Chapter 142 The Living Dead

Qingli walked into the room and took a look. Sure enough, every single candle in the room was lit, and those candle flames were infused with spells, making anyone's head spin with dizziness.

"How can you two possibly play chess like this?" The two of them were sitting cross-legged on the couch; the moment she finished speaking, one of them leaned straight back. "I don't want to play chess, he's the one forcing this old man to play. I just wanted to bask in the sun, is that really so much to ask?"

"The sun?" Qingli looked at the blinding lights filling the room and suddenly understood what all this was for. Yet, she had no solution for it. "I made some pastries, have a taste."

Hearing the word "pastries," Old Master Xie immediately propped himself up from the couch, his white whiskers twitching with excitement.

"Delicious, delicious. Qingli, your culinary skills are getting better and better."

Qingli crossed her arms. "Of course."

Then she looked at Gu Chengwu, who had taken a single bite and stopped completely. "Prime Minister Gu, is this not to your liking?"

"Too sweet, I don't like it."

Xie Muyun bumped Gu Chengwu's arm. "Pst, pst, show some respect."

Qingli picked up a piece, took a bite, frowned, and stuck out her tongue. "It really is too sweet." Then she thought of Jiang Lan outside. "Oh no, there's another plate in the Young Master's room!"

Qingli hurried over to take the plate left beside Jiang Lan, only to find that of the ten or so pastries originally placed there, fewer than two or three remained. So sweet—Qingli couldn't help swallowing hard.

"Young Master, do you like this flavor?" Qingli asked.

Jiang Lan shook her head. "There's not much taste to it. Add more sugar next time. Also, has Sanmu returned yet? If he's not coming back soon, the few of us will start eating without him. We won't wait."

"So you were just hungry," Qingli muttered to herself. But with them being so sweet, how could the Young Master not feel anything at all?

Jiang Lan opened her mouth wide and stuck out her tongue.

Seeing Gu Chengwu's eyebrows knit tightly together, Jiang Lan asked, "Is it very serious?"

Gu Chengwu nodded. "Very serious, so serious that I can't find a single thing amiss with it."

Qingli, standing nearby, was extremely worried. "Then what should we do? The Young Master has lost her sense of taste; how will she ever enjoy the pastries I make in the future?"

Gu Chengwu packed up his medicine chest. "What you eat isn't important. I'm afraid this is a deep-seated ailment, and it's not just a problem with the tongue."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Lan formed a guess in her heart.

Then she said, "Prime Minister Gu, please wait. Could you trouble yourself to examine my arm as well?"

"Your arm?" Gu Chengwu rested his hand on his medicine chest. When he saw the slender, milky-white arm revealed as Jiang Lan rolled up her sleeve, he was momentarily stunned. Then, with a wave of his hand, the previously smooth arm seemed to have been savagely hacked into pieces by some sharp blade, with parts of the skin already horribly decayed, leaving only bone and flesh.

Qingli almost screamed out loud, and Old Man Xie beside them suddenly felt that the pastry in his mouth was no longer so delicious.

"What kind of symptom is this?" Xie Muyun asked Gu Chengwu, who was carefully observing the injuries.

After a long pause, Gu Chengwu looked at Jiang Lan. "The Young Master probably knows the cause of her own illness."

"She knows?" Xie Muyun and Qingli looked at Jiang Lan, only to see her nod.

"I know. I transgressed against the Dao," Jiang Lan said slowly, pulling down her sleeve.

Except for Gu Chengwu, who already knew the source of the ailment, everyone present was practically driven to apoplexy by Jiang Lan's casual tone.

"Young Master, that is the Dao itself! How could you provoke it?" Qingli spun around in frantic anxiety.

Meanwhile, Xie Muyun scrutinized Jiang Lan. "Could it be that you are a heinous and evil fiend?"

Jiang Lan narrowed her eyes, looked at Xie Muyun, and said solemnly, "If that were true, based on those words you just uttered, I could finish you off right now."

Frightened, Xie Muyun hid behind Gu Chengwu.

Gu Chengwu slapped away the hand that was ruffling his robes and said to Xie Muyun, "Would it kill you to talk less?"

Witnessing the dynamic between the two, Jiang Lan said with a hint of jealousy, "I originally intended to use Mr. Xie to keep this wild horse of a man in check, but who would have thought you'd end up protecting him."

"Who told him to be a greenhorn even as a ghost? A millennium-old spirit like me never bullies the weak."

Jiang Lan clapped her hands internally and thought, *That was a roundabout way of calling me a bully of the weak.*

"He's just a gluttonous ghost, don't pay him any mind. Prime Minister Gu, you are knowledgeable and experienced. Is there any way to undo the damage inflicted by the Dao?" Qingli asked anxiously. Beside them, Xie Muyun stroked his beard and protested, " Lass, who's a gluttonous ghost? I am a man of advanced years!"

Qingli glared at him. "I am hundreds of years old myself, out of everyone here you're the youngest."

Xie Muyun bristled and argued, "Isn't there Shanzi?"

"Hmph!" Qingli completely ignored him. At a time like this, instead of caring about the Young Master's health, he kept suspecting whether her master had done something heinous to incur the punishment of the Dao—it was utterly infuriating!

Clearly, it was the Young Master who had brought him out of the prison in the first place; otherwise, how could he have ever left that dungeon?

"You ungrateful ingrate biting the hand that feeds you! No matter what, the Young Master brought you out of the prison and even had me take good care of you both with fine food and wine. How can you be like this?!"

Xie Muyun straightened his posture. "His kindness to me, I naturally keep engraved in my heart. But that has no conflict with whether he committed evil deeds or whether I should condemn him. People have two sides; he could save me, yet he could also kill others. I cannot ignore the fact that he killed others simply because he saved me."

Jiang Lan nodded on the side. "What the Mr. says is correct, it makes sense."

"Young Master, how can you!"

Jiang Lan signaled for Qingli to remain calm, leaving Qingli with no choice but to turn back to Gu Chengwu to ask about the situation.

Gu Chengwu closed the lid of his medicine chest. "This symptom of hers is also known as being a 'living corpse.' There is no cure, unless she transforms from a living corpse into a truly dead person. In short—there's no saving her."

"What does 'living corpse' mean?" Qingli had never heard of such an illness.

Gu Chengwu looked at Jiang Lan, and seeing her nod, he explained, "A living corpse generally refers to those who have already died but still retain a breath of life. Some merely hang by a single thread of vitality, lying sickly in bed; others lack even that trace of life force yet move sluggishly. Someone like her is the first I've ever seen."

The more Qingli listened, the wider her eyes grew. "Does Prime Minister Gu mean that the Young Master is actually already dead?"

Gu Chengwu shook his head. "That explanation isn't entirely wrong, but it's not comprehensive either. I can only say that this body has already reached the end of its oil and withered, devoid of any vitality, yet she went against the natural order. The Dao sensed her abnormality and took the initiative to attack her. Since she was already a living corpse to begin with, her body began to rot day by day. Compounded by the punishment from the Dao, the rate of her physical decay has accelerated drastically."

"Then what about the Young Master's sense of taste?" Qingli asked.

"Judging by what I saw just now, her decay started from her left arm and gradually spread outward. Now it has already reached her tongue. The taste buds at the tip of her tongue first lost their sense of taste, and soon they will grow as stiff as stone, leaving her unable to swallow food until she starves to death."

Gu Chengwu looked at Jiang Lan, always feeling as though she already knew everything in her heart. Seeing her still maintaining that calm and breezy expression, he added one more remark, "From the current looks of it, her remaining days are not many."

Qingli grew frantic with worry. "What on earth are we to do then?! The Young Master is supposed to live a hundred years! She hasn't even married or had children, and she hasn't eaten enough of the pastries I make—the Young Master cannot be allowed to come to harm!"