In the dead of night, ghosts came knocking.
Beneath the hazy moonlight, the Capital City had fallen quiet.
Lin Shou walked through the deserted streets, carrying a corpse-stitching case made of leather-covered wood. Inside were his stitching tools.
He made his way to the Bureau of Corpse Management without a sound.
"Stop! Who goes there?"
The two guards at the entrance blocked his way.
"Corpse stitcher from Shop No. 9, Lin Shou."
His eerie, cold voice sent an inexplicable shiver of fear through the two guards. Their confidence faltered, and they unconsciously took a step back.
"Y-you wait here. I'll go report this."
One of the guards went inside to make the report. Lin Shou stood at the gate, peering in and taking stock of the Bureau of Corpse Management.
Inside, the buildings were arranged in orderly rows. Covered corridors ran along both sides, with a passageway through the center. The wall facing the entrance was carved with scenes of the Ancient Tombs of the Underworld River and Old Yin-Protection Customs, with one enormous character, "Burial," in the middle to suppress the passageway sha.
"Passageway sha" was a term in architectural feng shui. Put simply, it meant that the front door faced the back door, leaving a clear, unobstructed path through the building.
As the old saying went, qi entered through the door and ought to remain in the home. But with a passageway sha, the two ends were open. Qi would enter from the front and leave through the back, unable to gather. Without qi, wealth wouldn't gather either, and it was considered unlucky.
That was why courtyards often had something built in the middle of the passageway to block it off, whether a screen or a building, or, as at the Bureau of Corpse Management, a wall facing the entrance.
Such walls were commonly found in old family compounds. Aside from suppressing passageway sha, old tales passed down through the generations claimed they could illuminate ghosts and drive away yin energy.
In the old days, people believed that wandering, homeless ghosts roamed the world. If one found its way into your home, the place would be haunted, bringing disaster upon you. So people built a wall at the entrance. If a ghost came in, it would see its own reflection on the wall and be frightened away. That was why these walls were also called "spirit walls."
Of course, these were all just superstitious folk tales, excuses feng shui masters used to make money.
A few years ago, there were even unscrupulous feng shui masters who would sneak up to the homes of wealthy families without spirit walls and splash pig's blood by their gates, playing at ghosts and spirits. No business? They'd make their own.
These days, spirit walls were mainly used to lend a residence an air of grandeur. They were covered with enormous carvings. Merchants seeking wealth favored flowers heralding prosperity and eternal spring, while officials seeking authority often chose tigers descending the mountain or mighty dragons summoning rain. But the wall at the Bureau of Corpse Management...
Lin Shou stared at its carvings of the Ancient Tombs of the Underworld River and all kinds of Old Yin-Protection Customs, not to mention that enormous "Burial" character. It made the place feel downright ominous and ghostly. He wondered which feng shui master had designed it. Had they not paid enough?
Tsk, tsk. A tomb at the entrance? Going for some avant-garde art?
If it were up to me, I'd put up an entire pornographic spring-palace painting of the Eighteen Caresses. Much easier on the eyes...
Lin Shou hadn't waited long before a clerk from the Bureau of Corpse Management came out to receive him. The clerk led him inside, turning left and right before bringing him to a side room.
Two officials were talking outside. Judging by their official robes, both appeared to hold ranked positions.
One was likely Sun Xianfu, the Bureau of Corpse Management's deputy chief clerk, second only to its chief clerk and in charge of its internal affairs.
The other was probably from the Imperial Medical Academy. Lin Shou didn't recognize him.
"My lords, I've brought the man."
The clerk stepped forward and bowed. Sun Xianfu nodded.
"Take him inside. Tomorrow morning, notify the Public Mortuary to come collect the body. Lord Lu and I have morning court tomorrow, so we won't be coming back."
The clerk acknowledged his order and watched the two officials leave.
Lin Shou stood to one side, thinking, Well, would you look at that. They've even booked me a spot in the morgue? So they really did bring me here to die?
Creak. The side-room door opened.
Lin Shou was shoved inside.
"Stitch up the corpse in there tonight."
After giving his instructions, the clerk slammed the door shut, as if there were something terrifying in the room.
Lin Shou clicked his tongue and looked around. The room seemed about as large as his own corpse-stitching shop, with a similar layout. A cold bed stood in the middle, holding a corpse.
It was none other than the Tomb Raider's corpse, which Lin Shou had seen half a month earlier.
What made the room unsettling was that talismans covered everything, from the ceiling to the walls, windows, and floor. Strange ghostly symbols had been drawn in cinnabar on the yellow paper.
The whole room looked as though some old Daoist had performed a ritual there. With so many talismans, Lin Shou couldn't tell whether they were trying to suppress some enormous grudge or had found a wholesale market's half-price sale.
Lin Shou shook his head and stepped closer to inspect the corpse. A ring of stitches circled its neck.
The Tomb Raider had been beheaded. Earlier, the first corpse-stitcher to die at Shop No. 20 had stitched up most of the wound, but had died with five stitches left.
Now, of those five stitches, three had been sewn. They were crooked and uneven, each one different—not the work of the same person.
Clearly, the three corpse stitchers who had died over the past few days had sewn them. One stitch per corpse stitcher.
Two stitches remained.
Lin Shou stared at them, shaking his head. So a corpse stitcher's life wasn't worth anything? They were just piling up their lives to get the job done?
The first corpse stitcher's death could have been called an accident. But after that, they'd clearly known there was a tiger on the mountain and still sent people up it. One, two, three, four, five—all fed to the tiger.
Five stitches. Five lives.
They'd rather lose five corpse stitchers than leave the corpse unburied, though Lin Shou had no idea why.
But he had no intention of dying in such a miserable way.
Lin Shou opened his leather-covered wooden corpse-stitching case and took out his tools.
First, he lit three sticks of incense. Then he took precautions, cinching his clothes tightly until he was covered from head to toe. Finally, he took out the "secret weapon" he'd prepared.
Lifelike finger joints, connected by fine, threadlike nerves, could be controlled remotely from as far as twenty meters away. A set of wooden Medical Mechanical Hands!
That morning, Lin Shou had gone to the Bureau of Corpse Management to investigate. After deducing that he might be ordered to stitch up the Tomb Raider's corpse, he'd spent the entire afternoon cobbling these together with the Art of Prosthetic Substitution and his modern knowledge. They would let him stitch up the corpse remotely.
With a maximum operating range of twenty meters, he could avoid the corpse's sudden grab at his hand—the very thing he'd seen in the Lantern of Life while it was being stitched.
He'd seen exactly how the corpse stitcher from Number Twenty had died, so naturally he'd prepared for it.
The three sticks of incense had nearly burned down, two short and one long.
He knew there was something wrong with the corpse, but he still had to stitch it. The Bureau of Corpse Management had made it compulsory this time, and refusing would probably have serious consequences. After all, corpse stitchers like them couldn't exactly claim to have any rights.
Lin Shou adjusted the Medical Mechanical Hand and positioned it, then stepped well back. Controlling the threads, he began stitching the corpse remotely.
Two stitches. Not many at all.
But just as he finished the first stitch—
Crack! The corpse clamped its hand around the wooden Medical Mechanical Hand!
Lin Shou reacted instantly, releasing it and severing all the threads. The wooden hand fell to the floor.
Before long, the entire hand began to rot and blacken, releasing a wisp of smoke. It was ruined.
Lin Shou swallowed. It was bad enough that anything touching the corpse died, but even wood rotted on contact. What kind of thing was this?
Fortunately, he was used to preparing for every contingency.
Lin Shou took another wooden Medical Mechanical Hand from his corpse-stitching case. He had a spare.
He controlled the wooden Medical Mechanical Hand and threaded the needle.
The final stitch on the Tomb Raider's corpse.
Stitched shut!
Buzz! The Yinchuan Paper Treasure and the Record of Selling Corpses appeared!
Lin Shou saw the Tomb Raider's Lantern of Life.
He had been a Grave Robber from the Xiang Region, making his living by searching for dragon veins, robbing tombs, and selling burial goods.
Later, the local authorities had put out a warrant for his arrest, so he'd had no choice but to flee to the Capital City. But he'd still been caught.
Under the Great Jing Law, anyone who robbed an imperial tomb was beheaded.
After his execution in the autumn, his corpse had been sent to Shop No. 20—the very day Lin Shou had crossed into this world.
But the Grave Robber was dead. Why could his corpse still move? And what was that strange poison? It could make a person itch before killing them, and it could corrode wood. It had already killed four unsuspecting corpse stitchers in succession.
If Lin Shou hadn't seen the corpse grab people's hands through the Lantern of Life in the Record of Selling Corpses, after discovering it by watching the dead corpse stitchers, he would probably have fallen victim too.
Lin Shou watched the Lantern of Life for a long while and found only one detail that might be relevant.
Before leaving the Xiang Region for the Capital City, the Grave Robber had robbed a prince's tomb. He'd camped there and gone to sleep, only to wake the next morning inside a bronze coffin. Terrified out of his wits, he'd scrambled out and fled.
The tomb raid had ended there, but as he ran, he'd accidentally grabbed a burial object and carried it away.
After arriving in the Capital City, he'd been caught while trying to sell that object, and had lost his head.
The Lantern of Life ended.
Lin Shou saw nothing unusual in it, apart from the night he'd woken in the bronze coffin inside the prince's tomb.
He didn't know whether the corpse's many inexplicable oddities were connected to that incident.
The Yin-Yang Abacus clattered; Heaven, Earth, Black, and Yellow—every grade had its price.
Corpse valuation: Yellow-Grade, First Rank.
Oh, that was a pretty high price.
Lin Shou raised an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth lifting. This trip hadn't been a waste.
A Burial Shovel appeared in his hand.
But before Lin Shou could get a good look at it—
The Yin-Yang Abacus clattered; Heaven, Earth, Black, and Yellow—every grade had its price.
Huh? What did that mean? It was happening again?
Corpse valuation: Heaven-Grade, Third Rank.
A Heaven-Grade valuation?!
Lin Shou was dumbfounded.
Of Heaven, Earth, Black, and Yellow, the highest grade he'd received before was Yellow-Grade. How had a Heaven-Grade suddenly appeared?
At the same time, Lin Shou wanted even more to know why stitching up one corpse had earned him two rewards from the Record of Selling Corpses.
Lin Shou looked from a distance at the corpse on the cold bed.
One corpse, two lives?
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