Chapter 182: The Old Man’s Final Gift
By the time everyone woke up and came downstairs, Ao She had already dressed the old man in burial clothes, placed him into the coffin, and even nailed the lid shut.
“My father and I both knew this day would come, so he had me start preparing the coffin two months ago,” Ao She said. His expression looked no different from yesterday when he was catching, killing, and cooking the duck. His complexion was dark, making it hard to tell whether his eyes were red, but on closer inspection, the whites of his eyes were laced with fine, dense blood vessels.
“There’s breakfast inside. You all should go eat.”
Xie Chongyi asked, “Are you planning a burial?”
Ao She wiped the coffin with a rag. “Here, we only do burials. My father also instructed that it must be a burial.”
“And you can carry this coffin by yourself?” Lin Mengzhi stepped forward, rolling up his sleeves as he did. “I’ll help you lift it.”
“No need for your help,” Ao She refused bluntly.
Just as everyone thought he was about to carry his father’s coffin alone, his gaze shifted toward Wu Heng. After looking at Wu Heng, he also noticed Ying Liuquan and Shen Ping’an. “You three, come help me carry it.”
Although the three who were called looked puzzled, considering the old man’s identity as a prophet, it wasn’t entirely incomprehensible for him to have left behind some strange instructions. They stepped forward, and under Ao She’s guidance, bent down to shoulder the wooden beams placed beneath the coffin.
This weight was nothing for people with special abilities. The burial site was just behind the house, and the pit had been dug very deep. They tied the coffin with ropes, lowered it down step by step, then pulled the ropes back up and filled the pit with earth.
Wu Heng took off his coat and stuffed it into Xie Chongyi’s hands.
“Does it have to be them?” Xie Chongyi frowned slightly as he held Wu Heng’s coat. “Wouldn’t Xue Shen work?”
Xue Shen looked at Xie Chongyi with a confused expression.
Ao She didn’t answer—that was answer enough.
Wu Heng showed no sign of reluctance. He walked over to stand beside Ao She, rolled up his sleeves, and crouched down beneath the exposed wooden beam.
Ao She glanced back at the two behind him—both were ready. He then looked toward the drizzly doorway and shouted in a low voice, “Lift!!!”
The prepared wooden beams had just raised the coffin slightly off the ground when one corner suddenly sank. The entire coffin crashed back down with a loud bang.
Ying Liuquan’s thin, stick-like back was bent as he trembled on the ground, drenched in sweat, his face full of apology and embarrassment. “Sorry… it’s heavier than it looks.”
“How heavy could it be, teacher, you—” Dou Lu had only gotten halfway through her sentence when she noticed that beside Ying Liuquan, Shen Ping’an was sweating just as much. “It’s really that heavy?”
A frail old man and a coffin—normally, for people with special abilities, it should be as easy as lifting with a single finger.
“I’ll try.” Lin Mengzhi pushed Ying Liuquan aside and crouched down to shoulder it. Even though he was mentally prepared, the moment that terrifying weight pressed down on his shoulders, his expression changed. “Pff—”
Ruan Silian subtly took a step back.
Lin Mengzhi didn’t care at all. He hunched over and crawled out, clapping his hands. “Damn, it almost squeezed a fart out of me! This thing is insanely heavy!”
“Ao She, did you put rocks inside?!” Xue Qi leaned against Xue Shen’s shoulder.
“No.” Ao She couldn’t explain their confusion either. “When I carried my father into the coffin, I already felt the weight was off—it was much heavier than it looked. But now… it’s much heavier than it was just a few hours ago.”
Xie Chongyi looked at Wu Heng, who even had a light sheen of sweat forming on the tip of his nose. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Try again.”
The four of them got back under the beams and strained to lift the coffin. This time, even Ao She let out a muffled groan as the pressure hit him, his neck instantly flushing red.
“It’s even heavier than before!” Ying Liuquan wailed, throwing his head back, his whole body trembling like a willow branch swaying in the wind.
Xie Chongyi moved closer to Wu Heng and reached a hand under the coffin, trying to lift it slightly. The weight was indeed beyond imagination—it was no wonder Ying Liuquan had been crushed straight to the ground.
“Hurry up. It’ll only get heavier.”
One of Wu Heng’s shoulders was in excruciating pain, as if the bone were being sawn apart alive. At this point, even switching to the other shoulder was impossible—he simply couldn’t lift the weight off himself.
He forced his consciousness to detach from his body, handing control over completely. Otherwise, he felt like he might burst into tears.
Compared to the other three, the boy was actually holding up better. At least his legs weren’t slipping or trembling; every step he took was steady.
Teacher Ying looked utterly miserable, even starting to mutter to himself. Lin Mengzhi shouted at him to stop talking—once this person mentally collapsed, it could drag everyone else down with him.
The four of them struggled immensely to carry the coffin. After what felt like forever, they finally reached the burial pit that had been dug in advance. Ying Liuquan immediately collapsed onto the ground without a care, while Wu Heng, slightly better off than the others, carefully lowered the weight from his shoulder.
Standing to the side, finally unburdened, a gust of wind cut through him, sending a chill down Wu Heng’s back. Only then did he realize his clothes were already soaked through with sweat—he had never been this exhausted, not even after a full battle.
Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder.
Xie Chongyi lowered his head and lifted the fabric at Wu Heng’s shoulder. The cloth there had already been soaked through with blood.
If that old man hadn’t specifically named Wu Heng to carry the coffin, no one would’ve let him do this kind of heavy work—though to be fair, Wu Heng himself probably wouldn’t have volunteered either.
“It’s fine,” Wu Heng said, taking his coat back and putting it on. “It’ll heal on its own soon enough.”
Without even pausing to catch his breath, Ao She gripped a shovel and channeled a steady stream of energy through the wooden handle into the ground. In an instant, the deep pit containing the coffin was filled and packed solid with earth, looking as if it had never been dug at all.
Only at this moment did everyone realize—Ao She was also an ability user.
After burying the coffin, Ao She took out a stack of joss paper and candles from the windowsill behind him—no one knew when he had prepared them. There was also a lighter underneath. He dropped to his knees directly onto the muddy ground, first placing the candles on either side of the grave. When he tried to light the wicks with the lighter, he failed several times. Lifting it to check, he realized it had already run out of fuel.
“I’ll help you.” Lin Mengzhi raised his hand, and both candles ignited at once.
Ao She glanced at him. “Thank you.” Using the candle flames, he burned through all the bundles of joss paper.
In the apocalypse, death was nothing unusual. The streets full of zombies and corpses had gradually numbed humanity to it. Yet when such a crude, almost disrespectfully simple funeral appeared before them again, several people found tears falling from their eyes before they were even aware of it—any death, no matter how insignificant, was a small extinction. One person, just like that, truly disappeared from this world.
—
Before leaving, Wu Heng brought out Doctor Chen to treat the injuries of those who had carried the coffin. Although he could heal them himself, he didn’t want Doctor Chen’s professional skills to go to waste.
By the time Doctor Chen appeared, everyone else was already used to it. At most, they greeted him casually, like, “Doctor Chen, where have you been making your fortune lately?”
Even Ao She wasn’t startled—he merely tensed up instantly, entering a defensive stance. But after Lin Mengzhi and Xue Qi explained things to him, he suddenly paused. “Doctor? To die for one’s country.”
Doctor Chen burst into laughter. You could even see how the exposed bones of his jaw moved as he spoke. “Saving lives and serving the country—that has indeed been my lifelong aspiration.”
“No,” Ao She shook his head. “Those five words were left for you by my father. He told me last night there was still one person he hadn’t met.”
Doctor Chen flicked his sleeves. “Not bad. It seems I’ve fulfilled my lifelong wish.”
Lin Mengzhi gave him a thumbs-up. “Doctor, you’ve got such a great mindset.”
“Well, I’m already a dead man—what’s there to feel good or bad about?” Doctor Chen said with a self-deprecating smile. “Come on, the injured, step forward. Let me take a look.”
While everyone else gathered around Doctor Chen and Ao She, discussing the strange occurrence just now, Wu Heng stood quietly outside by the door. He took off his coat and hung it on a nail on the pillar, then unbuttoned two buttons of his shirt, exposing one shoulder. The bloodstains were still there, but the wound itself had already disappeared.
He used a damp cloth in his hand to wipe away the darkened blood on his skin. After wiping for a while, his movements slowed, then stopped. After a moment, he undid two more buttons.
On the left side of his chest, several black-and-gold thread-like lines coiled across his skin. They intertwined with each other, some forming shapes resembling a shield.
Wu Heng rubbed at them forcefully with the cloth, but they wouldn’t come off.
At that moment, Xie Chongyi came out. “What’s wrong?”
Wu Heng hurriedly pulled his clothes back together, not even having time to fasten the buttons. “Nothing.”
Xie Chongyi had already stepped in front of him. Without a word, he pulled away the hand Wu Heng was using to hold his shirt closed and yanked it open, fully exposing what he had been trying to hide.
“What is this?” Xie Chongyi reached out, his fingertip brushing lightly across Wu Heng’s chest. There was no raised texture—the lines seemed embedded into the skin. “Was this there before?”
At the touch, half of Wu Heng’s body went weak for a moment. Leaning against the pillar, he lowered his head and began fastening his buttons.
“I don’t know if it was there before. Does the class monitor know?” he said softly, his eyes lowered. His eyelashes were so long they almost made it look like his eyes were closed, his voice low and murmuring—almost like a tease.
Xie Chongyi was momentarily stunned before realizing what Wu Heng was talking about. The seriousness in his expression shifted into something teasing; tilting his head, he bit down hard on the cheek in front of him. “You brought this on yourself, ge.”
Wu Heng wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he felt that Xie Chongyi seemed to enjoy biting and pinching him—whether it was some innate tendency to be a bit rough with things he liked, or something to do with his brain being affected by the insects, making him want to gnaw at whatever he held.
But he was already somewhat used to it, so he didn’t bother touching the bite mark on his face. Instead, he continued the earlier topic, “If Teacher Ying and Ping’an have it too, then it should be something the old man left for us. We just don’t know yet whether it’s good or bad.”
Xie Chongyi, however, couldn’t put on a serious face anymore. After Wu Heng finished speaking, he pressed the tip of his nose against Wu Heng’s, smiling, and said slowly, “Come on, repeat after me—Shen. Ping. An. Put together: Shen Ping’an.”
