True Lord of Digging Pits and Burying People

The next few days passed in leisure again.

Lin Shou spent his days reciting the Classic of Burial and training, his nights sewing corpses. Every day brought some gain, and he never tired of it.

Over these days, from the Record of Selling Corpses, he obtained a Strength Pill, a Dog Skin Plaster, a Snake Gallbladder, a Century-Old Ginseng, a Compendium of Materia Medica, a Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, and a Ten Books on Yang Dwellings...

He used the Strength Pill and the Dog Skin Plaster.

His physical constitution improved once more.

Originally, Lin Shou had felt he was reaching the upper limit of his body's strength.

But after cultivating power from the Classic of Burial, he sensed that limit vanish, allowing him to continue enhancing his physique.

This was likely what the martial world called internal and external complementation—internally training a single breath, externally training sinew, bone, and skin.

As for the Snake Gallbladder and Century-Old Ginseng, this was the first time Lin Shou had obtained such items from the Record of Selling Corpses.

The Snake Gallbladder came from sewing up a snake catcher. He had gone into the mountains to catch snakes, got bitten by a venomous one, and died. His family, not seeing him return, went into the mountains to search and found him with half an arm gnawed off by wolves.

The Century-Old Ginseng came from sewing up a herb gatherer. He hadn't died from encountering a wild beast in the mountains. Instead, outside the city, he ran into bandits robbing a caravan. He was just unlucky enough to be passing by, and the bandits took him out with a single blade stroke.

Tsk, tsk. Two unlucky souls.

The effects of the Snake Gallbladder and Century-Old Ginseng were very similar—both gave Lin Shou a year's worth of cultivation power.

In the current feng shui environment, reciting the Classic of Burial only netted him ten to twenty days of power per day, depending on how diligent he was.

Yet this one Snake Gallbladder and one Century-Old Ginseng could each grant him a full year of power. Good stuff!

Lin Shou felt the noticeably fuller power in his dantian, cycled it through his entire body, and threw a full-force punch.

Clang! Crash!

The force of his punch knocked a copper basin two meters away to the ground.

Though he only had a little over two years of power, his abilities had already surpassed the scope of ordinary humans.

Lin Shou was very satisfied.

Additionally, besides the main effect of increasing power, the Snake Gallbladder and Century-Old Ginseng each came with a minor extra effect.

The Snake Gallbladder enhanced the body's resistance to toxic and harmful substances, boosting immunity. Simply put, it increased poison resistance.

If he ate enough of these in the future and stacked his poison resistance high enough, he might become immune to all poisons.

The Century-Old Ginseng, aside from boosting power, also replenished blood and qi, promoted metabolism, and increased blood production. After eating it, he felt greatly nourished, his whole body brimming with energy.

These were the supplements obtained from the Record of Selling Corpses. The other items were skills of the trade—medicine and physiognomy.

The Compendium of Materia Medica covered how to identify herbs and distinguish medicines, how to formulate prescriptions and decoct them, covering water, fire, earth, metal, stone, grass, grains, vegetables, fruits, trees, clothing, utensils, insects, scales, mollusks, birds, beasts, and humans—from the smallest to the largest, from the lowliest to the most precious—compiling the origins, forms, and harvesting of medicines, along with formulas to treat and save people.

With all this herbal knowledge poured into his mind, Lin Shou could now be called a walking herbal encyclopedia.

Whether searching for and gathering herbs in the wild, or going to a pharmacy to pick and formulate medicines, he could do it all.

Paired with the other medical skill he obtained, the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases—covering observation, listening, questioning, and pulse-taking—Lin Shou could even switch careers halfway and become a wandering doctor, treating illnesses and saving lives.

This Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases came from sewing up the corpse of a down-and-out old doctor.

From the Lantern of Life, he saw that this old doctor, despite his down-and-out state, had a significant background. He had once been an imperial physician for the late emperor, a sixth-rank court official just like that Sun from the Bureau of Corpse Management.

Later, because Prince Yi's consort fell ill with a strange disease, the imperial physician was summoned to treat her. He treated her for three years, but she never recovered.

Prince Yi flew into a rage and wanted to behead the physician.

In the end, the late emperor, remembering the old minister's service, commuted the death sentence, dismissed him from his post, and let him retire to his hometown.

After being dismissed and returning home, the old physician remained listless and dejected. He had been loyal to the sovereign his whole life, never expecting to lose his integrity in his later years and end up like this. Drifting in a daze, one night he got up to relieve himself, fell into a well, and died.

In the Lantern of Life, Lin Shou saw that the moment the old physician first examined the consort, he had declared the disease incurable, only manageable to prolong life.

A doctor is not an immortal.

Besides, there's the old saying, "Even a Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal would find it hard to save them." Even immortals aren't omnipotent, so why demand it of humans?

But Prince Yi was naturally violent and unreasonable.

Can't cure the consort's illness?

If you can't cure it, you're a quack! I'll have your head!

If the late emperor hadn't intervened out of old sentiment, the old physician would have died right then. But even surviving that, he had lost all his reputation, and in the end, he didn't live long, dying by falling into a well.

Selling one's life to the imperial family is like living with a tiger—serving the sovereign is like sleeping beside a tiger.

Under feudalism, the weight of blind loyalty is truly lamentable.

This corpse was priced at Xuan-grade, seventh rank.

Heaven, Earth, Xuan, Huang—this was the highest-priced corpse Lin Shou had sewn up so far, aside from that inexplicably lucky Heaven-grade one. It was the only Xuan-grade.

The reward, the medical skill Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, was naturally not inferior.

Now, walking down the street, Lin Shou could use the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases combined with Subtle Perception to observe people's appearances. That one coughing with phlegm—likely caught a chill. That one with depleted qi and blood—kidneys aren't doing well...

Observation, listening, questioning, pulse-taking—he hadn't even used the skill of taking a pulse yet. Just a few glances were enough to diagnose illnesses and determine ailments.

Tsk, tsk. If he got a few more medical skills, he might be able to raise the dead and regrow flesh and bone, becoming a top-tier national physician.

The rivers and lakes have eight professions, with the Skin Gate covering medicine and the Gold Gate covering physiognomy.

Medicine had yielded a good harvest, and another trade had also brought some gains—that of feng shui physiognomy.

Ten Books on Yang Dwellings.

Lin Shou's reward from stitching up a feng shui master.

From the Lantern of Life, he learned that this master had no real skill—just a morally bankrupt, slick-tongued charlatan. But the reward from stitching and selling the corpse was genuine ability.

"A person's dwelling should take the great mountains and rivers as its foundation; the flow and momentum of its veins bear the greatest relation to fortune and misfortune, and are of utmost importance..."

In simple terms, the principles of residential feng shui.

Lin Shou spent one night fully absorbing and integrating the knowledge of the Ten Books on Yang Dwellings, mastering the most basic Four Symbols Feng Shui Technique.

The so-called Four Symbols—Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, Black Tortoise—correspond respectively to the left, right, front, and back of a building or residence.

A dwelling with flowing water to the left is called the Azure Dragon, wealth to the right is the White Tiger, a bright terrace in front is the Vermilion Bird, and hills behind are the Black Tortoise—this is the most auspicious land.

These Four Symbols positions are the simplest yet most fundamental principles of feng shui, with many complex variations above them.

They can apply to something as large as a city or as small as a person.

On a large scale, in the current Capital City of the Great Jing Dynasty, there are the Azure Dragon Ward, White Tiger Ward, Vermilion Bird Ward, and Black Tortoise Ward—four great wards, each assigned nobility, misfortune, wealth, or stability, to activate the city's feng shui layout.

On a small scale, for a person: left Azure Dragon, right White Tiger, a rooster raising its head in front, a turtle painted on the rear... well, take it as a bit of fun.

The Four Symbols Feng Shui Technique is roughly this principle.

Arrange the Four Symbols, place and position them, to improve feng shui.

Lin Shou happened to test it out in his little Corpse-Stitching Shop. He set up the Four Symbols positions and then placed the ornaments he had bought.

The left Azure Dragon represents nobility and life, suited for flowing water and vitality.

But Lin Shou had no way to dig a river beside his shop, and besides, to his left was the Qingcheng Teahouse. So he placed a few pots of plants to signify vitality.

The right White Tiger represents wealth. Lin Shou looked around the street stalls for things like cornucopias, but they were all overpriced, tacky, and a total rip-off. He simply carved a wooden lucky cat himself and set it up.

The rear Black Tortoise emphasizes stability, requiring mountains as a surround. Lin Shou bought a mountain landscape scroll and hung it on the back wall at the Black Tortoise position.

The front Vermilion Bird emphasizes openness and brightness. Lin Shou cleaned the area in front of his door at the Vermilion Bird position every day, then bought two big red lanterns and hung them at the front entrance to light it up.

Lin Shou thought about how he recently needed to find a way to upgrade his grave-digging shovel and also wanted to expand his business, so he turned the two big red lanterns into neon signboards, writing his business ads on them.

After that.

When the red lanterns lit up outside the Corpse-Stitching Shop at midnight, a chill wind blew, ordinary people dared not walk at night, and the neighbor's kids were scared into crying.

On the two blood-red lanterns, each had a word written on it.

One said "digging graves," the other said "burying people."