Strange Tales of the Ghosts

Li Bandian had a strange habit of never wandering around when he was drunk, and he remembered to go home no matter how drunk he was.
His so-called home was an abandoned temple out of town on a mountain.
No one took care of the place, so he decided to take it.
He thought it was nice; the conditions were fine, the air was fresh, and it was quiet.
No one would ever disturb him there.
However, the temple was full of dust, plus it wasn't maintained for many years, and it was broken, some places even collapsed.
The people there thought only a crazy man like Li Bandian would dare to live there.

Li Bandian always seemed to be calm.
He slowly walked up the mountain and it was almost dark when he arrived at the temple.
He grinned and took out a small chicken from inside his robe.
The chicken's mouth was tied together, it couldn't make any sound, but its wings flapped livelily.
He mumbled to himself, “Just about time.”

He walked inside and stopped next to the two coffins.
The coffins were the cleanest things in the entire temple, even the wood was new.
Li Bandian pushed it lightly, and the lid opened.

“Dinner time,” Li Bandian spoke to the person inside the coffin as he slit the chicken's throat open.
Blood sipped out and dripped into the mouth inside the coffin; the mouth swallowed the blood continuously as if it finally rained in the desert.
But the mouth wasn't greedy; it only drank about a wine cup and didn't open up again.

Li Bandian smiled, “Enough? It'll be his turn then.” As he spoke, he pushed the other lid.

When he opened the other lid, it was empty inside.
Li Bandian immediately sobered up and knew it was bad.
He quickly tore a charm paper, stuck it on the body that drank the chicken blood, and ordered, “Get up and talk!” As soon as he stuck the charm paper on it, the body immediately sat up inside the coffin.
It was a female body, and its neck was sewed together.

“Where is Zhao Tianhu?”

“I don't know.” The body still had blood stains next to her mouth, and she replied blankly.

Li Bandian frowned.
If she couldn't feel the other body leave, that means the body didn't leave himself, but someone stole him during the day.
But who would steal corpses in town? Li Bandian couldn't think of anyone in the town who would do this, and rarely anyone would steal dead bodies in this world.
Ordinary people wouldn't have a use for them, and they were frightened of them, let alone trying to control them.

Li Bandian didn't run away from the responsibility as he didn't guard it, he was determined to find the other corpse back.
He started to investigate it secretly, but the result wasn't ideal.
He looked in town and the nearby areas, he even asked the other Daoist Priests, yet he found nothing.
He thought the body must've been taken to a further place, but he was alone and poor, plus he had another body, so he couldn't leave town to find it.
He could only wait while nurturing the other body.
It wasn't good news to not hear about it, but it would even be worse to have news about it as it meant tragedies would happen soon.

It was a worry that he didn't know where the body was, but the corpse recovered well under Li Bandian's care.
The sewing marks on the body's neck disappeared in merely forty-nine days.
Another forty-nine days later, the corpse could talk more; and another forty-nine days, the corpse could walk.
Every forty-nine days cycle was an advancement.