

“Master, that fellow probably isn’t much of a hard bone. If he does turn out a little difficult to chew, San’er has plenty of methods.”

It had apparently been far too long since Xue San last tortured anyone.

He looked almost impatient to begin.

“Uh... better if you interrogate him. I’ll wait for the result,” Zheng Fan declined.

He genuinely had no experience in this field.

And there was too much happening tonight.

Everyone’s time was limited.

Even if Zheng Fan wanted to learn, there was no need to start tonight.

Blind Man Bei had clearly expected this answer.

He still bent respectfully at the waist.

“Then once this subordinate has gathered and organized all the information, I will report everything to Master.”

“Mm. All right. Thank you for the trouble.”

“Master is too courteous. This is what this subordinate should do.”

Then Blind Man Bei turned toward Fourth Lady.

“Xue San brought back documents from the authorities. Fourth Lady, help sort and copy them as well.”

Feng Siniang nodded.

“Got it.”

Blind Man Bei turned and left.

Xue San followed behind him.

Fourth Lady was about to begin transcribing the documents stolen from the yamen.

Before she left, however, she still thoughtfully asked Zheng Fan:

“Master, shall I have Little Yun prepare bathwater for you?”

Tonight had been Zheng Fan’s first time seeing someone killed.

His first time seeing human intestines spill all over the floor.

He genuinely felt he needed to relax.

So he accepted Fourth Lady’s suggestion.

When Zheng Fan returned to his room, the large bathing barrel was already ready.

Little Yun was carrying hot water over one bucket at a time from the rear kitchen.

When she saw Zheng Fan enter, she came over and began helping him undress.

This time, Zheng Fan did not refuse.

Once his clothes were off, he stepped into the barrel.

The comfort spreading through his body immediately began washing away the exhaustion in his heart.

Little Yun picked up a soft-bristled brush and began scrubbing his back from behind.

The pressure was exactly right.

Zheng Fan closed his eyes and quietly enjoyed it.

Truthfully, everything that had happened tonight was a first for him.

He had panicked.

But he had not been especially afraid.

That guard had died right in front of him.

A’Ming had drained the man’s blood dry.

And once they extracted the “worldview” from that young master, he too would be killed and his body disposed of.

Yet Zheng Fan felt almost none of what people called guilt.

Moral or immoral.

Right or wrong.

In this world, those things had already lost their meaning.

Earlier, when he and Feng Siniang disguised themselves as master and servant and walked through the nighttime streets, there had been no streetlights.

Naturally, there had also been none of the dense security cameras found throughout modern society.

Something evil at the bottom of a person’s heart, some urge for freedom and indulgence, had inevitably begun to grow.

Or perhaps... this was his true nature all along?

Perhaps this way of acting, this kind of choice, this style of doing things, was what truly felt correct to him.

Little Yun finished scrubbing his back and started moving around to clean his front.

Zheng Fan waved a hand, indicating she could leave.

After Little Yun departed, Zheng Fan sank farther into the bathing barrel until only the part of his face above his nose remained out of the water so he could breathe.

Gradually, he fell asleep.

...

Two rooms away from Zheng Fan, Liang Cheng pushed open the lid of a coffin that was broader at the top and narrower at the bottom, then placed A’Ming inside.

A’Ming’s chest and abdomen had been wrapped thoroughly.

He looked like a mummy that had already been packed with spices and prepared for burial.

Once A’Ming was settled, Liang Cheng pressed one hand over his own chest while supporting himself against the edge of the coffin with the other.

“Does lying in there help you recover faster?”

A’Ming shook his head.

Then he answered with complete seriousness:

“No. But life requires a sense of ceremony.”

The corner of Liang Cheng’s mouth twitched.

“I always thought that as a zombie, you should understand our kind of ceremonial feeling.”

Vampires liked sleeping in coffins.

Zombies, apparently, were also supposed to like sleeping in coffins.

“No. I prefer beds.”

“What a betrayal. Forgetting your roots.” A teasing note entered A’Ming’s voice. “Truthfully, before this, I rarely slept in coffins either. But after arriving in this world, I earned money brewing wine, so I paid someone to build this model for me.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid. Afraid that if I spent too long as an ordinary person, eventually I would really start believing I was nothing more than an ordinary person.”

“You aren’t an ordinary person anymore.”

Liang Cheng narrowed his eyes.

“Heh. If the Blind Man and Fourth Lady didn’t have urgent work in their hands, I imagine they would already be crowding around my coffin too.”

“Everyone has been stifled for far too long,” Liang Cheng said with some emotion. “Before, there was no hope, so we could suppress it. Now that we’ve seen hope, there’s no way anyone can keep enduring quietly.”

“Truthfully, I don’t particularly want to answer you right now. If I tell you now, I’ll have to repeat everything to them later. I’m wounded. Seriously wounded. I need rest.”

“I can drain a little more blood from you and let you sleep forever.”

“That’s excessive.”

“It would be appropriate.”

“Fine. Truthfully, I think the fact that I recovered part of my strength must be connected to Master. Otherwise, there’s no way to explain why nothing happened during the previous half year.”

“Be more specific.”

“How am I supposed to be more specific?”

“What did you do with Master in private?”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“Does it require doing something disgusting?”

“...” A’Ming.

“Continue.”

“I talked with him.”

“We’ve all talked with him.”

“I had a serious conversation with him.”

“What about?”

“Truthfully, he’s pretty useless.”

“Yes.”

“But we won’t abandon him.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps the only difference between me and the rest of you is that I told him directly that we would not abandon him.”

“Now you’re the disgusting one.”

“No.”

“Mm. Continue.”

“Using the process of elimination, I think it should be emotion and recognition.”

“Recognition?”

“Don’t you find it strange? Why did the seven of us come to this world together with him? The seven of us may each be independent individuals, but in truth, every one of us is a character he created.”

“Mm.”

“From the moment we awakened, all seven of us seemed to possess the same instinctive awareness: he is our Master.”

“The title ‘Master’ was the Blind Man’s idea.”

“The title is merely a continuation of the feeling. We could hardly follow that idiot Fan Li’s suggestion and call him... Dad.”

“Mm. Fair point.”

“Truthfully, the relationship between us and him is somewhat like knights and retainers in the Western Middle Ages.”

“Mm?”

“When he woke up, some kind of contractual relationship underlying our existence was activated.”

“Mm. Continue.”

“And what we need to do now is obtain it. Obtain his acknowledgment.”

“I understand.”

Liang Cheng stood, preparing to leave the room.

“What are you going to do?” A’Ming asked.

“Find Master.”

“Master is bathing right now. Are you going to scrub his back?”

“I’ll wait until he finishes.”

“That impatient? Heh.”

“You’re already satisfied. Naturally you aren’t impatient.”

“Disgusting again.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Wait.”

“Mm?”

“Help me put the coffin lid back on. I’m going to rest.”

“Should I hammer the coffin nails in while I’m at it?”

“Fuck off!”

...

Zheng Fan felt as though he had slept for more than three hours.

During that time, Little Yun had quietly returned again and again to add hot water to the bathing barrel.

After waking, Zheng Fan coughed and felt vaguely lightheaded.

He climbed out of the barrel, changed into a clean white underrobe, then put his hoodie and leather boots back on.

His entire body felt indescribably relaxed.

Since coming to this world, the most obvious change in himself seemed to be that he could sleep much more easily.

But just as Zheng Fan was preparing to visit the latrine and deal with a physiological emergency, he pushed open the door and nearly jumped out of his skin.

Liang Cheng, face faintly blue, stood rigidly right outside the door.

A person could scare another person to death.

And the one standing in front of him was a genuine zombie.

“I...”

One curse lodged directly in Zheng Fan’s throat.

He could neither cough it out nor swallow it back down.

Once he calmed himself, Zheng Fan asked:

“How’s your injury?”

“Nothing serious, Master.”

Liang Cheng loosened the bandages around his wound and exposed it.

The bleeding had apparently stopped.

The wound itself was black.

“That’s good. Uh... do you want to bathe? Need the barrel?”

“No, Master.”

“Oh. Then... is the interrogation finished?”

“Not yet.”

“Uh... then do you need something?”

Liang Cheng fell silent.

A’Ming’s words still echoed in his ears.

But now that he actually stood here, Liang Cheng suddenly found he had no idea how to say what he wanted to say.

“Something wrong?”

Zheng Fan asked again.

Liang Cheng opened his mouth.

Zheng Fan was already getting anxious, but he forced himself to remain patient.

He reached out and placed a hand on Liang Cheng’s shoulder.

“If there’s something on your mind, you can talk to me. I know I probably can’t do much, but I can at least listen.”

Liang Cheng lowered his gaze and looked at the hand resting on his shoulder.

Then, as if moved by some strange impulse, he raised his own hand and placed it on Zheng Fan’s shoulder.

“...” Zheng Fan.

Beneath the night sky, outside the room where the bathing barrel stood, two men stood face-to-face, each with one arm resting across the other’s shoulder.

The sight reminded Zheng Fan of works created by some of his peers who specialized in a completely different artistic direction.

Zheng Fan had never been an enthusiast of that genre.

But he could not deny the enormous audience and influence such works possessed.

When that sort of scene actually happened to him, however, the discomfort felt like countless ants crawling all over his body.

“Master, next time something happens, don’t go forward yourself.”

“Mm?”

“To say something unpleasant, even we understand that we... do not truly count as human. If we’re gone, then we’re gone. But Master is different.”

“That sounds a little too distant.”

“In any case, what happened this time will not happen again. Next time, we will not allow Master to fall into danger unless every last one of us is already dead.”

Well.

In the middle of the night, to suddenly hear something this heartfelt...

Goosebumps rose across Zheng Fan’s body.

And the other urgency inside him became even worse.

Still, Zheng Fan nodded very seriously.

“I understand. And I trust all of you.”

As he spoke, he gave Liang Cheng’s shoulder two firm pats.

Hiss...

He really could not hold it much longer.

“I’m going to the front to see how the interrogation is going.”

Leaving those words behind, Zheng Fan hurried straight across the courtyard.

Liang Cheng remained standing outside the room.

He closed his eyes.

Both fists clenched tightly.

The way he had behaved just now, the things he had just said... remembering them now made him so mortified he wanted to go berserk.

He was a zombie.

A zombie.

A ZOMBIE!

If some unrelated passerby had happened to be standing in front of him at that moment, Liang Cheng might genuinely have lost control, charged over, and torn the man apart.

But in the next instant, Liang Cheng suddenly froze.

He lowered his head again in astonishment.

From the wound in his chest, a thread of black zombie baleful aura was beginning to seep out.

[End of Chapter 12]