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Chapter 501 Teeth Loosening and Falling
As Zhu Yu reached out to check the eyes, her other hand instinctively rested on the head of the high priest's corpse, as if trying to support the head. The moment she released her hand, a strand of long hair slipped down as she lifted her fingers.

Zhu Yu frowned.

If what's in front of you is already a dried-up corpse, or has decomposed to the point of being nothing but bones, then it's understandable that the hair on the head would fall out easily.

However, the high priest in front of me, while it might be an exaggeration to say that he looked lifelike, was far from being a desiccated corpse, let alone corroded. Apart from his shriveled eyeballs, he looked more like a living person who was emaciated and suffering from hunger and cold.

Logically speaking, under such circumstances, his eyes should not be so sunken, and his hair should not fall out so easily.

Zhu Yu now had a more certain guess in her mind. She squatted down, reached out and carefully pinched the high priest's jaw joint, opening his tightly closed mouth.

As soon as he opened his mouth, several teeth fell out before Zhu Yu could even reach out to touch them.

Seeing this, Zhu Yu no longer hesitated and carefully laid the high priest's corpse on the ground. The high priest's legs, which had been sitting cross-legged, slightly parted, and during this process, a lot of his hair fell out.

Zhu Yuxian looked into the high priest's mouth by the light and saw that his gums were not completely shrunken and receded. Apart from being particularly dry due to the lack of saliva, they were not much different from a living person.

However, any tooth in his mouth that you touch is loose and could easily fall out.

Zhu Yu grew increasingly certain. She pulled out her small leather pouch from her bosom and quickly spread open the high priest's white robe, revealing his chest. She then took out her long-handled black iron knife from the pouch, knelt beside him, and carefully made a long cut from his chest to below his navel...

A moment later, Zhu Yu put the high priest's robe back on, and there was nothing wrong with it. Only then did she feel a chill coming from her lower body. She put away her knife and touched her legs as she got up. She then realized that she had been too focused and had not noticed that her legs were ice cold, as if she had just been pulled out of an ice cave.

Only then did she take a closer look at the smooth black stone slab on the ground. She reached out and touched it. At first touch, it was no different from an ordinary stone slab. But after a while, the cold air slowly seeped in.

Isn't this the kind of eerie stone slab in the small mountain building that forcibly woke me from my coma by freezing?
Zhu Yu pursed her lips, got up and stretched her stiff legs to make sure she wouldn't feel too stiff when walking, before walking out of the tent set up by runes and talismans and returning to Lu Qing's side.

“Master,” she said to Lu Qing in a serious tone, “I have examined it carefully. That high priest is dead beyond dead, completely dead!”
However, it's unclear whether it's because he had been taking elixirs in the past, but the cinnabar he ingested had an effect, allowing him to remain uncorrupted after death, as if he were still alive.

"Are you sure?" Lu Qing asked, feigning nonchalance.

"I'm certain!" Zhu Yu answered with certainty, and indeed he was absolutely certain.

Just now, she could vaguely see small, silvery beads in the high priest's lungs. Isn't that a sign that the cinnabar poison has entered his bone marrow?
What she didn't say was that this death and resurrection was not only due to the effects of the mercury poison extracted from the cinnabar of the high priest, but also inextricably linked to the entire house.

"Dead..." The guards were not surprised by this conclusion. They were not sure before, but now that there was evidence, they were more certain.

The group looked at each other, and one of them, looking rather naive, asked, "Divine Doctor, would you like to take a look yourself?" Ultimately, they were still not entirely at ease with this half-grown apprentice. Even if they were to go back and report, they wouldn't dare tell King Brahma that only the young apprentice by the Divine Doctor's side had examined him.

Lu Qing was silent for a moment, then nodded slightly: "I can see it for myself, but you must wait outside and not disturb me."

The guards readily agreed to the request, nodding and heading out.

Since the high priest was already dead, the four guardians who had been in seclusion with him were even less likely to be alive, so they weren't worried that the divine physician might have any ulterior motives.

After all, there's nothing to do. Who could possibly pull off something in front of a few corpses?

The group agreed and walked straight out, leaving the room to Lu Qingzhu, Yu, and the other three.

"Just now, have you examined everything that needed to be examined?" After the others left, Lu Qing stepped forward to examine the High Priest's corpse. "Do the others need to be examined as well?"

Zhu Yu was squatting down in front of the corpse of a protector, prying open the person's eyelids to take a look. He found that there were shriveled eyeballs inside. He turned to Lu Qing and shook his head: "No need for that. I've already seen enough."

The high priest's lungs and even his heart were filled with tiny white mercury droplets, which could not have formed in a short time. He must have been severely poisoned before he died.

It seems this high priest not only concocted medicines for Brahma, but also for himself and his trusted protectors...

In my judgment, these five people must have died shortly after entering this secluded room.

"So they didn't decay after death because their bodies were full of mercury-white droplets?"

“That’s one reason.” Zhu Yu waved his hand, squatted down and patted the smooth black stone slab. “The stone slab here is exactly the same as the unusually cold stone slab in the secret passage of the small mountain building.”

With this device, it was as if the five corpses were placed in an ice cellar. Add to that the formwork sealing the doors and windows, and the thick earthen wall, over a foot thick, completely sealing the outside of the room with mortar, effectively turning the house into a sealed space with different airflow inside and out. This provided an extra layer of protection for the bodies, preventing them from decaying.

Upon hearing this, Lu Qing squatted down and touched the stone slab on the ground. Sure enough, a chill ran through his palm.

He stood up, about to ask Zhu Yu another question, when he suddenly heard the guard outside shout, "Who goes there—!"

Then came the sound of weapons clashing together.