“The dead are on the move, living folks, keep your distance!”
“Jingle, jingle.”
As torrential rain poured down, figures clad in straw raincoats trudged along a muddy road.
At the front, a man held a glass lantern with a brass cap in one hand and a copper bell in the other.
The brass cap kept the rain off, but also blocked some of the light.
The already dim glow grew even fainter.
Six figures bounced along behind him.
The group arrived at a rundown inn.
The place was pitch-black, with no lamps lit.
“Creak.”
“Old Yang, I left the guests behind the door. Couldn’t you fix this lousy thing?”
The man at the head of the group didn’t seem bothered by the darkness, but the broken door clearly annoyed him.
“I can barely feed myself. Why would I fix a door? This is your last trip, right?”
An old voice came from inside the dark inn.
“Yeah, it’s my last trip.”
The man at the head nodded.
“Ah, what a shame. With your Taoist skills, you ended up working as a corpse walker.”
At last, a faint yellow light appeared inside the dark inn. An old man held an oil lamp, shielding its flame with one hand from the wind blowing in through the doorway.
“With a face like mine, who wouldn’t be scared, apart from you?”
A flash of lightning lit up the rundown inn. The lower half of the man’s face looked as if it had been flayed, covered in pink scars. A row of yellow teeth, with no lips to conceal them, showed in the open air.
