Page 12 of The Scarlet Alchemist

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Gou Jau Gam.

CHAPTER FIVE

Gou Jau Gam fell still in the dirt, his lungs expanding with rattling breaths. I finally dared to lift my hands, which trembled even though I could no longer feel them. My arms had a pale purple tinge, hair standing up and bones shuddering with cold. I had to remind myself how to breathe, my heartbeat punching against my chest like it wanted to break me open from the inside.

Old man Gou burst into the pen, apparently taking the sudden silence as confirmation that we’d finished.

“Is he back?” he said, bending down and grabbing the dead man’s shoulder.

I tensed. “Don’t—”

But Gou Jau Gam’s skin tore like wet paper, splitting at the base of his neck, syrupy black blood oozing out. Old man Gou froze, but his brother only winced and sat up. His eyes were still pale and blue, his complexion still like old porridge. He coughed and brown purge fluid spilled past his lips, down his bare chest.

But old man Gou hugged him anyway, squeezing out more of the black blood, like his brother was nothing but a rotten soup dumpling. Over his shoulder, Gou Jau Gam’s eyes met mine. They widened, as if remembering, but he would only know me as a hazy character in a bad dream.

“Dinner!”Auntie So yelled from beyond the window.

Me and my cousins flinched from the sound. It was hard to think about things like food after dragging a man back from death.

Wenshu raised the sheet over Gou Jau Gam’s shoulders. “You need to leave now,” he said.

Old man Gou nodded, helping his brother to his feet. Gou Jau Gam listed to the side, but his brother held him steady. His limbs would still be stiff for a while, his qi just beginning to circulate once more.

“He’ll be all right now?” old man Gou asked.

“Eventually,” I said. “Besides the skin, which I warned you about.”

Old man Gou nodded. “If he... I mean, can he die again?”

“Yes,”I said, frowning. “Of course. He’s alive again. Anything alive can die. He shouldn’t be out looking like that anyway, so it shouldn’t be hard to keep him from dying in your house.”

Old man Gou nodded. “And are there any long-term side effects?”

I glanced at his brother, his milky eyes staring past me as if seeing into another world.

You cannot create good without also creating evil.

That was alchemy’s key truth. Surely new life came at a great cost. Surely a soul couldn’t simply be dropped to the bottom of the dark sea and then resurface as if nothing had happened, especially if their body had decayed.

But my hands didn’t even hurt after the transformation. I felt a bit tired as my heartbeat slowed down and warmth crept back into my bones after my journey through the river, but that seemed too cheap a price for raising the dead.

It had been years since my first resurrection, and I still hadn’t figured out the true cost. There was no one for me to ask. My father had been the one to do the research, and he was gone.

“No,” I said, because that answer was better for business. I didn’t feel too bad about lying, because I knew that no possible side effect would have changed his mind. If I turned out to be wrong, it wasn’t as if he could report me to the market commandant to get his money back.

“He should cough up the rest of the purge fluid in a few days,” I said. “Just stitch him back up if his skin slips.”

“Dinner!”Auntie So called again.

Yufei held the door open for the men as they shuffled outside, the sheet pulled higher to hide Gou Jau Gam’s face. Wenshu sighed at his bloody palms, fingers twitching.

“Go wash up and distract Mama,” I said. “I’ll clean up here.”

Wenshu whispered his thanks and hurried into the house. We needed to wash down the floor, or else the smell of purge fluid would waft inside. Uncle Fan and Auntie So didn’t have a very strong sense of smell anymore, but we didn’t want them to have a reason to investigate the pen and find our supplies.

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