Record of Selling Corpses

Lin Shou opened his eyes, three incense sticks held in his hands.

Outside the door, a rainy night pattered on; inside, damp and cold, candlelight dim and murky, a corpse with its head severed from its body lay on a cold bier.

Where is this...

Chaotic memories flooded into his mind, and Lin Shou quickly understood from them that he had transmigrated.

The present was the Great Jing Dynasty, the fifty-ninth year of Ganhuang's reign.

The court was corrupt, famine and plague raged, natural disasters and man-made calamities struck, the people had no means to live—look outside and see nothing, white bones covering the plains.

This was different from the peaceful Earth he had once lived on.

Chaos, turmoil, the dead living and ghosts stirring, demons and monsters running rampant.

He was now in a corpse-sewing shop on the street facing Caishikou execution grounds in the Great Jing capital, working as a corpse sewer who prepared the dead for burial.

What was a corpse sewer?

As the old saying goes, after death, a person's leaves fall and return to their roots, buried in peace for rest, with the importance of dying with an intact body. If someone was buried missing an arm or leg, it was a great taboo, inviting ominous disaster.

To lay the departed souls to rest, this trade of corpse sewing came into being, also known in some places as encoffiner, ghost stitcher, or second-skin tailor.

Corpse sewing, along with trades like executioner, paper doll maker, coroner, and coffin bearer, were all businesses that fished in the dark gate.

Dealing with the dead day in and day out, few dared to do it, and even fewer could.

It was best for those in this line to be heaven-crippled or earth-lame, bearing some disability, or at least to be widowed, orphaned, solitary, having outlived several relatives, and to have touched upon a few of the five calamities and three deficiencies. Otherwise, one's fate wasn't fierce enough, and taking money from the dark gate could easily lead to trouble.

Lin Shou's predecessor had grown up among refugee crowds, nearly thrown into a pot for hotpot by starving refugees as a child. In this chaotic era, he knew not his parents, and later even became intellectually disabled. His own fate was fierce, which was why he could do this job.

In the turbulent chaos, it barely counted as a way to make a living, scraping together a meal, better than starving to death.

"This world is too chaotic."

After sorting through the memories, Lin Shou felt very uncomfortable—the gap between the peaceful era of his past life and this precarious present was too great.

Especially since this world wasn't just chaotic; it seemed to be filled with all sorts of bizarre demons, ghosts, and monstrous plagues...

Twenty-four corpse-sewing shops near Caishikou in the capital saw old faces suddenly vanish every year, replaced by unfamiliar newcomers.

So far, Lin Shou had never seen a corpse sewer retire safely—disappearances, sudden deaths, illness, misfortune, madness—their endings were all grim.

Just as he was pondering this, a raven's beak pecking at the door sounded in the night, a mournful announcement mingled with the fine rain:

"Corpse sewer position vacant at Shop Twenty! Corpse sewer position vacant at Shop Twenty!..."

Lin Shou's heart skipped a beat—another one gone.

If it were possible, he would very much like to switch trades. After all, the current him was no longer the intellectually disabled Lin Shou of before. With a shopfront in a bustling area, what business couldn't he run? Even selling sesame cakes would be better than risking his life fishing in the dark gate.

But these twenty-four corpse-sewing shops at Caishikou in the capital weren't opened by the corpse sewers themselves. How could a bunch of disabled people afflicted with the five calamities and three deficiencies have the money or power to open shops in a busy district?

These twenty-four shops were a corpse-processing department specially established by the Ministry of Rites and the Imperial Medical Academy.

They corpse sewers were nothing more than hired workers given room and board.

If Lin Shou said he wouldn't work tomorrow, he'd be on the streets sleeping under the sky with the ground as his bed by the next day. Without a travel permit, he couldn't even stay in the capital and would be thrown into the refugee camps outside the city.

So, until he found another way to make a living, the corpse sewer's job had to continue.

Lin Shou glanced at the three incense sticks he had just offered; they had all burned steadily to ash, and only then did he look down at the corpse.

The corpse was that of an adult male, head severed from body, a clean, neat cut the size of a bowl on the neck.

That morning at Caishikou execution grounds, beheadings had taken place—batch after batch of death-row prisoners executed in autumn, like cutting leeks.

After the heads were chopped off, family members tearfully claimed the bodies and sent them to the corpse-sewing shops around Caishikou.

What Lin Shou had to do was sew it back together.

Threading the needle, stitching the human skin, applying powder to the seams, combing the hair and brows, dressing it in burial clothes.

After a night of sewing and preparing the corpse, the originally severed body was restored to its former state, lying on the cold bier.

Lin Shou put down his needle and thread, let out a long breath, and thought to himself that this sewing had gone smoothly, with no mishaps.

But then, suddenly, his mind went into a daze.

Before his eyes, mist slowly spread, and within the mist, layers of burial mounds and tombs rose and fell, mausoleums and grave markers stretching like mountain ranges, while ghost money and paper treasures flowed like endless rivers.

From the dark mountains and nether rivers, a scroll of mottled stele inscriptions was offered up, its cover engraved with three eerie characters:

Record of Selling Corpses.