Hiss. Lin Shou's scalp prickled. This was a serious problem.
He turned around stiffly.
He was met by a pair of captivating, cat-tailed eyes blinking at him.
A light black veil half concealed her fair, slender legs as she stood poised before him. Her delicate, oval face was flawless as soft jade and fragrant ice. Her eyes were rippling pools of autumn water, her lips a tender pink, and a tiny vermilion beauty mark sat at the corner of her mouth.
This woman, as beautiful as if she'd stepped out of a painting, was the serial killer who had scalped twelve people in the Capital City.
The Scalp-Cutter, Ning Luowei.
Ning Luowei stood before Lin Shou and asked with a sweet smile:
"My dear, why didn't you save me?"
Hiss. Lin Shou's expression remained calm, but his blood had gone cold. His mind was full of the Lantern of Life's vision: this woman cleanly slicing the scalp off No. 6, the corpse stitcher, with a single stroke.
He'd clearly taken precautions. The Corpse-Stitching Shop's only door was shut and locked. So how had the Scalp-Cutter gotten in? Could she actually walk through walls?
In the night, Lin Shou caught a faint whiff of blood from Ning Luowei, who stood close enough to touch.
Subtle Perception was running at full tilt, driven by his will to survive. It gathered every scrap of information around him and worked through the possibilities. There was a smell of blood on her. She'd been caught in the middle of the night, yet she hadn't attacked him as soon as she arrived...
Subtle Perception laid out several possible explanations. She hadn't come looking for him by chance. If there was anything she could want from him, apart from his handsome face, it was probably his skill.
The Beast-Making Art, Subtle Perception, and Greed-Abstinence Silver were all out of the question; outsiders couldn't know about them. That left only... the Corpse-Stitching Needle Technique?
"Did you stitch all the corpses that left this shop?"
Ning Luowei blinked her cat-tailed eyes and asked.
As expected, she was after the Corpse-Stitching Needle Technique. Lin Shou steadied himself, reassured now that he knew what she wanted. His nose had already caught the scent of blood. She was injured.
Ning Luowei padded over to Lin Shou like a kitten, then lifted herself onto the cold stone bed. She crossed her fair legs, one over the other, right in front of him. She was like a feline prowling through the night, and her eyes were especially bewitching.
She was quite pretty. Lin Shou watched her slender, pale legs sway before him. He wasn't embarrassed; he wasn't some inexperienced young boy. He even shamelessly kept staring. As long as I'm not embarrassed, she's the one who'll be.
"Ahem..."
Ning Luowei tugged her hem down to cover her legs. Her cheeks burned from being stared at, and she spat in annoyance. She usually didn't mind people looking at her. She knew she was beautiful, and she enjoyed the adoration and attention her looks brought her. But Lin Shou's gaze was a little too brazen.
Seeing that Lin Shou had made her self-conscious, she said, perhaps out of irritation or just to save face:
"Am I not pretty?"
To her surprise, Lin Shou shook his head with a cold expression.
"Average."
Ning Luowei was furious! How could there be someone like this? If she was average, why had he stared for so long?! How could she understand the joy Lin Shou had known in his previous life, as a seasoned freeloader who watched videos without ever giving them a like?
He might have been joking around, but Lin Shou wasn't unaware of how dangerous his situation was. He dared to flirt because he knew Ning Luowei needed something from him. He was using the opportunity to subtly seize control of the conversation, hoping to get out of this alive.
That was the art of negotiation. Sucking up and putting on airs were both useless. Sycophants never came to a good end, and if you put on airs, did you think the other person was an idiot? The right move was to pull the other person down to your own level. Then you could use your wealth of experience to get under her skin.
"I know you're skilled. I want you to stitch my wounds."
Ning Luowei wanted to get straight to the point. Turning her back to Lin Shou, she opened her clothes to show him her wounds.
A hundred fresh, crimson gashes had torn open her body, smooth as gel and white as jade. She looked like a white-glazed, ice-crack vase drenched in blood, its surface spiderwebbed with fissures, so fragile it seemed a touch would shatter it to pieces.
Tsk. Lin Shou had already used Subtle Perception to notice Ning Luowei's unsteady breath and the smell of blood on her, so he knew she was injured. But he hadn't expected so many wounds. She looked as if she'd been subjected to a thousand cuts; the sight was bloody and terrifying. He asked mildly:
"How did you get hurt?"
"Xue Ning of the Four Great Constables. As expected of the top expert in the Six Fan School. Once he used his exclusive sword move, Thousand Cuts, no one below the master level could withstand it."
Lin Shou studied the horrifying wounds covering Ning Luowei and marveled inwardly. They were on a completely different level from the wounds on the Canal Gang porters he'd stitched before.
Gangsters really were amateurs. The Six Fan School and you professional criminals knew how to fight!
"Are you afraid the wounds will scar and ruin your looks?"
Lin Shou said calmly, hitting the nail on the head. Wasn't that exactly why she'd come to him?
Ever since Lin Shou had practiced the Corpse-Stitching Needle Manual, his Corpse-Stitching Needle Technique had reached perfection. He could even stitch a cabbage back together without leaving a seam.
But using a cleaver to kill a chicken was a waste. Lin Shou had always used the technique on corpses. Education was scarce in this era, and ordinary folk were uneducated and unsophisticated. They didn't dare look too closely at corpses; if anyone did notice his work, all they'd say was, "Young master, your stitching is so good, it looks just like the original." Who cared beyond that?
But while the unsophisticated didn't care, some people did. Like the woman who had come knocking tonight.
Everyone loved beauty, and women even more so.
What woman would want to be left with ugly scars crawling all over her like centipedes? None of the physicians at the clinics Ning Luowei had found dared claim they could stitch her terrifying wounds without leaving scars. At best, they could offer her their condolences.
Her only hope of preserving her beauty was the corpse stitcher whose Corpse-Stitching Needle Technique had reached perfection: Lin Shou.
"Can you stitch me up? I don't want to be stuck with these ugly scars for the rest of my life."
Ning Luowei looked at Lin Shou with her cat-tailed eyes. Her tone softened slightly. It was clear how much this mattered to her.
Tsk. A good doctor was in demand in every era, Lin Shou reflected.
He stayed silent, leaving Ning Luowei waiting for a while. Only when she began shifting uneasily did he speak:
"I only stitch the dead, not the living."
"They're both people. Is there really that big a difference?"
"If I do a bad job on a dead person, I won't get sued for malpractice."
"..."
Ning Luowei was at a loss for words.
"Just give it a try. If you can't do it... even if you can't do it well, that's fine. Just do your best to stitch me up..."
Without realizing it, Ning Luowei began lowering her demands and compromising with Lin Shou. She truly had no one else to turn to. In the Capital City, only this corpse stitcher's skill gave her any hope.
The Corpse-Stitching Shop fell silent for a long while. Ning Luowei saw Lin Shou lower his head in thought and assumed he was considering it. She didn't know he was simply spacing out and leaving her hanging. After a long, agonizing wait, she finally heard him say:
"Lie down."
Delighted that Lin Shou had agreed, Ning Luowei nodded and obediently lay on the cold stone bed, like a fish on a chopping board.
Lin Shou found a pair of fish-skin gloves and put them on. But after seeing how densely packed the wounds on Ning Luowei's body were, he took them off again and brought out two jars of wine. As he prepared, he asked casually:
"Are you a wanted criminal? Were you the one who scalped those twelve people in the Capital City?"
"I'm just an assassin who follows my master's orders to kill evil men."
Lying on the cold stone bed, Ning Luowei felt the chill against her skin. She'd just escaped death at the hands of the Four Great Constables, and now that her taut nerves had finally relaxed, she couldn't help complaining and sharing what was on her mind:
"In the martial world, there are always things beyond your control..."
Lin Shou glanced at Ning Luowei, surprised by her complaint, then went on pouring wine to disinfect his hands and soaking the thread. He also heated the gold corpse-stitching needle over a candle to disinfect it.
"Let me make this clear first. I've only stitched the dead, never the living. If I botch it, I'm not responsible."
"As long as you do your best to stitch me up, good or bad, I'll repay your kindness. That's the rule of the martial world."
"Stitching your wounds is one thing, but don't try to pin anything on me. Once I'm done, just leave. I don't need you to repay me."
Lin Shou shook his head. He'd finished preparing and picked up the corpse-stitching needle, ready to begin.
There was no corpse tonight. He was going to stitch a living person.
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