Chapter 18 The Resurrected

  Lan Chi pressed his hand against his head. The depletion of his mental energy left him dizzy and disoriented. "I can't take it anymore. I need to sleep. Little Hut, keep an eye on him for me." With that, he staggered to his feet and stumbled into the bedroom to sleep.

  "Got it," the hut replied. More vines extended from the floor, wrapping around the puppet.

  ...

  Nightshade Ashnar felt as if he had dreamed a very long dream. He dreamed of his parents, his brothers and sisters. He dreamed of the castle where he had grown up. He dreamed of heretics using his family members for blood sacrifices. He dreamed of fleeing, of eventually becoming an alchemist. He dreamed of taking his revenge. He dreamed of being slowly, piece by piece, turned into a puppet.

  Nightshade Ashnar opened his eyes and saw the restraints binding him. He lifted his head and looked around—an ordinary wooden room, though the walls were covered with glowing eyes. This was clearly a commoner's home. The living room had little furniture, only a hearth built into the fireplace, looking extremely simple. The nearby shelf, however, was hung with weapons—axes, iron picks, daggers, and bows all mixed together. In the corner, two strange creatures were snoring in their sleep, one topped with an axe, the other with a pickaxe—a truly bizarre sight.

  Where was this? Nightshade Ashnar's mind was chaos. He remembered that he should be dead, yet now he could feel his own heart beating powerfully in his chest. He clenched his fist—his nimble fingers conveyed a warm temperature, all telling him that this was not the state a dead person should have.

  He had been revived. Who had the power to resurrect him? Even those religious believers, if they wanted to resurrect someone, had to pay an enormous price to achieve it. Even if resurrected, that person would become a devoted follower of that god.

  Nightshade Ashnar did not feel any fervent devotion to anyone. He was still himself.

  "Oh, you're awake." A vine dropped down from the ceiling. The large eye on it blinked, dangling in front of Nightshade for a moment. Then the vine quickly moved away, came to a wooden door, pushed it open, and shouted: "Lan Chi, the puppet is awake."

  "Oh, got it." Lan Chi sat up, pressing his forehead. He felt like he hadn't slept long, and his head still hurt. He walked out of the bedroom, casually picked up a mutated wild fruit, and began eating it. As the fruit went down, his mental energy quickly recovered somewhat.

  Chewing as he walked, he squinted and carefully observed this "puppet." The skin was no longer that deathly waxy yellow, but instead showed a faint trace of color; those originally crimson eyes had also turned to a deep brown. There was no hollow emptiness of a dead thing in those eyes—instead, it seemed like... thinking. There was even an almost imperceptible rise and fall in the chest.

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  This guy had changed quite a bit.

  He noticed that the other party was also staring at him expressionlessly. Lan Chi walked over to the shelf, picked up an axe, then pulled out a chair in the living room and sat down at a distance. "Can you understand human speech?"

  Nightshade Ashnar stared expressionlessly at this young man with black hair and black eyes. The syllables that emerged from his lips were completely foreign. He frowned—he couldn't understand. This wasn't the continental common tongue, nor any noble language, alchemical code, or heretic prayer he knew.

  "Great, looks like I broke him?" Lan Chi muttered to himself.

  "Did you forget? He's a local. He doesn't speak your language?" The hut's large eye descended beside Lan Chi and asked.

  "Uh... right. I haven't learned the common tongue yet." Lan Chi glanced at the scroll lying on the table and said to the hut, "I'll learn it later. Let's deal with this guy first. Help me ask if he can understand."

  "Okay." The hut rattled off a string of words, but the other party still showed no reaction. "Looks like he really is broken."

  "No way? Try connecting mentally?" Lan Chi refused to give up. He communicated with his various mutated creatures using mental thought. "Hey, hey, can you hear me?"

  Still no reaction from the other side.

  "Great. Little Hut, this guy is really broken. Money wasted!" Lan Chi covered his face, as if he could see one hundred thousand Phosphorus Crystals turning into smoke.

  "What a pity, what a pity. I thought we had a powerful fighter," the hut lamented.

  Listening to this man and one eye discussing right in front of him whether he was "broken," "damaged," or "money wasted," Nightshade Ashnar's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them again, he finally spoke coldly: "I'm not broken. I can hear you."

  "Holy crap! It talks!" Two voices in unison.

  Nightshade looked at the person and the eyeball. "Can you untie these restraints?"

  Lan Chi and the hut exchanged glances. They frantically communicated through thought: "Should we untie him?"

  "I don't dare. I'm scared," the hut replied.

  "Damn, me too. Do you think he'll attack us?" Lan Chi thought.

  "Hey, I'm still here. I can hear you." Nightshade's voice rang out. Lan Chi and the hut awkwardly exchanged glances. "Fine. I won't attack you two."

  "Ahem. Little Hut, untie him." Lan Chi coughed awkwardly.

  The vines crawled off Nightshade's body and sank into the floor. Nightshade pulled off the seal strips on himself and looked down at his nearly naked body, covered in dust and dried blood stains, along with the tattered remnants of his pants. He looked up and asked, "Where's the bathroom? I want to wash up. Also, do you have any extra clothes?"

  Lan Chi looked at Nightshade in his torn pants and pointed to the wooden door beside the fireplace. "That's the bathroom. You can wash up in there. Little Hut will prepare some clothes for you."

  After Nightshade entered the bathroom, the hut spoke up: "That was so awkward."

  "Cough. Looks like we should do less mental chatting." Lan Chi walked to the table and opened the common language scroll. Following the instructions, he dripped his blood into the formation at the center of the scroll, then placed four Phosphorus Crystals at the formation's nodes. A white light flashed, the formation rose up, transformed into a tiny compass, and shot into Lan Chi's forehead.

  In an instant, countless foreign syllables, vocabulary, and grammatical rules flooded into his mind like a tidal wave. After a slight swelling pain, a wonderful sense of clarity spread through him. The formation dimmed.

  "That's it?" Lan Chi shook his somewhat dizzy head and uncertainly touched his forehead.

  "Try it out," the hut said. Then it switched to another language and asked, "Can you understand me now?"

  "Oh? I really can understand. And I can speak it too." Lan Chi marveled. "This scroll formation is really convenient."

  Just then, the sound of water in the bathroom stopped. The door handle turned, and Nightshade Ashnar emerged, wiping his wet hair.