The Woman in Red

The female corpse was beautiful, with a slender figure. Her face was painted with rouge and powder, and upon closer inspection, there was even a faint scent of body fragrance.

The cause of death was suffocation. There was a clear ligature mark around her neck. Her body was clean, without any soil on it; she had not crawled out of the ground. What kind of mutation had occurred was unknown.

A clean corpse was easier to handle. He only needed to wipe the rouge and powder from the woman's face.

This was also the rule for cleaning corpses. Before cremation, a corpse had to be restored to its original appearance. Otherwise, if the ghost messengers who hooked souls mistook the person, it would cause a major disaster.

Qin He put on mourning hemp and donned filial white, then used a damp cloth to clean the woman's face. Without the enhancement of cosmetics, the corpse returned to its original appearance. Her complexion was somewhat gray, a normal phenomenon after death.

Overall, her features had not changed. She was not the sort whose face became unrecognizable once her makeup was removed.

At that moment, Qin He also noticed that the woman was clutching a white handkerchief. He tugged at it, but it was held very tightly.

Even using both hands, he could not pull it free. Looking carefully, he saw it was Suzhou Embroidery, with fine, dense stitches and red patterns on it. Unfortunately, it was gripped in her palm, so he could not see the full design.

Qin He did not dare try again. The female corpse was so attached to this handkerchief that her Obsession must have run deep. Forcing it might bring misfortune.

Without further delay, he immediately moved the corpse into the furnace and fanned the flames. This body made him uneasy.

A corpse wrapped in red had never been an auspicious omen.

Within the blazing flames, the corpse remained utterly still, showing no sign of Corpse Mutation.

Yet Qin He still did not feel at ease. He reached for the oil barrel nearby, scooped up a ladleful of fire oil, and poured it over the woman's corpse. His gaze never left the body, and he kept himself ready to use the Corpse Suppressing Nails at any moment.

The fire oil was supplied by the Corpse Burning Facility, but there was very little of it. Corpse Burners were all frugal with it, only using it on bodies that gave them an especially bad feeling, in hopes of cremating them quickly.

But at that moment, Qin He's pupils contracted.

It was not that the corpse had moved. It was that he discovered the handkerchief clutched in the woman's hand... had vanished.

The woman's palm lay open, completely empty.

A chill surged from the soles of Qin He's feet straight into his skull. He hurriedly stumbled several steps back.

The handkerchief had not burned away, because there were no ashes in her palm. It had simply disappeared.

Qin He gripped the Corpse Suppressing Nails, sweat beading in his palm.

The five years of inner strength he had just gained within his body seemed to have been provoked by something, surging back and forth.

The tautness along his spine told him that there was something behind him.

Qin He had no way of knowing what was behind him, but it had not attacked. Perhaps it was wary of the aura of his inner strength, or perhaps of the Corpse Suppressing Nails in his hand.

At a time like this, he absolutely could not turn around. Otherwise, death would strike in an instant.

This was an even stranger Supernatural Incident than Corpse Mutation, involving something on an entirely different level.

The time that followed felt incomparably long to Qin He, every second dragging on.

Under such tension, the passage of time no longer felt real.

He did not know how long it had been—half an hour, or perhaps an entire hour—before the corpse before him gradually turned to charcoal.

The Yin Energy behind him slowly receded, vanishing without a trace.

Qin He let out a huge sigh of relief and slowly turned around. There was nothing behind him, as though the sensation he had felt earlier had merely been an illusion.

A huge gray-white curtain slowly descended, while the sharp clack of wooden beaters pierced through the dim yellow lamplight.

Shadow Play Performance, half illusion and half reality—it was the female corpse's life.

She had originally been the daughter of an official family. She had learned to read and write from childhood, and her father had risen to the post of Right Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate.

Four years ago, her father and twelve court officials jointly impeached Wei Qiansui, accusing him of corruption, bending the law for personal gain, forming factions for private interests, sowing chaos in the inner palace, and seven other charges, intending to bring down the Eunuch Faction in one stroke.

But they failed. The officials who had signed the petition were imprisoned or executed; the male members of their clans were sent to the frontier, while the female members were consigned to Jiaosifang.

Jiaosifang was, in name, an office of music, but in truth it was a brothel of the Ming Dynasty reserved for the pleasure of the powerful and wealthy.

For a criminal woman to enter that place was to walk into a tiger's jaws. Her only way out was to be favored by some powerful noble, who could redeem and take her away. Otherwise, her fate would be exceedingly miserable.

Because she could read and write, she quickly became accomplished at singing, playing instruments, and dancing, carrying herself with the air of a true master. Her reputation for talent gradually spread, until Xu Huaien, the son of Prince Zhongshan, noticed her during a performance of song and dance and redeemed her from Jiaosifang.

Yet what awaited her was not a turn in her fortunes, but death.

After entering Prince Zhongshan's Mansion, she spent some time in days as carefree as heaven, with no worries over food or clothing. Xu Huaien showered her with favor.

But fair scenes did not last long. One day, after the woman finished dinner while being attended by servants, she suddenly felt unbearable heat throughout her body. In a daze, she had an illicit affair with one of the household retainers.

Xu Huaien happened to witness the scene. Thunderously enraged, he ordered the woman strangled to death on the spot.

A talented beauty of her generation thus met her end in a muddle within the grand residence of the wealthy.

After the woman died, sinister winds rose on every side. The mansion servants deemed her corpse inauspicious and sent it to the Corpse Burning Facility.

Soul-Snatching Shadow Lamp, Judgment Weighing. Zhang Jin Kou, the Black Robed Man: "A smile bloomed like a flower, a jade voice flowed soft and sweet. Who knew hearts were separated by a belly's breadth? Though talent filled her breast, it all came to nothing."

As the ripples faded, a faint radiance appeared around Qin He. A prompt rang out in his mind: You have obtained ten years of Dao Xing.

Qin He was delighted. This reward was quite good.

When he had chatted with other Corpse Burners before, they had said that the monks and Daoists who specifically dealt with Supernatural Incidents measured themselves by Dao Xing.

The Corpse Burners could not explain exactly what Dao Xing was. It seemed to be another system that ran alongside inner strength, except it was more focused on demons, monsters, ghosts, and supernatural phenomena. It could be used to harm people, but it was far less direct than inner strength.

With ten years of Dao Xing, dealing with small-scale Supernatural Incidents would no longer be a problem. For an ordinary person to reach that level would take at least ten years of bitter effort—and that was with guidance from an expert.

It seemed the reward was indeed closely tied to the corpse being burned. The rewards from a Supernatural Incident were far greater than those from an ordinary corpse.

What Qin He could not understand was why the woman's corpse had caused a Supernatural Incident. That vanished handkerchief had never appeared throughout the Shadow Play, which was truly strange.

But Qin He was not someone who liked to burrow into a dead end. If he could not figure something out, then he simply would not think about it.

The reward was already in hand. What he wanted now was to make himself stronger as quickly as possible. His current strength was still far from enough to protect himself.

He rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

"Aah!!"

Just then, a miserable scream suddenly rang out from somewhere nearby.

Qin He hurriedly looked in that direction. After several days of quiet, people had finally begun dying again.

He did not know which Corpse Burning Room it was.

The duty officer soon gave the answer.

"Corpse Burning Room Two is vacant. Find a replacement immediately!"

Qin He froze for a moment.

Number Two was Horse Butcher, the most senior Corpse Burner at the East City Corpse Burning Facility. He had once been a pig butcher, and had endured half a year at the Corpse Burning Facility on the strength of his Sha Qi.

He had not expected that tonight would still mark the end.

After dawn, the Corpse Burners gathered outside Room Two and watched Horse Butcher's body, wrapped in black cloth, be carried away on a Corpse Transport Cart.

Once it was out of sight, they dispersed. That counted as their farewell.

For the next few days, they would still remember him, because surviving half a year in the Corpse Burning Facility was truly rare.

But after another half month, when someone mentioned "Horse Butcher" again, they might have to pause and think who that was.