Fortune-Longevity Paste, the Western Affairs Party, and the constable who died at Shallow Water Pier.
There was a story behind each of these.
First, the Western Affairs Party.
When the Grand Ancestor founded Great Jing, its armies were strong and its people prosperous. It stood as the Middle Kingdom, drawing every nation to pay tribute, while even the smallest states bowed their heads.
In that golden age, the gates were opened and ports were established for trade.
Great Jing exported tea, silk, porcelain, leather, sugar, paper, books, and other goods. It held an advantage in overseas trade for a long time, earning silver from foreign lands.
But golden ages never lasted.
Over the past two centuries, Great Jing had suffered internal turmoil among its vassal princes and rebellions in the Miao borderlands. Rebels from the former dynasty's old factions, such as the White Lotus Sect and Heaven and Earth Society in the southern lands, had risen up. Abroad, Rakshasa in the north watched like a tiger, Japanese pirates plagued the eastern seas, and the Red-Haired Barbarians and Flower Flag coveted its riches. To deal with foreign threats, restricting overseas trade was the easiest solution.
Now, under Ganhuang, Great Jing had adopted a policy of isolation, leaving only one port open to trade, in Min-Guang.
Foreign merchants who wanted to enter Great Jing and sell their goods had to work with local Cohong merchants. These intermediaries were called "compradors."
The comprador trade in foreign goods brought many opportunities for speculation and profiteering, and naturally, officials and merchants were connected. With so many people invested in the compradors' interests, local officials in the south, including the Viceroy of Liangguang, allied with Capital City officials in the north who sought their own gains. Together, they formed the Western Affairs Party.
Put simply, the Western Affairs Party in Great Jing was a little clique of officials at court who had a stake in trade with foreigners and secretly banded together for private gain.
Among the foreign merchants' goods, one product had a profound impact on Great Jing: Fortune-Longevity Paste.
Fortune-Longevity Paste was opium.
Capital City was dotted with opium dens, hundreds of them, large and small—more than there were latrines.
From commoners up to court officials, even the emperor himself had smoked opium during morning court. Naturally, everyone followed the example set above.
Whether they were idle princes and nobles or young men from wealthy families looking for fun, those who got hooked would light their pipes as soon as they had a free moment, then sprawl on the kang and waste the whole day smoking like hunchbacked ghosts. Their faces grew slack and ruined, as if they were drowning in their addiction.
Lin Shou had seen people in nearby opium dens smoking all day long. Once they lay down with their pipes, they could never get up again. They smoked until their wives and children left them, until their homes were destroyed, until they lay dead in the streets.
When Lin Shou had first arrived, he had seen it with his own eyes: the corpse whose hat the corpse-stitcher had removed—the one whose death had led to the Scalp-Cutter affair—was a sickly opium fiend who had smoked himself to death.
That was "Fortune-Longevity Paste."
It drained your silver and ruined your body. Some fortune and longevity.
Had anyone ever tried to stop such a harmful substance from running rampant?
Of course. Fortune-Longevity Paste had not appeared only under Ganhuang. It had been around since the time of the Grand Ancestor and the Late Emperor. At first, it had been used as a painkiller, but later people discovered how addictive it was.
By the time of the Late Emperor, opium fiends had become rampant. Seeing this, the Late Emperor feared that if things continued, the people would cease to be a people and the nation would cease to be a nation. So he issued an opium restriction edict, limiting the annual amount of Fortune-Longevity Paste imported, restricting the number of private opium dens, and forbidding court officials from smoking, so they could set an example for the people.
The opium restriction edict had worked quite well during the Late Emperor's reign, and the whole court had been swept clean. It had continued to work well in Ganhuang's early years, too. But now, in Ganhuang's twilight years...
Ganhuang had once been a capable ruler. He had repeatedly put down border wars and earned great military honors. He wrote a book of his own and called it the Ten Perfect Military Achievements, showing off his military might. But in his twilight years, he had become vainglorious, extravagant, and debauched, squandering the state's wealth.
When an ordinary person squandered his fortune, there was a limit to how much he could spend. If he gambled until he lost all his money, that was the end of it. If he wanted to borrow more, there was only so much he could get—at most, a money shop would lose out, or someone would beat him to death. It made little difference.
But when an emperor squandered his fortune...
The treasury of an entire nation. The realm of an entire dynasty.
When he squandered his fortune, he could drag the whole Great Jing Dynasty down with him.
Ganhuang had grown lax in governing, spending every day lost in food, drink, and amusements, chasing women and indulging his lust. Knowing Jiangnan was full of beautiful women, he spared no expense and traveled there six times to select consorts.
He loved smoking opium, keeping it close at hand during morning court. The officials followed his example and smoked, rendering the Late Emperor's opium restriction edict nothing but empty words.
He loved vainglory and manufactured achievements, persecuted people through literary inquisitions, and burned books from the previous dynasty. Countless people were convicted for what they said.
He appointed corrupt officials, letting extravagance sweep through the court and the countryside. Greedy officials and crooked functionaries ran rampant, the court was rotten, and corruption was everywhere.
After all these years, Ganhuang was now advanced in age and near death, but he had already emptied the treasury, the court had rotted away, and the dynasty was tottering on the brink.
The sick men smoking in the opium dens scattered throughout Capital City and the emperor smoking as he huddled on the Dragon Throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony were no different. What sort of ruler, what sort of people?
Of course, though Ganhuang had become such a spendthrift and the court was rotten, teeming with corrupt officials, at least a few ministers in the Grand Council still worried for the nation and its people, exhausting themselves to prop up the tottering edifice.
Take Fortune-Longevity Paste, for example. The opium restriction edict was still in force, and the amount of Fortune-Longevity Paste foreign merchants were permitted to bring in each year was still capped at under two hundred dan.
But opium dens were now everywhere in Great Jing. How much Fortune-Longevity Paste was there? At least twenty thousand dan!
Where had all this Fortune-Longevity Paste come from?
Apart from the compradors who dealt with foreign merchants all the time, there was no other possibility.
Worried and loyal ministers from the Three Dukes and Six Ministries had submitted memorials several times, impeaching the incumbent Viceroy of Liangguang and several Western Affairs Party members at court, but each time, their accusations were dismissed for lack of evidence.
To impeach the Western Affairs Party, they needed evidence proving that the Party was smuggling Fortune-Longevity Paste.
In the end, the emperor entrusted the matter to Lord Chen Chunyuan, Left Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, ordering clerks from the Three Judicial Offices and the Six Fan School to assist him in investigating the smuggling of Fortune-Longevity Paste.
The Western Affairs Party naturally didn't want the evidence to be found.
Lately, the martial world had been rife with rumors. The Six Fan School's men were moving about everywhere, as the two sides struggled against each other.
Now a Scalp-Cutter had suddenly appeared in Capital City, killing twelve people, all of them underlings who sold smuggled Fortune-Longevity Paste. Outsiders should never have been able to learn the names on that list of underlings.
That should have been enough to put the Western Affairs Party on alert. They would suspect that the Scalp-Cutter knew something, and might possess evidence that could hurt them.
To keep the Scalp-Cutter from being caught and revealing anything damaging to them—anything that might reach the Censorate and fall into the hands of Left Censor-in-Chief Chen Chunyuan—they had found a scapegoat.
The whole matter was finally starting to make sense.
This fake Scalp-Cutter was part of a smokescreen cooked up by the Western Affairs Party's drug-trafficking ring to protect its interests.
But the real Scalp-Cutter was still out there.
Lin Shou could imagine that if he were one of the Western Affairs Party, he would secretly find out who the real Scalp-Cutter was and kill her, eliminating the threat.
Thinking of this, Lin Shou glanced at the Tofu Shop across the street, its candlelight glowing in the windows. Ning Luowei was safe while she stayed hidden, but if she was exposed, she might well be killed.
Though he didn't know where she had gotten the list of people selling smuggled Fortune-Longevity Paste, the Western Affairs Party would certainly not let her go.
The constable who had died at Shallow Water Pier was a warning. Lin Shou had seen in the Lantern of Life that the constable had been killed to silence him after he found a lead on the Fortune-Longevity Paste smuggling.
Tsk, tsk. Great Jing, vast and mighty, was on the brink of ruin.
Looking at this whole rotten mess, Lin Shou sighed from the bottom of his heart.
Still, none of this had anything to do with him.
He was just a spectator, an ordinary commoner, a lowly corpse-stitcher in a little shop.
To put it plainly:
What did Great Jing's fall have to do with him?
He only needed to recite the Classic of Burial every day and tend to his flowers and birds.
He would sit and watch the winds and clouds rise, as new faces always replaced the old.
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