Autumn Examination Ends, the Examination Hall's Mystery Remains Unsolved

Lin Shou returned to the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

He had seen the Ruler of Preaching and Teaching's effects for himself. He'd taught the big black dog a set of regular script and the Three Hundred Tang Poems.

The ruler's wisdom had poured into the dog's mind. Even a dog could learn, so there was nothing to brag about.

It could teach people, too. From knowledge like Tang Poetry and Song Lyrics to the Beast-Making Art, the Human-Substitution Art, and even the Classic of Burial and the Classic of Haoran Qi, it could teach anything that counted as knowledge. There were, however, considerable limitations.

The Ruler of Preaching and Teaching imparted knowledge, but it required literary talent.

If your learning wasn't up to snuff, you shouldn't mislead the next generation.

Lin Shou had only seven units of literary talent. He could teach simple things like Tang Poetry, Song Lyrics, and calligraphy, but he was nowhere near capable of teaching a complicated folk art like the Beast-Making Art, let alone the Classic of Burial.

Lin Shou figured he wouldn't have much use for it anyway. He wasn't a teacher and had no students. He could only use it to train little animals like the big black dog and amuse himself.

On his way back earlier, he'd seen two young masters fawning over the big black dog. They had probably discovered that this divine dog could write poetry and calligraphy.

Lin Shou had used the Ruler of Preaching and Teaching once, and in doing so, had given the big black dog a stroke of good fortune.

He'd given it the Three Hundred Tang Poems, a treasure trove of the poetry and culture of the High Tang. It remained to be seen what fate awaited the big black dog from then on.

Over the next few days, Lin Shou kept clearing the Autumn Examination dungeon solo. Each night, he stitched corpses and opened boxes, enjoying every minute of it.

The literary talent in his Temple of Literature shot up until, on the last day of the Autumn Examination, he had fifteen units.

Apart from Confucian classics, however, he'd also found a Legalist Classic and an Eclectic Classic.

After reading them, Lin Shou could feel that they contained literary talent, but he couldn't absorb it into his Temple of Literature and make it his own. The Classic of Haoran Qi he cultivated was based on Confucian theory and thought, so it couldn't accommodate the doctrines of other schools.

That didn't bother Lin Shou. After all, the Great Jing Dynasty revered Confucianism above all. The Four Books and Five Classics used in the imperial examinations were rooted in Confucianism, which had the broadest audience and the greatest wealth of texts. If he had to choose one school to build his Temple of Literature around, Confucianism was clearly the best choice.

Of course, it would be even better if he could someday find a way to accommodate the doctrines of the various schools.

Over the several days of stitching corpses during the Autumn Examination, the only things he'd gained besides the literary talent in his Temple of Literature were a few little objects activated by literary energy, such as the Four Treasures of the Study, and some calligraphy techniques.

He'd also watched quite a few Lanterns of Life and witnessed the heartbreak of the small-town exam grinders, ravaged by the imperial examination system.

Some had gone mad, some had become fools, some had fallen ill, some had sunk into depression. Some had taken the exams until their families were torn apart; others had neglected their fields or had their wives run off with other men. Such were the sacrifices demanded by a flawed system.

There was no need to dwell on these heartrending stories. What did catch Lin Shou's attention, as he watched the Lanterns of Life inside many corpses, was something strange.

Every night at the Examination Hall, a "person" wandered around looking at the candidates' papers and passing judgment. "Mediocre talent," "will pass"—that sort of thing.

At first, Lin Shou had thought it was an examiner making the rounds. But after seeing the figure several times in the Lanterns of Life, he realized its clothes were old and plain, not official robes. It clearly wasn't an examiner.

A candidate? Candidates were confined to their cubicles and weren't allowed to leave. Anyone who did would have their results voided on the spot and be thrown out of the Examination Hall. How could a candidate wander around at night for so many days?

What was more, most of the dead whose Lanterns of Life showed them encountering this "person" had suddenly gone mad or taken their own lives after hearing its judgments.

Could there really be a ghost in the Examination Hall?

Lin Shou looked at the Examination Hall before him. The Master Statue at its entrance had been replaced, and three flags for inviting the gods and summoning souls fluttered in the wind. It was broad daylight, yet the place carried an indescribable, eerie gloom.

Did ghosts really exist in this world?

Lin Shou had wondered about that more than once. The world was strange at every turn, and tales of ghosts and gods were common.

But to this day, he had never truly seen a ghost.

Today was the last day of the Autumn Examination.

Once the candidates finished their exams during the day, they left, and the Examination Hall closed. There would be no more corpses today.

That year's Autumn Examination was unprecedented: not a single corpse stitcher had died. Lin Shou had taken every corpse for himself, except for the three from the first day. For all nine days, none of the other corpse stitchers had received a single one.

At first, the others had wondered why no corpses had been sent in after they'd waited several nights. Only after asking a clerk at the Bureau of Corpse Management did they learn that Little Nine had taken on all the "dangerous" corpse-stitching work. The corpse stitchers were so moved they nearly cried.

Seventh Master and Eighth Master, who had always looked out for Lin Shou, scolded him for being foolish. He was so young—why risk his life for a bunch of old men like them? They were old enough to die and be done with it. Lin Shou was still so young! If something happened to him while stitching corpses for them, wouldn't that be a terrible loss?

Lin Shou couldn't tell them the truth. He could only spread his hands helplessly and mutter to himself, Actually, I've made a killing clearing this Autumn Examination dungeon solo...

Still, Lin Shou had his doubts.

Every year, corpse stitchers died during the Autumn Examination, so there had to be something wrong with the corpses. But why hadn't he encountered a single accident?

Was it because the righteous energy in him was so strong that evil spirits couldn't approach? Or was it, as the Bureau of Corpse Management's Registrar had said, because he was born under the fate of the Heavenly Sha Lone Star?

Lin Shou had thought the Lanterns of Life might reveal why people died in the Examination Hall each year, but they hadn't.

Over the past few days, besides the "Sharp-Tongued Examiner" in the Examination Hall, whose identity as a person or ghost remained unknown, the Lanterns of Life of all the corpses he'd stitched had seemed perfectly normal. There had been plenty of accidents, but each death had its own clear cause. He hadn't seen a single death that defied reason. At most, the incidents were just too coincidental, all piling up at once.

The only corpse Lin Shou thought might have been cursed was the one reduced to a basinful of entrails on the first night.

Unfortunately, that corpse had appeared too early, and he hadn't gotten his hands on it. He'd only taken over the Autumn Examination corpse-stitching contract afterward. By then, the corpse had already been sent to No. 1 Shop, so he'd never had the chance to see its Lantern of Life.

Tsk. That was eerie.

That was all Lin Shou could say. Even with the ability to watch the Lanterns of Life of the dead, he still hadn't uncovered the secret behind the deaths at the Examination Hall.

If he wanted to investigate further, he'd have to wait until the next Autumn Examination, three years later.

Lin Shou sat at a cold-tea stall by the Examination Hall and watched the last candidate leave. Then the gates closed.

He shook his head. He'd sat there all day, watching the faces of every candidate who came out. By the time they'd all left and the Examination Hall had closed, he still hadn't seen the "Sharp-Tongued Examiner" from the Lanterns of Life.

Lin Shou stood and left. The Examination Hall's strange mystery remained unsolved. He would have to come back and investigate in three years.

The Autumn Examination had ended.

The Bureau of Corpse Management submitted that year's examination results to its superiors. Sun Xianfu, the bureau's supervisor and Assistant Director, was surprised to hear that not a single corpse stitcher had died.

Later, the Registrar told him that Lin Shou of No. 9 Corpse-Stitching Shop had taken on all the corpse-stitching work, stitching almost every corpse from the nine days of the Autumn Examination—and had survived. Sun Xianfu couldn't help but marvel at the young man's courage and good fortune.

Lin Shou's name stuck in Sun Xianfu's mind, too. Usually, they remembered corpse stitchers only by their numbers. This was the first time Sun Xianfu had remembered a corpse stitcher's name since becoming Assistant Director of the Bureau of Corpse Management.

As for Lin Shou, he returned to his usual routine: reciting the Classic of Burial, tending to feng shui, going to funerals to bury the dead, reading to cultivate his Temple of Literature, occasionally visiting a teahouse to listen to stories, and meeting a few people for drinks in his spare time.

Some time passed like this, until one day, a corpse was delivered to the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

The corpse was connected to the leprosy outbreak from a few days earlier. Back then, many lepers had been taken to the Six Afflictions Pavilion for quarantine. The Imperial Medical Academy seemed to be developing some kind of medicine and had begun buying large quantities of snake gallbladders from the public, offering a good price.

That prompted many people to go snake-catching on An Mountain, near the Capital City. The dead man had been one of the snake-catching party.

His elderly mother had brought him in. When Lin Shou heard the story, he'd assumed the man had been bitten by a snake. But the moment he lifted the straw mat, he saw something was wrong. How could this have been a snakebite?

The dead man's eye sockets were hollow. His eyeballs were gone.

The corpse felt too light. After asking the family, Lin Shou cut open the dead man's chest—and found the entire body hollow inside. His mother immediately fell to her knees and wept bitterly.

"There are monsters on An Mountain! My poor son went up there to catch snakes! The monsters ate him clean!"