The Eight Sects of the Jianghu.
This referred to eight kinds of trades that people in the jianghu pursued to make a living. After listening to stories for several days, Lin Shou had more or less learned what each one meant.
Feng shui and fortune-telling, practicing medicine and selling remedies, performing magic tricks, putting on monkey shows, working as bodyguards and escorts, street performances, telling stories in teahouses, singing in opera troupes, and the livelihoods of beggars and courtesans who sold smiles and sob stories...
There were also trades like corpse-stitching, paper effigies, the Pallbearer Guild, and suona playing—the sort of minor yin sect trades Lin Shou worked in—along with mounting and framing, painting, and the like.
Most of the mainstream "skill" trades in the jianghu fell among the Eight Sects. Aside from those were solitary crafts passed down to one heir, unique skills, and illegal trades involving swindling, cheating, murder, and arson—all collectively known as unorthodox paths.
The storyteller performed tales from the Record of the Eight Sects of the Jianghu, recounting them as biographies of their characters. He might tell of the jianghu miracle physician Liu Jinping, who hung out his gourd to heal the world; the great escort Nie Yongzhen, who rode alone for a thousand miles; or the Beggar King...
In short, they were all stories from the jianghu, mixed with illicit affairs, lives lost, court cases, and battles between gods and devils. They were down-to-earth and entertaining, and ordinary people loved listening to them.
To Lin Shou, it was much like the internet celebrities who made short videos in his previous life. Storytellers with great skill, plenty of tricks, and good stories had fans following them and teahouses vying to hire them.
When big teahouses hired famous storytellers, the money they made from a single performance was no less than what a celebrated opera singer earned.
Lin Shou mused that if he ever couldn't make a living as a corpse-stitcher, he could switch to storytelling.
His storytelling skills might be lacking and need honing, but he had an advantage: his head was full of stories from his previous life. The Four Great Classical Novels alone would keep him fed for the rest of his life.
As Lin Shou pondered, he wondered whether he, too, could make money through his wits and become a literary plagiarist.
Just then, a little maid from the teahouse hurried past him and ran to Shopkeeper Xia. She leaned close and whispered in his ear.
"Shopkeeper, the Second Miss is coughing again."
Shopkeeper Xia went pale at the news and hurried to the back courtyard, where the boudoir was. He pushed open the door. Inside, the floor was made of peachwood, incense burned in a censer, and a frail woman lay on the couch.
Once the door closed, Lin Shou could no longer hear anything from inside. The scene he'd been imagining in his mind stopped there as well.
But from what he had just seen and heard, Lin Shou had already pieced together a picture from the few scraps of information available.
Lin Shou was sitting in the teahouse, twenty meters from Shopkeeper Xia. The maid had whispered into his ear, so Lin Shou couldn't hear her, but he could see how her lips moved. By reading her lips, he had reconstructed what she said.
After that, Shopkeeper Xia hurried off to the inner boudoir in the back courtyard. Lin Shou couldn't see the courtyard, but the sound of his footsteps changed, telling him that he'd stepped onto wooden flooring once inside. The scent of incense drifted out from the room, and from its medicinal fragrance, Lin Shou could tell that the ingredients were precious.
Also, the "Second Miss" in the boudoir was coughing. Judging by the rise and fall of the sound, she was probably lying on the couch. Her breath was weak, so she must have been frail...
The fragmentary clues came together in Lin Shou's mind, faintly forming a single thread.
This extended deduction, comparable to Sherlock Holmes's method of observation, was a reward Lin Shou had received from the Record of Selling Corpses after stitching up the corpse of a constable who had died at Shallow Water Pier last night.
Corpse valuation: Yellow Rank Grade Six.
The Record of Selling Corpses had rewarded Lin Shou with two spot-the-difference scrolls depicting Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
"Know the distant through the near; see the great through the small."
Lin Shou had spent the whole night playing spot-the-difference with the densely packed crowds in the two Along the River During the Qingming Festival scrolls, and had mastered the skill of "Subtle Perception."
After mastering Subtle Perception, Lin Shou could clearly feel that his observational skills and logical thinking had improved considerably.
Of course, he was still far from the inhuman, abnormal powers of deduction possessed by Sherlock Holmes, who could look at someone once and see through their entire family history.
In practice, its effect was just like what he'd done moments ago: using the five senses to gather information, then making deductions and filling in the gaps.
Lin Shou thought that for Yellow Rank Grade Six, it was pretty good.
Still, this attempt at Subtle Perception had unexpectedly let him glimpse a little of Shopkeeper Xia's family affairs.
Lin Shou sat in the teahouse listening to stories. By the time his tea had gone cold, the sun had already set. It was getting late, and he should head back.
He returned to the Corpse-Stitching Shop and waited and waited, but even after night fell, no corpse was brought in.
Well, that made another day without business.
Lin Shou shut the shop and barred the door, then turned to the half-built stove against the wall.
A few days earlier, he had filed a request with a clerk at the Bureau of Corpse Management to build a stove in the Corpse-Stitching Shop. It had been approved the day before yesterday, so he'd prepared bricks and mortar and gotten to work.
He rolled up his sleeves, picked up a brick, and figured that since he had no corpses to stitch tonight, he might as well finish building the stove.
But just as he was about to start, someone knocked. An urgent woman's voice came from outside, pleading for help:
"Is the shopkeeper in? Help! Help! A villain is trying to molest me! Help!"
Lin Shou heard her and frowned.
Her voice was urgent and her breathing uneven, so it really did sound as if someone was chasing her. But a determined person could fake that, too.
He crept to the door and secretly peered outside through a small hole in the paper window. There really was a woman standing beyond it.
She wore a dark robe embroidered with peonies in shadowed thread. It could barely conceal her graceful figure, and beneath her black veil, the smooth, pale flesh showed faintly. Her loose hair hid her face.
Through the tiny hole in the paper window, Lin Shou glimpsed the woman's shapely figure. Her features were hidden, which only made her seem more mysterious.
Her cloudlike coiffure bloomed with flowers; her wind-swept sleeves drifted with the scent of roses.
Anyone else would surely have opened the door to save her.
Unfortunately for her, she had run into Lin Shou.
Beneath the character for lust hovering over her head, Lin Shou saw a bloodthirsty butcher's blade concealed.
There was no point in saying more. Just one thing.
As a lecher, Lin Shou very much wanted to play the hero and rescue the beauty, but he had seen the clothes the woman outside was wearing before.
Where?
In the Lantern of Life of the No. 6 corpse-stitcher, the one who'd peeled the felt hat off a corpse and been scalped.
That was right. The woman outside was none other than the culprit behind the Twelve Capital Scalp-Cutting Cases—the Scalp-Cutter.
"Shopkeeper, help! Help me!"
The Scalp-Cutter, disguised as a frail woman, called from outside.
Lin Shou held his breath and stayed silent.
The Corpse-Stitching Shop's lamps and candles were lit. Anyone could tell someone was inside, but what did it matter if he stubbornly pretended not to hear her?
There were plenty of people in the jianghu who turned a blind eye to those in danger. It was impossible for her to guess that he wasn't opening the door because he'd recognized her as the Scalp-Cutter.
The woman outside knocked and called for help a few more times. When no one answered, she suddenly heard the sound of boots hurrying along the street.
Lin Shou was delighted. It was the constables making their night patrol.
Sure enough, when the Scalp-Cutter heard the officers approaching, she turned and quickly left, apparently afraid of them.
Lin Shou listened as the constables passed by outside. Once the Scalp-Cutter had vanished, he finally let out a long breath and relaxed.
The doors and windows of the Corpse-Stitching Shop had been shut tight from beginning to end. The Scalp-Cutter couldn't get in, so she couldn't take his life.
However, Lin Shou suddenly heard the bright, sweet voice of a woman behind him, ringing out from the room. It sounded like an oriole carrying a blade in its beak.
"Good sir, you're truly a heartless man."
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