Thousand-Mile Lone Rider

"East of the great river, the waves sweep away all those heroes of ages past..."

The myna recited the timeless verse about Red Cliff, and Lin Shou, using an animal as his proxy, brought another dawn of civilization to this world.

For the next few days, Lin Shou spent his time playing with the bird in the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

He fed it minced meat every day. The myna especially loved meat, and for fruit it would only eat grapes and cherries. It wouldn't touch apples or pears. It was quite picky. Lin Shou often talked to it, and with the boost from Tireless Teaching, he got far better results than ordinary bird trainers.

In less than three days, Lin Shou no longer needed to keep the shop door shut. He could let the myna fly off to play as it pleased. It always flew back each day, having already accepted the shop as its nest.

Of course. What place could offer it better food than Lin Shou's shop?

The myna had found itself a steady meal ticket.

Every day, it also brought back little twigs in its beak. At first Lin Shou didn't understand what it meant, but eventually he realized the bird wanted him to build it a nest.

You're pretty bold, acting like you're no stranger here. Lin Shou was so exasperated he almost laughed. He built it a nest in the Azure Dragon Position. Naturally, he didn't use some broken branches. He took special care to do a bit of carpentry and make it a proper nest. He had the various skills he'd learned from Record of Selling Corpses to thank for that. Ordinary carpentry wasn't as mysterious or impressive as the craft in the Book of Lu Ban, but mastering it still put him at the level of a skilled artisan.

The Azure Dragon Position was already one of the feng shui sites Lin Shou had focused on cultivating. With potted plants and koi, it had practically become a little ecosystem. Now that a myna had moved in, it had gained even more vitality, and its feng shui had improved further.

Lin Shou's cultivation speed from silently reciting the Classic of Burial had now reached—

One cycle brought thirty days' worth of cultivation.

Tsk, not bad. He could play with flowers and birds like a carefree dandy every day, and his cultivation still got faster. The Classic of Burial really suited him.

As for the other feng shui positions, the Black Tortoise Position was the main one for protection, where Lin Shou could practice calligraphy and paint. The White Tiger Position governed wealth and status, so it was best suited for antiques, paintings, calligraphy, jade, and gold... Which all sounded like expensive hobbies that could bankrupt him.

Besides, Lin Shou didn't have much knowledge or skill in those fields yet. He hadn't stitched many wealthy connoisseurs, after all, so he wasn't confident in appraising treasures or gambling on stones. Otherwise, he might have found a way to visit the famous Capital Ghost Market...

Lin Shou thought he'd wait until spring next year to look into it. Winter had already arrived, and the New Year was coming soon. Cities in the north moved slowly during winter, making it an unsuitable time to travel. He'd spend the next few months testing his luck and see if he could pick up a trick or two.

That afternoon, an old man and a young man brought in a corpse, their faces heavy with grief.

Lin Shou thought they looked familiar. Then he remembered: weren't they the father and son from the Chen family's sauce shop in Mingde Ward?

A few months ago, when Lin Shou had first arrived in this world, he'd stitched a corpse and obtained the Paper-to-Silver Art. Through the Lantern of Life, he'd seen that the dead man had been a local thug. He'd gone to extort money at Young Master Chen's wedding banquet, but the shopkeeper had killed him in self-defense. As he died, he'd shouted about five thousand taels.

Lin Shou had only seen the shopkeeper in the Lantern of Life, so he hadn't expected to encounter him in person today. He lifted the straw mat and took a look. The dead man was indeed the shopkeeper who had killed the thug.

The eyes were missing from their sockets, and the corpse's weight was wrong.

After the Chen family father and son left, Lin Shou cut the body open for a look. It was the exact same manner of death: all the internal organs, bones, and flesh had been gnawed away. The bite marks were identical.

Had the "monster" in An Mountain eaten him too?

Lin Shou furrowed his brow slightly and lit the three incense sticks before him. While they burned, he examined the corpse again, finally taking a close look at the soles of its shoes.

He'd walked along mountain roads, so there had to be mud on the soles. But there was another layer mixed in... coal dust?

An Mountain had coal mines. The large coal mine run by Yuzhitang Trading Firm supplied the whole Capital City, so it wouldn't be strange for the shopkeeper to have coal dust on his shoes if he'd been to An Mountain.

When the three incense sticks had burned down, Lin Shou began stitching the corpse.

Record of Selling Corpses appeared, and the Lantern of Life came alight.

The dead man had once been an escort for the Jiangnan Water Gate Escort Agency, traveling the waterways for years to guard cargo. Later, Eastern Ocean raiders and river bandits ran rampant, and the border piers of Jiangnan were constantly under attack. Many merchant ships were plundered, making escort work a perilous trade.

Eventually, the dead man's wife and children told him to quit. They lived in fear every day, worried that if something happened to him, they wouldn't know how to get by. His wife said they had a distant relative doing business in the Capital, and suggested he go take a look.

So the escort came to the Capital and became the shopkeeper at Master Chen's sauce shop. He was capable, bold, and careful. In just a few months, he had earned Master Chen's deep trust and firmly established himself. Then he thought to bring his wife and children over and settle down in the Capital for good.

Master Chen had sent letters to Jiangnan and arranged a carriage to bring them over. They were nearly there, passing through An Mountain in the last few days. But after hearing that monsters had been appearing in An Mountain, the escort couldn't put his mind at ease. He said he would go meet them on the main road through the mountain.

He'd left standing up in the daytime. The next day, he came back lying down, his corpse cold and lifeless.

Master Chen was heartbroken too. What a fine shopkeeper he'd been. They hadn't worked together for long before such a calamity had struck.

Corpse value: Profound Rank, Fourth Grade.

Record of Selling Corpses rewarded him with a martial art: Thousand-Mile Lone Rider.

Over mountains high and roads far, a lone hero stood fearless.

They said that after the first surge of energy, the second weakened, and the third was exhausted. Thousand-Mile Lone Rider was a technique for building an offensive momentum. The more victories one won, the stronger one's momentum grew, sustaining one's power without end.

Lin Shou had once fought two hundred members of the Canal Gang at Shallow Water Pier. Afterward, he'd felt exhausted. With this Thousand-Mile Lone Rider technique, however, he would grow more spirited the longer he fought. Each victory would sustain his strength, allowing his energy to flow on without end.

Tsk, were you stacking kill points or something?

Lin Shou activated the Thousand-Mile Lone Rider technique, and a sense of fearless solitude surged through him.

Early the next morning, Master Chen's servant came to collect the corpse. The stitching was done, but Lin Shou kept thinking about what he'd seen in the Lantern of Life: what had happened to the dead man in An Mountain?

His eyes had been eaten out, and his innards had been gnawed clean. But he'd once been an escort with excellent martial skills, so he'd managed to resist for a while. He hadn't gotten a clear look at the thing that had sprung out of the grave, but he'd caught a glimpse of yellow fur.

Comparing it with the bite marks he'd drawn, Lin Shou had a guess.

So today, Lin Shou went to Bird Market, specifically to look at the stalls selling mink and dogs. He examined the bite marks on the wooden cages and finally decided that the mink's bite marks looked very much like the ones he'd drawn. He found a mink seller and showed him the drawing.

"Friend, do you think these bite marks were made by a mink?"

The man made his living with minks, so he knew more about them than Lin Shou did. He could tell the difference at a glance just by looking at the drawing. He said:

"No. These look like they were made by a yellow weasel."

The yellow weasel was a type of weasel, an animal with many eerie folk legends surrounding it. One such tale said that yellow weasels lived in graves and cultivated themselves into immortals by feeding on the yin energy of the dead.

Lin Shou nodded. It seemed he'd found the right track. He asked the mink seller:

"Do yellow weasels eat people?"