Burial Shovel Upgrade

The next day, at Qingcheng Teahouse.

The storyteller, whose words were all jumbled, finished a tale. The teahouse's patrons scattered like startled birds and beasts. Xia Ruzhen noticed a piece of paper left on the counter at some point and picked it up to read.

"Your younger sister's days are numbered. I fear she won't live to see next spring. Since fate has brought us together, I've left this prescription to extend her life by a year..."

Shopkeeper Xia's mind went blank.

Not many people knew about Li'er's illness.

As for her condition being so severe that she wouldn't survive until spring, only one person had ever seen it: a physician's apprentice from the Imperial Medical Academy, whom Shopkeeper Xia had managed to invite after pulling many strings. That apprentice had left him with nothing but a single sentence: "Please accept my condolences."

Now someone had not only recognized Li'er's illness, but could even extend her life! The person who had left this prescription was an expert!

Shopkeeper Xia clutched the prescription tightly. Looking at the departing patrons, he gritted his teeth and hurried to the teahouse entrance.

Facing the crowd heading out, he fell to his knees.

"Sir, please show yourself and save my younger sister!"

Shopkeeper Xia was the daughter of a wealthy Shu Region tea merchant, a young woman of noble birth. Yet today, before a crowd of poor, coarse commoners, she knelt without hesitation, her forehead striking the ground. She did it only to beg that expert to reveal himself and save her sister's life.

The crowd slowed, unsure what was happening.

"Sir, please show yourself and save my younger sister!"

Shopkeeper Xia knelt in the middle of the doorway, bowing until his forehead touched the ground.

The crowd milled about for a while, but no one stepped forward to ask what was wrong. After a moment, they shuffled along, numb and indifferent, going around Shopkeeper Xia and leaving in streams on either side.

"Sir, please show yourself..."

Everyone minded their own doorstep. The onlookers outside the teahouse had long since departed. Shopkeeper Xia knelt alone, prostrate on the ground. In the end, no one paid attention to this plea for a life, and no one answered.

"Shopkeeper! What are you doing?" The teahouse's attendants and maids cried out as they hurried to help him up and brush the dirt from his clothes.

Shopkeeper Xia told them not to worry about that. First, they needed to prepare some silver and go with him to the medicine shop to get the prescription filled.

And so, the matter of An Yunli, the second daughter of a Shu Region tea merchant, contracting a strange illness, could be considered settled for now.

An Yunli had slipped out in the middle of the night, only to be frightened back by the fool from the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

An "expert" in the Capital City had left a life-extending prescription at a teahouse.

An Yunli, who should have died next spring, had her life extended by another year through a series of twists and coincidences.

At the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

Lin Shou was leisurely tending to the greenery in the Azure Dragon Position.

He'd originally only meant to arrange a few pots of flowers and plants, but the more he fussed over them, the more engrossed he became.

Pothos, kaffir lilies, lucky bamboo, aloe... The entire Azure Dragon Position was now lush and verdant, brimming with life. Every day, Lin Shou loosened the soil with a little shovel and watered the plants with a can.

Then there was the White Tiger Position. At first, it had only held a beckoning cat that Lin Shou had carved. Recently, he'd added a little pine tree and hung colorful ribbons, bells, and other bits and pieces from it. It looked very festive.

When a clerk from the Bureau of Corpse Management came to deliver a body and saw it, he curiously asked what it was. Lin Shou said it was a Western holiday decoration called the Western Seven-Treasure Marvelous Tree.

Every year during this holiday, an old immortal with a red robe and a white beard would ride a deer and come in through the chimney, granting you whatever you wished for.

After hearing that, the clerk went home and studied his stove for ages, wondering how anyone could come in through something full of smoke and soot.

That foreign immortal didn't seem to have much sense.

The Four Symbols Feng Shui Positions at the Corpse-Stitching Shop were now arranged even better. With the feng shui nurtured, his cultivation of the Classic of Burial naturally sped up again.

By now, he gained ten days' worth of cultivation every week.

Lin Shou enjoyed a few more days of leisure like this.

He stitched up some more mountain folk and villagers, earning a few rewards from the Record of Selling Corpses. Among them were Tiger Heart and Bear Gallbladder, tonics much like Snake Gallbladder that could boost one's cultivation when eaten. They also had the effects of nourishing yin and strengthening yang...

After several days of taking tonics and silently reciting the Classic of Burial, Lin Shou had accumulated ten years of cultivation in his dantian.

Now, when he channeled his cultivation, he could poke right through a copper basin with one finger.

Don't ask how he knew. Just know that he'd have to go to the market tomorrow to buy a new basin. He really hadn't expected that.

He'd never practiced martial arts, and he knew nothing about releasing qi outward. He'd simply channeled his cultivation through his body to enhance his strength, then poked the basin once—and smashed it to pieces.

Good thing it had been a copper basin. If he'd punched someone in the head instead, tsk... it would've burst like a watermelon.

His cultivation had made a decent leap, but his practical skills hadn't improved much. Lately, all he'd stitched were mountain farmers and common folk, and the rewards had mostly been skills for hunting, farming, livestock raising, and other productive work.

Still, it wasn't bad. The more skills, the better.

Even basic knowledge could become formidable when accumulated, especially since it could enrich Subtle Perception's database.

Lin Shou had discovered that as he learned more and more, Subtle Perception's functions grew stronger too.

He remembered that at first, it could only share the five senses in a simple way. But now, as its database of knowledge expanded, Subtle Perception had begun to read people's faces and infer their occupations, backgrounds, recent circumstances, and more.

Subtle Perception: also known as the little Sherlock Holmes method of deduction.

And then there was the Burial Shovel.

This upgradeable divine weapon was a Future Warrior.

To nurture it, Lin Shou had gone out of his way to expand his business, taking on jobs digging graves and covering the dead with earth.

In his previous life, this work had all been done by excavators. In this era, there were no such advanced tools, so everything was done by hand. A single funeral required several strong young men. Usually, for convenience, people just paid the Pallbearer Guild extra to handle it along with carrying the body.

Lin Shou had, in a way, blazed a new trail. A corpse stitcher was now getting in on the business, and people around the Capital City could often see him wandering between funeral tents and mass graves with a shovel slung over his shoulder.

He carried that enormous shovel sideways across his shoulders, rested both elbows on top, and strolled along with the same swagger as the Great Sage carrying his golden cudgel. He looked even more brazen than a street hooligan.

The neighbors on Caishikou Street kept saying that the little fool from the Corpse-Stitching Shop had gone mad again.

However, Lin Shou's antics had made the local hooligans and layabouts very unhappy. They were the coolest kids on these streets. He'd stolen all their swagger—how could they let that stand?

The way these young troublemakers from the Capital City thought really was different from ordinary people's...

Whenever these hooligans saw Lin Shou out on the street, they chased after him and picked a fight. In this era, street brawls were common. As long as nobody died, the authorities couldn't be bothered to interfere.

Then they got beaten up.

Every day, they came swaggering over with bricks in hand, then went back home with black eyes, aching all over and baring their teeth in pain. They couldn't believe the skinny little fool from the Corpse-Stitching Shop could fight so well.

After taking that kind of beating for a while, the local hooligans stopped daring to bother the little fool from the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

Lin Shou couldn't help feeling a little wistful. Sigh, he'd lost his free punching bags for his daily practice.

The disturbance rose and died away as quickly as it had begun, barely making a ripple. It wasn't important. But speaking of the Burial Shovel...

In recent days, Lin Shou had been to more than a dozen funerals, helping people bury their dead. Each time he covered a grave, wisps of gray smoke seemed to seep into the Burial Shovel. After several such occasions, it seemed to have grown sturdier and more durable.

It had once been an ordinary, rotten iron shovel head, so flimsy that even a couple of chops from a kitchen knife could chip it. Now, after upgrading, it could be smashed against a tempered Hundred-Refined Blade and knock several huge notches into it, while it remained dark, gleaming, and bright as new.

The more Lin Shou held it, the more comfortable it felt in his hands.