126 A Most Natural Resurrection

126 A Most Natural Resurrection

The courtyard was quiet, save for the rustle of wind through dying leaves and the faint creak of old wood. A garden once full of life now held the stink of death. And at its center, sprawled in a pose that could only be described as violently artistic, lay what remained of Hei Yuan.

He wasn’t just dead. He was mangled, torn apart, burned in places, and dried out in others. Unrecognizable to anyone who hadn’t seen him fighting back-to-back with you in the gates of Hell itself.

I stepped toward the corpse, careful not to step in the blood that had congealed into dark, crusted lines beneath him.

“Old man,” I muttered, raising my hand. “You always did like making an entrance.”

With a breath, I called upon Divine Word: Raise.

The air around us shifted. Light, not warm or cold but commanding, shimmered from my fingers and sank into his ruined body. Flesh knit. Bones mended. Blood vessels crawled back into place like roots drinking rain. He gasped as his lungs filled again. His eyes shot open with a snap like they were spring-loaded.

And then… he blinked at me.

Confused. Muddled. Very naked.

His robes had not survived the revival process. They hung in pathetic shreds, slipping off his frame to reveal what nature and cultivation had crafted. The man was built like a statue carved by a drunk god with decent taste.

“...Master Wei?” Hei Yuan’s voice cracked like a dry twig. “Is this… the afterlife?”

“Nope,” I said, popping the ‘p.’

He looked down at himself, first at his bare chest. Then lower. His eyes widened, and his hand gently cupped his groin with an almost reverent sort of grace.

“Ah… This must be the afterlife indeed,” he whispered, nodding solemnly. “I have returned to my most natural state… as the heavens intended. Naked… like the day I was born.”

“Sure, let’s call it that,” I said, crossing my arms. “Though I’m starting to regret bringing you back.”

He looked up at me, eyes suddenly glassy with emotion. “Master Wei… even in the afterlife, you are clothed… regal… majestic beyond compare. A true immortal…”

Oh no.

Here it comes.

“I should’ve just let you reincarnate,” I muttered, taking one step forward.

I was tempted to slap the back of his head. Tempted enough to picture it. But knowing my luck and my strength, I’d probably accidentally tear it clean off his neck.

So I flicked his forehead instead. Hard.

Yep, it could be considered bullying the elderly and teaching the young a lesson at the same time. It was a strange world. A suppressed burst of willpower-tinged intent surged through my finger. Hei Yuan’s eyes crossed. He flipped. A perfect somersault of 360 degrees in the air. Then he landed facedown with a thud that made the cracked stones under him groan.

His bare ass now pointed at the sky like it was trying to catch divine blessings.

"Please tell me you are awake for real now," I exhaled through my nose and rubbed my temples. “Anyways... Welcome back, Old Yuan.”

He groaned into the stone, voice muffled. “I see… the afterlife is pain…”

“You’re alive, not dead.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

I kicked a piece of the tattered robe toward him. “Cover yourself, man.”

He took it and wrapped it around his waist like it was royal garb, lifting his chin in pride.

“As you command… Great King of the Afterlife.”

I stared at him. “If you ever call me that again, I’m sending you back.”

He paused. Then grinned, teeth yellow but full of mischief. “You missed me.”

I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t need to.

He knew.

“If you could joke, then you should be fine,” I said, squatting beside the pathetic excuse for a man who had just performed a perfect naked flip and landed face-first into a rock. "I thought you'd be more traumatized... just about by everything."

Hei Yuan groaned, peeling his cheek off the courtyard stones. His voice came out scratchy. “It was painful, but... Was that… necessary?”

I tilted my head and looked him over. He was alive, sure, but his ribs were poking out like a scarecrow, his skin still patchy from wherever the technique hadn't fully healed him, and his hair looked like he'd lost a fight with a lightning spirit. It seemed my spell was unable to hieal him completely.

Yeah. That was on me.

Hindsight and all.

“Stay put,” I said, dusting off my sleeves as I stood and silently cast Great Cure on him, allowing his rib to mend properly. “Don’t try to be majestic again. Your spine’s not ready.”

“I’ll have you know I once rode a dragon bareback across five provinces,” he muttered. "Hmmm... It's a wyvern, actually, but..."

“And now you’re riding shame, bare-assed, across a courtyard.”

I rolled my eyes and closed them briefly, expanding my Divine Sense outward like a bubble. I swept through gardens, walkways, chambers, and people moving about the Imperial Palace like well-trained ants.

Among them, one soul stood out. She was humming. Not meditating, not patrolling, not attending to nobility, just humming a jaunty little tune and walking through the hallway while munching on a rice cake. Casual. Carefree. Not exactly what I expected from an imperial handmaiden.

I vanished from the courtyard and reappeared a few feet in front of her.

She shrieked like I’d turned into a blood demon. The rice cake flew up and slapped her in the forehead before falling to the floor in slow, tragic agony.

“Calm down,” I said, raising both hands.

She pointed at me with wild eyes. “W-What’s a brute like you doing in the Imperial Palace!?”

I looked down at myself. Tunic crisp, jade robes, boots polished, and I reckoned a handsome enough face to be mistaken as a dignified prince charming who was in fact just a mischievous demon role-playing as a Paladin. I gestured at myself. “Miss… does this look like a brute to you?”

She paused. Her eyes narrowed. That look, that sharp, judgmental, contemptuous glint, cut deeper than a Heaven-Severing Saber or whatever that was... Before she could unleash whatever insult she had brewing, I reached into my sleeve and pulled out the Emperor’s Token. Nongmin gave it to me reluctantly, like a parent handing the keys to a child with questionable driving skills. I’d kept it handy for moments just like this.

Her face froze. Eyes flicked from the token to me. Then she dropped to her knees and planted her forehead on the floor.

“I pay my humble respects to His Majesty!” she blurted.

Huh. Useful thing. Maybe I should wear it as a necklace.

“I need you to go to the courtyard on the western wing,” I said, pointing. “Find me there. Bring… let’s say thirteen robes.”

She looked up. “Thirteen?”

“Yes. At least. I’ve got some old folks who’ll need them soon. Don’t ask questions.”

“I-I will do as ordered!” she stammered, trembling as if I’d asked her to deliver demon hearts.

I was already turning to leave when I stopped. “What’s your name?”

“Zhu Lian, my lord!”

Zhu?

Huh.

Either she was related to General Zhu Shin… or the Zhu surname really was that common. I squinted at her. There was a faint resemblance around the eyes. Then again, everyone in this palace was either too noble, too poor, or too suspiciously bred to guess at.

I sighed. “Never mind. I need those clothes more than I need to show favoritism.”

She nodded rapidly as if understanding my little monologue.

I gave a short bow. “Apologies for disturbing your rest and your rice cake. I’m sure it was delicious.”

She blinked. “I… I will do as you command!”

Then she took off, moving at the speed only a Will Reinforcement Realm could muster.

Quick on her feet, but the cultivation was sloppy. Raw. Unstable. The kind of power that didn’t come from talent, but it came from grit. Probably beat her head against the walls of qi until the wall gave up.

A hard worker. I respected that.

I returned to the courtyard, where Hei Yuan had managed to drag a half-burnt bush over himself for modesty.

“I found someone,” I said. “Clothes are on the way.”

He lifted a twig in the air like a victory flag. “My savior.”

“Just shut up and stay decent. The palace has standards.”

He snorted. “And here I thought I was reborn free of mortal shame.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “and I thought I was getting a day off.”

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Hei Yuan and I worked in silence… Well, as much silence as one could expect from two men stacking corpses and making casual conversation about violent deaths.

One by one, I retrieved the bodies from my Item Box. The spatial compression let them lie preserved, untouched by time or rot. It still didn’t make it any less weird pulling full-sized elders out of thin air and laying them in a neat line like some kind of grotesque scroll unrolling.

Hei Yuan, despite being recently resurrected and still mostly naked with only a bush-leaf skirt for modesty, took to the task with a reverence I hadn’t expected. Every time I placed a new corpse down, he would kneel beside it, place a hand on the body’s chest, and introduce me.

“This one here,” he said, gesturing to a guy with sunken cheeks and a crooked nose, “is Elder Ji Wen. He was the clan’s historian. Could recite three thousand years of blood feuds without blinking.”

“Oh, I remember this guy,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Nearly got swallowed by a flesh demon shaped like a worm the size of a palace. I had to cut through four layers of intestine to get him out before it fully digested him. I am curious. He has a different surname, what's up with that?”

"Adopted," Hei Yuan let out a dry chuckle. “Bet he'd hate being remembered as the one who got swallowed...”

I nodded. “Too late. That's the Ji Wen File in my head now: ‘Swallowed by Worm Demon.’”

Next corpse.

“This one’s Granduncle Min,” Hei Yuan said, patting the bloated chest of an elder who looked like he’d been inflated with bad karma. “He was always suspicious of women.”

I squinted. “He’s the one who got charmed by a mid-rank succubus, right?”

Hei Yuan winced. “Yeah…”

“I remember,” I said. “She almost made him stab me. Then, at the last moment, he slit his own throat and shouted something about no wench taking his soul.”

“Suicidal lunatic.”

“He got better,” I said.

“He’s dead.”

“After getting better,” I clarified. “It’s all about the order of operations.”

Next.

“This is Old Kang.”

“Oh! Kang!” I grinned, remembering the way the man had shrieked. “He’s the one who got dirt kicked into his eyes when the earth demon decided to play whack-a-mole with his face, right?”

Hei Yuan snorted. “That demon was bored.”

“And Kang tried to negotiate. With a creature made of stone. Using poetry.”

“He always said poetry was the truest weapon.”

“Yeah, well, the demon used a boulder.”

Another body.

“Here lies Elder Ping.”

I sighed. “Possessed by a djinn. Tried to stab me in the eye with a soup spoon. Told me I had ‘too much balance in my soul’ and he needed to unbalance it with cutlery.” I couldn't believe I was saying this, but those really happened.

Hei Yuan tilted his head. “You still got that spoon?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably would make a great rice ladle now.”

“It’s a spiritual artifact, though,” murmured Hei Yuan begrudgingly. “I recall it can cleanse spiritual toxins.”

We kept at it like that. Laying bodies. Swapping memories. Laughing at the absurdity of it all.

One guy had died while trying to headbutt a flaming giant into submission.

Another one screamed, “I regret nothing!” as he rode a collapsing platform into lava like it was a festival ride.

Hell’s Gate wasn’t a place where sane people went. And these old fellows weren’t sane. They were suicidal cultivators who had nothing left, no homeland, no legacy, and no future. So they chose to die beside their Grand Elder, following Hei Yuan into a one-way death zone.

And I? I’d been the outsider who couldn’t stop saving them. Even when I said I wouldn’t.

“You know,” I said, squatting down next to Hei Yuan, “I thought I’d forget most of these guys. But now that I’m looking at them, I remember every single face.”

Eventually, footsteps approached the courtyard, hesitant and uneven. I turned, and there she was, Zhu Lian, robe bundles clutched in both arms like she expected them to explode.

She looked at me like I was a tiger who'd just asked for a pillow.

“You came,” I said.

“I did as ordered, Lord Immortal!” she squeaked, still trembling. Her eyes didn’t leave my face, like breaking eye contact might summon death.

“For some reason, she’s scared of me,” I muttered to Hei Yuan.

“She probably saw your portrait in some wanted scroll,” he replied. “Sorry, that’s too out of place for me. It won’t happen again, Master Wei. It seems I've grown enamored and was filled with nostalgia as we talked about there heroic ends.”

“Eh. Help’s a help.”

Zhu Lian set the robes down on the stone bench, giving the corpses a wide berth and nearly jumping when one of them shifted slightly. That was just gravity, but I didn’t bother explaining.

She turned to leave, but I gestured at Hei Yuan. “Help the old man out, would you?”

To her credit, she didn’t scream. Just nodded like a puppet and got to work dressing Hei Yuan in one of the simpler sets of robes. He went from wild elder of the woods to "retired eccentric cultivator" real fast.

As for the others, we left the cadavers unclothed. It would’ve been a waste. Their bodies were still a bloody mess, most of them looking like they'd been minced and stitched back together with thread. The robes would’ve just soaked in gore.

Hei Yuan stood before the line of bodies, now robed, and clasped his hands before him.

“Brothers,” he said, voice solemn, “you were born in a broken time, fought for a broken clan, and chose to die beside me when we had nothing left. May the heavens recognize your courage and my immense debt to you.”

He turned to me and bowed, deep and sincere. “Thank you, Master Wei. For retrieving them. I thought I’d never see their faces again.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’re you talking about?”

He blinked.

“I’m bringing them back, obviously. You think I went through all that trouble just to give them a scenic nap spot?”

Emotion flickered across Hei Yuan’s face. He let out a bark of laughter, rubbing at his eyes. “Of course you are. How foolish of me.”

I smirked. “As comrades in arms, the least I could do is try, right?”

He looked at me, eyes glassy but spirit steady. “Then let’s bring the old bastards home.”

I told Zhu Lian to call for more help. Not just for dressing the old folks, though, judging by how they were all going to pop out like naked radishes again, that was probably a good idea, but also to bring me the highest-grade spiritual stones they could find.

She hesitated, trembling slightly as she adjusted her robe. “A-as you command, Lord Immortal,” she said with a deep bow, then ran off like she was racing a ghost.

“Poor girl,” I muttered. “Definitely going to get scolded for this later.”

Hei Yuan, now decently robed, was crouching beside one of the corpses, his face pale and his hand trembling slightly as he brushed hair away from the forehead of an old man whose chest had been crushed in. His voice was steady, though. “This is Elder Hong… used to terrify the junior disciples with his cane. Called it ‘discipline enforcement.’ The kids said it hurt more than soul poison.”

I crouched beside another cadaver. “Right… I remember this guy. Beheaded by an arachnid. Almost lost his head in the chaos. The next second, I found it being used as a decor to a spear of some gargoyle. Nasty stuff.”

Demons were truly illogical creatures...

Hei Yuan snorted.

“Okay,” I psyched myself up. “Let’s start!”

I placed my palm over the first elder and activated the Revival Liquid I had been stockpiling. Not cheap. Not easy to make. But I’d fought demons with these old fools, so Resurrection Stones weren’t enough. We needed items that could pierce the veil where the blood and soul had been mangled.

A soft glow emanated from my palm as the liquid magically seeped from my palm. The first elder’s chest rose, then fell. He coughed up a mouthful of black sludge and groaned. One down.

Second elder, Revival Liquid again. Worked.

Third? Didn’t. The Revival Liquid sizzled and evaporated before it could even touch her. I blinked and leaned in. There it was, a lingering acid curse on the body. Probably from one of those stomach-dwelling slime beasts that ate cosmic dust for breakfast.

I cast Cleanse. A ripple of white light swept over the woman’s body, hissing as it dispelled the last remnants of demonic venom. Once done, I applied the Revival Liquid again. This time, it worked. She gasped like someone drowning coming up for air.

Fourth elder?

Charred beyond recognition.

I whistled. “Tsk. Must’ve taken a meteor to the face.”

I opened my item pouch and pulled out a Phoenix Feather. Honestly, kind of overkill, but I still had a few. Shoved it into the corpse’s chest. A moment later, his body sparked, cracked, and reformed. A second later, he opened his eyes, looking vaguely insulted by existence.

“Alright,” I said, standing. “Last one.”

The fifth elder looked mostly intact, just cold. Tried the Revival Liquid, no go. He had a spiritual tether that was thin and fraying. This one needed something better.

I pulled out a vial with swirling golden liquid, the Elixir of Resurrection. Expensive as hell, rare too. Poured it straight into his mouth. The elder twitched once, then shivered, and began to breathe.

They were all alive.

And naked.

The newly revived old men and the single old woman were just standing there, gawking at everything like baby chickens. One of them was spinning slowly in place. Another was trying to bow toward the sky. The woman was muttering something about the wheel of reincarnation and whether or not she had been judged fairly.

Then they noticed me.

They all immediately fell to their knees.

“O Immortal Savior!”

“Great Emperor of the Afterlife!”

“Please accept our worship!”

I stared at them. “Okay, no… stop that.”

They didn’t stop. I didn't know it would have this big of a reaction.

I looked at Hei Yuan, who was already massaging his temples.

“Forgive them, Master Wei,” he said with a sigh. “Their souls have only just returned from the brink. Their minds yet wander between the Nine Hells and the mortal plane.”

“I noticed.”

Hei Yuan spun around and barked at the handmaidens who had just arrived. “Don’t stand there like you’ve seen ghosts! Scold them! Treat them like unruly brats! They’ve died once already, what dignity is left to lose?!”

One of the handmaidens hesitated, then snapped, “You! Don’t just kneel there, get clothed! And don’t flash your bum at the Lord Immortal!”

Another added, “We’re maids, not undertakers!”

It was chaos. Glorious, hilarious chaos.

And through it all, Hei Yuan stood tall, commanding his people like the clan wasn’t ashes and the world hadn’t tried to swallow them whole. He had spirit… no, he was spirit, forged in fire and tempered in the depths of the Hell’s Gate.

“You’re smiling,” came a voice beside me.

I didn’t need to look to know who it was.

“Am I?” I asked.

“Yes. Smiling.” Zhu Shin gave me a side glance, her expression unreadable, but I caught the tiniest twitch at the edge of her lips.

I nodded, eyes still on the scene. “Yeah… I guess I am.”