Chapter 67: The Bone Collector
The middle procession was made up of four pallbearers slowly carrying a black willow casket. Oddly enough, the four specters shouldering the load wore modern white laboratory coats.
The procession on the far right, however, was crude, messy, and sprawling.
They did not have coffins at all. Instead, a ragged line of dazed, broken spirits pulled wooden handcarts one after another, trailing deep into the desolate mounds of the graveyard.
A few carts had rough straw mats thrown over the corpses, but most had nothing covering the bodies, lacking even paper money or funeral banners. Mutilated, broken remains were piled carelessly on the wooden frames, stacked high until the carts groaned under the weight.
Anyone who had family in life would not be left broken and abandoned; even the poorest families would at least wrap their deceased in a straw mat for a decent burial.
Those who had slightly better means would receive a proper casket and be carried to a quiet cemetery or ancestral plot, much like the middle procession.
Those of noble blood or great standing received grander honors, carried away by sixteen pallbearers to an ancient mausoleum or royal tomb.
As for those stacked onto wooden handcarts like firewood, they could only be unclaimed dead—nameless wanderers whose families had vanished. In death, their souls became wandering ghosts, and their bodies were hauled off to a Mass Grave, dumped unceremoniously into the dirt.
Realizing this, Lin Huai’s eyes sparked with excitement. She gently steered her vehicle around and fell in behind the long line of carts.
Could the entrance to the Mass Grave outpost be hidden this deeply?
Before reaching a low ridge, the three processions divided, each turning down a separate path.
Lin Huai stuck close behind the carts. As they parted ways, she cast a lingering look back at the other two funeral lines, feeling a touch of regret.
The destinations of those two processions had to hold rare fortunes as well. She could only hope for another chance to explore them in the future. For today, she had to pick one path, and the Mass Grave was the safest bet for reliable gains.
The ground grew rough and bumpy. From time to time, bodies tumbled off the carts ahead, falling onto the rocky dirt.
Yet neither the dazed ghosts pulling the carts nor those marching directly behind gave the fallen corpses a second glance. They kept dragging their heavy loads forward, entirely numb to their surroundings.
Trailing behind the entire line, Lin Huai picked up the fallen bodies and loaded them into her green jade coffin. Doing so made her blend in even more naturally with the morbid convoy.
Winding deep into the barren hills, the carts finally halted along the lip of a colossal sinkhole.
Lin Huai hit the brakes. Stepping to the edge of the cab, the scene before her took her breath away.
This was no ordinary grave pit; it was an entire mountain built from piled corpses.
The sinkhole plunged into bottomless shadows. Its sheer walls were not formed of earth or stone, but of layers of crushed, pale limbs and broken bones, gleaming with a sickly, oily sheen in the gray light.
The thick stench of decay was heavy in the air. A foul gray-green mist swirled like a living creature at the bottom of the pit, occasionally tossing up a stiff hand or foot before pulling it back under.
Flocks of sinister carrion birds circled above the abyss, letting out harsh, metallic shrieks that sounded like scrap metal grating together. Every few moments, one would dive straight down, tearing out an eyeball or ripping loose internal organs from the rotting piles.
Reaching the rim of the pit, the ghostly laborers turned their carts around and began dumping their grim cargo over the edge.
Broken limbs and torsos plummeted into the depths, the dull thuds and cracking bones echoing endlessly through the crater. Even Lin Huai, who spent her days dealing with the dead, felt a cold knot of nausea twist in her gut.
There was no time to dwell on the disgust.
After emptying their loads, the dazed spirits turned their pale, vacant faces toward Lin Huai’s armored hearse.
They were waiting for her to dump her share.
Steeling her nerves, Lin Huai stepped down from the cab, putting on the same vacant, lifeless expression.
Cloaked in the heavy shroud of Yin energy from the coffin, she gave off no warmth. To the mindless laborers, she looked like just another wandering phantom.
With a flick of her hand, Lin Huai lowered the green jade casket to the ground. Pushing open the heavy lid, she hauled out the collected bodies and dropped them over the cliff.
Once the last body fell, the ghostly laborers turned in unison, grabbed the handles of their carts, and began the slow trudge back the way they had come to scour the wasteland for more dead.
Watching their hunched silhouettes vanish into the gray mounds, Lin Huai let out a long breath of relief. At least they hadn’t forced her to follow them back.
Left alone at the rim of the chasm, she began searching for a way down. Leaping blindly would get her swallowed by the shifting corpses, even if she survived the fall. The crater walls dropped nearly straight down, leaving no visible path besides the unstable mountain of remains.
She remembered hearing rumors about Chen Feng in her past life—he had reached this Mass Grave and walked away with a fortune in rare materials.
How did he manage to climb down?
While she was wracking her brain for an answer, her eyes caught a small, ragged figure moving in the pit.
It was a young boy covered in caked mud and dark brown blood. He was hunched over the piles of remains below, rummaging through the skeletons as if hunting for something.
Lin Huai’s eyes brightened. Could this be the outpost NPC for the Mass Grave?
She waved from the edge and called out, “Little friend, can you give me a hand down?”
Hearing her call, the boy turned around, looking somewhat surprised. His milky, unfocused pupils twitched, yet Lin Huai felt a bone-chilling stare lock onto her soul.
A second later, his small body rose smoothly into the air. Drifting up from the pit of bones, he hovered level with Lin Huai along the rim of the sinkhole.
“Did you come to deliver bodies?”
His voice was hoarse and grating, producing an awful sound like sharp fingernails scraping against bone. “Now that the bodies are in the pit, why haven’t you left?”
Remembering what had brought her here, Lin Huai smiled gently. Pulling a pure Yin energy crystal from her inventory, she held it out between two fingers, letting it catch the dim light. “Do you recognize this?”
The boy’s clouded eyes shifted toward the gem. “A Yin crystal? Is it for me?”
Lin Huai nodded. “It’s yours. And if you can guide me down into the Mass Grave, I have plenty more for you.”
The boy tilted his head, reached out with a pale hand, and took the crystal from her palm. “I am the Bone-Picking Child. Sifting bones from the dirt is my work. Aside from crystals, I have one more condition.”
“Tell me what it is,” Lin Huai replied readily. “As long as it’s within my power, I’ll agree.”
The boy’s face remained completely expressionless. “I want your third vertebra.”
Lin Huai’s brow pulled tight. Her body instantly tensed as she stepped back, resting a hand on her weapon and preparing for an ambush. “My third vertebra? You want my life?”
The Bone-Picking Child didn’t react to her sudden hostility. He spoke in the same flat, raspy voice: “You only need to promise it to me now. When your day comes to die, I will come to collect it myself.”
