Classic of Burial

The morning cock crowed at dawn, and the good dog barked at the rising sun.

Early that morning, the Bureau of Corpse Management was on duty.

A clerk came to open the side room where the Tomb Raider's corpse had been placed. The door had been locked the night before, for fear the corpse-stitcher might run away.

As he unlocked it, he called to his colleagues to help. They were about to load the corpse-stitcher's body into a cart and take it to the Public Mortuary. They had done this for three days now and knew the drill.

But the moment the clerk opened the door that morning, he stomped his foot and backed away seven or eight paces, his voice bursting out in alarm:

"Good heavens! Are you a man or a ghost?"

Inside, Lin Shou was packing up his corpse-stitching kit. He walked out, "grinning like an idiot," and asked the clerk:

"Sir, I've finished stitching the corpse. Can I go home?"

"Hey! You!" The clerk was three parts bewildered and seven parts afraid. When he saw Lin Shou step out of the side room and stand beneath the blazing sun without a problem, three parts of his fear finally ebbed. He swallowed and asked:

"Are you alive?"

Lin Shou burst out laughing. "Sir, listen to yourself. I can jump around just fine. How could I be dead?"

"Strange..." the clerk muttered, then asked, "Did anything odd happen last night?"

Lin Shou shook his head. "No. I finished stitching the corpse and went to sleep. I slept straight through till now."

"You finished stitching the corpse?"

"I did."

"..."

The clerk went inside and, keeping well away from the body, craned his neck to take a look. The stitches on its neck were complete. The corpse had indeed been stitched.

The clerk scratched his head, even more baffled than before.

It was best not to have bystanders when stitching a corpse. One person and one corpse made for a balance of yin and yang; if that balance was disrupted, trouble was more likely to arise. The Bureau of Corpse Management still hadn't figured out why this corpse was acting up. All they knew was that whoever stitched it died.

In the clerk's eyes, Lin Shou had been a dead man for sure. He had even come prepared to collect the body today. Yet, against all odds, this little fool from Shop No. 9 had survived.

Lord Sun, the bureau's chief, had gone to morning court. The night before, he had said to send the body to the Public Mortuary if the man died by morning.

But now the man hadn't died. What were they supposed to do?

"Sir, can I go home?"

"Uh... go on back for now. But don't wander far today. If Lord Sun wants to summon you after he returns from court, you'll need to be here."

"Sure thing."

Lin Shou left the Bureau of Corpse Management with a cheerful grin and returned to the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

As soon as he got back, he saw several corpse-stitchers craning their necks and peering around the entrance to his shop, muttering, "He must've run off..."

They all knew Lin Shou had been summoned to the Bureau of Corpse Management the previous night.

There was an eighty percent chance he wouldn't make it out alive.

Yet they hadn't heard the Obituary Bird cry all night.

So, first thing in the morning, they had come to see whether "Little Nine" had run off yesterday.

Lin Shou found them amusing. He let out a fake, angry shout, startling the men who had been nosing around his shop. They turned around and saw Lin Shou.

"Little Nine, you didn't run away?"

"Why would I run? The officers told me to go to the Bureau of Corpse Management."

"You went?"

"Of course."

"And you're still alive?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"But Little Fifteen and the others all died... Why did the officers summon you to the Bureau?"

"To stitch a corpse. What else does a corpse-stitcher do? All right, all right. I'm exhausted after working all night. I'm going back to my room to sleep. You lot can clear off."

Lin Shou smiled as he shooed the corpse-stitchers away, then went back into his shop.

He dropped into a chair and set down his stitching kit. Back in his familiar, shabby little room, he sighed. Ah, there was no place like home.

After resting for a while, Lin Shou began to take stock of what he had gained from stitching the corpse at the Bureau of Corpse Management.

First, to dig a pit and bury a body, you needed the right tool.

Lin Shou pulled a large shovel out of his stitching kit.

This was the reward for a Yellow-Grade First-Rank valuation in the Record of Selling Corpses. It could barely be called... a divine weapon?

Burial Shovel.

It was an ordinary shovel, but the more often you used it, the better it would feel in your hands. The souls of the dead buried beneath its blade would become nourishment, honing the Burial Shovel.

Simply put, it was an ordinary shovel for now.

But it could be upgraded by burying people. It was a weapon that grew stronger over time.

And it seemed to have no limit to its potential. The more bodies you buried, the stronger it could become.

Lin Shou weighed the Burial Shovel in his hand. It wasn't much use yet and was no different from an ordinary shovel, but anyone with half a brain knew what the words "unlimited growth" meant.

Unlimited potential, a bright future. It was practically a Future Warrior.

A Yellow-Grade First-Rank reward had gotten him such a fine thing. He'd made a killing. What a bargain.

The only thing Lin Shou wasn't entirely satisfied with was that it was a shovel. Why couldn't it be a sword or a blade? As a divine weapon, this thing wasn't cool at all!

Oh, well. A person had to know when to be content. He couldn't ask for too much.

If it wasn't cool, so be it. At least it was practical.

Lin Shou leaned the "future divine weapon," the Burial Shovel, against the wall and began examining his other reward.

A reward for a Heavenly-Grade Third-Rank valuation!

The Heavenly-Grade reward was unexpectedly free of all the frills. Unlike the version of Along the River During the Qingming Festival with its spot-the-difference puzzle when he had gained Subtle Perception, or the Human-Faced Beast-Heart Fruit when he had learned the Livestock-Transformation Art, it wasn't like that bizarre volume, the Corpse-Stitching Needle Manual...

Instead, it had the feel of the Great Dao pared down to simplicity, of returning to the uncarved block.

The Record of Selling Corpses had left behind a scripture, rated Heavenly-Grade:

Classic of Burial.

"To bury is to conceal, and to ride the breath of life."

The plain scripture was deeply engraved in the spiritual platform of his mind.

Lin Shou silently recited the Classic of Burial and felt the qi of all things in the world around him slowly drawn into his body.

This qi expanded his extraordinary meridians, nourished his muscles and bones, and moistened the acupoints throughout his body. It swept the dust from his spiritual platform, calmed his mind, and finally gathered in his dantian, forming internal power.

The Classic of Burial seemed to be a cultivation method.

Yet it also seemed different from ordinary martial arts and internal cultivation techniques.

Lin Shou didn't need to meditate or circulate his power.

All he had to do was silently recite the Classic of Burial in his mind. It would automatically draw in the qi around him, circulate it through his body, and bring it into his dantian, where it would form internal power.

Each cycle through his body granted him a day's worth of internal power.

As Lin Shou silently recited the Classic of Burial and felt the qi circulate through his body, he could clearly feel his internal power growing in his dantian. His physical capabilities were improving across the board.

He recited the Classic of Burial from sunrise until sunset. By the time the lamps were lit and twilight had fallen, the qi had completed ten cycles.

Lin Shou threw a punch, the wind whistling around it. He now had ten days' worth of internal power.

The cultivation method in the Classic of Burial was quite interesting.

Lin Shou marveled at it. But that wasn't all.

A Heavenly-Grade cultivation method clearly couldn't be this simple.

The Classic of Burial had another wondrous feature: the speed of cultivation wasn't fixed. It changed with the feng shui of the surrounding environment.

This so-called feng shui included the almanac, buildings, scenery, objects, canals, carriages and horses, people, fortune and misfortune, birth charts, sunny and rainy weather, life and death, yin and yang, baleful spirits, fortune, and everything else beneath the sun—a myriad of forms, both material and immaterial.

Under the feng shui conditions at hand, each cycle of qi gave Lin Shou one day's worth of internal power.

If he changed the feng shui arrangement around him, he could speed up the growth of his internal power: five days' worth with each cycle, ten days' worth, a month's worth, a year's worth, ten years' worth...

In theory, the better the feng shui of the place, the faster he could cultivate.

That was the Classic of Burial's true value.