The sun was high in the sky beside the wall of Qingcheng Teahouse.
A bunch of Heavenly Cripples and Earthly Maimed sat there, listening to the storyteller through the wall again.
"Hey, fellas, listening to stories again?"
Lin Shou brought over two steaming bags of freshly roasted chestnuts and handed them around to the corpse stitchers.
"Fresh out of the wok, roasted with a new batch of sugar. Eat them while they're hot—they're easy to peel."
The men, young and old, didn't stand on ceremony. If it was offered, they ate.
Ordinary people didn't put on airs in those days. It was an age of scarcity. Leave a threadbare quilt on the street, and you could close and open your eyes only to find someone had taken it.
Lin Shou scanned the group. There were a few unfamiliar faces and a few familiar ones missing. Old Blind Man from No. 1 Shop was still there, though. He'd outlived them all, a gnarled old evergreen.
Lin Shou sat down by the wall and ate chestnuts with them. He made casual conversation, slipping the questions he wanted to ask into it as they chatted about recent events.
"Fellas, hasn't there been an awful lot of death at our corpse-stitching shops lately?"
"Sure has. Three people have died already. Who knows what kind of ghostly thing they were stitching?"
"I know a little about it. Don't go spreading this around, but..."
"What is it?"
"Little Fifteen died last night. I happened to see an official from the Bureau of Corpse Management come looking for him yesterday afternoon. He told him to go to the bureau that night."
"He wasn't stitching a corpse last night? Then how did he die?"
"Little Eighteen, who died the day before yesterday, was the same. I happened to hear an official tell him to go to the bureau that night, too."
"What's that supposed to mean? So none of the three died while stitching corpses? Then what killed them? You've got me all confused."
"The officials wouldn't want to harm us, would they? Can't be. That bird still cries out loud at night to announce the dead."
Lin Shou had opened the subject, and the corpse stitchers began talking it over, one after another. He got a useful piece of information from them.
On the day each of the three corpse stitchers died, none had been at their shop. They'd been summoned by a clerk from the Bureau of Corpse Management.
As they were talking, a clerk from the bureau happened to approach from a distance. The corpse stitchers immediately fell silent and pretended to listen to the storyteller.
The clerk, however, came straight to Lin Shou.
"Ninth Shop, come to the Bureau of Corpse Management after sunset today. Bring your corpse-stitching tools."
After saying this, the clerk turned and left. It seemed he'd come all that way just to deliver the message to Lin Shou.
The corpse stitchers were dumbstruck. Speak of the devil.
They'd just been talking about how for three days running, three corpse stitchers had been summoned to the Bureau of Corpse Management at night—and died.
Now Lin Shou was about to become the fourth.
"Little Nine, you can still get out of the city before dark. Hurry up and run. Three people have already died."
There was still a kind-hearted corpse stitcher among them. He said this to urge Lin Shou to flee.
The others didn't look too happy, either. It wasn't that they all cared so much about Lin Shou; it was more like the rabbit had died and the fox mourned. They were wondering if they'd be next once Lin Shou was dead.
Lin Shou frowned and thought it over. Subtle Perception pieced the clues together in his mind.
"Fellas, I'll head back for now."
Lin Shou stood up, dusted off his backside, and strode away. The corpse stitchers assumed he was planning to flee.
One sighed at how unlucky it was to get caught up in this. Another wondered if he should report to the Bureau of Corpse Management that Lin Shou was trying to flee, in hopes of being spared himself.
As for Lin Shou, of course he wasn't planning to run.
After leaving the teahouse, he headed straight for the Bureau of Corpse Management.
The Black Tortoise Ward, the Bureau of Corpse Management.
Lin Shou looked at the high walls and grand courtyard. The Imperial Medical Academy stood next door. Those beyond saving were transferred straight here, where they were embalmed, laid out, sent off, buried, and given their seventh-day rites—a one-stop shop for funerals.
Black Tortoise Ward was much busier than Caishikou. Caishikou was where ordinary folk gathered, while this was an upscale commercial district frequented by the Capital's gentry, wealthy merchants, and middle-class sophisticates.
There were plenty of people coming and going in the street. Lin Shou glanced around and spotted a beggar, scruffy and filthy, holding out his bowl.
Begging was probably the easiest way to get into the underworld. All you needed was a bowl. But precisely because the bar was so low, there were beggars everywhere. Every street in the Capital had them, sitting with their bowls out. The more theatrical ones wailed and played up their misery, waiting for some grand gentleman to toss them a meal.
They might have spoiled the city's appearance, but they were also like watchtowers scattered throughout the Capital. Sitting on a street all day, they watched everyone come and go and saw all the big and little things that happened. If you wanted to know something, they were the people to ask.
"You were here last night, too?"
Lin Shou wore a broad straw hat. He crouched, pulled the brim low to hide his face, and questioned the beggar.
The beggar looked up at Lin Shou and nudged his bowl forward.
Lin Shou dropped in a copper coin.
The beggar beamed. "Yes, sir. I was here the whole time."
"Did you see anyone going in or out of the Bureau of Corpse Management last night?"
The beggar nudged his bowl forward again.
Lin Shou had no choice but to toss in another copper coin.
"Yes, sir. I did."
Lin Shou clicked his tongue. What kind of answer was that? Was "yes" all he was going to get?
"I'm asking you to tell me what kind of people went in and out."
The beggar nudged his bowl again and grinned ingratiatingly. "Sir, may you grow rich! May you grow rich!"
Lin Shou gave him another copper coin. Of course, he was already getting annoyed. It was hard to say what might happen if the beggar kept pulling stunts.
"Yes, sir. Around midnight last night, a corpse stitcher went in..."
"And then?"
Lin Shou frowned. The beggar had only told half the story.
The beggar grinned and nudged his bowl forward again, fishing for a reward.
Lin Shou narrowed his eyes. The beggar was insatiably greedy, always wanting more. Asking for money after every sentence was one thing, but now he was splitting a single sentence in two just to beg for another coin?
Clink! A large silver ingot dropped into the beggar's bowl.
The beggar was stunned. He hurriedly snatched up the silver and tucked it into his clothes, guarding it like a treasure. His shifty eyes darted from side to side. Seeing that no one had noticed, he smiled until his face crinkled like a chrysanthemum.
"May you live long and prosper, sir! May your fortune grow!"
"Cut the useless nonsense and answer my question."
"After that, the corpse stitcher walked in, but was carried out lying down and sent to the Public Mortuary."
"Did you see the corpse?"
The beggar wore a smile from ear to ear and nudged his bowl forward again, shamelessly saying, "Sir, may you grow rich! May you grow rich!"
Lin Shou laughed. He'd been worried the beggar wouldn't hold out.
Last time, two taels of Greed-Abstinence Silver had tormented Wang Er until he was barely human. This beggar had such a big appetite—
Clink! Clink!
Two more large silver ingots!
"Oh, my gracious! You're like a father to me!"
The beggar threw himself to the ground and pinned the two silver ingots beneath him. His eyes gleamed green with greed as he said,
"I saw him, I saw him! His whole face was covered in bloody scratches, like a ghost had clawed him. It was terrifying."
When the beggar finished speaking and looked up, the generous gentleman had vanished.
With so much Greed-Abstinence Silver in his possession, the beggar naturally suffered greatly over the next few days. Once he'd been tormented nearly to the breaking point, he discovered the silver was gone.
When he tried to remember who had given him the silver that day and why, he couldn't. It was as if his memories had all been burned away in a single fire.
The information Lin Shou had gotten from the beggar matched almost exactly what he'd deduced with Subtle Perception. He could now be certain of what had happened.
For three days in a row, corpse stitchers had been summoned to the Bureau of Corpse Management, and each had died soon afterward. It was probably because they'd been ordered to stitch up that tomb raider's corpse—the one that bit people's wrists!
Tonight, it was Lin Shou's turn.
Before you continue