The Treasure-Hoarding Mountain Traveler

Night, the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

Lin Shou looked at the corpse on the cold slab. He had already split it open from chest to belly, the chest cavity hollow—organs gone, flesh and bone absent.

After sending off the old woman who had wept until the sky went dark that afternoon, Lin Shou had examined the corpse again more carefully.

He found fine, dense teeth marks on the inner layer of the human skin, indeed as if gnawed by some animal, which had eaten clean the internal organs and flesh, leaving not even a scrap of bone behind.

Demons and monsters stirring on An Mountain...

The man's death was truly uncanny. Lin Shou tapped his fingers on the cold slab, mulling over how much of that talk could be trusted. After a moment's thought, he picked up a brush and paper and sketched the gnaw marks.

After the three sticks of incense in front of him had burned down, Lin Shou began stitching the corpse.

This time, the workload was considerable. The five viscera and six organs, along with the bones, were all gone. Lin Shou had to make him a new set—no need for precision, just enough to look the part.

After threading the needle and pulling the thread back and forth, the corpse was sewn up.

The Record of Selling Corpses appeared, and the Lantern of Life rose.

Lin Shou saw the deceased's life story.

The dead man was a Mountain Traveler—literally, someone who lived off the mountains. In some places, they were also called Treasure Seekers. Around the Capital City, Miyun Township and Pinggu Township had many mountain ranges, and in those mountains were mountain treasures: ginseng, cloud fungus, bezoars, donkey treasures, and various medicinal herbs, rare birds, mineral veins, and timber. Mountain Travelers would find these and sell them, making a living that way.

There was a folk tale about an old Buddha from a previous dynasty who fell ill and needed wild ginseng to save her life. They searched the entire treasury but couldn't find any old enough, so they summoned a Mountain Traveler into the mountains. Three days later, he returned with ginseng of sufficient age and was rewarded with enough money to last a lifetime.

Of course, "If you find a great mountain treasure, you'll never worry about food or drink for life" was just like telling someone "Buying a lottery ticket can make you rich"—a carrot dangled in front of a donkey, something to hear and forget, not to take seriously.

Most so-called Mountain Travelers didn't have that kind of skill. They were just woodcutters, herb gatherers, snake catchers, and the like. The corpse Lin Shou was stitching, for instance, had spent his life mostly digging up mushrooms and hunting rabbits to sell. Recently, he'd heard the Imperial Medical Academy was buying snake gallbladders for good money, so he'd tried his hand at snake catching.

It was said that true Mountain Travelers knew how to read the mountains. They had special training methods—thrown into a cellar at birth, smeared with secret herbal ointments every day to nurture the eyes that could spot treasures. They had master-disciple lineages, unlike the fakes.

An Mountain now produced White Wax Wood and Coal. The Yuzhitang Trading Firm's large coal mine supplied all the Capital City's coal. It was said that this coal vein had been found twenty years ago by a Mountain Traveler, who sold it to the Yuzhitang Trading Firm and made a lot of money. That was a real Mountain Traveler with true skill.

But in this Lantern of Life, the fake Mountain Traveler had gone up An Mountain in life, intending to catch snakes.

The professional snake catchers, the ones who knew the trade, understood how to spot snake trails and find snake dens. But this guy was just a country bumpkin. He heard snake catching paid well, so he came along too. What did he know? He could only wander aimlessly up the mountain, relying on luck.

He didn't even take the proper mountain paths. Think about it—how many people passed along the main trails every day? Whether real or fake Mountain Travelers, everyone knew there couldn't be treasures on a busy road. Someone else would have picked them up long ago. So they all headed where the forests were deepest, where no one went—that's where they burrowed in.

This fake Mountain Traveler spent a whole day burrowing through the forests on An Mountain and didn't see a single snake. His only haul was two bird eggs.

No choice. He saw the sky was getting dark and thought, time to head back. When he got home, he'd make one egg into soup and one into steamed egg custard, and call it a meal.

As he hurried back in the dark, trouble struck.

When he'd come, it was daytime. He saw a forest and dove in without much thought. But once it got dark, he was in trouble—he couldn't find his way.

So he started guessing and stumbling along, trying to find the path. By the middle of the night, he finally emerged from the forest into an open area. But what lay before him was... a graveyard!

Some graves had headstones, some had neither stone nor name. Several rows of earthen burial mounds. It scared the fake Mountain Traveler so badly that cold sweat broke out all over him. In this desolate wilderness, where had a graveyard come from?

In the dead of night, just as he was terrified, he suddenly heard a shout from a nearby grave mound! The fake Mountain Traveler turned his head and only saw a gust of eerie wind sweep past. Then everything went black.

The pair of eyes in his sockets were already gone.

The fake Mountain Traveler collapsed to the ground in agony, rolling around. Then he felt something block his mouth—something had crawled in through his mouth and started eating his insides. Before long, he was dead.

The Lantern of Life ended here.

Lin Shou was stunned. What the hell had come out of that grave mound at the end? A ghost? A corpse rising from the dead?

The fake Mountain Traveler had gone blind too fast. Lin Shou couldn't get any more useful information from the Lantern of Life.

The Yin-Yang Abacus clinked and clanked. Heaven, Earth, Dark, Yellow—a good price.

Corpse valuation: Yellow Grade, Ninth Rank.

The Record of Selling Corpses rewarded him with a mushroom. It was for boosting virility—supposedly, eating it would keep you standing for three days. Lin Shou didn't lack for that; it was neither here nor there.

More than the reward, he was curious about what he'd seen in the Lantern of Life. Were there really demons and monsters on An Mountain?

The next day, the old woman came to collect her son's corpse and took it home for burial. Lin Shou hadn't figured it out all night, so he decided not to dwell on it. After all, An Mountain probably had nothing to do with him.

In the morning, he stepped outside and exhaled a breath of cold air. The weather in the Capital City had been turning cold lately. Winter had arrived. Everyone on the streets was wearing thicker clothes. A couple of days ago, Ning Luowei had caught a cold from the change in weather.

Lin Shou had also gone to the Cloth Market and picked up a few thick cotton-padded jackets. Winters in the north were bitterly cold, and in this era, there was no air conditioning or underfloor heating. Getting through winter relied on cotton clothes, stoves, and heated brick beds.

In the dead of winter, you'd boil some hot water, curl up on the heated bed, wrap yourself in a quilt, and soak in the warmth from the fire burning underneath. Comfortable.

Around here, heating all ran on coal. Lin Shou went to check how much coal was left in the shop. When it got really cold, he'd need to buy a batch at the market—enough to burn through the whole winter.

Without coal to burn, people froze to death in northern winters.

Today, while changing the water in his fish tank, Lin Shou noticed that several of his koi had died. Couldn't cold-water fish even handle this weather? Would it be better to switch to a deeper tank in the cold?

The tank looked sparse with fewer fish, lacking vitality. Even the feng shui of the Azure Dragon Position had weakened, and his progress in practicing the Classic of Burial had slowed.

Lin Shou felt unsettled either way. Alright, he'd head to the Bird Market today and buy some more fish.

The Capital City's Bird Market was also a place where the pleasure-seekers went to play.

Though it was called the Bird Market, it wasn't just birds. Flowers, birds, fish, insects—all were there. "Bird Market" was a catch-all term. Nowadays, people kept cats and dogs as pets, but back then, that wasn't the case. In the old days, when people said "keeping pets," they mainly meant keeping birds.

In ancient times, there was a specific phrase for the daily life of idle rich young men: "Carrying a cage, walking a bird." That shows how much everyone loved keeping birds.

Some hunters would catch good birds or small beasts and bring them to the Bird Market to set up a stall on the ground. Wealthy young masters would see something they liked—a thrush with a jade-like curve to its brow, a hawfinch with a yellow-tipped beak—and they'd be willing to spend money. If you ran into someone who really splurged, you could make a killing. There were even people who made a living traveling around to catch rare birds and beasts.

That was one of the pleasures of the rich. They were willing to spend money, buying rare and exotic breeds, and loved to compete: "Today I see your sparrow is nice; tomorrow I'll buy an even better one."

As long as there was competition, the bird-catchers' trade always had business.

In short, it was showing off wealth. But compared to today's showing off with watches and cars, it was far more satisfying. No matter how good your watch or car was, it was still an industrial product—if one could be made, two could be made. But these rare, exotic little animals? There was only one in heaven and on earth. A unique item.

You had it, and no one else did. Every time you compared, you could really strut.