Lin Shou looked at the corpse and thought, Well, would you look at that. You stole a dead man's hat, and now he's come knocking. Though he really put his back into it—he even flipped your skull right open.
The dead man's family standing nearby were scared stiff. The corpse had been lying there just fine, and nobody had touched it. So how had a whole skull suddenly popped out?!
"Get me a piece of cloth to wrap this in."
The Bureau of Corpse Management clerk said this to Lin Shou. The family, trembling with fear beside them, found a piece of black cloth and handed it over.
Lin Shou wrapped the piece of skull in the black cloth, then followed the Bureau of Corpse Management clerk back to the Corpse-Stitching Shop.
Then Lin Shou saw the lame old man's corpse being carried into his shop and laid on the cold bed.
Yikes. Lin Shou's scalp prickled. He had a bad feeling about this.
The Bureau of Corpse Management clerk spoke up. "We've recovered the scalp too. Stitch up the corpse tonight."
Just as he feared, they were dumping this corpse with its bizarre cause of death on him. Lin Shou thought, If only I'd known, I wouldn't have gone out to watch.
"Sir, shouldn't this corpse be examined by the Three Judicial Offices? The man didn't die while being stitched up. Was he murdered?"
The Bureau of Corpse Management clerk just waved a hand. "No need. We have a pretty good idea what caused it. Keep your doors and windows locked at night, and be careful."
The clerk spoke in riddles, saying things that seemed to mean everything and nothing, explaining absolutely nothing. Then he left.
He didn't bother to explain what "not caused by a human" meant, leaving Lin Shou baffled and on the verge of a breakdown.
What does "not caused by a human" mean? What does "be careful" mean? What is it that you have a pretty good idea about? Is this how you repay me for splashing those two basins of black-dog blood for you? Did you come from Gotham? You look like you could use a good beating from Batman.
Lin Shou looked at the corpse on the cold bed and the piece of scalp. His chest felt tight, his hands and feet cold.
It wasn't that he didn't want to stitch corpses, but what if something went wrong with a corpse this sinister?
He didn't want to hear that ill-omened Obituary Bird calling out the name of his Corpse-Stitching Shop that night.
But the Bureau of Corpse Management had given an order. A corpse-stitcher couldn't refuse, or he'd be thrown back into the refugee camp. Either way, there was no room to bargain, so he could only steel himself and get on with it.
And so Lin Shou spent the day anxiously waiting for nightfall.
Night came, and he lit three incense sticks.
Lin Shou dearly hoped something would go wrong with the incense, because that was the only condition under which the Bureau of Corpse Management would let him leave a corpse unstitched.
But the incense burned steadily, and nothing unusual happened before it was gone. He could only steel himself and begin.
Since the skull had been pried open, Lin Shou first had to use nails and a hammer to fasten it back in place. Then he could thread his needle and stitch the scalp back on.
He spent the night stitching the corpse and preparing its face for burial, his mind taut with tension as he kept watch over his surroundings. The pressure was immense.
Only when he finished stitching and nothing had happened did his heart suddenly loosen. He let out a long breath. It seemed he'd just scared himself.
His vision blurred, and the Record of Selling Corpses appeared before him.
The lame old man's Lantern of Life began to play, too.
There wasn't much worth seeing in the lame old man's life.
In the first half of his life, he'd been a swaggering, hotheaded porter. One day, drunk and picking a fight, he'd had his leg broken by someone.
How could a porter keep working with a lame leg?
After that, he'd begged on the streets, drifting from place to place for half his life. He'd done plenty of vile things, too—pickpocketing, swindling people out of money, and selling tobacco.
Later, the Bureau of Corpse Management had picked him to become a corpse-stitcher.
None of that mattered. What mattered was how he died.
At dawn the previous day, the lame old man had spotted a dead man's hat he liked. He needed a hat for the winter, so he'd snatched it.
After returning to the shop, nothing had happened. Like Lin Shou, he hadn't been assigned a corpse to stitch that night. He'd been sitting there with his eyes closed, humming a little tune.
In the dead of night, with dark clouds veiling the moon, someone knocked at the door.
"Who is it?" the lame old man called out impatiently.
The person outside replied with just one sentence. The color drained from the lame old man's face as he heard it:
"Give me back my hat."
Early the next morning, the No. 9 Corpse-Stitching Shop opened its doors.
Lin Shou stood at the entrance, his face dark.
After watching the lame old man's Lantern of Life the night before, he'd learned the whole story. Now he was waiting for someone.
Before long, a Bureau of Corpse Management clerk arrived.
The clerk held a Wanted Poster and pasted it on the wall.
"Wanted: 'Scalp-Cutter,' responsible for twelve murders in the Capital City. Each victim was scalped, and the methods were cruel beyond measure. The criminal's sins are heinous. A reward of five hundred taels of silver is hereby offered for his capture and return."
After putting up the Wanted Poster, the clerk looked quite pleased. He turned around—and found Lin Shou standing right beside him like a ghost.
"Whoa, you scared me! What are you doing?"
"Sir, what's this?"
Lin Shou spoke through gritted teeth.
"A wanted notice. The Scalp-Cutter is a serial killer who's appeared in the Capital City. He's already murdered twelve people, and his methods are extremely cruel. The Six Fan School's Four Great Constables have all been alerted."
"So he's the one who killed the No. 6 corpse-stitcher?"
"That's right. The Ministry of Justice has been hunting him for half a month. I knew it the moment I saw him, and hurried back to report it. We've now narrowed down the ward where he's been operating."
"When you said it wasn't caused by a human..."
"A fiend like that—he's practically not human!"
"Sir, you really are a brilliant man!"
"Brilliant... bri-what?"
"It's dialect from my hometown. I was praising your wisdom and might."
"Ah, such praise is too much. Really, it's nothing."
The clerk grinned from ear to ear. He had no idea what Lin Shou meant by that sarcastic "brilliant man."
Lin Shou was thoroughly speechless beside him. The clerk had scared the wits out of him the day before, talking in riddles instead of speaking plainly. He'd made Lin Shou think a ghost really had killed someone.
After stitching up the corpse the previous night, his heart pounding with fear, Lin Shou had watched the Lantern of Life in the Record of Selling Corpses and seen everything that had happened before the lame old man's death. Only then had he learned it had all been a false alarm.
The killer was human.
On the night the lame old man was attacked, he'd been terrified when he heard the words "Give me back my hat" from outside. He'd thought a ghost had come to find him, too.
He'd dropped to his knees in a panic and kowtowed, begging every god he could think of for help. But the person outside kept knocking, repeating that he had to give the hat back.
Terrified out of his wits, the lame old man had rummaged through his belongings until he found the hat. He cracked open the door and tossed it out through a tiny gap, praying the ghost would take it and leave.
But the moment he opened the door, he'd already made a fatal mistake. The man had probably seen him snatch the dead man's hat during the day. He'd staged this little performance at night to scare the old man into opening the door.
The man shoved the door open and barged in!
He was fast as lightning. One hand clamped over the lame old man's mouth to stop him from crying out, while the Moon-Ring Willow Leaf Blade flashed past.
Before any blood appeared, the scalp had already fallen to the ground.
In the end, the lame old man had been left with his little skull exposed to the ceiling, and had died from blood loss.
The Lantern of Life ended there.
It hadn't been the dead man whose hat was stolen coming to get him. The one who'd killed him was the Scalp-Cutter, the man wanted in the notice.
It had been a simple case of a serial killer murdering someone. But the Bureau of Corpse Management clerk had made it sound so terrifying with his riddles, leaving Lin Shou scared out of his wits for nothing all night.
Lin Shou was now tempted to get himself a full set of bat-themed night clothes and deliver some righteous justice to that Bureau of Corpse Management clerk in the dead of night.
But, to be fair.
Lin Shou had seen the Scalp-Cutter's face in the Lantern of Life.
He looked at the portrait on the Wanted Poster again: a fierce, brutish face, with a hairy mole beside the mouth.
The more he looked, the more his brow furrowed. This was a completely different person from the one he'd seen. The Scalp-Cutter really did have a mole, but...
It was a beauty mark beside Dan Ying's lips.
Before you continue