Chapter 101: Inheritance
During the day, the old house was peaceful, as if nothing had happened.
The human skin was strange, and Lu Jinzhao didn’t dare to casually discard it and let it run around, nor did she dare to carry it on her body. Throughout the entire day, she stayed almost entirely in the room observing this human skin.
When her gaze fell on this human skin, it was just a piece of dead matter.
But the moment Lu Jinzhao’s attention shifted, it began to stir.
Several times, when Lu Jinzhao deliberately looked away and pretended to be in deep sleep, upon opening her eyes again, she saw that this ghostly thing was still properly hanging on the wooden frame, yet its position had clearly shifted a little.
Even once, a corner of the skin had already fallen off the wooden frame. Lu Jinzhao didn’t need to think to know that if she ignored this ghostly thing a little longer, it might silently attach itself to her body again.
It seemed to have an unusually strong desire for people.
If it really stuck to her skin and replaced her original skin, what would happen?
Several thoughts flashed through Lu Jinzhao’s mind, but none of them ended well.
Night soon fell.
The group brought their respective air-dried human skins to the door of Master’s room. The first mission had been completed by all of them.
“Since everyone has completed the mission, shall we go in?” Zhong Sui looked at the others and, seeing no objections, reached out and pushed open the door.
As the door was pushed open, the smell coming from inside the room was somewhat different from yesterday.
The stench was heavier.
Master’s skinless flesh-and-blood body was rotting.
Entering the room, as expected, a letter was found in the corpse’s hand.
According to their deduction, today’s mission would probably be drawing, but when Zhong Sui took out the letter and read it aloud, her tone revealed some surprise.
“Today’s mission is… stripping away bones. By 12 a.m. tomorrow night, use the stripped bones to make suitable manipulation chopsticks.”
Human skin replacing beast skin, human bone replacing bamboo stick—would a shadow puppet made this way really not be a ghostly thing?
At the very least, taking such a shadow puppet out would definitely make it a supernatural item.
But the premise was that they had to survive to take it out.
“Then, tonight’s work is… stripping away bones.”
Dissecting a skinless rotting corpse to extract the bones and divide them into five portions.
“Why do I feel like what we’re doing… is very much like some kind of ritual?”
Zhong Sui murmured to herself, and after her words fell, no one else voiced any rebuttal.
After a moment of silence, Fu Xuesheng suddenly spoke up: “Who knows, maybe it’s some strange ritual meant to take our lives?”
Just looking at the layout of this house was already very strange.
Now, the position of the corpse, from a macro perspective, was right in the center, while their five people’s rooms were scattered in the five corners of the house. First night stripping away skin, second night stripping away bones—what about the third night?
Was this a trial, or some kind of sacrificial ritual?
“Everyone be careful.”
Danger was already imminent, but no one knew when it would descend.
Dissecting a human body to remove bones was naturally something only Ji Xiangchen could take the lead on, but fortunately, this time it wasn’t as fine as stripping away skin, so the others could help to some extent.
However, during the process of cutting open the flesh and blood to dig out the bones, everyone discovered something strange.
The flesh and blood and bones on this corpse didn’t seem firmly attached.
No, it couldn’t be called not firm—it was just like that layer of human skin, merely attached to the bones, not at all like it had naturally grown inside the human body.
It was as if something had fixed this flesh and blood onto the skeleton, and if unsatisfied, it could be swapped out at any time.
Lu Jinzhao felt a chill at this thought.
If this corpse was really the Master from her memory, was he really a normal person?
What was the purpose of him taking disciples, teaching skills, and setting trials?
Extracting the bones took much less time than stripping away skin, probably because they had all completed the mission, and no abnormalities appeared in the room aside from the corpse itself.
“The bone materials are sufficient…”
Compared to the skin, there were clearly extra parts of the bones.
“Let’s go back.”
After dividing the bones, the group clearly didn’t want to stay here any longer.
At this moment, this wooden table was completely unbearable to look at.
Rotting and decomposed flesh and blood covered the table, minced meat mixed with blood water making the entire tabletop extremely disgusting, with human internal organs exposed to the air, including intestines and fascia.
However, even though it was disgusting, Lu Jinzhao still glanced at the extracted intestines.
Very clean.
The stomach was the same.
It was as if the corpse hadn’t eaten for a long time before death, and its stomach was completely empty.
Or perhaps, this corpse had never needed to eat in life, without the physiological needs of a normal person?
The overly clean internal organs, the strange sense of separation between skin-flesh and bones—this corpse gave Lu Jinzhao an extremely strong sense of being “man-made,” almost like a living, three-dimensional shadow puppet.
Her hands were covered in blood from participating in the dismemberment, yet the white bone she held now was exceptionally clean, without a trace of any human tissue attached.
Blood smeared on the bone could be wiped off casually, leaving no trace.
No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t normal.
Carrying this thing on her person was too dangerous.
But she had to complete the mission—not only carry it with her, but also grind it into chopsticks.
The human skin was contained using tools from the workbench, and it didn’t cause any trouble along the way. But Lu Jinzhao felt a headache just thinking about how this thing would try to attach to human flesh the moment a person’s attention wandered.
Tonight, they had discussed with the other passengers to try not to sleep at night, and during the day, gather in the front hall, taking turns to rest under someone’s watch.
But they still had to complete their individual missions, so there would inevitably be times when they separated. If after separating, they failed to keep watch on this ghostly thing…
Lu Jinzhao looked at her wrist; that red mark showed no sign of fading, and even now, a light touch caused agony.
She had a premonition that perhaps, before this mission ended, her arm wouldn’t heal.
Back in the room, she placed the human skin in the most conspicuous spot on the tool bench, then Lu Jinzhao planned to start making the bone chopsticks.
“How am I supposed to work on this thing?”
She was somewhat troubled. The hardness of human bones, combined with the tools on the workbench, making them into bamboo-stick-sized chopsticks within one day was almost impossible.
After all, there were no modern cutting tools here!
And just hacking with an axe—how could she ensure it was chopped into chopsticks?
Grinding slowly would take even more time.
However, she thought of the unnatural air-drying speed of the human skin—perhaps these bones also had something unusual about them?
Thinking this, Lu Jinzhao picked up a rib and carefully observed it under the light.
