Lin Shou covered the red pellet with a white bowl and began performing Three Immortals Return to the Cave.
The ancient art of conjuring had roots stretching far back. Since ancient times, people had spoken of the Hundred Arts of Fish and Dragon. "Hundred arts" referred to song, dance, and acrobatics, while "fish and dragon" referred to conjuring and magic.
Generation after generation, conjurers of later ages had carried on the art and found new ways to refine it, eventually dividing it into three distinct systems: sleight of hand, manipulation, and concealment.
Concealment Art was the art of hiding things on one's person.
In Eastern conjuring, Immortal Plucks the Bean hid beans in the hand, while the trick of making a fish tank appear hid the tank beneath the performer's robes. In Western magic, making a dove or a playing card appear from empty hands also relied on Concealment Art.
The number of red pellets beneath the white bowl kept changing under Lin Shou's hands. There was one, then he lifted the bowl and there were two; he lifted it again and they were gone. He opened the other bowl, and there they were...
Like this, the night passed until dawn.
Lin Shou lifted the bowl, and the red pellet was gone. He covered one bowl with another, then lifted it, and that bowl had vanished too. He covered his hand, lifted it, and everything disappeared.
All the color artifacts—the two white bowls and three red pellets—vanished. A clear stream flowed straight into his mind, and Lin Shou felt that he had mastered the art of Concealment.
Three Immortals Return to the Cave.
When skill reached the realm of creation, anything in the world could be hidden on one's person.
Lin Shou casually picked up the Burial Shovel beside him.
Whoosh—it was gone.
He turned his hand over, and it appeared in his palm again.
Three Immortals Return to the Cave could hide objects several times larger than a person on one's body without anyone noticing. It was an exceedingly convenient art.
It was like having a little portable storage space.
After figuring out Three Immortals Return to the Cave, the first thing Lin Shou did was hide his Medical Arm inside it. When he made a new human prosthesis, it would be easier to carry around.
As for the Burial Shovel, though a treasured weapon hidden from sight could catch an opponent off guard in a fight, Lin Shou didn't usually spar or brawl with anyone, so he had little use for it.
Besides, the Burial Shovel was one of his work tools. He needed it whenever he went to a funeral to do a job. It wouldn't look good if people saw him pull such a thick, black, long treasure out of who-knew-where on his body...
Better not. He'd keep carrying it in his hand as usual.
And so, the matter of the "Decapitation Trick" on the Capital City's Tianqiao came to an end.
The old man and his son who had performed the Decapitation Trick had vanished without a trace.
A conjurer from the Color Sect had been "beheaded" and died.
The Three Judicial Offices had gained a troublesome unsolved case for their files.
Lin Shou had gained the art of Concealment, Three Immortals Return to the Cave.
Tsk. Thinking about it, he was the only one who'd won—what a fat profit.
Lin Shou was delighted. As for whether he'd ever get the chance to see the father and son conjurers again, the jianghu was vast, and everyone had their own road ahead. He couldn't tell the future, so who could say?
The days that followed were as leisurely and ordinary as ever.
Lin Shou occasionally went to the Qingcheng Teahouse to listen to storytelling. He even ran into An Yunli there. She was still barely clinging to life, but after taking the medicine he'd prescribed, her health had improved considerably, and she coughed less often.
Lin Shou called out to her. An Yunli heard someone calling and turned around, only to see that it was the great demon king. Her face went white with fright, and she spun around and fled back to her room.
Other than the teahouse, there was the Tofu Shop.
Ning Luowei still came every day to feed Lin Shou tofu. Lin Shou was just as heartless as ever: once he'd eaten his fill, he sent her on her way.
And so things went on until today, when a piece of news spread through the streets. Someone was shouting:
"The Scalp-Cutter has been captured! He'll be beheaded in public at the Caishikou execution ground!"
Not long before, the Three Judicial Offices had issued a wanted notice across the land, offering a thousand taels for the capture of the Scalp-Cutter. If they failed to catch him within two months, the Minister of Justice would resign and go home to grow sweet potatoes.
Now, with the deadline still ahead, the culprit had been caught.
Lin Shou heard the news while eating tofu pudding. He looked up at Ning Luowei, sitting across from him, and wondered who they'd caught.
Ning Luowei spread her little hands innocently.
Both of them were puzzled, so they went to the execution ground.
On the way, Lin Shou lamented bitterly. "Sigh, what a shame. Great Jing has lost a future sweet-potato magnate."
On the execution platform, the executioner held a huge Ghost-Head Blade. The "Scalp-Cutter" knelt on the ground, bound hand and foot, trembling like a sieve.
Lin Shou looked at the "Scalp-Cutter." He had a face full of rough-hewn flesh and a hairy mole at the corner of his mouth, just like the one in the wanted notice.
The supervising official read out the Scalp-Cutter's crimes: he had murdered twelve people in the Capital City and brutally scalped them. His crimes were heinous, and today he would be executed. On and on he went.
At last, he tossed down the execution token. The blade flashed.
The head fell!
It was Lin Shou's first time watching an execution at the grounds. He sucked his teeth at the sight. It was too bloody. Couldn't they use hanging?
The spectacle was over quickly. One swing of the blade, and that was that—no dragging it out. On the way back, Lin Shou remembered something and asked Ning Luowei, "Why did you kill those people back then?"
"Didn't I tell you? I was following my master's orders to eliminate evil bandits."
"How did you know they were guilty?"
"My master gave me a list. They were all lower-level sellers of smuggled Fortune-Longevity Paste. They once..."
Ning Luowei abruptly stopped speaking. Her expression shifted, as if she realized she shouldn't have said that and regretted it.
Lin Shou glanced at her. She fell silent and said nothing more, so he didn't continue the subject.
But all the way back, Ning Luowei wasn't as lively as usual. She barely spoke and, unusually, didn't pester Lin Shou. She went back to the Tofu Shop by herself in silence, looking troubled.
Lin Shou didn't care much. What did Ning Luowei's business have to do with him? When he got home, he went back to tending his flowers and plants, and reciting the Classic of Burial.
Then, at dusk, a corpse was delivered to Lin Shou.
He lifted the straw mat and saw the Scalp-Cutter with the hairy mole.
Lin Shou helplessly shook his head. He truly didn't want to know too many secrets, but fate had sent this corpse to him.
The Record of Selling Corpses appeared, and the Lantern of Life flickered to life.
Lin Shou saw the life of the "Scalp-Cutter" with the hairy mole.
The man wasn't from around here. His hometown was Zhangpu County in the south, where he'd been a local hoodlum, spending every day extorting money to drink, visit brothels, and gamble. He never did an honest day's work.
Later, the Heaven and Earth Society attacked the Zhangpu County yamen, and fighting broke out in the area. Life became difficult, so he traveled all the way to the Capital City to seek help from his uncle.
His uncle was a good man and took him in, but the bastard had no decency. He ate and lived there for free, never looking for work. It wasn't long before his gambling addiction flared up again. He had no money, so he stole from his uncle to gamble.
His uncle caught him red-handed. Evil flared in the man's heart, and he grabbed a knife and killed his uncle.
He was the very picture of an ungrateful wretch.
Later, the yamen arrested him and locked him in jail to await trial.
As the Lantern of Life showed him this, Lin Shou calculated the dates.
While the Scalp-Cutter had still been committing his crimes, before the wanted notice was issued, the man with the hairy mole had already been thrown in jail. So why had the wanted notice used his portrait?
Clearly, someone had deliberately pinned the Scalp-Cutter's crimes on an unlucky scapegoat.
The real culprit was Ning Luowei. The man with the hairy mole had been deliberately offered up to take the blame for her.
Tch. Tampering with the Three Judicial Offices' case files, forging a wanted notice, and using someone else as a scapegoat—what kind of powerful figure would it take to pull off something like that?
Why would such a powerful figure commit the crime of deceiving those above and concealing the truth below just to keep Ning Luowei from being caught?
What was this person afraid Ning Luowei would say if she were captured?
What did Ning Luowei know?
"Those twelve people I killed were all lower-level sellers of smuggled Fortune-Longevity Paste..."
Ning Luowei's words from that afternoon circled through Lin Shou's mind.
Fortune-Longevity Paste, the Western Affairs Party, the constable who died at Shallow Water Pier.
The scattered pieces of the puzzle were gradually falling into place.
Lin Shou's Subtle Perception and deductions were close to piecing together the general shape of the case.
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