chsdbacks Chapter 21 The Graveyard
Chapter 21 The Graveyard
At the end of the path was a cemetery nestled against a low hillside.
The cold moonlight spilled across this desolate land. Dozens of mounds of varying sizes were scattered haphazardly; some bore simple tombstones with faded inscriptions, while others were merely raised mounds of yellow earth, long since covered by weeds. A night wind rustled the waist-high withered grass, like whispers. Several crooked old locust trees stood menacingly at the edge, a few black crows perched on their bare branches, their reddish-brown eyes reflecting a faint light in the darkness, motionless like sculptures.
The air was filled with an earthy smell and a faint, almost imperceptible odor of decay.
Nie Lingfeng subconsciously gripped the Qiankun bag in his sleeve; with a thought, the Snow Drinking Blade could instantly appear in his hand.
"There." Xu San's voice was extremely low, almost a whisper. He didn't shine the flashlight beam directly, but instead used the moonlight to make a suggestive sweep towards a certain area deep in the graveyard.
Nie Lingfeng stared intently in the direction he indicated.
Then, he saw that figure.
A figure dressed in old, mud-stained work clothes, their original color long since obscured, squatted before a grave mound that had clearly been recently dug up. Long, black hair hung loosely, swaying gently in the night breeze. She—or rather, "it"—held an ordinary farm shovel, digging frantically with an almost mechanical, yet strangely rhythmic, frequency and force.
The movements were both concise and efficient to the extreme: the shovel plunged vertically into the soil, the left foot stepped on the top edge of the shovel, the entire body weight pressed down, and with a twist and a pry of the wrist, a large clump of hardened soil was easily lifted. Then, with a swing of the arm, the soil, as if its trajectory had been precisely calculated, traced an arc and landed steadily on the mound of earth behind him. The entire process was devoid of any superfluous movements, so fast that it almost left a faint afterimage in the moonlight. The continuous "rustling" sound of the soil being thrown out was exceptionally clear in the silent cemetery, even possessing a hypnotic rhythm.
Nie Lingfeng's eye twitched slightly as he watched.
This efficiency, this intensity, this focus... It's a real loss to the industry if they don't go into civil engineering or archaeological site work.
"That's Bao Bao." Xu San's voice rang out from the side, with a tone of habitual yet helpless, "She... when she digs up graves, she's always so... absorbed and focused."
The two did not approach rashly. Instead, using the cover of several weathered tombstones and overgrown weeds at the edge of the cemetery, they silently crouched behind a dead old locust tree about twenty meters away from the grave. From this angle, in the cold moonlight, they could see the gravedigger's profile more clearly—
Even with mud splattered on her face and disheveled hair, her exquisitely refined features couldn't be concealed. Her skin was a translucent white, long deprived of sunlight, gleaming with a cold, porcelain-like sheen under the moonlight. Most striking were her eyes—large, with clear black and white, yet their gaze… was eerily empty. It wasn't bewilderment, nor ignorance, but a deeper, unsettling emptiness, as if nothing was reflected within them, like two bottomless ancient wells.
Feng Baobao.
Feng Baobao is a living, breathing person diligently digging up someone's ancestral grave.
Nie Lingfeng's heart skipped a beat. After ten years of arduous cultivation, this was the first time he had ever seen one of the "original protagonists" of this world. The feeling was incredibly strange, as if the black-and-white comic he had followed for years had suddenly transformed into a full-color, high-definition VR experience. The character had stepped out of the two-dimensional plane and into three-dimensional reality without warning, carrying the scent of earth and the cold glint of a shovel.
As he was immersed in this peculiar experience, his keen hearing suddenly picked up on an extremely faint rustling sound of clothing rubbing against each other, along with extremely suppressed breathing, coming from another patch of dense grass nearby.
Nie Lingfeng tilted his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over the area like lightning.
Not far away, in the overgrown weeds, a young man dressed in a dark blue tracksuit and wearing black-rimmed glasses, who looked quite ordinary, was lying there in an extremely awkward position. His eyes, through the lenses, were fixed on the figure wielding a shovel swiftly twenty meters away. His eyes were filled with disbelief and shock, as well as the raging anger that had risen after his ancestral graves were offended.
Zhang Chulan.
Nie Lingfeng recognized him almost instantly—those signature black-rimmed glasses, an attempt to add a touch of "scholarly air," that ordinary tracksuit so plain you'd disappear into a university cafeteria, and that carefully crafted aura of "just a curious college student passing by." Of course, there was also the faint, almost imperceptible fluctuation of "Qi" emanating from him, though painstakingly concealed, yet still as clear as a flickering candlelight in the darkness to someone like Nie Lingfeng, whose perception had been tempered by both the *Ice Heart Manual* and the *Mysterious Martial True Scripture*.
"Shameless..." Nie Lingfeng thought to himself, "This acting, this disguise, it's definitely innate. If I couldn't 'see' your Qi, I would have been fooled by your 'weak, pitiful, and helpless' appearance."
Just then, Feng Baobao, who had been working diligently, suddenly stopped without warning.
She raised her head, not looking at the old locust tree where Xu San and Nie Lingfeng were hiding, nor at the bushes where Zhang Chulan was hiding. Instead, like some kind of keen wild animal, her small nostrils twitched slightly, as if she were capturing some invisible and intangible information in the air.
Then, she slowly turned her head, and her empty eyes locked onto the patch of grass where Zhang Chulan was hiding.
Zhang Chulan, who was hiding in the bushes, froze instantly, even his breathing stopped.
The next second, Feng Baobao moved.
It wasn't running, it wasn't jumping; it was a more bizarre and swift way of moving—as if the ground beneath her feet had suddenly lost its friction, or as if she herself had transformed into a shadowless entity, "gliding" across the ground! The twenty-meter distance seemed to be erased from everyone's sight, leaving only a faint, almost imperceptible black trail!
In the blink of an eye, she appeared in front of the bushes, looking down at Zhang Chulan, who was still in a prone position, his face frozen between fear and confusion.
A short, unintelligible syllable escaped Zhang Chulan's throat, before he could form a complete sentence or make any response—
Feng Baobao had already swung the mud-covered shovel in her hand!
There was no shouting, no gathering of energy, just a simple yet powerful horizontal swing!
Snapped--! ! !
A dull, teeth-grinding bang exploded in the silent graveyard!
The broad blade of the shovel struck Zhang Chulan's face squarely and without any embellishment! The immense force prevented him from even letting out a scream; he was launched into the air like a baseball, tracing a slightly spinning parabola before—
Pfft!
Without veering off course, he plunged headfirst into the grave that Feng Baobao had just dug, which still smelled of fresh earth, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Nie Lingfeng: "..." Although he was mentally prepared, seeing this "Bao'er-style greeting" in person was still quite a shock. The force, the accuracy, no wonder she's a professional at digging pits.
Xu San: "..." He silently raised his hand, pushed up his glasses, and pressed his temples with his other hand, as if he had a headache.
"Cough cough...Ptooey! Ptooey!" The sound of Zhang Chulan coughing violently and spitting came from the grave, accompanied by painful groans. "Who is it?! Are you kidding me?! Why did you hit me?! And what right do you have to dig up my grandfather's grave?! Do you know that's illegal?!"
Ignoring his questioning, Feng Baobao squatted down, rested her hands on her knees, tilted her head, and carefully examined the dusty-faced young man with his glasses askr in the pit with her large, empty eyes. She asked in her distinctive, thickly Sichuan-accented, yet unusually flat, Mandarin, "Your grandfather? Zhang Xilin is your grandfather?"
"Nonsense!" Zhang Chulan struggled to climb out of the pit, but the walls were slippery, and he slipped back down several times, looking rather disheveled. However, the anger in his voice remained undiminished. "Who are you? Why did you dig up my grandfather's grave! Do you know you'll be punished for this?!"
Feng Baobao still didn't answer his question. She suddenly raised her head again, this time not sniffling, but listening intently. At the same time, for the first time, a very faint emotional fluctuation, similar to "warning," flashed in her empty eyes.