Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 435 Cruel people
"This old man is quite an oddball. He almost lost his life here, but he didn't even utter a sound."

Yan clicked his tongue in amazement.

When he and Milo arrived at the scene, they didn't immediately notice the old man who had been dragged to the corner of the cemetery, because he hadn't made a sound at all. Judging from the rusty shovel he was clutching tightly in his hand, he was probably planning to fight the beast-like Klaus to the death.

Moreover, the beast-like Klaus did indeed have many marks on his body from being slashed with a shovel.

This made Yan look at the emaciated old man in front of him with new respect:
"No wonder he's a ruthless person who lives in a cemetery."

However, Milo, who was in the know, quickly explained:
"He couldn't make a sound even if he wanted to shout; he's mute."

Having probably understood the meaning behind Milo and Yan's words, the old man, who was slumped on the ground, turned to Yan, opened his mouth, and pointed to the half of his tongue that had been severed at the root of his tongue.

Yan was truly disgusted by the old man's mouthful of dark, rotten teeth and broken tongue, and his face turned rather pale.

The old man turned to look at Milo and gave him a kind and grateful smile.

Milo nodded.

He knew the old man.

Milo had already witnessed the old man's strange temperament during the last ghoul incident.

Back then, the ghouls who had just entered the territory of Nanwei City were running rampant in this cemetery, sucking the marrow from one family today and taking the bone marrow from another to make soup tomorrow, making a mess of the cemetery.

Any normal person walking on a road in the suburbs at night would probably be terrified if they heard the slightest noise from the cemetery next to them, but this kind of fear seems to be absent in the tomb keeper.

Just like today, the old man back then would pick up a shovel and fight to the death with the ghouls hiding in the tunnels.

Before Milo noticed the ghouls' movements, the old man had been digging in the graveyard for two or three days straight, almost digging through the ghouls' burrow.

Fortunately, Milo arrived in time to stop the conflict.

Actually, it can't even be considered a conflict. You see, ghouls don't just eat corpses. Sometimes they won't refuse a little fresh flesh to improve their health. It's already a miracle that this old man survived after digging in the graveyard for two or three days with a shovel.

After that incident, Milo became acquainted with this strange old man.

The old man could not speak, but his hearing was fine. It seemed that not only was his tongue cut off, but his vocal cords had also died due to some kind of disease.

So Milo still doesn't know what the old guy's name is.

All he knew was the folklore that the old man had committed a serious crime in his youth and spent the rest of his life as a tomb keeper in this cemetery, paying for his past sins.

However, these were all just rumors, and Milo didn't take them seriously. People could always tell these legendary stories with great detail, but no one could say for sure what the old man's real name was. It seemed that this kind of person, who was far removed from the city dwellers, was only remembered during the Day of the Dead each year.

Before the ghoul incident, Milo had met the old man a few times.

I mostly encountered them when I accompanied my family to the outskirts of the city for the Day of the Dead, and once on the day the law enforcement system arranged a funeral for the group of seven.

……

To be honest, Milo actually admired this half-dead old man quite a bit.

After all, no one understands better than Milo how fragile the soul of an ordinary human being is. Even a ruthless person like Rebecca suffered a period of mental breakdown after the Eckham case.

An old man like him, whose first reaction upon seeing a group of strange creatures devouring corpses emerge from a cemetery in the middle of the night, would be to grab a shovel and fight them to the death, is indeed, as Yan said, a ruthless person.

In some ways, he is very similar to Mogot, the old law enforcement officer of Galid City.

So, when Milo had nothing to do at night, he would always bring two bottles of slightly better quality liquor to the cemetery and give them to this unsung tomb keeper. Although the old man couldn't speak, he would always smile and nod to Milo whenever he received the food and drink.

For Milo, perhaps the rarest people in the world are these kinds of people: Mogot, Nero, these old people, whose souls have not become weak like their bodies due to the erosion of time. In extreme cases, they are ruthless characters who dare to bare their fangs at evil rulers.

……

Just as Milo's thoughts were drifting a little further away...

The old man, with Yan's help, sat down on a stone bench nearby.

He made this gesture towards Yan—extending his fist and bending his thumb upwards twice.

This time, Yan Zheng won't be able to handle it.

He made an "uh—" sound, then looked suddenly enlightened, frantically pulled a matchbox from his pocket, and while striking a match, asked Milo:

"Is that what he means? He wants to borrow a light from me, right?"

……

Milo raised his hand to his forehead and explained helplessly:

"That's sign language, they're saying thank you."

"Oh, is that so?" Yan said with a look of "I've learned something." But just as he was about to put away the cigarettes and matches, the old man snatched them from Yan's hand with a strange expression and lit the cigarette himself.

Okay, so it turns out he was indeed asking Yan for cigarettes.

……

"Damn, this is the toughest guy I've ever seen. He didn't even feel it when his legs were bleeding like that."

Yan looked at the old man sitting on the stone bench, smoking a cigarette with a relaxed expression, and sighed again.

Milo patted Yan on the shoulder and said, "Stop talking nonsense and get to work. Kill this thing and find a place to bury it... Oh well, let's just burn it."

Upon hearing this, the old man immediately pointed to the small house in the distance and then made a drinking gesture.

"I know, I know, you're thirsty, aren't you?" Yan clapped his hands.

As soon as he finished speaking, the old man gave him a look as if he were an idiot.

Milo corrected, "He's telling you he has alcohol in his house that can be used to start a fire."

"Wow, impressive! When did you learn all this? I've never heard you mention it before." Yan muttered, dragging the beast-like Klaus towards the cabin.

Milo shook his head.

Should I tell you that I have seven silent shadows following me around every day?

……

...

Early in the morning.

It's located next to a suburban cemetery, near the canal bank.

Three figures, each with a bottle of liquor in their pockets, sat around a blazing "campfire".

Come to think of it, Yan and Milo haven't sat down and drunk together like this for several years.

Back when they were still city guards, the thing Milo and Yan Gan did most often was to hug a roadside pillar and gag their throats in the early morning or just before dawn.

At that time, their lives were not yet on track. Although it may not be on track now, at least Milo has shaken off that decadent state of self-destruction.

……

The expensive campfire burned for more than two hours, until Milo and Yan had drunk all the wine stored away in the old man's hut, and the fire was still burning.

"If a viscount can burn so well, what do you think would happen if we replaced it with an earl or duke? Would it burn even longer?"

Yan was so drunk that he became somewhat dizzy and started talking nonsense.

The old man beside him seemed to have gotten a little drunk, pointing wildly at the cemetery behind him and gesturing frantically. Yan Zheng was completely bewildered, and with a drowsy head in his hand, he tried to understand what the old man was trying to say with a puzzled look on his face.

Relatively sober, Milo could only act as the translator, explaining to Yan:
"He meant that there was a nobleman buried in the cemetery behind, and he didn't know if he had inherited the title. He asked if you wanted to drag that guy's body out and burn it."

Yan waved his hand and said:
"Come on, what nobleman with a title would be buried in this rotten land? The dead here are either poor people or homeless vagrants. Impossible, impossible."

As he said this, the old man began to gesture with his hands and feet again.

Yan turned to look at Milo with a bewildered expression.

Milo translated:
He wondered why the ghouls didn't go after the corpses in the noble cemeteries, but instead targeted the poor.

"Maybe the meat of ordinary people tastes better." Yan shook his head.

Alcohol had numbed most of his thinking abilities, and it was clear that he was incapable of contemplating such profound questions in this state. However, the answer he blurted out in his dazed state was surprisingly insightful. He patted the old man on the shoulder and said:

"Noble cemeteries are guarded by heavily armed private guards. Look at this godforsaken place. You're just a half-buried old man with a broken shovel. Sooner or later, you'll be buried and dug up by ghouls to be their dinner."

When people are in a state of excitement due to alcohol, their thinking is always very jumpy.

Just like Yan, once he mentioned the words "snacks to go with drinks," he started obsessively rummaging through the grass beside him, muttering indistinctly:

"Damn it, why did you just drink straight for so long? Where's the food... I clearly smelled roasted pork ribs just now... Where did it go... Milo, help me find it..."

Milo leaned against the lawn, watching speechlessly as the two drunken guys in front of him rummaged around on the grass.

……

(End of this chapter)