A Mortal’s Immortal Gourd
Chapter 49: Scarface

Sima Yi had been busy all day, and by evening he could finally rest a bit.

When he saw Ergouzi arrive, he leaned lazily on the chair, not even bothering to get up.

“How many Strength Pills did you bring today? Count them yourself, I’m not getting up.”

“Are you kidney-deficient? I read in a book that people with white hair and lower back pain like yours are all kidney-deficient. Want me to get you some desert cistanche to help out?”

Ergouzi had been reading some medical texts lately, and asked seriously.

“My kidneys have never been weak, even since I was a kid.”

Seeing that Sima Yi wouldn’t admit it, Ergouzi didn’t press and just lowered his head to count the number of Strength Pills in the sack.

He found that ever since he gained divine sense, he didn’t need to do it the old way. A sweep of his divine sense through the sack and the count was clear.

“A total of 6,530 pills.”

From Ergouzi’s behavior, Sima Yi immediately guessed the reason.

Though he didn’t cultivate himself, there were many cultivators in the Sima family, so his knowledge of cultivation was even broader than Ergouzi’s.

“Just broke through recently.”

Ergouzi nodded, not hiding it.

“With your current level, you could try taking the Martial Juren exam next year.”

“If you pass, you’ll become the youngest Juren in the entire Sanyang Prefecture.”

Sima Yi sat up straight, visibly excited.

“Then maybe I’ll wait a few more years to take it.”

Ergouzi already held the title of Martial Xiucai, which exempted him from taxes and harassment by yamen officers. He wasn’t in a rush to take the Martial Juren exam.

Becoming the youngest Juren would draw attention from everywhere—that kind of spotlight made him uncomfortable.

If anyone got jealous and tried to investigate his master for secretly passing down a cultivation method, he’d be in serious trouble.

“Why are you slacking off too?”

Sima Yi quirked a smile, half-joking.

“I never planned on becoming some big official. As long as I have food and can farm peacefully on the mountain, that’s enough.”

“You’re even less ambitious than I am.”

Sima Yi was actually quite pleased, feeling like he’d found a kindred spirit.

“Right, do you want to trade these Strength Pills for Peiyuan Gutben Pills again, or something else this time?”

“I wanted to ask—do you have any way to get actual pills?”

Ergouzi thought of the pills he’d read about in books. Maybe Sima Yi could get some.

“Pills?”

Sima Yi frowned, thinking for a moment.

“That’s tricky. In the Great Zhou Dynasty, alchemy is monopolized by the government.

The state pays to train alchemists, opens alchemy houses, and sells the pills through official channels.

Anchan County doesn’t have any alchemists. You’d have to go to the Sanyang prefectural capital—that’s where the government-established alchemy house is.”

“The Anchan County Office submits a large amount of goods to the prefecture every year, and the prefecture sends back a few dozen pills.

My family has a small spirit field that yields a few decent herbs each year, which we exchange at the prefecture’s alchemy house for one or two pills.”

“So pills are always in high demand but short supply, and the price is extremely high. Really, really high.”

“My uncle, even when he gets one or two pills, doesn’t dare use them lightly. He saves them for breakthrough moments.”

After hearing all this, Ergouzi was about ready to give up hope on pills, but he wasn’t completely resigned yet.

“How expensive are we talking?”

“Let’s take the cheapest one—Peiyuan Pill—as an example. One of those is worth 100 shi of Strength Pills.”

“The Peiyuan Gutben Pills everyone eats now are supposedly made by hand using ordinary herbs, based on the Peiyuan Pill’s formula.”

At that point, Ergouzi was basically done hoping.

A hundred shi of ordinary Strength Pills could sell for around 30,000 taels of silver.

And to make that many, he’d need about 100 shi of grain. The whole process involved dehusking rice, steaming it, pounding it, shaping the pills...

It cost him a ton of time.

He hadn’t even factored in the gourd’s enhancement effects.

“Forget it, just exchange them for Peiyuan Gutben Pills again.”

Honestly, most people couldn’t even afford to eat 10-tael-a-piece Peiyuan Gutben Pills regularly like he did.

His cousin Zhang Youliang practically squeezed the tenants of Shexi Village dry just to get more cultivation resources—mainly to buy more of those pills.

If Zhang Youliang saw Ergouzi looking this exasperated, he’d probably dig up their ancestral graves in rage.

“Alright, come pick up the pills tomorrow morning.”

“By the way, can you deliver more Strength Pills over the next few days?”

“How many do you need?”

What Ergouzi was really curious about was where all these Strength Pills ended up, since Sima Yi bought so many each time.

“This time, the more the better.”

“Actually, I’ve been making quite a bit of profit flipping these pills. I need a big chunk of money right now.”

When Sima Yi mentioned making profit from the price difference, he actually blushed a little—something quite rare.

Maybe in his heart, making money off a friend wasn’t exactly something to be proud of.

But when Ergouzi heard Sima Yi had been making profit off it, he was actually relieved.

They did business several times a year—Sima Yi sold the Strength Pills for him, then bought the Peiyuan Gutben Pills. He ran around doing all the legwork.

If Sima Yi didn’t make a single coin off of it, Ergouzi would’ve felt bad about troubling him.

“Alright, I’ll bring them over in ten days or so.”

After leaving Huichun Hall, Ergouzi headed to Zhengwu Hall.

Huang Laocai’s son, Huang Mancang, had been learning martial arts at Zhengwu Hall for a few months now. Tuition alone cost dozens of taels of silver a year.

Word had it that when Huang Mancang showed up with Ergouzi’s letter of recommendation, he got given a hard time.

Huang Laocai had to smile apologetically and offer several envelopes of silver before everything was approved.

Ergouzi had come to understand by now—no one at Zhengwu Hall really respected him as an honorary instructor.

People only treated him politely because of the Sima family’s influence.

As for the students he recommended? No one felt the need to show them any courtesy.

But to Ergouzi, the biggest value of Zhengwu Hall was its library.

He didn’t care what others thought.

He used to ask Sima Hong for advice on martial techniques.

Now that he’d reached the fourth layer of Qi Training and started learning spells, Sima Hong couldn’t help anymore.

Ergouzi walked into the library, returned the books he borrowed before, and picked out a dozen more to take home and study.

These days, he loved reading. Any bit of free time, he’d read a little. It broadened his horizons and expanded his knowledge.

He even picked up all sorts of things unrelated to cultivation.

After staying the night at Zhengwu Hall, he went to Huichun Hall the next morning, picked up the Peiyuan Gutben Pills, and then left the city for home.

Halfway there, he felt hungry—he’d forgotten to buy buns in the morning.

So he found a quiet spot, sat on a rock, and ate some persimmon cakes to stave off hunger.

While eating, he casually pulled out a book he’d just borrowed and started reading.

It was a book introducing various materials from around the world.

He flipped through it casually and happened to land on a section about jade materials.

The book said that high-quality jade could store a cultivator’s divine sense.

Many cultivators would craft jade into pendants or slips to store information.

Reading this, he couldn’t help but remember the Jade Pendant his master left behind when he departed.

His master had been incredibly kind to him, risking execution to pass on a cultivation method. That kind of spirit was something he still couldn’t live up to.

He always believed the Jade Pendant must have had some deeper meaning, but he had never figured it out.

At this moment, he sent his divine sense into the gourd and found the Jade Pendant.

It looked very ordinary, with some cracks on the surface—it clearly had some age.

He tried using his divine sense to probe inside.

Just then, a powerful suction burst out from the Jade Pendant, and his divine sense was pulled in uncontrollably.

Crap!

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

“Don’t…”

Ergouzi roared furiously in his mind, but he was powerless—his divine sense was completely sucked into the Jade Pendant, not a shred left. His entire body slipped into a half-conscious state.

He was in a daze, aware of what was happening, but didn’t even have the strength to lift a finger. All he could do was lie there on the ground.

No one knew how much time passed before a passing refugee spotted Ergouzi lying unconscious by the roadside.

He poked him with a stick a few times—no response. Then he crept over and rummaged through Ergouzi’s body.

He pulled out a pouch of broken silver, weighed it—at least several taels.

Overjoyed, the refugee glanced around, stuffed the silver into his clothes, and hurried off.

Not long after, another refugee passed by. After looking Ergouzi up and down, he took off his shoes and walked away.

Then came a whole family of refugees, and in no time, they stripped Ergouzi of all his clothes.

“Sigh! Such a good-looking young man, what a pity.”

“Leave him his underpants—give him a little dignity.”

The family left, happily clutching his clothes.

Truth was, Ergouzi had already regained consciousness, but he still couldn’t move.

Having his clothes stripped off made him incredibly anxious, but he couldn’t even utter a sound.

Thankfully, that family had some decency and left him his underwear.

He wasn’t even sure whether to be grateful or to curse.

But he didn’t stay “lucky” for long. For every decent person, there’s always someone indecent.

Another refugee passed by and took away even the last piece of dignity—the underpants.

Just as Ergouzi was seething with humiliation and shame, a few more people came up to him.

One of them placed a finger under his nose to check.

“There’s still breath. Not cold yet either.”

“Then let’s take him while he’s still warm.”

Two refugees grabbed him by the legs and dragged him off upside-down.

His clothes were long gone. Now, as he was dragged along the ground, his back and head scraped against the dirt painfully.

Sometimes there were uneven rocks or wood stumps on the ground—these two didn’t bother to go around, just pulled him right over them.

Ergouzi had no time to worry about the pain from the scrapes on his back. His mind was full of dread.

In a famine year like this, everyone knew what people dragging off bodies were up to.

But panic wouldn’t help—he still had zero strength in his body.

After dragging him a short distance, the two refugees dumped Ergouzi roughly onto a cattle cart.

The cart already held several cold, stiff corpses. Lying among them, Ergouzi oddly felt a bit more secure.

Along the way, the group pushing the cart picked up a few more corpses, and Ergouzi ended up buried beneath them.

That added to the sense of safety.

He wondered—anyone with a cart like this must have some money. Surely they wouldn’t be eating corpses.

And they were collecting so many—no ordinary household could eat that much.

Could they be processing them for sale?

Like dried meat, cured meat, or meat buns…

As he thought of his beloved meat buns, a wave of nausea rolled through his stomach.

Lying on the cart, Ergouzi’s mind wandered in all directions. Slowly, a faint wisp of divine sense reformed in his sea of consciousness.

He began to feel his limbs again. His fingers and toes could move slightly.

Only his True Qi in the Dantian was still inaccessible.

He opened his eyes and peeked out through the gaps between the corpses.

It was already nighttime. The moon hung high, stars filled the sky. A few dark figures pushed the cart along a country road.

They came across an old beggar sleeping by the road. Silently, they smothered him with practiced ease and tossed his body onto the cart.

The cart traveled on for a long while more. Ergouzi gradually felt more strength returning.

When they cut open his belly later, he figured he’d at least have the strength to curse them out—just to vent a little.

Finally, the cart stopped at the foot of a mountain.

A group was already waiting there.

“Boss He, here are twelve bodies. You can check.”

The man called Boss He turned over the corpses on the cart and counted.

“Correct—twelve corpses. One liter of rice each, twelve in total.”

“Can you give us a bit more? We walked dozens of li and worked all day.”

One of the cart pushers tried to negotiate for more, pleading with Boss He.

“Not happening. Grain prices are still rising. These corpses will be worth even less in a few days.”

“Just help carry these into the corpse-rearing cave, and I’ll give you more grain.”

“Don’t drag them on the ground. If the bodies get damaged, they’ll lose value.”

Under Boss He’s orders, they carried the corpses several li further into the mountains before entering a cave.

Ergouzi figured he could probably escape now, but wouldn’t be able to last long.

Better to wait and recover more—it was safer.

After all, with so many corpses around, he might not be the first one to be dissected.

The cave was lit with torches, but it still felt chilling to the bone.

Ergouzi and the other corpses were thrown onto the icy ground. Besides the twelve “new arrivals,” there were over twenty more corpses already inside.

The corpse collectors took their twelve liters of rice and left joyfully.

Inside the cave, Boss He now stood behind a scar-faced man, showing him great respect.

Ergouzi squinted through the corpses—he recognized that scar-faced man. He’d seen him just yesterday at the county market.

Back then, Scarface had bought over twenty live people in one go.

Ergouzi even used Aura Vision on him and confirmed he had third-layer Qi Training strength.

Now this changed everything—he absolutely couldn’t try to escape rashly.

Forget escaping—he didn’t even dare breathe heavily. He forced himself to look like he was on the verge of death.

Until he fully recovered his strength, he was no match for Scarface.

Thankfully, Scarface had only reached the third layer and hadn’t developed divine sense yet. He couldn’t detect Ergouzi’s disguise.

“Move the corpses collected today along with the previous ones into the rearing cave. In two days, a branch master from the Iron Corpse Hall will bring a trace of Lord Drought Fiend’s corpse aura.”

“Once these ordinary corpses are tainted with that aura, they’ll become zombies within a month or two.”

Ergouzi kept playing dead among the corpses.

He remembered reading in the Geographical Records of the Great Zhou that west of the empire lay the country of Taoshan.

Taoshan was full of ghost cultivators and zombies.

Among the many types of zombies, Drought Fiends were especially notorious—terrifying and infamous.

Boss He led a few people to carry the corpses into a smaller cave.

“This one’s still warm—might not be fully dead.”

A man dragging Ergouzi’s body noticed he still had some body heat.

“Who cares if he is or not? They’ll all be zombies in a few days anyway,” Boss He said carelessly.

The group tossed all the corpses into the rearing cave and sealed the entrance.

Lying among the corpses, Ergouzi felt a chilling cold seep into his bones.

He slowly moved his limbs, pushed aside the bodies on top of him, and sat up.

There were at least two to three hundred corpses inside—men, women, old, and young. Most were stripped bare, their skin tinged blue.

Sensing his recovery, Ergouzi figured that if he made it through the night safely, he’d be fully restored by tomorrow.

He’d nearly been killed for nothing—tossed around and stripped by scavengers.

From behind his usually honest and simple gaze, a flicker of murderous intent flashed.