Chapter 1749 - 7

He saw the third sedan chair appear at the ancestral house gate, saw the group of people who had followed that chair all the way here, saw the second brother who couldn't get the door open to come in and simply hid nearby.

In the end,

On a slope very close to the ancestral house, the Great Elder saw Zhao Yi.

A body with no skin, half its flesh missing, half its bones gone… like a butcher at market, tossing a slab of pork split clean in half onto the chopping board.

Seeing this, the Great Elder's heart clenched hard; he was honestly terrified Zhao Yi wouldn't "live" through this.

"Yi'er, you can't die. Before the lamp is lit, you absolutely cannot die!"

...

"Sis, you think with only this little bit of the boss left, can he even wake up again?"

"If the boss never wakes up, this slab's mine. When I die I'll have it buried with me for a joint grave."

Hearing that, Liang Li was very unconvinced: "Why should it be yours?"

Liang Yan shot back: "You really wanna split a single slab?"

Liang Li: "I…"

Liang Yan: "Want me to give you a leg?"

Liang Li: "You…"

Liang Yan: "Little sister, I'm the older one, you're still young. Don't let this kind of thing hold you back. You should learn to let go and go chase new happiness."

Liang Li: "Sis, we're twins."

Liang Yan: "Even if it's one second earlier, older is older. You're the one who used to say that yourself."

Liang Li: "Heh, I seriously doubt even the midwife knew which of us came out first. Probably just pointed at random for our parents: this one's the elder sister, this one's the younger. And when we were kids taking baths, I bet even our parents got us mixed up."

Liang Yan: "Doesn't matter."

Liang Li: "I've noticed, sis, you really like putting on the virtuous act in front of the boss nowadays."

Liang Yan: "Virtuous big sister, lively little sister— isn't that exactly the combo men love most?"

Liang Li: "Why can't it be the other way round? You believe I won't tell the boss how, when you practiced sword as a kid, you always liked shaving the tree stumps on the mountain into little penis shapes, then laughing your head off while chopping them off for fun?"

Liang Yan: "And those little toys on those thugs we ran into back then— who was it that chopped them to bits personally? Chopping away while yelling how chewy they were."

"Hoo… hoo… hoo…"

The slab of meat that had been dead as a butchered pig suddenly began to breathe.

The sisters traded a look, immediately turned around, and stared behind them in delight.

Liang Li: "Boss, you came back to life?"

Liang Yan: "Husband, you're awake?"

Liang Li: "..."

Zhao Yi opened his eyes. Just now he'd gone through what felt like endless drowning; even he had almost believed he wouldn't make it back.

Good thing his trip to Fengdu had actually killed him a few times for real, letting him rack up that precious experience in dying.

And besides, all those years lying in bed like a cripple— saying "soft as boneless" is putting it nicely— in truth, eating anything even slightly hard to digest was enough to throw his life into crisis.

After spending so long in a broken shell of a body, he really had mastered the art of clinging to life like a mangy cur.

Zhao Yi: "I've only got the one. You two can take it, cut it in half, each gets a piece. One chops, one minces. Don't be picky."

Liang Li: "We're not picky."

Liang Yan: "It's long anyway, plenty to go around."

Liang Li was really pissed.

Zhao Yi: "Raise the curtain higher for me, help me sit up."

Liang Li pulled the cloth curtain up higher— mainly to block the wind.

In a state of being skinned alive and missing chunks of flesh, even a tiny breeze brushing past brought the pain of ten thousand needles stabbing.

Liang Yan carefully helped Zhao Yi sit up.

The boss's current texture was like a freshly skinned bullfrog, with many spots twitching slightly out of his control.

In that drafty heart of his, a faint warmth rose.

Liang Li: "Boss, let us get you out of here."

Zhao Yi: "Leave here for what?"

Liang Li: "To get treated?"

Zhao Yi: "Treated? You can treat injuries like mine? Or you think you can find someone who can? Wounds like this can only be healed with Merit."

Liang Li: "Then what do we do now? Boss, in your state, there's nothing you can do anymore, right?"

Zhao Yi: "What do we do? I just finished setting up this stage, we're only halfway through the show. If I step off now, of course I've gotta sit here and keep watching."

Liang Li: "Then the other half…"

Liang Yan: "Naturally it's Brother Xiao Yuan. In this world, only he can take over our boss's act."

Zhao Yi smiled; the muscles on the left side of his face, lacking support, sagged downward.

For a moment, the left half of his face was a crooked mouth and slanted eye.

Liang Yan hurriedly reached out and propped that piece of muscle back up for him.

Liang Li: "Boss, you'd already planned everything out with that Li fellow?"

Zhao Yi: "Mind your manners. You think you can just call him 'that Li fellow'?"

Liang Li stuck out her tongue.

Zhao Yi: "There was no way to plan anything. Before I made those arrangements, I didn't even know the specifics of what was going on. I couldn't have given him a heads-up even if I'd wanted to.

It was that Li fellow who lent me a hand first, which really steadied my heart quite a bit.

And besides, a show that isn't fully rehearsed— when you pick it up, you can't guess the ending. Isn't that what makes it fun?"

Liang Li: "Complicated. Don't get it."

Zhao Yi: "Not getting it is perfect; I don't either, I'm waiting to see. Oh right, the thing I sent you to fetch earlier— you bring it?"

Liang Li immediately took out a box, opened it, and set it before Zhao Yi: "Young Master, brought it."

Inside the box was a piece of facial skin.

Zhao Yi reached out and gently stroked it.

"It's his face skin."

"Mm. He said, if you want it lifelike and flawless without the actual person's skin, then the only way is to use the craftsman's own face skin to make it.

I told him, once this mask is finished, the personal debt between you and him is wiped clean with one stroke."

Zhao Yi: "Don't skip steps. Say the whole thing."

Liang Li: "Of course they didn't want to use their own face skin to make something for us. They almost went all out against me. In the end I pressed a Dagger to his wife's neck and then looked over at their kids.