Becoming a Fox Spirit from Under One Person.

In the gentle moonlight, only his voice remained.

"These past few days have really been a nightmare, dealing with corpses."

The fox followed for a while and discovered that the corpse driver's skills were truly remarkable.

Normally, being able to manipulate seven corpses is extremely rare, but this guy had a full twenty-four corpses strung together with straw ropes behind him.

The more walking corpses he commanded, the more tiring it became to transform the corpse energy with Qi. After traveling for a while along the mountain road, the corpse driver was panting heavily and leaned against a tree trunk to rest.

He glanced at the top of a camphor tree and laughed, "A friend who has attained Qi? The mountain road is long, come down and have a chat."

Once his presence was discovered, Chen Ruoan jumped down.

How did you find me?

The corpse-driver lifted the soul banner: "I know a little about corpse-driving and soul-controlling witchcraft. Are you tired? Would you like to rest inside my soul banner?"

With just a few words, the fox knew that the guy in front of him was a natural social butterfly.

Recalling Mr. Liu, who had conspired with the county magistrate in Hubei, Chen Ruoan introduced himself and inquired about the other party's school of thought.

The corpse driver chuckled: "Where else could it be but the Liu family of Xiangxi, Liu Zhixing?"

"Your corpse-driving lineage has recently become infamous."

Liu Zhixing blushed: "A bunch of bastards are causing trouble outside, it's really airing our dirty laundry in public. Damn it, using the corpse-driving technique for fighting and bullying, they're really disgracing our ancestors."

"Here you go." The corpse driver beckoned and took out half a meat pie from his bundle. "Want some? I broke it open. Don't be disgusted by me, I'm not dirty at all."

Chen Ruoan was looking for a place to rest, so she hopped over there.

A meat pie was offered to him, and the fox reciprocated with an egg.

"My abdomen is like a storage magic artifact, please don't dislike me."

"You're quite an interesting fox."

Liu Zhixing took the egg, peeled it, and put it in his mouth, gazing at the corpses strung together by the straw rope.

Chen Ruoan also glanced at it.

Liu Zhixing shook his head, recalling the merchants who had fled in terror: "How could such a romantic technique be spread as some kind of heretical practice? A group of people acted as if they had seen demons and monsters."

The fox felt like it was choking on the pancake.

"I can understand corpse-driving, but where does the romance in that come from?"

"Hehe, do you know what 'corpse driving' means?"

In Chen Ruoan's opinion, the corpse-driving school is a school destined to decline with the development of the times.

As far as I can remember, there was a girl named Liu Yanyan who appeared later. She was a rebellious and dim-witted young woman who was tricked into doing a lot of bad things like digging up graves and stealing corpses in order to join the "Quanxing".

The fox thought for a moment, then continued, "Everyone has their own expertise, and you must all have your own unique understanding."

"Mmm."

Liu Zhixing nodded, lay down comfortably on the ground, and started talking to himself, regardless of whether the fox wanted to listen or not. It seemed that he had been traveling for a long time and his only companion was his corpse. He was truly lonely.

He said that this practice of transporting corpses, also known as "spirit transport," is a type of corpse logistics. The original intention was to send the deceased's body back to their hometown for burial, allowing living relatives and friends to meet and say goodbye to the deceased, and then perform rituals to help them pass on to the afterlife.

The earliest corpse drivers were not very skilled in using Qi. They could only drive the dead who missed their homeland. They used Qi to temporarily seal the soul and used the soul-capturing bell as a guide to lead the corpse over mountains and across valleys back to its homeland.

In Liu Zhixing's understanding, the practice of transporting corpses was initially linked to the rural sentiment of "returning to one's roots".

He pointed to the corpses strung together with straw rope and asked, "Do you know where these guys came from?"

The fox shook its head, looking at the stitches on the corpses. There were knife wounds and gunshot wounds. Even if the origin was unknown, most of them were probably related to the battlefield.

“I’ve traveled to many places these days and seen all sorts of massacres and purges. The bodies of some farmers and soldiers were just left there to be displayed, or thrown into mass graves or drowned in rivers. Those left on the spot were eaten by wild animals and rotted into bones…”

"I buried what I could secretly."

“Some of my fellow villagers entrusted me to take them away, and I used various means to do so.”

Chen Ruoan looked up and saw that the corpses had wooden or bamboo slips hanging from their waists, engraved with their names and hometowns. They could be considered to have returned to their homeland.

"Now that you mention it, it's really quite romantic."

"Hehe, I knew it." Liu Zhixing chuckled. "After this job, I'm done. I'll go home, get married, and live a stable and peaceful life."

After these words, which sounded like a flag, the fox immediately became alert.

You can't say that.

"what happened?"

"It's nothing, I'm just tired and want to rest."

The loneliness of hiking in the mountains, the hardship of long journeys, and the danger of traversing post-war battlefields are all insignificant.

What Liu Zhixing found unacceptable was the expressions and reactions of his relatives and friends after he brought the body back.

"In a world of ghosts, how can there be an endless stream of corpses to be delivered?"

"Without corpses, your techniques would be lost."

"So what if it's gone? A trivial skill, if it could be exchanged for a few peaceful years, that would be a huge profit."

As Liu Zhixing spoke, he suddenly felt that his topic was getting a bit heavy, so he stopped going on to delve deeper. After talking for a long time, he still hadn't completely swallowed the egg in his mouth.

Chen Ruoan didn't mind listening more, but the atmosphere was somber that he gradually lost interest in speaking.

Corpse drivers travel at night and rest during the day, unlike foxes.

Chen Ruoan assumed that the Liu family member was a skilled and virtuous person, so he didn't pay much attention to him. He used wood element magic to weave a grass blanket, curled up under the tree, and planned to get through the clear night.

With nothing to do, Liu Zhixing simply stood up and stared at the fox as it slept.

Um--

Foxes, like dogs, sometimes wake up with all four legs tucked away, looking quite like they're dead.

"Tsk tsk tsk, what a terrible sleeping posture."

Liu Zhixing shook his head and sighed. From the bushes not far away came a series of rapid, heavy breathing.

Zhang Huaiyi's feet were covered in armor, and the lightning on his body had long since disappeared. He saw corpses strung together with straw ropes, as well as a fox kicking its limbs under a tree.

"Wait, it's a misunderstanding..."

Or did Senior Brother Chen die?

Stab it!

Just as the palm lightning was gathering its power, the fox's ears twitched.

Chapter 96 This is a blatant provocation against the fox.

Chen Ruoan was imprisoned twice by lightning, and coupled with his wild animal-like fear of thunder, he was particularly sensitive to even the slightest ripple of lightning.

The fox's ears perked up, and it opened its mouth to exhale a demonic wind that rustled through the forest. Zhang Huaiyi covered his eyes, extinguished the lightning in his palm, and looked at the small beast with its fur standing on end and its body hunched over at the foot of the tree.

"Senior Brother Chen, are you alright?"

Zhang Huaiyi asked, unaware that Liu Zhixing, standing to the side, was covering the Soul-Capturing Bell, also in a state of readiness to fight.

"acquaintance?"

"Then why did you exude a murderous aura?" Liu Zhixing tied the bell to his waist and let out a long sigh.

Chen Ruoan, who was just about to fall asleep, was disturbed and was wide awake, even more so than when she was traveling during the day.

"Zhang Huaiyi, weren't you going to the Shaanxi-Gansu area? Why did you end up in western Hunan?"

The big-eared thief thought to himself that perhaps he had been too blunt before, which angered his fox-like senior brother. This time, he would speak more tactfully.

“My senior brother said that he encountered many interesting things along the way with you. So I changed my route and wanted to travel with you for a while longer, maybe we would encounter something interesting.”

Zhang Huaiyi still doesn't understand that it's very difficult for a person to achieve success by relying on another person.

The big-eared thief chased them from Hubei to the border of western Hunan. Chen Ruoan couldn't refuse directly, so he asked him to cut some vines, weave them into a net, and hang it on the straw ropes tied between the zombies.

Liu Zhixing needed to travel at night, so the fox slept in the grass net. The walking corpse's steps were coordinated and steady, and the grass net, hanging in the middle, swayed but wasn't too uncomfortable.

According to Chen Ruoan, lying in the grass net felt similar to riding a green train, but it was more stable than in the carriage, with no harsh "clanging" noises and no passengers with poor manners.

Liu Zhixing simply stopped ringing the bell and stopped chanting the corpse-driving song he had made up.

He asked Zhang Huaiyi, "Are you a Taoist priest from Wudang Mountain?"

"It's Longhu Mountain."

Compared to the notorious reputation of those who relied on a few rebels to make their name as corpse drivers, Longhu Mountain is truly renowned within the circle.

"The Taoist priests of Zhengyi are quite far away. Why did you call him Senior Brother Fox?"

Liu Zhixing spent most of his time traveling to the post-war areas and knew very little about the affairs of the martial arts world. He was unaware of things like the Lu family's birthday banquet, the Sanyi reforms, and the interesting stories about the Taishan Xuanhu.

"That's a long story."

"The night is long, there's plenty of time to talk."

Liu Zhixing thought he had found a good travel companion, but Zhang Huaiyi was in a terrible situation. Not only was he struggling to keep up with the journey, but he also didn't have a chance to close his eyes. Now he was being pestered to tell stories.

There are two versions of the story about the fox.

After thinking for a moment, Zhang Huaiyi still told the version compiled by Chen Ruoan. It wasn't because the fox's words were more credible, but because Zhang Zhiwei's words were more exaggerated and unreliable. There was no way around it; Senior Brother Zhiwei had such a reputation in Longhu Mountain.

In the tranquil moonlit night in the mountains, the Taoist priest and the corpse-driver chatted idly. A fox lay among the straw ropes used to string the corpses together, swaying gently as they went. The fox was light and graceful, like a small boat on the water, carrying a boat full of peaceful dreams.

···

When Chen Ruoan woke up, the corpse-driving team had officially entered the territory of western Hunan.

The mountains and fields are lush and verdant, and many secluded caves are hidden among the forests and valleys. Occasionally, when you look into a cave, you can see rock pillars with condensed dew hanging on them. When the light shines through, the dew sparkles like starlight.

After Liu Zhixing returned the four corpses to their hometown, it was his turn to rest and catch up on sleep during the day.

Zhang Huaiyi, who was usually good at hiding his true feelings, found himself particularly compatible with Liu Zhixing, a person who was so open, honest, and without any pretense.

The two talked all night, and their relationship grew a little closer. When Liu Zhixing was catching up on sleep, Zhang Huaiyi simply sat cross-legged beside him, helping to keep an eye on the walking corpses hidden in the bushes, so that no unsuspecting passersby would be disturbed.

Chen Ruoan, alone with the fox, circled the cave hidden by grass and trees, occasionally glancing inside, but there was nothing inside except for the cool stone walls and some moss.

The fox turned and went to the mountainside, where an elderly couple was kneeling by the mountain path.