"Help, help...!"
Stein struggled desperately in pain and fear.
"Damn it!" Antonio and I cursed in unison. Despite our injuries, we immediately scrambled to our feet and lunged at the blood-covered zombie.
Antonio was the first to attack. He grabbed the zombie from behind and wrestled it to the ground. As the creature loosened its grip, Stein was flung free—though not before two bloody holes were left in his neck from the bite.
The blood-covered zombie was too powerful for Antonio to restrain for long. Within moments, it reversed the hold and lunged for his neck.
Antonio twisted his head from side to side, dodging just enough to keep the zombie from sinking its teeth in.
Seizing the opportunity, I leapt into the air behind the zombie and brought the blade down on its neck.
With a sickening thunk, the zombie's head tumbled to the ground, blood spraying in its wake. A stream of foul-smelling pus oozed from the severed neck.
The head rolled downhill with a few jerky twitches, while the body convulsed violently before collapsing, motionless at last.
We'd finally killed the blood-covered zombie. It hadn't been easy—but this time, it was truly dead. Once decapitated, it wouldn't be coming back.
"Antonio, are you okay?" I asked urgently.
Clutching his chest, he shook his head firmly and insisted he was fine, urging me to check on Stein instead.
I dropped the knife and rushed over. Stein lay unconscious, his face ghostly pale, lips tinged purple, and two puncture wounds darkening on his neck.
Shit. He'd been bitten by the blood-covered zombie. Even if he survived, he'd turn into a jiangshi. We had to treat him immediately.
Dreaming Nun pressed two fingers to Stein's neck and assessed the wound. "The corpse poison isn't too severe yet," she said. "There's still time. We must hurry back to the nunnery and apply glutinous rice."
Without wasting another second, I hoisted Stein onto my back and started downhill. Dreaming Nun supported him from behind, her voice heavy with guilt. "If he hadn't tried to save me," she murmured, "this wouldn't have happened."
"What's the point in saying that now?" I grunted. "If you're truly sorry, marry him as your husband once he recovers."
To my surprise, Stein suddenly jerked awake at those words. "Wife?!" he shouted, bizarrely energetic. "Where?! Wife!"
Just as quickly, his eyes rolled back, and he passed out again.
Dreaming Nun sighed. "Amitabha," she chided. "Don't make such jokes. I'm a monastic."
I had hoped to help Stein secure a wife—after all, he'd risked his life. But it seemed Dreaming Nun was truly devoted, unwilling to forsake her Buddhist vows.
Just then, Antonio caught up from behind, still clutching the knife, his face pale with terror.
The moment I saw his expression, my heart leapt into my throat. "Don't tell me the blood-covered zombie resurrected?" I asked.
Antonio shook his head. "No—but there's another one back there."
"Another one?" My breath caught. "Please don't say it's another blood-covered zombie."
"No," Antonio said. "Not a zombie. A ghost. I saw a woman hanging from a tree—her feet swaying, her hands combing through her hair. She looked right at me... and smiled."
Wasn't that Kongqing—the ghost Dreaming Nun had mentioned? That was how she'd died: hanging herself from a tree atop the mountain.
"Bullshit," I snapped. "There isn't a single tree up there. Where the hell did you see a hanged woman?"
Antonio swallowed hard. "That's what's so wrong about it. Just like Stein said—Kongqing's body and yin-yang souls split apart. Her corpse became the blood-covered zombie, and her lingering spirit... must have turned into something far worse. Thank Buddha her ghost didn't attack us earlier, or we'd all be dead."
Dreaming Nun gritted her teeth. "If Arturo's family truly desecrated my senior uncle like this... I swear they'll pay. To torment the dead like this—do they really think Buddhists are so easily bullied?"
With Stein's condition worsening, we hurried down the mountain. It took nearly forty minutes to reach the nunnery, slipping back through the dog-hole entrance and into the woodshed. Dreaming Nun rushed to the kitchen to fetch glutinous rice.
Once she left, I tried rousing Stein. The first two attempts failed. On the third, he jolted awake—but his movements were frenzied, his body trembling violently. Classic corpse-poison symptoms.
When Antonio turned on his phone's flashlight, the full severity became clear: Stein's lips had darkened to a sickly purple, his already pale skin now corpse-gray, fingernails blackening—though, thankfully, not yet lengthening.
"Stein, how are you holding up?" I asked.
Antonio cut in grimly, "Listen, if you turn... I'll make it quick. I know you wouldn't want to hurt anyone."
"Bastard," Stein wheezed. "If I turn, you're my first bite."
His ability to curse coherently was a good sign—for now. But the poison would keep spreading. Once it reached his brain, he'd become a jiangshi. Once it reached his heart... there'd be no saving him. All we could do was pray Dreaming Nun found the rice in time.
Antonio managed a nervous smile after being yelled at, relieved that Stein was still coherent for now.
But Stein didn't remain lying down. He forced himself upright and said solemnly, "Since entering this profession, I've anticipated this day might come. Whether I live or die, I have no regrets. But while I'm still clear-headed, I need to explain the nunnery situation to you both - in case I do turn into a jiangshi, you'll understand how to handle things."
Stein explained that after Kongqing's death, someone must have performed dark magic on her corpse, transforming it into a blood-covered zombie. But why was the trigger condition opening the coffin?
The answer was simple: the coffin contained secrets. Someone feared these secrets might be discovered, so they cast dark magic ensuring anyone who opened the coffin would face the blood-covered zombie.
"Whoever opens the coffin must die!" Stein emphasized.
But what exactly was the secret? We'd examined the coffin thoroughly, and the only suspicious element was the snake that triggered the zombie transformation. Yet this alone didn't seem important enough to warrant such elaborate dark magic arrangements.
Beyond the snake, the coffin contained nothing unusual - just the wooden box and the corpse itself. Stein had inspected the coffin construction and found nothing supernatural about its design, leaving only the body itself as the focus.
"This means someone didn't want us seeing the body," Stein deduced. "That's why they ensured coffin-openers would die!"
But why? What could be so revealing about a corpse?
Stein had pondered this extensively but couldn't determine what secrets a body might hold. Even an undecomposed corpse wouldn't be particularly noteworthy.
After careful consideration, only one possibility remained: "The woman in that coffin wasn't Kongqing at all!"
If this was Kongqing's tomb but contained someone else's body, naturally the perpetrators would need to hide this fact. They couldn't risk anyone opening the coffin and seeing the truth - that the body inside wasn't Kongqing!