Who You Are

Chapter 104 - Second Body Part

On the next morning, the two departed again, heading back to the Xinglu Ridge.

Yesterday, Nie Huaisang had been caught and confessed everything. Over the night, he called for all of the sect's reliable disciples to clean up the mess that the intruders created. When Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walked over, the piece of wall that Wei Wuxian dug Jin Ling out of had just been filled and a new corpse was already put inside. Watching the white bricks stack up neatly, he wiped some sweat off his brows. However, as he turned around, his legs almost gave out.

He pulled a cringing smile onto his face, "Hanguang Jun...and you..."

Wei Wuxian waved his hands as he grinned, "Sect Leader Nie, you're building the walls?"

Nie Huaisang wiped sweat away with his handkerchief, rubbing so many times that he almost took a layer of skin away, "Yes, yes..."

Wei Wuxian said in a voice filled with much empathy and a dash of timidity, "My apologies. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience, but you might need to build the wall again afterwards."

Nie Huaisang, "Yes, yes... What?! Wait!"

Before he could finish his sentence, Bichen unsheathed. Nie Huaisang gaped as he watched the brick wall, which he repaired mere moment ago, crack open again. Destruction was always easier than restoration. Wei Wuxian's speed at taking bricks down was countless times faster than their speed at stacking bricks. Nie Huaisang trembled as he tightly gripped his fan, feeling so wronged that he was on the verge of bursting into tears.

...

"Sorry, Nie-Xiong," Wei Wuxian told him.

"Oh, hehe, it's fine," He said.

"Clearly it was not," Wei Wuxian pointed out, "we could have compensated for it after."

"I know, I just didn't want to bother," Nie Huaisang told him.

Wei Wuxian looked at Lan Wangji, "his words, not mine."

"Mmm," Lan Wangji nodded.

...

Yet, since Hanguang Jun stood on the side and commented nothing, he didn't dare to say anything either.

After Lan Wangji explained the situation to him in a concise manner, he immediately swore to the Heavens and Earth, "Nonsense! That's utter nonsense! The corpses that our Saber Hall uses are all complete with each limb attached. It's impossible for there to be some armless male corpse. If you don't believe me, I'll take apart the wall with you and prove my innocence. But afterwards you must put them back as soon as possible, without any delay. After all, this is our ancestral burial ground..."

A few disciples of the Nie Sect also joined them. Now that there were other people doing the work, Wei Wuxian backed off and stood on the side, waiting for results. After an hour, the stone bricks on the wall that Jin Ling had been buried in were mostly taken off. Some disciples put on face masks while others swallowed special red-colored pills, so that the breathing and human energy didn't cause corpse transformations. Among the black dirt, an ashen hand or a vein-laced foot sometimes poked out, in addition to the tangled, grimey hair plastered everywhere. Each and every male corpse was hastily cleaned and set row-by-row on the ground.

The corpses came in all shapes and sizes—some were already skeletons, some were in the process of rotting, some were still quite fresh. However, every single one of them had a complete body. They didn't find any male corpse that was missing a left arm.

Nie Huaisang spoke warily, "Taking apart this one wall is enough, isn't it? Does any more need to be taken down? Probably not, right?"

It was indeed enough. The Curse Mark on Jin Ling's body was extremely dark in color, so the being that created it was most likely buried nearby him and the range would definitely not exceed this wall. Wei Wuxian squatted down by a row of corpses.