Studying Medicine Could Not Save the Nation

The stairs to the lowest deck were narrow and steep. The farther down they went, the dimmer the light grew and the fouler the air became.

Before they reached the bottom, two burly sailors with brutish faces blocked their way with iron rods.

"Stop. What are you doing here?"

One of the sailors, who had only one eye, looked Li Xiang up and down. Seeing his long gown and respectable appearance, he softened his tone slightly.

"Sir, down there's no place for you."

The one-eyed sailor grinned, showing teeth yellowed by smoke, and pointed toward the pitch-black cabin below.

"A water ghost caused trouble last night. Killed a lot of the lower-deck folk. It's filthy down there now, with bloody water up past your ankles. If you dirty that gown, it'll bring bad luck, and you'll have to pay to wash it. Best go back up and rest."

To them, an esteemed guest staying on the second deck or higher had to be sick in the head to come down to a pigsty like the lowest deck—or looking for a thrill.

But this was the kind of thrill that gave you nightmares.

"Move." Li Xiang's voice was calm.

"Sir, it's the captain's orders. They're cleaning up down there. Please don't make things hard for us..."

"I'm an Embalmer." Li Xiang raised his head. "I make my living from the dead."

"An... Embalmer?" The one-eyed sailor swallowed.

In this world, anyone who dared deal with corpses and could make a living from it belonged to the trade.

Such people carried an air of the grave. Offend one, and who knew? A ghost might pin you down in your sleep one night.

"So you're a master of the trade."

The two sailors exchanged a glance. The contempt vanished from their eyes, and they stepped aside, even bending to gesture him through.

"Sir, please... after you. Just be careful. It's slippery down there."

Li Xiang led Lin Xuanguang into the common cabin, one step at a time.

The moment his foot touched the floor, it made a sticky sound.

Even though he had braced himself, the sight before him made his pupils contract.

Bodies lay everywhere, scattered at every angle.

A layer of dark red liquid covered the floor, river water mixed with blood and unidentifiable fragments.

Water ghosts usually killed by dragging people into the water to drown them, or by tearing out their hearts and lungs.

This was no cabin. It was a slaughterhouse.

"Urgh..."

As a Maoshan disciple, Lin Xuanguang had followed his master in catching ghosts and hunting demons. He had seen plenty of dead people.

But carnage on this scale, like something from a butcher's yard, shattered his composure in an instant.

His stomach churned like a river in flood, and bile surged up his throat.

"Hold it in."

A handkerchief faintly scented with medicinal wine appeared before him.

Li Xiang's voice was hard as iron. "Cover your nose and mouth. The smell of blood is too strong here. Breathe in too much, and it could cause trouble."

With that, Li Xiang rolled up his sleeves, baring two slender forearms. He opened the wicker case he carried and took out rows of cold, gleaming silver needles and coils of mulberry-bark thread.

"Xuanguang, help me lay the bodies straight. Find any severed limbs and put them back in place. If you find anyone with their eyes open, close them."

"Got it!" Fighting down his nausea, Lin Xuanguang took the handkerchief, covered his nose, and set to work.

Li Xiang went to the body nearest the door.

It was an elderly woman, still clutching a child no more than a few years old. Claws had pierced both their bodies, leaving them joined together, impossible to separate.

Li Xiang sighed. He did not try to force them apart.

He took out a silver needle and threaded it with mulberry-bark thread. His fingers flew like butterflies flitting among flowers.

"Dust to dust, earth to earth. On Yellow Springs Road, do not look back."

Li Xiang murmured the words of his trade, but his hands moved swiftly, stitching wounds, arranging their features, and lighting soul-soothing incense.

[Completed one corpse stitching. Embalmer experience +1]

[Completed one corpse pacification. Embalmer experience +1]

When he finished with the first pair, their once-gruesome bodies looked remarkably peaceful.

Li Xiang did not rest. He moved to the next.

One body, two bodies, ten...

Li Xiang worked like a precise machine, stitching without tiring, as though he were mending torn clothes rather than corpses.

"Brother Li, I can't find this body's leg!" Lin Xuanguang called, sweat covering his forehead.

"If you can't find it, carve a rough one from wood, or tie one together with straw. What matters is that he has all four limbs. Don't send him down there a cripple," Li Xiang said without looking back.

"Got it!"

Li Xiang did not know how much time had passed. His fingers had gone stiff, and his back and waist ached.

All 136 bodies in the common cabin had been laid out neatly along one side. They were still corpses; they could not come back to life. But at least each had been made whole, and the blood had been wiped from their faces.

[Completed one corpse stitching. Embalmer experience +1]

[Completed one corpse pacification. Embalmer experience +1]

[...]

In his mind, the Book of a Hundred Trades flipped through its pages furiously, golden light flashing without cease.

Li Xiang felt the warm current within him grow stronger and stronger. When he finished stitching a burly man whose face had been half bitten away by a water ghost, a boom rang through his mind, like an evening drum and a morning bell.

BONG—!

Li Xiang straightened. Golden light blazed before his eyes, and lines of ancient-looking text appeared across his vision.

[Embalmer has reached Lv10 (100/100)]

[Unlocking advancement ritual...]

[Advancement ritual: Personally prepare three Joyful Funeral corpses.]

"Joyful Funeral?"

Li Xiang stared at the line, checking again and again that he had read it correctly.

[Advancement ritual details: Joyful Funeral]

[Requirement: Birth, age, illness, and death are part of the Heavenly Dao's cycle. Many die violent deaths; few die in peace. Personally prepare the body of an ordinary person over one hundred years old who died of natural causes.]

[Current progress: 0/1]

[Notice: Until the ritual is complete, Embalmer level will be locked and no experience can be gained.]

"I..."

A curse lodged in Li Xiang's throat.

Over a hundred years old?

Dead of natural causes?

This was the Great Xin Dynasty!

An Age of Chaos where human lives were as cheap as grass, demons roamed everywhere, and warlords were as common as dogs!

For ordinary folk, living to forty or fifty counted as a ripe old age. At sixty, they were considered auspicious; at seventy, they were practically ancient monsters.

In this man-eating world, reaching a hundred was a miracle in itself, never mind an ordinary person dying peacefully of old age.

Finding a Joyful Funeral would be harder than finding a virgin in a brothel.

"Joyful Funeral... Joyful Funeral..."

Li Xiang rolled the words around in his mouth and tasted only bitterness.

In an age of chaos littered with violent deaths, finding one Joyful Funeral had become the most extravagant wish of all.

"Brother Li? What's wrong?"

Seeing Li Xiang frozen in place, Lin Xuanguang asked worriedly, "Are you worn out?"

Li Xiang drew a deep breath, forced down the stampede of ten thousand horses in his chest, and managed a smile uglier than tears.

"It's nothing." His voice was hoarse and drained. "I just suddenly realized... in this world, it's damn hard for someone to die a proper death."

He glanced at the severed limbs scattered across the floor. The sense of accomplishment that had just risen in him was doused like a flame with cold water.

Lin Xuanguang paused, not quite grasping his deeper meaning. He thought Li Xiang was lamenting the people who had died at the water ghost's hands.

"It is hard." Lin Xuanguang sighed too. "But Brother Li, the way you stitch bodies back together is incredible."

Just then, a jumble of footsteps came from the cabin entrance.

The surviving family members who had not dared come in could no longer hold back their grief. They had worked up the courage to come down and identify the dead.

When they saw the bodies laid out in neat rows, and the dignified faces of their loved ones despite their deaths, their muffled sobs burst into full-throated cries.

"Dad!"

"My son..."

Grief-stricken cries shook the cabin.

Soon, several sharp-eyed family members noticed Li Xiang and Lin Xuanguang standing nearby, their clothes covered in blood.

They knew who had given their loved ones this final dignity.

Thud!

A man with tears streaking his face dropped to his knees before Li Xiang and knocked his forehead hard against the floor.

"Sir, thank you... Thank you for letting my father go looking like a human being!"

Li Xiang hurriedly stepped aside and reached down to help him up. "Please don't. This is my job. I can't accept such a bow."

"Why can't you?"

Beside the man, a boy of thirteen or fourteen wiped his tears away. His voice was clear and firm.

Looking at the rows of bodies that no longer appeared gruesome, he said loudly, "When my grandfather was alive, foreigners called him a pig, and warlords worked him like a beast. He never got to live with dignity. But after he died, you gave him dignity. What's wrong with bowing to you for that?"

The boy's words landed like a stone thrown into water.

The families around them, numb and frightened until now, gathered close.

They might have had no money to offer, and they might not have known any elegant words of thanks. But their tear-filled eyes and heartfelt gratitude seemed as though they could never be exhausted.

"Dignity..."

Li Xiang looked at the boy, something stirring in his heart.

In this age of chaos, dignity for the living was a distant dream. Perhaps dignity for the dead was the last line these common people had left to defend their own.

"All right, stop kneeling." Li Xiang waved a hand, his tone calm again. "If you really want to thank me, clean out this cabin. Don't let the smell of blood draw anything foul here again."

At noon.

The atmosphere in the second-deck dining room was oppressive.

After last night's terror and the morning's cleanup, most of the survivors were pale as startled birds.

Though steaming food sat on the tables, few had any appetite. Only a handful of people who were either thick-skinned or ravenous silently sipped their rice porridge.

In a corner, only three or four remained of the young idealists who had once been so full of spirit.

They sat around a table, looking as though they were mourning their own parents.

The young woman with short hair lay over the table, sobbing. Her shoulders shook violently, and her voice was sharp and wretched.

"It's all that young Daoist's fault... All his fault!"

"If he hadn't said all that about not believing in science yesterday, if he hadn't jinxed it, Zhiyuan wouldn't have opened the window to prove science was right!"

Li Xiang and Lin Xuanguang had just washed up in their rooms after leaving the common cabin. They walked into the dining room in clean clothes and heard the piercing accusation.

Lin Xuanguang stopped. His face flushed red, and his clenched fists crackled.

"Leave it," Li Xiang said, patting his shoulder. "Give someone a little rice and they're grateful; give them a whole sack and they resent you. She may not be the only one aboard wondering where you were earlier and why you couldn't save everyone."

"Stop right there!" Hearing them, Li Anqi fixed her swollen red eyes on Lin Xuanguang as though she wanted to devour him.

"You murderer! If you'd stepped in last night, Zhiyuan wouldn't have died!"

She shrieked hysterically and snatched up a teacup, ready to hurl it at him.

But a hand stopped her.

"Li Anqi, please calm down."

The speaker was a young man in a gray Zhongshan suit.

He wore glasses too, though his had black frames. His hair was combed without a strand out of place. Deep grief and exhaustion lay in his eyes, yet his expression was extraordinarily calm, with a reason that bordered on coldness.

His name was Xu Zhou, one of the leaders of the students who had studied abroad.

"Xu Zhou, why are you stopping me?" Li Anqi stared at her companion in disbelief. "Zhiyuan is dead! He died in the room next to yours, with his organs ripped out!"

"I know."

Xu Zhou pushed his glasses up his nose. A reflection on the lenses hid his eyes.

"The captain warned him. The young Daoist warned him. I tried to stop him too. But he chose to open the window anyway."

Xu Zhou's voice was frighteningly calm, as though he were reporting the results of an experiment. "That was his choice, and the price of this lesson."

"In a world that science cannot yet explain, trying to force a borrowed scientific framework onto everything is itself a kind of trial and error."

"Zhiyuan proved with his life that reason and fearlessness alone cannot stop the monsters outside the window—not at this stage."

"What... what are you saying?" Li Anqi was so shaken by Xu Zhou's icy words that she forgot to cry. "That was Zhiyuan! He was our comrade!"

Xu Zhou ignored her and slowly turned around.

He looked toward Lin Xuanguang and Li Xiang at the door, straightened his collar, then bowed slightly.

"Young Daoist, she was out of line just now. I apologize on her behalf."

Lin Xuanguang froze.

He had prepared a bellyful of retorts, even braced himself for a fight. He had never expected this response.

"You... you're a reasonable one, at least." Lin Xuanguang scratched his head, half his anger fading.

"One thing is one thing; another is another."

Xu Zhou straightened and looked Lin Xuanguang in the eye.

There was no gratitude in his gaze, and no hatred. Only an almost obsessive fervor.

"Yesterday, you said studying medicine couldn't save the Great Xin Dynasty. I've remembered those words."

"But I don't believe it."

Xu Zhou pointed at the dark red bloodstain on the floor, not yet completely wiped away.

"In your eyes, those things are demons, monsters, ghosts, and karmic retribution."

"But in my eyes, they're merely biological phenomena we haven't yet explained."

Xu Zhou did not speak loudly, yet everyone in the dining room heard him clearly.

"If they're living things, they have structures and weaknesses. They can be dissected and studied."

"Talisman water can kill ghosts because it contains some kind of energy. The Peachwood Sword can ward off evil because peachwood has unusual properties. Science can explain all of this."

"Right now, scalpels can't cut down water ghosts because we don't understand their physiology well enough. Our weapons aren't specialized enough."

"Kid, have you lost your mind?" An old man eating porridge nearby could not help but interrupt. "You saw what happened last night. You think a scalpel could cut down a water ghost?"

Xu Zhou did not even glance at the old man. He kept his eyes on Lin Xuanguang.

"Once I've gone to the Eastern Seas, finished my studies, and returned, I'll build a dissection room."

"I'll capture these demons and monsters to dissect them. I'll peel off their skin, take apart their bones, and see exactly how their energy circuits work."

"I'll give the young Daoist an answer."

"And if I truly can't save the Great Xin Dynasty, then at least I'll have ruled out one false path to saving it for those who come after me."

With that, Xu Zhou took the still-stunned, short-haired young woman Li Anqi by the hand and left. His retreating figure looked resolute and aloof.

"That man..."

Standing in a corner, Li Xiang watched Xu Zhou leave, lost in thought.

A madman.

An absolute madman.

"Interesting." Lin Xuanshu walked up to Li Xiang and said quietly, "If a man like that survives, he'll accomplish great things. Either he'll become a legendary physician, or... he'll turn into the kind of madman who'll stop at nothing for his research."

"Senior Brother, he's far too arrogant." Lin Xuanguang curled his lip, though some of the contempt had left his eyes. "He wants to dissect demons? He'd better hope one doesn't swallow him whole."

"A little arrogance is good."

Lin Shouzhen's voice sounded softly behind them.

He came over, his gaze deep. "In times like these, anyone who isn't a little arrogant has gone soft to the bone."

Just then, the deck beneath their feet trembled slightly.

"Woooo—!"

A long, piercing whistle cut through the mist over the river and echoed between heaven and earth.

Someone leaned out a window and shouted.

"We're here! I can see the dock!"

"Linjiang County! We've arrived!"