Chapter 2: The Most Noble Bird in the World
There are truly countless kinds of birds living in the world.
Starting with the eagle, the king of the sky, hawks, owls, cormorants, swans, pheasants, pigeons, and even small sparrows.
Besides, there were divine birds like the Vermilion Bird and the Phoenix that people considered sacred.
There will be many more birds that I don’t know than the ones I do.
Birds like eagles, hawks, and owls are talked about as brave birds, and birds like pheasants, pigeons, and sparrows are widely known as birds used in cooking.
Among them, there were also birds that were deliberately raised for people to hunt, and there were birds that, when you heard their cries, meant welcome guests would visit.
But there was a bird that was neither brave nor used in delicious dishes, and not a bird that people welcomed.
It was a crow.
Crows are relatively brave among many birds, but no one praises them for being brave.
If people see that bird with their eyes or hear its cry, they all curse it as bad luck.
It’s fortunate that they only curse, as many people throw stones at them, so it was certain that they were the most cursed birds in the world.
But among the people living in the world, there were those called crows.
That’s what they called undertakers who lived by going from battlefield to battlefield.
No, to be precise, they were corpse handlers who couldn’t even be called undertakers.
It seems they came to be called crows because they were the same as the crows that lived by eating corpses, as these people made a living off corpses.
And I was a famous crow among those called crows.
Caw, caw, caw……
Crows that had flown over the field full of dismembered corpses landed on tree branches and cried noisily.
The martial artists who were rummaging through the corpses rolling around the field frowned at the noisy cries of the crows.
“Ugh, d*mn birds.”
It might be natural for the martial artists to frown and swear because there were crows wherever there was death.
This was because among these numerous corpses, there would also be family members and blood relatives.
I, who was watching the scene from afar, turned my gaze following the footsteps approaching this way.
Where I turned my gaze, a young martial artist was looking down at me with a sword at his waist.
“I heard rumors that you’re an expert at finding the deceased?”
I, who was squatting, got up and bowed deeply.
“Yes, I have a bit of talent.”
“Follow me.”
I followed the young martial artist without saying a word.
Where he led me, there were a dozen young and old martial artists standing.
“I brought the crow.”
As the young martial artist bowed deeply and stepped back, an elderly martial artist turned to me.
“Can you find a young girl?”
I bowed to the elderly martial artist as well.
“Yes, please tell me her appearance, physique, age, and if she had any special belongings.”
At my request, the elderly martial artist looked up at the distant mountain with blurry eyes.
Seeing that, it seemed that the woman I had to find was either a direct family member of this martial artist or a very close blood relative.
“She’s a very beautiful child. On top of that, she’s bright and excellent in martial arts, so young men constantly visited our family to see her.”
Among the things the elderly martial artist had said so far, there was no useful information about the woman I had to find.
If the woman was a family member of the elderly martial artist, there was a high probability that her being beautiful wasn’t true, and her being bright and excellent in martial arts might not be true either.
Above all, I couldn’t find the woman with that information.
Sigh……
I sighed inwardly but held it back and listened to the martial artist’s story.
“If you find her, clean the blood off her and lay her in a good coffin and bring her to me.”
In the end, the elderly martial artist didn’t offer a single helpful piece of information.
“……Yes.”
But I bowed silently.
And I stepped back and called the young martial artist who had guided me here to a corner.
“Let me see you for a moment.”
“What is it?”
The young martial artist approached with a puzzled look.
“Please tell me the woman’s face, physique, age, and if she had any special belongings.”
At my request, he thought for a moment and then revealed information about the woman.
“Her face is……”
This battle was an all-out war that determined the rise and fall of the two families.
And at the end of this battle, one family perished, and the other family took possession of all the perished family’s assets.
I crossed the field covered in corpses and entered the forest.
Both families were wearing blue uniforms, so I had to check the faces of the corpses one by one.
If her blood relatives couldn’t find the woman in the field, it meant that her corpse was elsewhere.
Sure enough, not far into the forest, a black figure appeared before me.
Sob……
The figure raised its hand and pointed down the valley with a sorrowful cry.
I went down to the bottom of the valley where the figure pointed.
There were five or six corpses lying at the bottom of the valley, and the face of the woman the young martial artist had mentioned caught my eye.
The woman’s face was separated from her body.
The blood had already drained, and her complexion had turned white, but the flesh from her lifetime remained, and her cheeks were still chubby.
I looked up at the black figure.
“Where’s your body?”
Then the black figure pointed to a torso lying on the upper side.
The reason I’m good at finding the deceased is that I can see the spirits and hear their words.
It wasn’t that I could see and hear them from the beginning.
I became able to see them after a horrible experience that I don’t even want to recall, a memory I don’t want to bring up.
I examined the torso the black figure pointed to.
Although it was a corpse, the slender body contrasted greatly with the chubby face.
“Is this your body?”
Sob……
The black figure suddenly cried sorrowfully.
I ignored the sorrowful cry and brought the woman’s head and attached it to the neck of the chubby-looking corpse.
The cut surfaces matched exactly, confirming that this corpse was indeed the woman’s body.
“Do you want to be like this even in death?”
As if offended by my sarcastic words, the black figure burst into tears and scattered into the air like smoke.
Regardless, I took out cloth, thread, and a needle from the backpack I was carrying on my back.
Only those who could seamlessly sew the severed parts so that the stitches weren’t visible were called skilled crows, and I was quite good at sewing.
I connected the severed head and body and soaked the cloth in water to clean the bloodstains that were stuck all over.
After changing her into a shroud, she looked no different from when she was alive, except for her pale face.
This time, the work was very easy.
If there were many corpses, I would have had to search through them one by one, wipe off the blood, and check their faces.
Moreover, if there were many severed parts, the work would have been even more difficult.
I shouldered my backpack and carried the corpse.
“There’s another one here!”
It was only then that the martial artists came down to the valley and examined the corpses.
I carried the corpse and went up to the valley.
On the field, people called crows like me were clinging to the corpses, sewing the arms and legs that had fallen off.
I carried the corpse to the cart and lowered the coffin that was on it.
All the work was done by opening the coffin lid and placing the corpse inside.
“I’ve finished the work.”
I approached the elderly martial artist and bowed.
He checked the woman’s face lying in the cart and shed tears.
“Poor thing……”
The martial artist, who wiped his tears with his sleeve, looked back at me with a cold face.
“How much do I need to pay you?”
Most of the reactions were like this.
Before finding the corpse, they would plead, but after the work was done, they would change their attitude as if nothing had happened.
“Twenty silver taels.”
“Give it to him.”
But sometimes, like this, there were cases where they paid the coffin price and the labor cost without saying much.
After receiving and pocketing the twenty silver taels, I sat in the shade again and waited for work.
The crows were still sewing flesh on the field.
After sewing all the flesh, they would lay the corpses in wooden coffins and receive silver taels. Usually, the money received after finishing the work was about six silver taels.
Of course, those who were skilled received a little more silver, but the rest just roughly matched the shapes and sewed them together.
At least the corpses that people had assembled were laid in coffins and even had funerals.
But the corpses of the defeated family would all be gathered in one place and cremated.
The reason why others only received about five silver taels was that they couldn’t properly find the severed parts and sew them together.
They would pick up someone else’s limbs and forcefully sew them on, and there were even cases where the head and body belonged to different people.
After waiting like that for a while, the young martial artist came out to the field and shouted, as if they had collected all the corpses of their blood relatives.
“Gather all the corpses in one place and burn them all!”
At his shout, the people called crows flocked again and began to collect the corpses.
I also got up to gather the corpses in one place and burn them with them.
“Dong-jae! Let’s find an inn and have a drink!”
An old man living in the same village shouted and called me.
Actually, many of the people here lived in the same village as me.
Because it was a job that people pointed fingers at, I and they lived in a place separated from the large village.
“I’m fine, so please take your time and come back!”
When I responded like that, the faces of those living in the same village were filled with regret.
“You heartless b*stard. We’re going, going!”
The villagers grumbled like that and got on the carts.
Soon, the carts led by horses started moving one by one, and I also moved my cart.
“Giddy up! Let’s go.”
As I started the horse, Ajusshi got on the cart as if he had appeared out of nowhere.
“Did you make a lot of money?”
“I earned twenty silver taels.”
Tsk tsk……
“After deducting the coffin price, you didn’t earn much. Still, to not make money even after doing the most noble work in the world……”
Ajusshi even clicked his tongue and expressed his disapproval.
“Still, I earned a lot compared to others.”
As Ajusshi said, the coffin price was quite expensive.
A decent coffin cost almost three silver taels, and even a roughly made coffin cost over one silver tael.
Therefore, ordinary commoners would sometimes wrap corpses in cloth and bury them in the ground because they couldn’t afford a coffin.
“You fool. Instead of doing this kind of work, you should join the Martial Alliance and become a hero.”
“Oh, what talent do I have to become a hero of the Jianghu?”
I brushed off Ajusshi’s words lightly.
Then Ajusshi burst into anger.
“You hopeless b*stard! How many people in the Jianghu do you think are stronger than you? You could easily become a hero of the Jianghu, so why do you keep wasting time like this!”
I slightly moved my head and glanced at Ajusshi.
His nicely grown beard was trembling, which meant he was very angry.
“I’ll think about it slowly.”
When I took a step back, Ajusshi lowered his voice and persistently urged me.
“Why don’t you join the Martial Alliance tomorrow? Since you already have the Hundred Martial Arts Plaque, joining the Martial Alliance won’t be that difficult.”
