Chapter 289: The Coffin and the Caretaker

A cluster of dim and erratic flickering stars captured Duncan’s interest.

The faint luminescence was slightly different from the surrounding starlight, its elusive and feeble radiance resembling a transparent phantom, and the unstable flickering suggested it could dissipate at any moment. Duncan had seen faint flashes in this chaotic space before, but even if weak, those flashes didn’t possess such a transient quality.

He furrowed his brow.

A faint flash often indicated a body that hadn’t been dead for long, but the faint and almost transparent illusory sensation... what did it signify? He extended a finger and gently touched the shimmering light.

The next moment, he felt his consciousness abruptly traverse an infinite boundary, projecting from the Vanished onto an entirely new body. Cold and numb sensations spread from his limbs, and then the numbness gradually subsided, allowing him to feel his skin’s touch and his heart’s slow beating.

However, this new body felt extraordinarily heavy for some reason, as if he was operating through a dense barrier. He exerted great effort to barely move his fingers and used the same amount of effort to open just a sliver of his eyelids.

Complete darkness surrounded him.

“Am I blind? Or are my eyes obscured?”

Duncan instinctively raised his hand to check his eyes, but as soon as he lifted his arm, it collided with something hard and cold. Then, he lifted his other arm and encountered the same obstruction.

Feeling around, he finally realized he was confined in a... container.

A coffin.

Duncan lay silently in the darkness, sighing after a long while: “Well, it makes sense...”

It was logical for the body to be trapped in a coffin during possession—previously, the two consecutive unencumbered possessions were rare exceptions.

But why did it have to be logical now!

A sense of helplessness and frustration welled up inside him. Duncan seemed to grasp a little of the bewildered feeling that Dog and Vanna had when facing the “logical development on the Vanished,” but now was clearly not the time to continue lamenting. He had to find a way to escape this coffin.

“Silence!” The caretaker gripped the double-barreled shotgun, and the sharp sound of the safety being disengaged echoed in the night. The hunched old man glared at the coffin, yelling furiously, “You should be asleep now—you belong to another world. The world of the living has no place for you.”

The knocking from the coffin abruptly ceased.

Duncan assessed the sounds outside. It appeared to be an old man, very close to him, and there was also a faint metallic clinking noise just now, possibly the sound of a weapon.

Having someone nearby was beneficial. In this way, whether he could escape or not, he had another means to collect information from the outside world.

“Hello, I want to know what’s happening,” Duncan cleared his throat, pondering how to maximize this body’s potential to gather information from the person outside the coffin. “I’m trapped in this...coffin, but there must be some kind of misunderstanding. I’m still alive, you see? My voice is actually quite strong.”

“Breathing is a common illusion for the deceased, and attachment to the world of the living is a subconscious fear lingering in the cerebral cortex. It’s indeed difficult to accept, but Bartok, the ruler of death, has prepared a better place for your soul,” the old caretaker stared at the coffin, still gripping the shotgun in one hand while silently tracing the emblem representing the god of death in the air with the other. He then retrieved a small packet of dry powder from his pocket and rubbed some onto the shotgun barrel, scattering the remainder on the ground. “Lie down and be quiet. You should already feel the exhaustion. That’s the call of the ruler of death. Yield to it. It’s better for both of us.”

The teachings of the ruler of death, Bartok—Duncan silently made a mental note of this detail, then cleared his throat and continued to negotiate: “...But I still believe I could be saved. What if it’s a misdiagnosis?”

The old caretaker, clutching the shotgun, furrowed his brow. For some reason, he felt that tonight’s “disturber” was unlike those he had encountered during his career. The voice in the coffin sounded too rational and even knew how to bargain. But soon, he shook his head and dismissed the idea: “Forgive my candor, but you fell from the safety railing near the well, plummeting a hundred meters into the mine shaft with the back of your head crushed. The pallbearers expended great effort piecing your skull back together. Sir, in my opinion, the likelihood of your misdiagnosis... is extremely low.”

Duncan listened to the voice outside the coffin and quietly raised his hand to touch the back of his head.

“...Alright, I concede that my injuries appear quite severe, and this physical condition indeed doesn’t seem suitable for leaving the coffin,” he sighed. “Sorry for the disturbance.”

The old caretaker was silent for a few seconds, lit another spare lantern hanging from his waist, and hung it on a wooden stake nearest to the mortuary table, quietly saying, “No need for apologies. Compared to most disturbers, you’re rather polite.”

“Oh? Do you encounter this kind of thing often?”

“Every year, there are always a few corpses that don’t want to stay in their coffins. Most of them try to escape using violence, while only a few rare exceptions attempt to negotiate,” the old caretaker murmured. “However, even those who know how to negotiate only spout incoherent nonsense. The deceased always think they can come back to life, but in reality... the great Bartok’s door is not so easily crossed.”

The old caretaker shook his head, watching the flame on the lantern hanging from the nearby wooden stake while continuing to converse. He knew that the deceased had no genuine rationality; it was merely the lingering attachment of a lost soul. In conversation, this “lingering” was consumed particularly quickly, and when the rationality of the one in the coffin was depleted, his “extra shift” for the day would be over.

“Disturbers, the living dead, and coming back to life are three entirely different concepts,” the old man rambled. “Crossing these boundaries requires immense strength, enduring extreme pain, and exceptionally rare opportunities. Sir, don’t make things difficult for yourself. You cannot cross them.”