I Accidentally Resurrected My Dead Husband - Chapter 81

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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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Episode 81
‘Something feels off. Should I have brought her along?’
Ern pushed down his unease and pursued the men heading toward the rendezvous point. Udith wasn’t a child. She was an adult. She could certainly manage to sit still and keep quiet.
“Where’s the rendezvous point?”
“We’re almost there.”
After chasing them for about ten minutes, the two men stopped at a fork in the path where the forest opened into a small village.
“That tree there.”
The man holding the cart reins pointed to a dead tree near the fork, its trunk broken and long since withered. They approached it and suddenly began digging at the ground.
“This should do. That’s enough.”
The burly man dropped his shovel with a thud, then retrieved a money pouch. He opened it and withdrew gold coins.
“Boss, if the big man finds out about this, we’re finished.”
“We haven’t been caught so far, have we?”
The burly man chuckled softly and tossed some coins to the man holding the reins as well.
Even as he thought this shouldn’t be happening, the man accepted the coins and pocketed them.
They placed the money pouch into the pit they’d dug and covered it with earth. Then they snapped a large branch in half and planted it diagonally in the ground beside where the pouch was buried.
‘So that’s why they needed the shovel—to bury and retrieve the money this way. But I’ve heard of this method before somewhere…’
As Ern racked his brain, the men hummed contentedly, as if their work was complete.
“Let’s go get a drink with our ill-gotten gains.”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
They headed toward the village. Ern waited a moment in that spot. They’d said today was the day to bury the money, so someone would surely come to retrieve it.
* * *
At the very moment Ern left to pursue the men moving the money, Udith sat hidden in the forest. The glow of their campfire flickered in the distance.
‘Moving a little closer shouldn’t give me away.’
The men showed no vigilance whatsoever. For people running a scam and fleeing, their composure was remarkable.
‘They pulled the same scam in the Southern Region and then did it again in the Capital, after all.’
Since they’d never been caught before, they seemed confident they wouldn’t be caught this time either.
“This bastard Aro—I told you to buy Frisela extract, and you didn’t bring it again!”
A peevish voice tore through the silence. Curious, Udith crept closer. In the firelight, a man in an apron emerged from a tent, looking irritable—just a dark silhouette in the flames.
“I told you a dozen times, a hundred times—the product stinks without it. It’s the most important thing.”
He was so frustrated he was practically snarling.
“Calm down. We’ll just go buy it now, and it’ll be fine. Come with me instead.”
A tall man soothed the man in the apron.
“We’ll buy the Frisela extract and grab a drink while we’re at it. We’ve got time before the next job starts anyway. Let’s take it easy.”
The tall man coaxed and calmed the apron-wearer, and eventually convinced him. The man in the apron went back into the tent and emerged again—apparently he’d removed his apron, though it was hard to see clearly.
The two then disappeared side by side. Udith waited until they vanished completely from sight, then crept closer to the tent.
There were four of them in total. Two had gone to bury the money and drink. The other two would buy the extract and then join the first two. Which meant the tent was empty now and would remain so for at least several more hours.
‘He said there was a paper with the formula in there, didn’t he?’
With that, she could make the antidote. They wouldn’t have taken the formula with them for a drink, so it was likely somewhere in the tent.
‘Ern told me not to do anything dangerous.’
Udith drew in a sharp breath. But she needed to secure the formula as soon as possible, and the men had left the tent unguarded. This was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. She crept out of the forest, looked around cautiously, listened intently, and hearing nothing, slipped quickly into the tent.
“Ugh.”
The moment she entered, Udith clapped her hand over her mouth at the stench that hit her. A familiar, sickening reek permeated the tent.
“It smells like rotting corpses.”
For better or worse, Udith was acquainted with this smell. It was the very stench that had interfered with her business opening. A smell one never truly grew accustomed to. After a few dry heaves, she slapped her own cheek.
“This is no time for that. Find the recipe first.”
Covering her nose with one hand, Udith surveyed the tent. In the center, two large pots boiled over a brick furnace haphazardly constructed.
“It won’t be there.”
On one side stood a long wooden table; on the other, a shelf and a cluttered desk.
“That must be the corpse they brought in earlier.”
Something lay on the long wooden table, covered with thick cloth.
“…But why is the body bleeding?”
Drip, drip.
Dark-red liquid fell along the edge of the wooden table. And looking closer, the earth below the table was saturated. Drip, drip, drip. Udith swallowed hard.
“They must have made a mistake moving it.”
Against her will, her gaze followed the blood drops downward until she saw something beneath the table on the floor.
“That thing under there…”
An old, stained straw mat. And something inside that bulged upward beneath it. That was the source of the reek.
“It’s definitely not there.”
Udith turned her head away. If the formula was anywhere, it would be on the shelf or the cluttered desk beside it. She moved toward them.
Drip, drip—the slow sound of liquid falling clung to the back of her neck. Udith wiped the back of her neck reflexively.
Concentrate.
She thought of Henry—poor Henry. Udith studied the desk carefully, cluttered as it was with shelves, papers, and rubbish scattered across every surface. But nowhere could she find the recipe.
Then her eye caught on an apron draped carelessly over the back of a chair—the same one the man had been wearing earlier. Udith approached the chair and felt through the apron’s pockets. It made sense; when making cosmetics, one might keep the recipe in an apron pocket to consult it as needed.
And her instinct proved correct. Inside the pocket lay a sheet of paper with the formula written on it.
That’s it.
Udith carefully retrieved the recipe paper and unfolded it on the desk. Then she took out the paper she’d prepared beforehand and a piece of charcoal, and began transcribing the formula.
She would have liked to steal the paper itself, but then they’d realize someone had broken in. Since she only needed the ingredients, not the entire instructions, she could manage with a copy.
“Two liters of Frisala Extract, ten bundles of dried comfrey, two bottles of Gulyse Oil.”
Look at that—these really are typical cosmetics ingredients. Comfrey has soothing properties, and Gulyse Oil provides moisturizing effects. She’d seen these exact materials when she studied what ingredients could be sourced in this world for making scented candles.
“One liter of Nikar diluted and added? Isn’t that the detergent they use to remove blood? Good grief—no wonder their skin ended up like that if they were spreading harsh detergent on their faces.”
So something strange was mixed in after all—nothing less than detergent had made its way into the cosmetics base. Udith clicked her tongue. With such a substance involved, there was no way the skin would survive intact.
“And finally… two jin of fat?”
Pork lard perhaps? Tilting her head in puzzlement even as she finished recording the ingredients, Udith skimmed quickly through the instructions as well.
“…after removing the fat, place it on cloth to drain the blood, then harden it. Once hardened, wash the fat once in diluted Nikar solution. Fresh fat works best. Do not use fat from corpses dead more than three days—it will reek…….”
Drip, drip—blood falling from a corpse, cold sweat rolling down Udith’s forehead in rivulets.
These madmen.
They’d made cosmetics from fat scraped off corpses?
Ugh. The bread she’d eaten earlier threatened to come back up; Udith clamped her lips shut again.
With trembling hands, Udith tucked the recipe back into the apron. Drip, drip—the sound of falling blood made her recoil. So that’s why blood kept dripping from the corpse……. No, no, don’t imagine it. Don’t think about it.
Udith gritted her teeth and tried to leave the tent. That’s when she heard the voices of the two men who’d supposedly gone out drinking. And they were very close.
“……because.”
“……no need for it anyway.”
The men were approaching. Udith backed away.
‘I’m in trouble.’
There was nowhere to hide inside the tent. Worse, there was no back exit. Udith hopped nervously in place, then tried to lift the edge of the tent and slip out. But the men had driven stakes firmly into the ground all around the perimeter, leaving no gap wide enough for her to escape through.
In that moment, a piece of torn, fluttering cloth caught her eye…….
Of all places, why there.

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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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