The energy that called to Liu Liangzhe dissipated around the town. It absorbed solely into his awaiting body, filling him with freezing heat. He shook his head, looking down.
"What have you done?" he whispered, his throat suddenly tense with the strain from the amassed power. He started to hum. He had no other way to gather his minions, to command them, they were all too far down, they needed a stronger guidance than his will. They needed a beacon.
"Bring the boy back to me," he said, except his voice was not his own, it was a thousand voices overlapping and echoing through his throat. Liu Liangzhe held his hand out and waited for a moment. The men around the temple started to shift with unease. Their boss must have been tired of the deal after several minutes, and as soon as he dared to take a step forward, a hand shot out of the water, pale and partially rotted. A waterlogged set of hands tossed a boy onto the wood above before it climbed from the hole.
Its irises were white, but the rest was stained with yellow and red from the asphyxiation part associated with drowning. Its skin was paler, nearly blue, and since there were no fish or crabs to nibble on the corpse, the wounds were only from having fallen to the rocks, and the sores from whatever blood pooling inside the body before it was forcibly expelled. It was a gruesome thing, death. There was one corpse, walking as if it were alive, hands raised and mouth snapping, its yellowed teeth ready to just start snapping.
The men around the room screamed, the corpse's heavy thud footstep smashing right in front of the unconscious boy's face before it snapped at the men gathered around, warning them back. Lia Liangzhe easily pushed the living apart with his hands, like parting gauze, and he went to the boy and held him up to try and force the water from his lungs. The boy expelled a stream of foul water before sagging forward and sobbing. There were so many emotions involved with this tearshed, and Liu Liangzhe petted the boy's grimy, matted hair in the process.
"So you made a corpse come to life," the boss said. "My boys can take it down." While the man was putting up a strong front, a front is clearly all it was. The man's fingers trembled at his sides, and his foot was already turned in a preemptive move to be the first one out the temple doors.
"You're mistaken," Liu Liangzhe said, stroking the boy's hair some more and patting his back. "I've actually brought to life only the corpses that have been sacrificed to the Diyu Lord."
"You'll anger him and all his demons," the boss man warned. "You'll be punished in one of the foulest hells!"
"Will I?" Liu Liangzhe asked, not worried about the man or his mouth at all. "Why? They were given to me, weren't they? Sacrifices are gifts. I have partaken in no thievery. I haven't sinned. But you? You have killed, and you have stolen, and that's just from what I see now. Who knows what other sins you've committed according to the five precepts."
"Five precepts? Only cultivators… but none of the sects practice this sort of magic. You're a freak," the boss shouted. He hesitated, his legs bouncing as if he wanted to both run towards Liu Liangzhe, and also towards the door, where he thought it would be safe. "Nobody in Wufatian follows those precepts. We are sinners, we thrive on it, and I'll stand by the Diyu Lord when I find my place in hell."
"You won't," Liu Liangzhe said.
There was a shrill scream from outside the temple, and the men all turned their heads towards the doors. The doors shuddered and quivered under the force of people trying to get in, but the doors didn't budge. Liu LIangzhe just had to clear his throat to return their attention to him, their eyes now wide and their mouths open as they panted frantically.
"It must be a scary thing. To be sacrificed to the Diyu Lord unwillingly," Liu Liangzhe said before he clicked his tongue a few times. Liu Liangzhe ignored the men as he wiped the boy's tears off his gaunt cheeks with his damp robes. He picked the boy up and held him in his lap before he forced himself to his feet. The boy rested snuggly against his hip. Liu Liangzhe had little idea on how to care for a child, he had never had the duty to take care of one before, but he knew that he was too small for his age, especially if he was alone.
All it took was a quick nod of his head, and the walking corpse attacked the nearest man, jumping on him and biting his face. The other men tried to pull the body of a poor young woman from their friend, and they did, their friends screaming and crying for them to stop as the corpse had sunk her teeth around a mouthful of his cheek and his friends gave her the extra strength to rip the flesh clean off. They tossed her to the ground and started to stomp on her, but she didn't seem to mind as she hungrily chewed the meat she had caught.
"W-who are you?" the boss asked, backing away from his men and Liu Liangzhe said.
"My courtesy name is Liu Liangzhe, but you, and probably plenty of others, know me as the Diyu Lord," Liu Liangzhe said. The man dropped to the floor, his hands above his head as he prostrated his shaking body before Liu Liangzhe.
"What do you think we should do with him?" he asked the boy against his hip? The boy just shrugged his shoulders before coughing again. Liu Liangzhe absently rubbed the boy's back through his scratchy tunic. "Well, I guess that man can start with an apology. It isn't kind to sacrifice people. And kindness--"
"You're not the Diyu Lord!" the man on the floor shouted as he jumped to his feet. "The Diyu Lord doesn't care about kindness. The Diyu Lord killed thousands of men, maybe even five thousand in the span of a week for nothing more than because he was hungry for the taste of blood!"
"Yes," Liu Liangzhe said, "I did those things. I was sick, I couldn't stop it from happening. You can stop yourself from doing heinous things. I suppose we don't need an apology. You will say more than enough when you find your place after death." Liu Liangzhe started to just walk away. He walked past the boss man with a hum and to the doors. He held his hand up over the little boy's eyes. "This is not for the eyes of a little boy. Please, close them." When Liu Liangzhe pulled his hands away, the boy had his eyes squeezed tightly shut, and he opened the doors to reveal that hundreds of zombies roamed the wooden docks, all of which were attacking the living that dared to abuse the malevolent energy that permeated the land.
"I was the reason this town was built, and I will be the one to burn it down," Liu Liangzhe said. "And I will make sure people like you die alongside it." He walked out the doors, and the boss got up to run, to try and sneak through the doors but they slammed shut.
"Please! Please, I apologize. I'm sorry. I am so sorry for everything!" the boss cried from through the wood. There was more screaming from inside, the heavy slosh of water and an extended number of footsounds that travelled weakly to Liu Liangzhe's ears. Still, he could feel every one of his living corpses under his control, all two hundred and sixteen of them, all of them serving some purpose or another. He felt as a group of three approached the door not far away.
"Have your revenge," he whispered through the doors, "You deserve it."
He looked down at the boy, who quickly shut his eyes, pretending as though they hadn't just been open and widely examining the world around him. Liu Liangzhe stroked the boy's drying hair again, and knew he would have trouble getting a comb through it. He walked down the wooden docks, ignoring the screams of anguish and cries from around him. He stopped at a small store and just took a piece of rice paper from the stand before he cut his index finger on a nearby broken beam before he drew his talisman and he flung it at the temple, setting it ablaze.
As they walked, he did encourage some people who were clearly at a loss for what to do to get out of the town. There were people who refused to leave, and the ones with the most greed, the most hatred, the most rage-- they tasted the best, and they were the first to be predated upon. Liu LIangzhe stood on the solid dirt and watched as the town of Wufatian burned.
"Shushu?" he called, to the same man from before, who watched in shock as Wufatian burned. The man was a farmer, and he had many things with him. A monk's spade was indeed something he carried as well, which was an odd choice, but one that boded well for Liu Liangzhe. The man turned to him after a moment of hesitation, the perched in his lips before was now on the ground, and his jaw was closely behind as he peered at Liu Liangzhe with different eyes entirely. "May I borrow your spade?"
"Uh, I don't see why not, gongzi," the man said. Liu Liangzhe set the boy down on the ground to accept the spade from the man before he returned.
"Stay here. I'm going to teach you something," he said. He stabbed the wed earth with the spade. "There are many ways to bury a body, but you see, there is resentment that can corrupt them, make them more likely to rise. There are people who handle those that do, but the ones I make aren't alive because they want to be. They follow my orders, and the best I can offer them is to put them to rest once they've helped me. It's only proper to thank someone after they've helped you, after all." He shows the boy how to dig a burial plot, and waits until the town burns, so his corpses can return to him, and he can lay them to rest. He took nobody who burned to his plots, they weren't worthy, and if they wanted to come after them in their death, then he welcomed the challenge, a single mindless walking corpse didn't scare him in the slightest. Rather, corpses like that should really be afraid of him. He was, after all, the Diyu Lord.