Diary of a Spirit Devourer

Shen Zhuo is a zombie. But he has a license, runs a clinic, and specializes in internal medicine.

He takes no money for treating patients, only merit. Save a villain, and he punishes the villain's entire family; kill someone who deserves to die, and he deducts a charitable donation from the King of Hell's ledger. His merit keeps piling up, but the heavenly tribulation draws ever closer. In this world, merit is no ticket to absolution; it's a parasitic mark left by the Heavenly Dao. Every bit of virtue you accumulate lets the Heavenly Dao write you deeper into the System.

When his golden glow of merit rivals the Buddha's, the heavenly tribulation won't strike him with lightning. It will wear a white coat and gold-rimmed glasses, sit across from him, open his medical file, and say, "Dr. Shen, your treatment starts now."

Shen Zhuo's entire path of cultivation is about keeping up the rhythm of chewing while he is being digested. He seals diseased areas with silver needles, and uses them to seal karma, too; cleanses the merit of wild demons and adds corrupted data to the Celestial Court's records. The Church's inquisitors chase him for reports, the Thunder Bureau treats him as a vulnerability-testing tool, and the demon clan sees him as an illegal exchange counter. Everyone wants to define him: evil, heretic, System error, aberrant kin. He gives them only one answer: "I'm a doctor. A doctor's duty isn't to cure everyone. It's to let those who deserve to die do so with full understanding, and give those who shouldn't die a choice."

In the end, he writes himself a death certificate. Not mutual destruction, not ascending to immortality, but helping the heavenly tribulation die peacefully within him. From then on, the Celestial Court has no record of this corpse, the Church has no record of this person, and the demon clan's family tree has only an ink dot where his name should be.

At the end of an alley, the door opens at a clinic with no sign. An old woman asks, "Doctor, what's your name?"

"It doesn't matter. I'll still be here when you come back."