My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin Vol. 1, page 15
Zhen Bei’s smile was a dazzling one.
After Wang Xiaomie and Wen Fengjin were done conversing, Zhen Bei finally scratched his head and approached with some awkwardness, saying, “Thanks again, guys, I never thought you’d actually say yes. I don’t know how I can thank you, Xiaomie, and also you… Thank you. I sincerely ask that you make sure to spare my dage.”
He gazed at Wen Fengjin with a look as clear as crystal.
Wen Fengjin smiled, or something like it. “All right, I’ll make sure to spare your dage.”
“That’s great!” Zhen Bei’s mouth split in an grin so warm and so excited that he practically looked like a golden retriever.
Wang Xiaomie couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. It was like the ocean on a cloudy day—clearly calm, yet terrifying all the same.
Zhen Bei said, “They’ve decided to make the journey a week from now, but they’ll be here two days before that to do some preparation. I’ll come along with them then.”
Wang Xiaomie blinked, pulling himself out of Wen Fengjin’s arms as he asked, “You want a map?”
Zhen Bei shook his head: “There’s no need for that. I’m content with you guys being able to answer my unreasonable request. On top of that, even after hearing that I’m going to come rob your grave, you still haven’t killed me…” He lowered his gaze, then looked up again, saying with all seriousness, “Thank you, Xiaomie.” After this, he suddenly started laughing and said, “Haha, sorry, your name’s just way too unserious.”
“That’s all because my grandma said a kid with a humble name is more likely to live to adulthood…” Wang Xiaomie grew angry with embarrassment. “Your name’s not any better, y’know!”
Wen Fengjin stroked his hair comfortingly. “You have a very pretty name.”
Zhen Bei chuckled. “According to my mom, my dage’s the one who named me.”
“Huh?” Wang Xiaomie was at a loss for words. “I can’t believe your brother had the guts to name you that, and your mother had the guts to go with it!”
“You got that right… Oh, right, I’ve gotta go! I snuck out to come here, and it’s been a few days since I disappeared from home; if I don’t get back soon, I’m definitely gonna get a scolding from my erge!”
Zhen Bei suddenly started scrambling to pick his backpack up off the floor, throwing it on as he scrubbed the dirt off his nose. “Hey, uh, I don’t know how to get out of here. Could you guys, y’know…”
Wang Xiaomie was about to say something, but Wen Fengjin preempted him by indifferently saying, “I’ll have Mu Yi escort you out.”
“Huh?” Zhen Bei shrank back fearfully. “Not the big lizard!”
Wang Xiaomie tried to placate him: “Mu Yi always does what Wen Fengjin says, so don’t worry—he won’t try to sneak a bite out of you.”
“Oh phew, that’s good to know.”
Something strange hid in Wen Fengjin’s expression as he swept his gaze over Zhen Bei’s smiling face, before turning to face the tomb passage with closed eyes. After a moment, a guttural sort of gurgling emerged from within its depths. The bloodred lizardman, Mu Yi, crawled out before them.
As Zhen Bei was about to leave with the lizard, he suddenly turned his head and said to Wen Fengjin, “Once my dage gets out safely, I’ll repay you.”
He then turned back and left, following Mu Yi.
Wang Xiaomie watched his figure recede into the distance, only for a large hand to turn his head away. “Stop looking.”
The look on Wen Fengjin’s face was a chilly one. Wang Xiaomie, assuming he’d gotten jealous, said with a grin, “Don’t go getting any silly ideas now—I was just thinking he has a really good personality. He might be a little foolish, but he fought his way here for the sake of his brother. Say, if I had a personality like his, do you think you’d like me even m—”
Wen Fengjin was silent.
“Oh fuck Boss, what kinda look is that?!”
Wen Fengjin thought: Hurk.
Chapter 26:
Would You be Scared of an Extra-Thick Halo?
SINCE ZHEN BEI’S last visit, Wang Xiaomie had realized something incredibly fun. He could say something like, “Wow Zhen Bei’s got such a good personality, I want—” and Wen Fengjin would purse his lips, a terrible look on his face.
He would continue, “What would you think if we had a child like Zhen Bei—”
And Wen Fengjin’s pursed lips trembled, his Adam’s apple bobbing wildly.
“What if—mmmph!”
Wen Fengjin put a hand over his mouth, and after a long moment of recovery, finally said “Xiaomie…shut up.”
Wang Xiaomie wriggled out of his arms like an earthworm, grinning with a crafty look in his eyes. “If you don’t tell me why you don’t like Zhen Bei, then I won’t stop talking!”
The fact that Wen Fengjin hated Zhen Bei was something Wang Xiaomie had just discovered the day before. It had to be why he got such an ugly look on his face whenever Zhen Bei’s name was brought up. But the two had clearly never met before, so what was the cause of Xiao-Wenzi’s terrible expressions? Wang Xiaomie was dying (metaphorically) of curiosity. But no matter what he tried, whether by threat or by se—ahem, by you-know-what—Wen Fengjin stayed as tight-lipped as ever.
Looking at his bright-eyed lover, who had curiosity written all over his face, Wen Fengjin’s frown relaxed. He was also beginning to find it funny how worked up he was getting over mention of that man’s name. Still, it was a long while before he finally said, “Xiaomie, you need to keep your distance from him. He is nowhere as simple as he appears.”
Wang Xiaomie rolled his eyes. “But you won’t tell me what exactly is so bad about him, so how am I supposed to know if he’s good or not!”
“You want to know?”
“Of course!”
“Come here.”
Wen Fengjin sat down beneath the freely blooming pining tree, resting an arm on one lifted leg, and motioned to Wang Xiaomie.
Wang Xiaomie walked to sit by his side, leaning against him. Wen Fengjin wrapped his right arm around Wang Xiaomie’s shoulders before speaking in a cold tone which did nothing to hide the disgust and dislike he felt. He told the story of a big boss who’d been lying at home, diligently working to revive his shixiong, only for people to keep inexplicably showing up at his door and starting trouble while shouting “Die, demon lord!” and other similar epithets. Among these people was one who left Wen Fengjin with mental scars that would never fade.
“I killed him a total of twenty-nine times. Throwing him off a cliff six times, stabbing him through the heart seven times, crippling all the vital channels of his body ten times… I even nearly chopped off his head a few times. But none of it worked. Every time he fell off a cliff, he wound up finding some kind of hidden treasure. It wasn’t until after I’d pierced his heart seven times that I realized he was born with his heart on the right side. Every time I crippled his channels, some reclusive master physician would come out of the woodwork to heal him. The next few times I killed him, I made sure to give him what were definitively fatal wounds… But it didn’t make the slightest difference. No matter what I did, he always managed to have some fortuitous encounter that saved him, allowing him to come back to face me once more.”
Wen Fengjin’s lips pressed tightly shut at this point—yes, it really did make him nauseous.
Even Wang Xiaomie had horrified goosebumps after hearing all this. What the fuck! How much money did they sink into this guy’s damn protag halo! Are you a top-tier VIP member or something?! This isn’t even a halo anymore! It’s more like you’ve stuck a whole god on top of your head! No wonder Wen Fengjin wants to hurl when he sees someone like that. It’s like he opened the door to find the guy he’d already killed a billion times over was standing there in front of him again. Eek! How scary! This is getting into horror-movie territory here!
Any normal person who had that many near-death experiences would have broken down ages ago. But this person seemed to have no emotions whatsoever. He acted as if he were born for the sole purpose of killing Wen Fengjin.
Wen Fengjin said, “He didn’t seem like a human being to me, but rather, some kind of twisted automaton. That thing was always smiling, no matter the circumstances. As if it had never, in its existence, experienced any emotion other than ‘justice’ and ‘hope’. The human named Zhen Bei shares certain similarities to that person. Even the sense of nausea I feel around him is extremely similar.”
At this point Wang Xiaomie felt his scalp go numb as he had a sudden thought. If his past self was chosen by the system to educate Wen Fengjin into a well-rounded good citizen, then what happened after he failed his mission?
That guy wasn’t created by the system to kill Wen Fengjin, was he?! Fuck! This is seriously scary to think about, for real…
“…But you really are amazing if you managed to eliminate a guy like that,” Wang Xiaomie said.
But Wen Fengjin shook his head. “I never did kill him.”
“Huh?! Then how—” How did you survive to this day without him pestering you to death?
Wen Fengjin then smiled: “I am unaging and undying. His lifespan ran out when I was a mere 150 years old.”
Wang Xiaomie was silent. So simply being better at living could actually be an advantage, huh? He suddenly thought of a line he’d once read. “The old woman took a drag of her cigarette and said, ‘All the doctors who told me to stop smoking back then have already passed away!’”
To think this story would have such an ending. It was actually kinda sad…
“But, Xiao-Wenzi…what exactly did you do after I died?”
After all, the system didn’t just decide to go back to your childhood in an attempt to straighten you out—it even made an extra-thick-plot-armored hero in an attempt to kill you, or at least disgust you, if nothing else.
Wang Xiaomie gazed curiously at Wen Fengjin.
Wen Fengjin froze under his gaze. After what felt like half a day had passed, he turned his head and graced Wang Xiaomie with a pure and innocent smile, saying, “I don’t know. I was hard at work reviving you the whole time, Shixiong.”
All Big Boss Wen had done was kill people—massacring entire sects and clans and families—and ultimately even overshadowing the Northern Kingdom for a hundred years before finally burying himself for good. He didn’t know what had happened at all!
Wink!
Wang Xiaomie, who’d been unceremoniously kicked back home by the system after failing his mission, thought, If I believed what you said just now, I might as well try to shit while doing a handstand.
He more or less understood now that Wen Fengjin had ended up with PTSD thanks to the extra-thick-plot-armored hero. It wasn’t that he hated Zhen Bei—
(Aside, Wen Fengjin: I absolutely hate him)
—it was that simply laying eyes on a person like that gave him a headache. It was just like the saying went: be bitten by a snake one morning and you’ll be afraid of coiled rope for ten years.
Having sated his curiosity, a now comforted Wang Xiaomie yawned. “Oh right, Zhen Bei said they were going to come dig up our grave in a week.” Ai, what kind of life were they living now? Even getting grave-robbed was being done by appointment.
“Mmhm.” Wen Fengjin nodded, indifferently adjusting their positions as he continued embracing Wang Xiaomie: “Would you like to sleep a while?”
Wang Xiaomie nodded as well. “All right…I am a little tired. I don’t know why, but lately I keep feeling like my ‘charging tree’ isn’t working as well anymore.” He used to be good for two hours after five minutes of charging, but now he had to sleep for half a day at least. “But what about the grave-robbing thing?”
“There’s no need to worry about that. I have everything planned out.”
Wen Fengjin hugged him tighter with a smile. The continuous fragrance of peach blossoms enveloped them as the scorching-pink blossoms blazed with radiance. A few petals floated down to land upon a winding river of inky-black hair, making a beautifully perfect adornment.
The man beside him was already asleep, leaning against this pining tree with neither pulse nor breath, his features tranquil and his skin snowy white. It was impossible to tell just by looking that this was actually a corpse.
Suddenly, veins and blood vessels slowly started to swell beneath his snowy skin. A bruise-like mark appeared on his neck, near his chin.
It was a patch of livor mortis.
“I told you before—there is no way to refine a body without a soul into either a puppet or a jiangshi. It will rot, even when transformed into a walking corpse. There are things which can be done if you wish only to preserve the body and prevent it from decaying, but the corpse-stabilizing beads and the pining tree can only maintain its surface state. The moment the body leaves their protection… Even if the immortal tree really can summon his soul back to the body and maintain it there, at best, he will wake but be unable to move. And at worst, the body—along with the corpse-stabilizing beads and the soul—will all dissolve to dust.”
“How do I bring a corpse to life?”
“You need a particular kind of medicine.”
“Tell me.”
“Yes, milord…”
Wen Fengjin started quietly humming an ancient tune from the Northern Kingdom as he lifted the now unrecognizable person whose face was covered in veins, placed him upon his lap, then unbuttoned his collar and slit open the side of his own throat.
The bitter scent of medicine mixed with the slightly sweet fragrance of peach blossoms filling the air. The person in his arms opened scarlet eyes before quickly burying his face in Wen Fengjin’s neck and sucking on it with great force. The ancient, husky-voiced tune obscured the bestial, gulping sounds.
Perhaps out of weakness, Wen Fengjin shut his eyes and stopped humming, his slender, bony fingers slowly sinking into the other man’s long, inky hair as he gently caressed the silken strands.
After a long while, the person in his arms once more regained a liveliness to his skin. Those scarlet eyes closed as he lay back in Wen Fengjin’s arms with a frown. Wen Fengjin brushed the red bloodstains off his lips with a finger, then pressed the back of a hand against his forehead.
“It’s all right now. Everything is fine… Once they enter the tomb, I’ll make sure to get my hands on that object. Then we will no longer need to stay beneath the ground. Wherever you may wish to go, no matter where it is on this earth, I will go there with you…”
After saying this, he lowered his gaze, lovingly pressing his cheek against Wang Xiaomie’s forehead. An unnatural color, like red mist, spread across his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Shixiong. I’ll have to lie to you again—but I cannot allow a single one of those men to leave here alive!”
The scene: the Zhen household.
Zhen Bei, a pack still on his back, paused the moment he crossed the threshold of this old house on Antique Road, his expression going momentarily blank before transforming into a dazzling smile.
“Erge!”
Zhen Mu looked up from where he leaned, arms crossed, against a doorpost behind the vermilion front gate. He was wearing a formfitting black outfit, his short black hair swaying in the wind, the forceful gaze beneath it softening somewhat at the sight of Zhen Bei.
“You’re back? What godforsaken place did you run off to without even a note? I told you before not to head out to the fields with that lot—you’d be better off staying home and studying antiques like you’re supposed to.”
Zhen Bei chuckled, saying, “Are you really telling me off when you’re in the same line of work, Erge? Besides, we have Dage to do the antiques research. I don’t have his talent, so I might as well not waste the effort.”
“That’s bullshit, you’ve got a lot of talent.” Zhen Mu’s smile dampened slightly as he walked over to throw an arm around his little brother’s shoulders. “In a few days, I’ll be accompanying Dage on a trip below. Let’s have a meal together—we might not have another chance in the future.”
Zhen Bei poked his brother in the chest with a smile. “What’s that supposed to mean? You make it sound like you’re never coming back or something! If we’re eating out, though, you’re paying!”
Zhen Mu laughed aloud at that, helplessly lifting a scar-covered hand to gently muss his little brother’s hair. “You brat—when’s your brother ever made you pay? Huh?”
“Heheh! You’re the best, Erge!”
Zhen Mu went with him to put away his luggage. After that, the two left the old and silent Zhen manor with much talk and laughter.
In a wooden chair in the drawing room sat a tall, thin man with a face so devoid of expression it seemed a mask. Beside him sat a gentle and refined man in his thirties, with such an extremely calm and youthful face that it gave one the impression of extreme softness—Zhen Hao.
“You’re sure this will work?” Zhen Hao asked the man as the two studied a map and text on brocade silk.
The man nodded. “Don’t worry. Can you not tell if this map is genuine or not? All the things those people had in storage were fakes, but this one genuine article was left to me by my shifu.
“Those two little brothers of yours have ventured in, and even survived to bring back a Fish Pearl. If your brother’s telling the truth, and the two masters of the tomb are capable of rational thought, just like living humans, then that means the legend is true, and there are more precious treasures than you can count in there. With my personally selected men and your erdi accompanying us, it shouldn’t pose us any problem at all. The main issue here is that the traps and tomb-guarding monsters in the mausoleum are relatively troublesome to deal with. But with this map, we can avoid those threats entirely.
“You’ve already personally experienced the power of the Fish Pearl. And those treasures you’ve never seen before, some of which have only ever been mentioned in unfinished books, are going to be a million times more valuable than a Fish Pearl. They’re all waiting for you within the tomb… Can you honestly say you don’t want to take a peek?”
