I am already dead.

Can human skin be gray? Xu Buhuo’s was. From the neck up he looked normal, but beneath the collar, where his shirt covered, his skin was entirely gray. That wasn’t all: intricate black lines, like a tangled web, crisscrossed his body. I knew these weren’t painted on. They were capillaries under the skin—degraded, necrotic veins dying beneath the surface.

“These are all old wounds,” declared Cao Guangshan after his examination.

Learning that these ghastly injuries weren’t the result of last night’s fight with Old Master Qin brought me some relief. Staring at the necrotic skin and veins, I could barely imagine what Xu Buhuo had been through for his body to deteriorate so terribly. What unsettled me even more was that, in all the times I’d interacted with him before, I’d never noticed anything amiss. Though I’d never experienced it myself, I could easily imagine Xu Buhuo suffering constant pain from the necrosis in his tissues—pain he never once revealed in front of me.

Only now did I understand why, even in summer, he would sit outside basking in the sun as if he didn’t feel the heat at all. Sunlight increases a person’s vital energy, or “yang.” My grandmother, who’d spent years working with the supernatural, often accumulated so much “yin” that even in summer she felt cold. Xu Buhuo’s sunbathing was clearly a kind of therapy, using sunlight to suppress the illness spreading through his body.

He coughed—dry, hacking. After cleaning his wounds, Xu Buhuo’s eyelids fluttered open, his gaze weak. I immediately apologized, admitting I’d wrongly accused him because of hallucinations.

He waved me off, signaling for me to wait. After a few sips of water and some steady breathing, the pallor in his face faded a little.

“Fetch the purple incense from my cloth bag,” he said, his voice faint, as if speaking a single sentence drained him. I didn’t know what he intended but did as he asked, lighting the purple stick of incense I found in his bag.

Curious about what he would do, I watched as Xu Buhuo brought the glowing tip to his nose and inhaled the blue smoke deeply.

The sight stunned me. I didn’t know what ingredients the purple incense was made from, but the moment it burned, a nauseating, putrid stench filled the air—like rotting pork, sharp and eye-watering. Instinctively, I held my breath, unable to stand the smell. Yet Xu Buhuo inhaled deeply, letting as much of the acrid smoke as possible fill his lungs.

It was clearly agonizing. His whole body shook with the effort. I instinctively bent to snatch away the incense, but one look from him froze me in place. The purple incense burned quickly; the rest of us watched in silence as Xu Buhuo inhaled every last wisp of smoke.

When it was gone, he lay back, eyes closed, fists clenched, his cheeks twitching, his whole body trembling. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. I could only guess at the intensity of his pain—it was bad enough that he cried out, his body writhing in agony.

We wanted to help, but didn’t know how.

At last the pain seemed to ebb. Xu Buhuo gradually quieted, his clothes soaked in sweat. When he opened his eyes and exhaled a long breath, the pallor on his face quickly receded, replaced by a flush of color.

The purple incense worked like an elixir, rapidly restoring his vitality. If not for the blood on his clothes, you’d never believe that half an hour before he’d seemed on the verge of death.

After getting up and moving around a little, Xu Buhuo pulled open his shirt, revealing his chest. The change there was remarkable. Where before the skin had been ashen, covered in necrotic veins like a spiderweb, now, after inhaling the incense, the web was gone, and even the dead skin was beginning to change.

Unable to hold back any longer, I asked, “Old man, why was your body like that? And why did the incense cure you?”

Xu Buhuo turned to me, a mysterious look in his eyes. “If I told you I’ve actually been dead for years, would you believe me?”

A heavy silence fell.

I stared at him blankly, his words echoing in my ears: I’ve already been dead for years.

If I hadn’t seen the state of his body for myself, I’d have dismissed it as nonsense. But after seeing the necrotic flesh, I couldn’t muster even a shred of doubt.

How could a dead person behave like a normal one?

Cao Guangshan, ever curious about such matters, couldn’t resist asking, “Sir, if you’re dead, how can you still be like this?”

Xu Buhuo smiled. “The mysteries of the occult are beyond your understanding. It’s a road with no end. You’ve all heard of the living dead. Truth be told, that’s what I am—a living corpse.”

The only sound in the room was the collective swallowing of fear.

In my mind, the living dead were like that old woman after she turned—a corpse capable of moving, but without much thought. Never did I expect the real living dead to be indistinguishable from the living.

“Three years ago, I died because of an incident. Afterward, your grandmother arrived,” Xu Buhuo said, fixing his eyes on me. “Ziwu, you should remember—three years ago, your grandmother was away from home for about half a year, wasn’t she?”

I thought back, then nodded. Three years ago, she had indeed left suddenly, gone for about half a year before returning, and when she did, she looked as if she’d aged a decade. I remember asking her where she’d been, and she only said she was saving someone.

Now I realized—she must have left home to save Xu Buhuo.

“Everyone must die eventually. It’s not that I don’t want to die—it’s that I don’t dare,” he said, gazing up at the roof beams in melancholy. “Your grandmother used all sorts of secret arts to make me what I am now, forcibly anchoring my soul to my body and using various methods to keep it from decaying.”

The facts were chilling, but Xu Buhuo recounted them lightly, as if telling someone else’s story.

When a person dies, the body changes. The flesh and the soul have an inexplicable connection. Simply put, the body can’t function without the soul, and vice versa—they’re bound together.

When the soul leaves, the body shuts down, decays, and rots. Only if the soul remains within can the body continue to function.

It’s like those in a vegetative state—why they rarely wake up is often because their souls have been gravely injured, incomplete, with only a fragment left. Their bodies live, but they cannot move or communicate.

For example, when Cao Guangshan and the others lost their souls, so long as the soul was absent for less than a month and someone cared for the body, its functions would persist. Beyond a month, the body would begin to rot, and not even advanced medicine could prevent death.

After Xu Buhuo died, my grandmother paid a tremendous price to forcibly keep his soul inside him, sustaining his organs’ function.

But one thing cannot change: dead is dead. No secret method can grant true immortality. The secrets only stretched a single moment of death into three years, five at most. Sooner or later, death would come.

Throughout the process, the body slowly decays, its condition worsening with time.

“At this rate, if nothing unexpected happens, I’ll be finished in two years,” Xu Buhuo said, assessing his situation.

He was calm, showing no panic or fear at the prospect of inevitable death.

“The incense you just lit is called ‘Life-Extending Incense.’ Each stick is worth a million, and I obtained it at great cost. The ingredients are extinct; there are probably fewer than ten left in the world.”

It was hard to believe a single stick of incense could prolong life—and that it was worth a million. No wonder Xu Buhuo had treated every wisp of smoke with such seriousness, fearing any might escape.

Yet he kept these priceless sticks casually in his cloth bag. I couldn’t help but wonder if he worried about losing them.

“Old man, if you had more of the Life-Extending Incense, could you live even longer?”

The question sprang from a wild hope. However expensive, the incense was priceless if it could buy more time. If it could extend Xu Buhuo’s life, I’d spare no effort to find more for him.

“In theory, yes,” Xu Buhuo replied, then gave me a faintly mocking glance. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re plotting. Don’t waste your energy. I understand my own body. Even if I had more Life-Extending Incense, it wouldn’t help much.”

Was the incense truly useless? I didn’t believe it. I silently resolved to find more, even if not for Xu Buhuo—such a miraculous thing could save someone close to me if disaster struck.

At that age, I was still reckless and naïve, not yet tempered by the hardships of life. I thought everything was simple, but true difficulty is only understood through action.

Afterward, I sincerely apologized to Xu Buhuo, explaining that I hadn’t doubted him out of mistrust but because I’d been deceived by hallucinations.

“It’s fine. I know you were under the influence of visions,” Xu Buhuo said, looking at me with exasperation.

“If you knew that, why didn’t you say so?” I asked, still confused.

“You’re still growing. Some things can’t be explained—they must be experienced. Only through your own mistakes can you truly understand.”

Xu Buhuo fixed me with a serious gaze. In that moment, his eyes were kind, almost grandfatherly, radiating a warmth and reassurance I’d never felt before.

It seemed that with him here, nothing could really go wrong.

Suddenly, the two black dogs tied nearby started barking, pacing anxiously. The unease quickly spread: our chickens began to cluck in alarm, and the rats hiding inside the house darted out, fleeing the courtyard.

Watching this sudden commotion, I couldn’t help but tense up.

Panic-stricken shouts drifted in from outside. I rushed out—and the scene before me is one I will never forget for the rest of my life.