Book of Lu Ban: The Art of the Substitute Body

Tsk. Lin Shou watched the Lantern of Life, frowning slightly as the corpse on the cold slab suddenly reached out and grabbed someone.

This time was different from before, when No. 6, the corpse-stitcher whose skullcap he'd sewn back on, had scared himself silly.

Last time, it was man-made—the Scalp-Cutter had dressed as a ghost to frighten people into opening the door. But this time?

The Lantern of Life showed it clearly: no one was causing trouble. The corpse had moved on its own.

Could it really be a haunting?

Lin Shou deeply doubted it. Strange and uncanny things happened often in this place, and people talked a mile a minute about ghosts and gods with great conviction.

But Lin Shou had yet to actually see a ghost, or witness a ghost harming anyone.

People with ghosts in their hearts, though—those he'd seen plenty of.

The Lantern of Life continued playing.

After No. 20 was grabbed by the corpse, he stood frozen like he'd been electrocuted.

About the time it takes to finish a cup of tea, he suddenly began clawing at himself frantically, as if itching, scratching his whole body and face until they bled without stopping, like he was possessed.

Finally, with a choked scream, he dropped dead.

The Lantern of Life ended.

Lin Shou watched with a grave expression, silent.

The Yin-Yang Abacus clinked and clanked, setting prices for heaven and earth.

The Record of Selling Corpses set the corpse's price: Yellow Grade, Fifth Rank.

The Record of Selling Corpses rewarded Lin Shou with a page of an ancient manuscript fragment.

The fragment contained mechanical principles, artisan craftsmanship, and ingenious, bizarre techniques. What it recorded was: how to replace the human body's skin and hair with ordinary wood, earth, metal, and stone.

Book of Lu Ban: Chapter of Human Replacement

Lin Shou read by lamplight all night, flipping through the pages. He marveled at the ingenuity of the craft and the strangeness of the imagination. By dawn, the techniques of prosthetic limb-making and the method of human replacement were thoroughly ingrained in his mind. The heavenly text dissolved.

Lin Shou casually grabbed a nearby stool, carved wood, threaded string, and applied the prosthetic limb-making method with the human replacement technique.

In the time it takes to burn a stick of incense.

In Lin Shou's hand, a lifelike wooden palm dangled from stitching thread. The joints were meticulously detailed, and inside, threads connected like sinews.

Lin Shou manipulated the threads in his hand, and the wooden palm vividly grabbed, made a fist, flipped the middle finger, and twirled a flower—moving as flexibly as a real human hand.

Lin Shou clicked his tongue in wonder. This prosthetic human replacement technique was incredible.

This bizarre, ingenious craft was more advanced than any bionic prosthetic technology he'd seen in his past life.

The flexible segmentation of the limbs was one thing, but the key was the technique of using threads to simulate nerves.

According to the Book of Lu Ban: Chapter of Human Replacement, this thing could not only be manipulated by hand like a marionette, as he was doing now, but could also be directly connected to a person's nervous system.

This was a miracle in the field of bionic medicine, a blessing for all disabled people. A prosthetic limb installed with this technique could perform at least eighty percent as well as a real limb.

Tsk, this thing was way too cyberpunk.

Lin Shou played with his "third hand" for a long time, truly marveling at its strangeness and ingenuity.

Corpse-stitchers actually needed to make prosthetics occasionally.

People's fortunes were unpredictable—even in death, there were lucky and unlucky ways to go. Sometimes a body might be missing an arm or leg, a part lost and unrecoverable.

Though they emphasized dying with the body intact, the dead still had to be buried. So for those missing limbs, they'd try to use the original parts if they could find them. If they really couldn't, the corpse-stitcher would have to mold a fake one out of clay and sew it on.

According to old sayings, this was called the "Deceiving the Ghost Ferry" method.

When you go down to the underworld and cross the Sanzu River, there's a checkpoint. The underworld clerk checks if you look human. If you're missing an arm or leg, they won't recognize you, and in your next life, they'll throw you into the Animal Realm.

Those who were afraid of being reborn as animals would linger in the human world, unable to enter reincarnation, and come back as ghosts to haunt their relatives.

So they'd make a fake to "deceive the ghost ferry," tricking the clerk into thinking you still looked human, and he'd let you pass.

Of course, these were all just old legends and tales. Take them as stories. It was just a rule of the trade: if you couldn't assemble a complete corpse, the corpse-stitcher would make a fake.

"Anyone who dies in my hands is in luck," Lin Shou thought.

He mused that with both the flawless Corpse-Stitching Needle Technique and the prosthetic human replacement method, even if someone sent him just a head, he could stitch it into Iron Man.

With skills like his, if he went out and opened his own shop, there probably wouldn't be a corpse-stitching shop in the Capital City that could compete.

But unfortunately, the laws of the Great Jing Dynasty seemed to prohibit private corpse-stitching. If caught, you'd be beheaded.

The corpse-stitching trade was government-run, all controlled by the Bureau of Corpse Management under the Ministry of Rites.

Lin Shou was actually quite puzzled. The corpse-stitching trade wasn't as profitable as salt or iron. If run on a large scale, it even ran at a loss—a money-losing venture. Why did the court hold onto it so tightly?

Oh well, none of his business.

Daylight came. Lin Shou had read all night and was now feeling sleepy. After the Bureau of Corpse Management's clerk took the corpse away, he lay down on the cold slab and slept.

That night, Lin Shou stitched a corpse—a medicine seller from the Skin Sect.

Yellow Grade, Ninth Rank. He stitched out a Strength Pill.

Lin Shou was speechless, but figuring the Record of Selling Corpses probably wasn't low-class enough to sell fake medicine, he downed it in one gulp to test it out.

To his surprise, it worked remarkably well.

Lin Shou felt that after downing one Strength Pill, his whole body's muscles burned with heat all night, power surging through him—an utterly refreshing and exhilarating sensation.

Originally, his predecessor had been frail from long-term malnutrition, but after this single night of transformation.

His once skeletal frame, as if fed a full course of tonics, filled out considerably, even showing some muscle definition, like the result of a consistent, sensible fitness regimen paired with a healthy diet and exercise for about a year—his height even seemed to have inched up a bit.

Lin Shou tried jumping and stretching in the room, his muscles and joints cracking and popping, his whole body brimming with strength and power—truly refreshing and invigorating.

In the morning, when Ning Luowei came to deliver tofu, she pushed open the door and happened to catch Lin Shou exercising inside. His upper body was bare, his frame lean and muscular, covered in glistening beads of sweat, sharp collarbones, faint abdominal lines, deep grooves of the V-line, and further down... tsk, the fabric was in the way!

Ning Luowei secretly licked her lips, walked up with a beaming smile, and said to Lin Shou, "Husband, come have some tofu."

"Not doing business. Blocking my door this early in the morning."

Lin Shou wiped the sweat off his body with a towel and pulled on his clothes, covering up his strikingly impactful physique.

As if he were still that frail, insignificant, dim-witted little fool from No. 9 Corpse-Stitching Shop.

After eating the tofu, Lin Shou sent Ning Luowei off.

In the following days, since one Strength Pill had given Lin Shou a significant boost in physical fitness, he also increased the intensity of his daily training.

At the same time, he started scouting around for where the Skin Sect sold street medicines to pitch his business to them—if they died, they absolutely had to come to his No. 9 Corpse-Stitching Shop, where corpse stitching came with a 20% discount.

He figured he'd see if there was a chance to snag another Strength Pill from the Record of Selling Corpses.

This body-strengthening stuff was really good stuff.

Of course, because Lin Shou was aggressively promoting his corpse-stitching business, it went without saying that he was being chased and cursed down several streets by a bunch of people.