I Accidentally Resurrected My Dead Husband - Chapter 45

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 45
“You mean the Followers?”
“You know of them?”
“I’ve fought them before.”
“Ah, so you were with the Imperial Knight Order. Well then, before you misunderstand, let me say upfront—we have a blood feud with them. This explanation is going to take a while.”
The Elder showed signs of fatigue, so Tan hastily brought her cold water.
“Our clan came to the Empire two hundred years ago. The Desert doesn’t offer much in the way of survival.”
At that time, the Empire was a great kingdom, locked in conquest wars with numerous other kingdoms.
“One hundred fifty years ago, King Sandonia made our clan leader a proposal. He said if we lent him our strength, he would treat us as a noble house and grant us a Fief where we could live together.”
King Sandonia.
He was a man who would later become the Empire’s first Emperor. The clan leader accepted his proposal. As a token of their covenant, King Sandonia took the Clan Leader’s Daughter as his betrothed.
The Shartin Clan aided King Sandonia with their Spiritual Power and Sorcery. He subdued several smaller kingdoms, declared himself Emperor, and founded the Empire.
The clan leader asked that the promise be kept, and the Emperor held a grand banquet to honor their service. There, he announced his marriage to the Clan Leader’s Daughter and promised to grant them their Fief. The vast majority of the Shartin Clan’s elders attended.
“But the Emperor broke his word. He never intended to keep it in the first place.”
At that banquet, the Emperor poisoned the wine. Countless clan leaders and elders who had trusted him drank and died. Those who didn’t drink he cut down with swords.
Only the exceptionally clever Clan Leader’s Daughter managed to flee with the survivors.
“That’s different from the history I know.”
Ern’s words made Udith nod as well. According to Udith’s recollection, the Shartin Clan had betrayed the Emperor and launched a rebellion to seize the throne.
Every citizen of the Empire knew the story—that the Emperor loved the Clan Leader’s Daughter so dearly he had been willing to drink from any cup she offered, until a single drop fell onto a Silver Utensil and the metal turned black.
“That would be it. The Emperor wouldn’t want it known that he broke his own oath. As you know, history is written by the victors.”
The Emperor used propaganda and falsification to brand the Shartin Clan as a treacherous people. Having lost all their leaders, the Shartin Clan could mount no proper resistance and were hunted relentlessly.
“But one leader remained, didn’t she? The Clan Leader’s Daughter.”
“She sought to take revenge on the Emperor by offering herself as a sacrifice. It is said she ended her own life and created something with it.”
“Something? You don’t even know what it was, Elder?”
The Elder nodded.
“From that point, our clan split into two. One side wished to guard what the Clan Leader’s Daughter created through her sacrifice and seek vengeance. The other wanted to return to the Desert.”
Those who chose vengeance came to be known in later ages as the Followers.
“Were you among those who returned to the Desert, Elder?”
“That was before I was even born. My great-grandfather made such a choice. But we never made it back to the Desert.”
While the wars raged and the clan remained in the Empire, many Shartin had built lives and families there. In the end, they chose to assimilate into the Empire’s populace.
“We mixed our blood. We married into the Empire’s people and bore children who didn’t resemble us, and lived that way.”
Through generations of mingling, the number of children born with strong Shartin traits dwindled.
Over time, some drifted away from the group, others split off to form independent factions, and still others lived pretending to be mere Empire citizens.
“But I noticed there are many children with amber eyes in this group.”
“When a child like that is born, we abandon them elsewhere. That’s why we’ve always had many children born with strong clan blood.” The Elder paused. “Those are the ones we keep close.”
The Followers called those unmixed with Empire blood “Pure Blood.”
“One of the Followers infiltrated our group and began seducing the young people.”
The Followers drew the Pure Bloods into their ranks. The discriminated young Shartin were seduced by the logic that we should gather together and dominate this Empire.
The Elder tried to stop them, but they left her to become Followers.
“My own daughter went with them. If she was swept up in this Rebellion, she’s certainly dead by now.”
The Elder murmured bitterly. Udith softly echoed her regret.
“Apart from that, is there anything else you know of the Followers? They made my body not decay.”
“They did?”
The Elder shook her head as if perplexed.
“I don’t know what reason they had for creating an undecaying corpse.”
Even through her clouded eyes, the Elder looked directly at Ern. Her unfocused pupils moved with deliberate intent, something eerily unsettling about them.
“I suspect they may have used you to test poisons. There are many types of Sorcery, but they specialize mainly in Poison Sorcery.”
Since Cliff had obtained poison from the Followers, it seemed a plausible theory.
“They created a new poison and tested it on you, and perhaps got unexpected results. So they might be observing you.”
It was a reasonable speculation. Either way, the fact that they experimented on him remained unchanged. Ern felt deeply unsettled.
* * *
Following the Elder’s instructions, Tan packed various items into a large satchel and followed Udith and Ern.
All the way to the Funeral Parlor, Ern watched Udith carefully.
“Stop staring.”
“You sure you’re okay? Don’t you regret spending two hundred thousand Gold Coins?”
Ern edged close beside Udith and whispered so only she could hear.
“Come on, admit it just to me.”
“It wasn’t a waste.”
Udith bit her lip as she answered. The children appeared bright but were somehow dejected, living in such harsh conditions, and Udith kept seeing her younger self reflected in them.
That was why she’d returned the Gold Coins as they were. More than pity for those children, it was a gift to her own past self.
A child scratching at their entire body because of a cramped sleeping space kept overlapping with his own childhood memories, and he couldn’t bring himself to turn away.
Well, call it self-comfort of sorts.
“Don’t you feel bad about it? Really.”
Ern, mulling over Udith’s words, suddenly snapped his fingers as if he’d grasped something.
“That’s right. No loss at all. It was Henry’s money to begin with.”
……!
So that was it?
Now he understood why it felt good to spend two hundred thousand Gold Coins as though making a donation.
Taking credit with someone else’s money, soothing old wounds and trauma with someone else’s fortune—this was something else.
‘Actually, I rather like it.’
* * *
“It’s here. I can feel strong resentment coming from beneath the floor,” Tan said the moment he stepped into the Funeral Parlor, already pinpointing the source of the stench. If he were older and more experienced, the Elder’s claim that his Spiritual Power was exceptional would seem all the more credible.

“Impressive, as expected,” Henry said, arriving at the Funeral Parlor just as he was clocking out to help Udith. He was startled to see Tan, but after hearing the circumstances, he felt sympathetic.
Udith had taken back the Gold Coins from Tan but didn’t bother mentioning that she’d given them back to him.

“It looks like we’ll need to tear up the floorboards,” Tan said.
“Must we really tear up the floor?” Udith asked.
Tan leaned down to peer between the floorboards, then shook his head. It seemed the stench couldn’t be removed without tearing them up.
It pained him to damage perfectly good flooring, but for the sake of removing the odor, the floorboards would have to be sacrificed.
“Let’s tear them up,” Udith decided, eager to rid the place of that stench as soon as possible.
At her word, Henry stepped forward this time.
“My lady, it’s dangerous. Please step back over there.”
Henry wedged his sword tip between the floorboards and gestured for Udith to move away, not forgetting a solicitous warning to be careful in case splinters flew.
“By the way,” Tan murmured, standing quietly beside Ern and turning to him with a slight tilt of his body.

“What’s the relationship situation here? Are you folks perhaps… open-minded about these things?”
“Speak plainly.”
“Lady Herington and the knight are married, and you and Henry are lovers, yes? And you two remain friends?”
Ern didn’t immediately grasp what Tan was saying and had to pause to think. The question boiled down to: Ern and Udith were married, Udith and Henry were seeing each other, and Ern and Henry stayed friends—was that how it worked?
He wasn’t even amused enough to laugh. Ern hadn’t lived a particularly moral or righteous life, but he despised such filthy arrangements. It was the kind of thing that would make even the grass-eating Gold outside curse the whole affair as sordid.
“That’s all right. I’ve seen a lot of relationships like this working as a spirit medium,” Tan said, reassuring him.
“That’s not what this is.”
“Oh, there’s no need to be embarrassed.”
After chatting for only a few hours, Tan seemed to have grown comfortable with Ern—comfortable enough to pat his forearm gently.
“I said that’s not it.”
“Yes, yes.”
Tan didn’t believe him at all, his lips quirking with amusement. Ern’s gaze turned glacial.
“Your mind doesn’t match your seventeen years. If you want to keep running yourself to death until you develop the kind of pure heart a seventeen-year-old should have, go right ahead.”
Why did the word ‘death’ sound so vivid? Tan pressed his lips shut and withdrew his hand from Ern’s forearm. The memory of that hellish running earlier flooded back.
Fortunately for Tan, at precisely that moment Henry managed to heave the floorboards halfway up. When his strength gave out, Ern kicked the half-raised boards away.
Crackle-crackle-crackle-crackle-crackle—
In an instant, a thick stench billowed forth, and dozens of centipedes scattered in every direction.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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