Corpse Retriever

After finishing his rounds and returning to the duty room, Doctor Fan Shulin leaned back in his chair and stretched lazily.

“Ah... I’m so sleepy.”

He had gone to a class reunion the night before, and after it ended, he and the two classmates he used to be closest with had gone off for a smaller gathering. It was supposed to be a quick chat before everyone headed home, but one of them suddenly got red-eyed and started talking about how badly things were going in his love life. So Fan Shulin and the other classmate had no choice but to listen and help him sort through it.

The three of them talked until dawn was almost breaking, and now he was in no shape at all for a night shift.

Fan Shulin pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk, lifted the newspaper covering the contents, and took out a magazine with a very revealing cover.

As he read,

well,

he woke right up.

Knock knock knock!

Someone was knocking at the door.“Coming.”

Fan Shulin opened it, froze when he saw who it was, then almost by reflex shifted his gaze behind the visitor.

Sure enough, another one on his back!

Damn it all, this was just the school clinic, not the city hospital and definitely not the provincial one.

“Brother Fan, you’re on the night shift again? Looks like your bosses are really focused on developing your talent.”

“Take him to a real hospital. This is the school clinic!”

“Oh, come on, Brother Fan. Your healing hands can bring the dead back to life. You’re a modern-day miracle doctor. If anyone’s got a headache or a fever, of course we’re coming to you.”

“When have you ever brought me someone with just a headache or a fever?”

“He hit his head, and he’s got a fever too.”

“If something goes wrong under my care, I can’t take responsibility for it.”

“Brother Fan, you’re too modest. Truly humble.”

Fan Shulin sighed. He knew he couldn’t outstubborn the guy in front of him. After all, he had failed the first two times. By now, he barely had the energy to resist.

“Next room.”

“Got it.”

Tan Wenbin laid Lin Shuyou on the operating table, and Fan Shulin began treating the wound.

The first time, he had been terrified. The second time, deeply nervous. The third time, which was now, he discovered he was actually pretty calm.

Mainly because the two people this guy had brought in were unbelievably tough. Injuries that severe, and after treatment, they were visibly recovering by the next day. Three days later, they could already get out of bed on their own.

Fan Shulin asked, “How many gangs are there at our school now?”

Tan Wenbin replied, “Oh, plenty. Otherwise how would there be this many gang wars?”

“Then your gang kind of sucks. People from your side keep getting hurt this badly and sent to the clinic. No one from the other gangs ever gets brought here.”

“That’s because they don’t need medical treatment anymore.”

“Then your gang really is the ruthless one.”

“Oh, absolutely. Every time our gang leader leads us into battle, we go in aiming to wipe out entire family registers.”

Fan Shulin laughed. He thought he had just made a very funny joke.

Tan Wenbin laughed along with him.

After the wound was treated, Tan Wenbin pushed Lin Shuyou into a hospital room.

When Fan Shulin came over to hang the IV drip, Tan Wenbin took out some money and slipped it into his white coat, then patted it lightly.

“Thanks for your hard work, Brother Fan.”

“Call me if anything comes up. Or even if nothing does.”

Every time the young doctor accepted a red envelope, he became uneasy and awkward, almost tongue-tied.

After the doctor left, Tan Wenbin carefully checked Lin Shuyou’s condition. Seeing that some color had already returned to his face, he relaxed, leaned back in the chair beside the bed, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

He dreamed that he was standing by a river, endlessly picking up stones and skipping them over the surface. There were too many stones on the bank, too many to ever run out, impossible to finish throwing.

Who knew how long he had been doing it before Tan Wenbin woke up. He glanced at the wall clock in the room. It was nine in the morning. He actually hadn’t slept that long.

There were soy milk and youtiao on the bedside cabinet. They were a little cold now, but still edible.

Tan Wenbin knew Doctor Fan must have left them there before getting off work.

There was also a small bag of jujubes behind them, probably some snack the doctor had been keeping in the duty room for himself.

He had just finished breakfast when he saw Lin Shuyou wake up. The boy turned his head and looked at him.

“Sorry, I...”

“You need to pee?”

Tan Wenbin bent down and pulled the bedpan out from under the bed.

“No, I mean...”

“You got hurt even worse this time, but you recovered faster than last time.”

The moment Lin Shuyou heard that, he suddenly seemed to think of something. He reached to pull up his hospital gown while trying his best to lift his head and look down.

“Hey, hey, hey, wait a second. I’ll help you.”

Tan Wenbin picked up the bedpan again.

“How is that possible? The face pattern... why is it whole again?”

Tan Wenbin’s brows rose immediately. He had caught the key point at once.

“You broke that face pattern yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I applied to a university in Jinling because I wanted to get farther from home.”

“Fighting with your family?”

“Not exactly. I just had some disagreements with my master, and my grandpa sided with him.”

“How come you never mentioned that before?”

“It’s not like we cut ties. I still have to go home for winter break, so I didn’t think there was any need to say anything.”

“Oh.”

Tan Wenbin picked up a jujube and bit into it. Pretty sweet.

“They always think I’m not grown up and want to control me.

When I left home for university, I even broke that face pattern right in front of my master and my grandpa. I told them straight out that I was an adult now and didn’t need them watching over me anymore.

Never thought I’d still end up relying on the family this time.”

Tan Wenbin said earnestly, “With a brain like yours, your family really should keep a closer eye on you. Otherwise once you’re out in the world, someone could sell you and you’d help count the money.”

“Brother Binbin, you really are the one who treats me best.”

“Good boy. Eat a date.”

“Brother Binbin, after I passed out last night, I think I heard you crying for me.”

“Yeah. At the time I thought you were dead, so I was mourning you.”

“Sorry for making you so sad, Brother.”

“Sad my ass. I was just going through the motions. If you’d died, then you’d died. What’s the big deal?”

“Brother, you’re right. To die for the righteous cause, with no regrets in death, that’s an honor. You should be happy for me.”

“No, no, no, that would be kind of deranged.”

“Brother, if something like that happens again, let’s do it together again. Fighting evil and upholding the right path with you all feels so good.”

“I remember that even when you enter spirit-possession, you still keep part of your memory and awareness, right?”

Tan Wenbin still remembered how, on the school field last time, Lin Shuyou had spared his balls.

“Not all of it, but I remember some things. It’s kind of like a blurry dream.”

“Then do you remember me sticking needles into you?”

“I do. Brother, you were amazing. That move really worked!”

“Uh...”

“If we had let White Crane Child leave back then, how would we have gone after Granny Yu? For a wicked thing that toys with human bonds and family affection, you should use any means necessary to kill it!

By the way, Brother, do you still have any of those talisman needles?”

“What do you want them for?”

“I know that kind of talisman is precious, but I really want some to take back for my master and grandpa to use.”

“Ah-you, you’re really too filial.”

“Once the three incense sticks used to ask the way burn out, we can’t maintain the spirit-medium state anymore, and the Lords have to leave too.

With a talisman needle like that, it’s basically like getting another round. We can keep doing a lot more. For us Officers of the Command Banner, that’s incredibly important!”

“I get it. But the side effects are severe. It’s very easy to ruin yourself with that.”

Lin Shuyou said in surprise, “What thing in this world doesn’t have side effects? If it works, then of course side effects are normal.”

“Actually, there are more gradual methods, and the side effects aren’t nearly that bad.”

Tan Wenbin remembered that Brother Zhuiyuan had originally prepared an entire set of methods, but at the time Brother Zhuiyuan hadn’t been there, so the only thing Tan Wenbin could use was the roughest, simplest version.

“Really?” Lin Shuyou got excited and sat up again, tugging at his wounds and making the corners of his mouth twitch with pain. “There really are?”

“There are.”

“Brother, could you teach me?”

“You’re giving me way too much credit.”

“Brother Zhuiyuan knows them? I... I thought that if Brother Zhuiyuan knew them, then you did too.”

“You’re insulting Brother Zhuiyuan way too much.”

“Brother, what do I need to do for Brother Zhuiyuan to teach me those methods?”

“You just need to stand there and not move. Brother Zhuiyuan will personally help you experience them.”

“How could I accept that!”

“You’re too polite. It’s only right, only right.”

“Brother, you and Brother Zhuiyuan are really too good to me. Something this precious, and you’d teach it to me just like that.”

“You’re the one trading your life for it.”

“Exactly. Things like these are precious enough to be worth trading your life for.”

“Hey, what I meant was, they’d be used on you.”

“You’re not only willing to teach me, you’re even willing to help me experience it firsthand as a demonstration?”

At last, Tan Wenbin couldn’t hold back anymore. He stood up, reached out to feel Lin Shuyou’s forehead, and muttered,

“The fever’s already gone down. Did he bang his head so hard yesterday that he damaged his brain?”

Tan Wenbin felt like Lin Shuyou was talking nonsense. Not because he was hard to communicate with, but because he was so easy to communicate with it felt unreal.

Brother Zhuiyuan treated him like a tool, yet somehow Lin Shuyou had practically written his own essay called The Self-Cultivation of a Tool and posted it on the dorm door to recite from memory.

In truth, Tan Wenbin had entered this world only recently, and from the moment he started, Li Zhuiyuan had been tossing books his way now and then.

Even now, the books sitting on his dorm desk, Strange Tales of the Rivers and Lakes and Chronicle of the Orthodox Demon-Suppressing Arts, if casually thrown outside, would drive people in the same line of work red-eyed and fighting like mad to snatch them.

Put simply, Tan Wenbin was suffering a bit from a “let them eat cake” mindset.

For sects and family lineages that had not been passed down for all that many years, just inheriting the traditions they already had was difficult enough. To go further and study, expand, and develop those traditions was harder still.

That required not only generations of a flourishing family and the accumulation of time, but also a genius suddenly appearing within the sect, someone who could completely master the existing inheritance in a very short time and then elevate the whole system further, raising its upper limit.

That kind of genius was truly far too rare.

Just look at the Yin Clan. A family passed down since the Eastern Han, for two thousand years, and they had produced only one Yin Changsheng.

Looked at from another angle, Yin Changsheng’s contribution alone had given his descendants two thousand years’ worth of old foundations to live off.

After Liu Yumei witnessed Li Zhuiyuan’s kind of talent, she had been willing to break every rule and let Li Zhuiyuan shoulder both the Qin Clan and the Liu Clan at once.

That was because the value of such a person was simply too great. Not even the Dragon King’s clan could resist the immense temptation of an inheritance producing another Yin Changsheng.

Li Zhuiyuan himself had possessed the book collection in Li Sanjiang’s basement from the moment he entered the field.

A year after entering, he had gone straight through the doors of the Qin Clan and the Liu Clan.

He himself had never noticed that these methods he had only improvised temporarily in order to make a tool function better meant something utterly different to other people.

In their eyes, those things were genuinely worth trading a life for.

It was like a newly established township enterprise producing a product that could be sent to a national-level laboratory for analysis, testing, and upgrading, pointing the way toward future development.

This was no longer a matter of how much someone was willing to pay. Under normal circumstances, it simply could never happen at all.

Lin Shuyou had just happened to run into the gap when Runsheng was absent from Li Zhuiyuan’s side.

Otherwise, his position with Li Zhuiyuan would have amounted to nothing more than an extra “door god” guarding the dorm room.

“Brother Binbin, I’m really fine. Please plead with Brother Zhuiyuan for me. As long as he’s willing to teach me, I’ll do anything. I can join you all and fight evil together in the future!”

“No, no, no!”

Tan Wenbin immediately waved his hands and said sternly,

“We’re good brothers in class, but outside the class, you’re you and we’re us.”

Don’t be fooled by how simple and honest Lin Shuyou seemed right now. The moment he put on the face, he became like a different person, cocky as hell.

Someone like that was fine to borrow now and then, but if he really hung around Brother Zhuiyuan all day long, Tan Wenbin honestly worried that one day Brother Zhuiyuan might just clean house and sink him in the river.

And when the time came, the one tying stones to the corpse to weigh it down would probably still be Tan Wenbin himself.

Mainly because the guy really was impossible to control. The times he was most obedient were exactly the times he was most useless.

“Brother...” Lin Shuyou swallowed. “Brother, if I bring these methods back home, my master and my grandpa would have to seat me in the place of honor at New Year’s Eve dinner!”

“That exaggerated?”

“They might even give me a page all to myself in the family genealogy.”

“Did you get a concussion?”

“I’m serious!”

“Fine, fine, I get it, I get it. You look like you’re in pretty good shape. Can you get out of bed and pee by yourself?”

“It’s fine, I can manage. I’ve already recovered a lot. This time my family also extended my—”

“Oh, right. This time the face pattern on your belly got restored, and your family extended your life again too. Do you think your family might come to Jinling right away to find you?”

“They probably... will.”

“I’m telling you in advance: if your family comes looking, you are not allowed to tell them anything about Brother Zhuiyuan. He hates trouble.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Then I’m heading out first. I’ll go pay your hospital fees for now. When you’re discharged, remember to get the refund.”

“Thanks, Brother.”

“When you count the money back, make sure you count it several times, and smile while you do it. Count happily.”

“Ah, okay, I got it.”

Tan Wenbin walked out of the room. The weather outside was gloomy now, and the wind had already picked up. Rain probably wasn’t far off.

He turned back and glanced once more at Lin Shuyou in the room.

Ever since Brother Zhuiyuan had made it clear that Lin Shuyou would not be brought into the team, Tan Wenbin had actually been deliberately controlling the boundaries of his feelings, not letting them spill over carelessly.

It was a besieged city.

Brother Zhuiyuan wanted to experiment with his emotions inside the team, hoping to find a way out, while Tan Wenbin was drawing his feelings back in from outside.

Because that night, when he had faced the three members of Zheng Haiyang’s family lying before him, the pain in his heart had been unbearable.

He did not want to suffer the same kind of pain a second time. If it was a teammate who spent every day beside him, then that was unavoidable. But for someone outside the team, as long as I don’t pour feelings into you, then if you die, you die.

Just like when he used to follow Grandpa Li to funeral banquets. Once you’ve seen enough death rites, you stop feeling so much about them.

Tan Wenbin had just prepaid the medical bill at the payment window when his pager at his waist suddenly started going beep beep... beep beep...

He took it out and looked. The number belonged to the shop.

Tan Wenbin immediately ran back to the school. Outside the shop, he saw a police car parked there.

Officer Xiao Zhou, standing beside it, waved at him.

There were a lot of people around the shop at the moment, so under everyone’s gaze, Tan Wenbin got into the police car and was taken away by the police.

The students immediately began whispering among themselves, guessing what exactly he had done.

Lu Yi, who was at the register, couldn’t help shouting loudly,

“That officer just said they only wanted my buddy to come to the station and help with some questions. I believe my buddy is definitely innocent!”

The moment Lu Yi said that, everyone became even more convinced that that classmate was really in trouble.

After arriving at the police station, Tan Wenbin first went to his own father’s office. He wasn’t a suspect to begin with, just there to go through the motions, so there were no restrictions on him.

“Oh my, Officer Tan, got yourself a new office? I’m so jealous of you, having such an outstanding son.”

Tan Yunlong set down his teacup and glared at the smug little delinquent standing in front of him.

And yet, he couldn’t refute it, because he really had benefited from his son.

They had only just held a celebration banquet yesterday, and already the date for the next one was being discussed.

Mainly because they had almost completely destroyed an entire child-trafficking ring. There were so many criminals, all scrambling to earn merit, afraid someone else might talk before they did, so a huge amount of information about trafficked children could be extracted from them, allowing many children kidnapped by that ring to be reunited with their biological parents.

This was truly a tremendous act of virtue. It probably wouldn’t be long before parents who had gotten their flesh and blood back would come to the station with their children, bearing banners of thanks and maybe even kneeling to recognize a godfather in gratitude. When that happened, the shutter buttons on the cameras of the publicity department would probably get pressed flat and refuse to spring back up.

But for Tan Yunlong, it was all a form of torment, because he knew very well that the one who had truly helped them was not him, yet he still had to sit here and receive all of it.

He had never been someone driven strongly by ambition. Otherwise, when he had been assigned down to the town police station, he would not have accepted it so gladly. And now, he was being forced to endure one round after another of moral self-torment.

“Close the door.”

Tan Wenbin immediately stepped back two paces and pointed at his father.

“Dad, I can close the door, but don’t go taking off your belt!”

Tan Yunlong said nothing.

“Dad, this is a police station. According to the Law on the Protection of Minors—”

“You’re an adult now.”

“According to the Public Security Administration Punishments Law—”

Tan Yunlong stood up and closed the office door himself.

“Dad, I advise you to stay calm. Calm. A new official takes office with three fires to light, but there’s no need to start by burning your own son. I think Officer Xiao Zhou is pretty decent.

That guy parked the police car right where foot traffic was highest and waved me over. Who knows what kind of charges the school’s probably pinned on me by now.

See? That kind of behavior from Officer Xiao Zhou really deserves criticism and education. It’s harmful to protecting the privacy and reputation of whistleblowers.”

At that, Tan Yunlong nearly laughed from anger. He walked straight toward Tan Wenbin.

Tan Wenbin struck a stance and said, “Dad, calm down. Your son actually knows martial arts now. If we spar and I really hurt you, that won’t be good.”

Tan Yunlong raised his hand and smacked him on the head.

Naturally, Tan Wenbin wasn’t really going to fight his own father, so he could only clutch his head and let his father swat him.

“How were your hands so sloppy this time? You rescue someone and they still find out your real name?”

Tan Yunlong had intended to describe his son as a whistleblower, but because of what Liangliang had said, he had instead become a direct rescuer in the story.

“Oh my god, Dad, this really isn’t my fault. Brother Zhuiyuan called me ‘Brother Binbin’ at the time, and that kid heard it.”

Smack! Smack!

“So you’ve grown capable now, have you? You screw something up yourself, and then you try to dump the blame on Zhuiyuan?”

“I...”

Tan Wenbin couldn’t defend himself. He truly remembered that at the time Brother Zhuiyuan had been drinking a can of Jianlibao and had said to him, “Brother Binbin, whatever makes you happy.”

And then that child had started calling him “Brother Binbin.”

“You didn’t do the job right, and now you don’t even want to take responsibility!”

Tan Wenbin was chased around the office, running in circles as he shouted in grievance, “Dad, who’s your real son here anyway?”

“I really would like to switch.”

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