The Bureau of Corpse Management

Dawn's pale light filtered through the morning mist as the golden rooster crowed.

A night of rain had washed the dust from the streets. The night-soil collector was already hauling a cartload of human waste through the lanes.

Lin Shou took down the door panels and stepped out of the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

The shop was tiny, with a nine written above its entrance. The Ministry of Rites had established twenty-four Corpse-Stitching Shops in the Capital City. His was Shop No. 9, directly across from the execution ground at Caishikou.

Whenever condemned prisoners were brought there for execution, business came his way.

It was still early. Lin Shou left his shop and headed out onto the street.

He had heard the Obituary Bird cry in the night. Someone had died at No. 20 Corpse-Stitching Shop, so he thought he'd go see what had happened.

He crossed a street and spotted two clerks standing outside No. 20 Corpse-Stitching Shop in the distance. Judging by their official uniforms, they were probably from the Bureau of Corpse Management at the Ministry of Rites.

His predecessor had seen the same uniforms before. All the corpse stitchers in the Capital City answered to the Bureau of Corpse Management at the Ministry of Rites. They recruited disabled people from the refugee camps, gave them some vocational training, then put them to work.

The corpse stitcher at No. 20 Corpse-Stitching Shop had died the night before. The Obituary Bird had carried the news back to the Bureau of Corpse Management, and clerks had come to handle the aftermath that morning.

The clerks spotted Lin Shou, too, and beckoned him over.

"Sir."

Lin Shou clasped his hands in salute, keeping a simpleminded look on his face. His predecessor had been a little fool with an intellectual disability.

He could take care of himself, but he wasn't very bright.

"Which shop are you a corpse stitcher at?"

"Shop No. 9. Lin Shou."

"Good. You're just in time. We can't do this ourselves in our official capacity, so give us a hand."

The clerk pointed to a handcart beside him. On it sat a basin of black dog's blood, reeking to high heaven.

Black dog's blood warded off evil, driving away yin spirits and baleful intent.

Following the clerk's instructions, Lin Shou carried the basin and splashed the blood into No. 20 Corpse-Stitching Shop.

A wisp of scalding smoke hissed up, then nothing happened.

Lin Shou took the opportunity to peer inside. A beheaded corpse lay sprawled on the cold platform. It must have been yesterday's "business," delivered after the execution.

The corpse of a lame man lay on the floor, too. It was probably the corpse stitcher who had died suddenly the night before. Bloody scratches from fingernails covered his body. He had died horribly.

Just then, the two clerks spoke by the entrance.

"Did you find out where the beheaded corpse came from?"

"I checked the case files at the Ministry of Justice. He was a tomb raider who got caught selling off burial goods. Under the Great Jing Law, he was sentenced to beheading."

Tomb raiding was just that: robbing graves.

During the frequent wars of the Eastern Han, Cao Chengxiang had established the posts of Faqiu Zhonglang and Mojin Xiaowei to rob tombs and supplement military funds.

Those "illegal archaeology groups" had long since been abolished in the current dynasty. Under the law, tomb raiders were put to death.

"Then that explains it. He must have disturbed some filthy thing while robbing a tomb. Seal the shop for three days to cleanse it of baleful intent. Once a new corpse stitcher takes over, send both corpses to the Bureau of Corpse Management."

The clerks sealed the shop, rolled the corpses in straw mats, loaded them onto the handcart, and returned to the Bureau of Corpse Management.

Lin Shou watched them leave, uneasy as he saw them carry away the corpse stitcher who had died so horribly.

That was how most corpse stitchers ended up.

It was also why they recruited from refugee camps outside the city. Who in their right mind would take a job that shortens your life? Only people who couldn't even scrape together a meal, people on the brink of starvation, would sell their lives for it.

Of course, Lin Shou wasn't like that now.

He had the Record of Selling Corpses. He could lie low in his shop, stitching corpses and reaping the rewards.

After all that commotion, the sun had risen high. The neighboring shops had opened for business, and Lin Shou returned to his own.

A person had died in the shop. You would have thought the authorities would come investigate, no matter how insignificant the death. But not a single person from the Three Judicial Offices showed up.

He was used to it. A corpse stitcher's life didn't count as a life.

Not long after Lin Shou returned to the shop, the family of the corpse he had stitched the night before arrived. They collected the body and took it home to hold a funeral and bury it. That was the end of the matter.

How Wealthy Master Gao had murdered his kin, or how Gao's daughter had died unjustly, had nothing to do with Lin Shou. Just as the Record of Selling Corpses said: when a person died, the lamp went out; once the coffin was closed, the verdict was final. Good and evil lay with me; praise and blame came from others.

Justice and right and wrong were matters for the lords of the Three Judicial Offices to decide. Lin Shou was only a lowly corpse stitcher.

After working all night, he was getting sleepy.

Lin Shou climbed onto the cold platform and lay down, as peaceful as a corpse.

Corpse stitchers slept by day and worked by night. He slept until the sun was low in the western sky, when someone knocked at the shop.

Lin Shou sat up from the cold platform. Business had come.

The weather was dry; take care with fire and candles.

Deep in the night, the night watchman clacked his bamboo rattle, disturbing the mongrel kept at the teahouse next door. It barked without stopping.

Lin Shou watched the three incense sticks he had offered burn steadily down to nothing. Only then did he thread his needle and prepare to stitch the corpse.

There was a reason for burning three sticks of incense before stitching a corpse.

Corpse stitching was an occult trade. Generations of practitioners had died along the way before they worked out its rules and taboos and established a set of professional standards. Naturally, those had to be followed.

Before stitching a corpse, you had to light three sticks of incense in front of its head.

If all three burned down smoothly at the same time, that was fine. But if they went out for no reason, and did so three times, it was best not to go on stitching. And if, for no reason, they burned into two short sticks and one long one, the corpse should not be stitched either.

As the old saying went, people feared three long and two short, while incense feared two short and one long.

If the incense failed to burn properly, it meant something was wrong with the corpse. Anyone without experience and skill who dared stitch such a body would surely meet with disaster.

Lin Shou valued his life and was careful in all things. Only after the incense burned down normally did he calmly begin stitching the corpse.

This corpse was much easier to stitch than the beheaded one from the previous night, which had involved a lot more work.

Tonight's corpse had only been stabbed once in the chest, leaving a gaping wound. He only had to stitch it closed.

Of course, the job still called for a deft hand. He had to stitch the flesh on the outside, as well as the heart and organs inside.

He threaded the needle and joined flesh to flesh. He powdered the seams, combed the hair and brows, and dressed the corpse in burial clothes. All night, he stitched the corpse and restored its appearance.

Lin Shou felt a brief daze. The Record of Selling Corpses appeared before his eyes.

At the same time, the corpse's Lantern of Life began to play.

In life, the corpse had been a local thug named Wang from Shallow Water Pier, a bully who preyed on men and women, broke the law, and committed every kind of evil, earning the hatred of the people around him.

The Capital City had nine rivers, with plenty of crabs and thriving canal transport.

At the canal wharves, gangs of porters hauled heavy loads. They formed cliques and fought all the time.

The rivers and lakes ran deep, and the Canal Gang's territory was a tangled mess. The whole place was one sprawling criminal underworld, and even the authorities hesitated to interfere. In such a chaotic place, plenty of thugs and bullies were bound to thrive.

The man now lying dead on the cold platform was one of them. He had done some truly despicable things while alive.

He and a gang of ruffians had occupied a house that a woman had left to her son. Whenever the owner tried to drive them out, they dumped manure inside. The authorities came, and they ran; once they left, he came back to dump more until the owner gave up and left.

He had spotted a young woman who was still pure and found her pretty, so he secretly had someone kidnap and rape her. The girl, unable to face the world, threw herself into the river. Her parents were heartbroken by their daughter's death, but he still went to their door to curse and jeer at them.

His crimes were endless; he was less than human.

A scum like him was hated by gods and men alike. He deserved to die.

The knife in his chest was the cycle of cause and effect, his just deserts for all the evil he had done.

To explain what had happened yesterday, Wang the Rogue had gone out to extort money...