Sea Arrest Warrant for the Scalp-Cutter

Lin Shou watched and thought, Good grief, you go and steal a dead man's hat, and now he's come knocking, hasn't he? Just a bit too much grip strength, though—tore the whole skullcap clean off.

The deceased's family beside him were frozen in terror. The corpse had been lying there peacefully, no one had touched it, so how did a skullcap suddenly pop out like that?!

"Get a cloth to wrap it up."

The clerk from the Bureau of Corpse Management said to Lin Shou. The trembling family members nearby found a black cloth and handed it over.

Lin Shou took the black cloth, wrapped up that piece of skullcap, and followed the clerk back to the corpse-stitching shop.

Then, Lin Shou watched as the crippled old man's body was carried in and laid on the cold slab in his stitching shop.

Hiss. Lin Shou's scalp crawled. He already had a bad feeling about this.

The Bureau clerk spoke up: "The scalp's been recovered too. Stitch this corpse up tonight."

Sure enough, they've dumped this weird-death corpse on me, Lin Shou thought. If I'd known, I wouldn't have gone to gawk.

"Officer, shouldn't this corpse be sent to the Three Judicial Offices for review? He didn't die from stitching—was someone responsible for his death?"

The Bureau clerk just waved a hand and said, "No need. It wasn't done by a human. We already have a handle on it. You should lock your doors and windows at night and be careful in everything."

The clerk talked like a riddle-speaker, his words vague and half-baked, explaining nothing at all. Then he left.

He didn't bother clarifying what "not done by a human" meant, leaving a dumbfounded Lin Shou with his mind in shambles.

What the hell does "not done by a human" mean? What does "be careful in everything" mean? What handle do you have? Do you even deserve those two basins of black dog blood I splashed for you? Are you from Gotham? Looks like you're missing a beating from Batman.

Lin Shou stared at the corpse on the cold slab and that piece of scalp, feeling a tightness in his chest and ice in his hands and feet.

He did want to stitch corpses, sure, but a death this sinister—what if something went wrong while stitching it?

He didn't want to hear that unlucky Obituary Bird calling out his stitching shop's number at night.

But the Bureau had given the order, and a stitcher couldn't refuse, or he'd be thrown back to the refugee camp. Either way, there was no compromise. He just had to grit his teeth and go through with it.

And so Lin Shou spent the day in anxious dread, waiting for nightfall.

Night came. Three incense sticks were lit.

Lin Shou desperately hoped the incense would burn wrong, because that was the only excuse the Bureau allowed for skipping a corpse-stitching.

But the incense burned steadily to the end without any issue, so he had no choice but to steel himself and proceed.

Since the skullcap had been torn off, Lin Shou first had to use nails and a hammer to fix the skull back in place, then thread a needle and stitch the scalp back on.

All night, as he stitched and restored the corpse's appearance, Lin Shou stayed on high alert, nerves stretched tight, under immense pressure.

Not until the stitching was finished and nothing happened did his heart suddenly relax, and he let out a long breath. Looks like I was just scaring myself.

A dizzy spell hit, and the Record of Selling Corpses appeared before his eyes.

The crippled old man's Lantern of Life started running too.

There wasn't much to see in the crippled old man's life.

In his early years, he was a thuggish, hot-headed porter. After drinking, he picked a fight with someone and got his leg broken.

How could a porter work with a crippled leg?

So after that, he took to begging on the streets. He drifted homeless for half a lifetime, pulling plenty of shady, rotten stunts—pickpocketing, scamming, peddling tobacco.

Later, the Bureau of Corpse Management picked him to be a corpse stitcher.

None of that mattered. The key was how he died.

Yesterday morning, the crippled old man saw that the dead man's hat was nice, and since he needed a hat for winter, he swiped it.

Back in his shop, nothing happened. That night, like Lin Shou, he hadn't been assigned a corpse to stitch. He sat there resting with his eyes closed, humming a little tune.

In the dead of night, clouds covered the moon. Someone knocked at the door.

"Who is it?" the crippled old man called out impatiently.

From outside the door came only one sentence in reply, and that single sentence drained all the color from the old man's face. The voice outside said:

"Give me back my hat."

The next morning, No. 9 Corpse-Stitching Shop opened early.

Lin Shou stood at the door, his face dark and grim.

He'd watched the crippled old man's Lantern of Life last night and already knew the whole story. Now he was waiting for someone.

Before long, the clerk from the Bureau of Corpse Management arrived.

The clerk held a Wanted Poster and pasted it on the wall.

"Criminal 'Scalp-Cutter' has committed twelve murders in the capital, all victims with their scalps removed. Brutal methods, heinous crimes. A reward of five hundred taels of silver is hereby offered for his capture."

The poster was up, and the clerk looked satisfied. He turned his head, and Lin Shou was standing right beside him like a vengeful spirit.

"Ah! You scared me. What are you doing?"

"Officer, what's this?"

Lin Shou ground these words out through clenched teeth.

"Wanted poster. Scalp-Cutter. A serial killer who's been active in the capital recently—already killed twelve. Brutal methods. Even the Four Great Arresters of the Six Fan School have been alerted."

"He's the one who killed Stitcher Number Six?"

"That's right. The Ministry of Justice has been hunting him for half a month. I recognized him at a glance, hurried back to report, and now we've locked down his operational district."

"You said it wasn't the work of a human..."

"A fiend like this—inhuman, I say!"

"Officer, you really are a big clever!"

"Big clever... clever what?"

"A dialect from my hometown. Praising your brilliance and martial prowess."

"Ah, flattery, flattery—hardly deserving."

The clerk's grin split his face wide. He had no idea that Lin Shou's sarcastic "big clever" was anything but a compliment.

Lin Shou stood by, utterly speechless. This clerk had scared him half to death yesterday, speaking in riddles like some cryptic fool, making him think there really was a vengeful ghost out killing people.

After stitching up the corpse in a panic last night, Lin Shou had used the Record of Selling Corpses to trigger the Lantern of Life. He saw the full sequence of events before the crippled old man died, and only then realized it had all been his imagination.

The one who harmed people was a person.

On the night the crippled old man was killed, he'd heard the voice outside the door say, "Give me back my hat." Terrified, he thought a ghost had come for him. He fell to his knees, kowtowing and begging every deity he could name, but the knocking at the door persisted, and the voice kept demanding the hat back. The old man, frantic with fear, rummaged through boxes and chests to find the hat, cracked the door open just a sliver, tossed it out, and prayed the ghost would take it and leave.

What he didn't expect was that opening the door was already a mistake. The man must have seen the crippled old man stealing the hat off the dead body during the day, and staged this act at night just to scare him into opening the door.

The door was shoved open, and the man burst in!

His skill was formidable. One hand clamped over the crippled old man's mouth to stifle his screams, while the other swept a Moon-Ring Willow Leaf Blade across.

Before the blood even showed, the scalp had already hit the floor.

In the end, the crippled old man lay there with his little brain exposed, his skullcap facing the ceiling, and bled to death.

The Lantern of Life ended there.

It wasn't the dead man whose hat had been stolen coming for him—it was the Scalp-Cutter, the one on the wanted poster, who had killed him.

What should have been a straightforward case of a serial killer committing murder had been turned into something terrifying by that cryptic clerk from the Bureau of Corpse Management, making Lin Shou waste a whole night in fear.

Lin Shou was now half-tempted to get himself a set of bat-style night gear and pay that Bureau clerk a visit in the dark for some righteous judgment.

But, to be fair.

Lin Shou had seen the Scalp-Cutter's face in the Lantern of Life.

He looked again at the portrait on the wanted poster—a face full of fierce, brutish flesh, with a long-haired mole by the mouth. The more he stared, the more his brow furrowed. It was completely different from the man he'd seen. The Scalp-Cutter did have a mole, but...

It was a beauty mark by the lips, like a dab of cinnabar.