Acquaintance With Death

An unnamed forest on the border of the Southern Flower Province, south of the Celestial Coat of Arms Empire

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A cold corpse in blood, dirt and wounds slowly became visible in the depths of the forest along with daylight. It was the body of a skinny boy with half his body burned.

He was swinging on the branch of an old poplar tree with his painful eyes open to the end, depicting the torture he experienced before he died.

As the bone-freezing cold wind blew deep into the forest, the little boy's body began to slowly shake.

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A small village of simple earthen and wooden houses 5 kilometers east of the nameless forest began to wake up slowly with the light of day. But one old man was constantly turning in front of his house with a deep restlessness that covered him as the daylight illuminated his face full of wrinkles.

'Where are you, Lin! Don't you know that this old man is afraid that something will happen to you?" His beard was bleached, tears were flowing from Xi Xuan's eyes with his back tilted. Although he had been searching for days, he had not found his grandson Lin.

No matter how much he asked the people in the village and the village chief for help, they said they didn't want to bother exhausting themselves for a little boy and turned him down many times. In such a deserted village, no one would care if people got lost or died. Xi Xuan had no one to turn to for help, besides, his old feet were sore and bleeding non-stop.

After a while, old Xuan fell to the ground in front of his house. As he continued to cry, 'Gods, what sin have I committed that will anger you? Why do you want to take my only relative from me in this life?' she just cried there in pain without moving her heart.

At the same time, laughter was rising in a wooden house east of the village, 'Ahahaha Danny, that little brat deserved to die the moment he provoked you. At the time of his death, he was spitting bullshit that he was going to get back at us, stupid thing!' an ugly woman and a man continued to talk while eating their stale potatoes.

'This is just the beginning, the boy scratched my face with his nails before he died. I'm going to do worse to that old man to get back at him for this.' The man continued to gnaw his potato while souring his face in a vengeful mood.

'Hey, Danny, although the death of the little boy is not a sound, the village chief can investigate the matter if there are more than one deaths. It wouldn't be good for us to do anything for now, and the old man can't live much longer by himself. At best, he would have crawled to his death!" the woman showed that she was pleased with what she had done, forming an ugly smile on Jun face.

Such things were always the same, whether in deserted or prosperous lands.

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Deep in the forest, a mouse came towards the place where the little boy's body was. It was a blood rat, wherever there was blood, they would be there. The mouse with its small size and yellow teeth slowly came to the bottom of the corpse, moved itself to drink the blood dripping from the corpse and tasted it.

A black snake, which was hiding in the bushes at that time, jumped Decisively on top of him.

Although the blood rat wanted to escape, the snake bit him quickly as it jumped on him and wrapped its tail around him. While painful squeals were heard, the snake quickly and steadily strangled its prey, then threw it into its stomach to digest it.

Satisfied with its condition, the snake began to crawl towards its nest in order not to become the prey of other predators. At this time, some movements to the stomach caused the snake to be on its guard, it was sure that it had killed its prey, but there was something moving inside.

As the snake's eyes widened, two long claws reached out and cut a hole in its stomach, something resembling a blood rat was slowly dragged through the dying snake.

The blood mouse, which was a living dead one, had long fingernails, and two blood-red claws had become. His lifeless eyes were constantly spinning, his big ones and teeth were making shrill noises while his nails were growing like nails.

After his transformation was completed, an ancient voice echoed in the blood mouse's mind 'Swear!''

The new blood rat began to tremble, and he got up on both feet and bent his head to the ground just like a human being. Not far from the blood mouse, the open eyes of the corpse swinging from the old poplar tree began to move at once.

As the body opened its mouth to the end as if it wanted to scream, blood began to seep out of the soil under the poplar tree and climbed up the tree. The dense blood coming out of the ground reached the corpse from the branches of the tree and, step by step, braided it around, turning it into a cocoon.

After about a week, the cocoon began to narrow and tear, Lin, covered with a black layer, fell unconscious from the cocoon to the earthen floor.

Although his body had fully recovered, he was still skinny and his bones could be counted. Although the blood condensed from the soil restored his life essence, he could not fulfill more than that. A few hours later, Lin began to open his eyes with light moans and coughs.

'Where is this place?' he slowly straightened his head with a puzzled look and looked around, but as time went on, his face looked more and more surprised.

'I'm Xi Xuan, am I dead?' he tried to make sense of what was happening while looking at his hands and his thin legs lying on the floor, when, examining himself, he came across something familiar. He had a birthmark on his wrist.

'It's a birthmark!?' he quickly tried to touch and recognize her face, tampered with her hair, did not understand what was happening. This is a small body, a birthmark and lines that look familiar... 'Could it be my grandson's body..?" he began to think about what had happened while his heart ached.

The last time the earth had fallen to the ground in front of the house, because his house was close to the mountainside of the village, the villagers could not see him unless they came there specifically. She remembered that her eyes darkened after she had been on the floor for a while, and then she was here!

'How can something like this happen, and if this is Lin's body, this is his soul..." while he wanted to think about what had happened, his eyes started to live as if they were repeating the time before he died. He wanted to attack and hurt himself, but because it was his grandson's body, an endless feeling of hesitation filled him.

He didn't even have the courage to hurt himself in his current situation!

After being motionless on the ground for a long time, he raised his head up and looked up at the sky. With a serious expression on his face, he said, 'Can that story be real?' he murmured. In fact, his grandson Lin's soul had already migrated and his body had come back to life, but he was deprived of a soul.

The story that Xi Xuan also remembers is that centuries ago there was a terrible being who ruled over countless corpses in the Celestial Arma Empire, he was trapped and killed in the center of the southern provinces when many powerful imperial guards joined forces.

However, it was said that he left countless curses behind that being.

One of them was talking about solid corpses looking for souls, it had not even crossed Xi Xuan's mind that this story, which was told to scare children in normal times, could be true.

The old poplar tree and the surrounding land had been mysteriously filled with intense yin energy in the past, so there weren't many living things near it either. When a corpse was exposed to such yin energy, it would undergo some changes. That's what happened to Lin's body.

The corpse, repaired by Yin energy, had been affected by the curse that had been hidden in the old poplar tree and had swallowed the soul of the deceased elder Xi Xuan closest to there.

His face had turned pale as he thought of these things, and then he tried to calm himself and look around.

When he saw the rope on the tree and the drag marks on the ground, Xi Xuan's anguished feelings began to overflow. It seemed to him that it had occurred to him how his grandson had died. He didn't know who killed Lin, but he felt that that person was in the village.

He stood up, as the feeling of anguish slowly began to turn into a feeling of anger and revenge. As his eyes glistened blood-red, he shouted,

'I will avenge you, Lin!''

A husband and wife couple in the village felt a cold chill on their backs as they did their work in the field..