"Yeah, more and more of them! And the rules keep getting stricter. It's a real pain!"
The man answered casually, sounding a little glum.
Xu Feng knew he would have to keep asking. Otherwise, the man would just keep repeating the same few lines.
Xu Feng leaned against the wall too and struck up a conversation.
Before long, he had the story straight.
Xu Feng now understood far more about Wanquan County.
He had asked the right person. The Hu Family had once controlled Wanquan County's funeral trade.
After the family patriarch passed away,
five of his six sons went into the same line of work.
Only after they had taken their fill did they leave any scraps for everyone else.
But the one with real ability had been the old patriarch.
The remaining Yin-Yang Practitioners
each had their own specialty.
For instance, people went to Master Liang when they needed a temple's plans drawn up and its site settled.
When they encountered evil spirits or needed a calamity averted, an exorcism performed, or an auspicious date calculated, they usually went to Master Zhu.
Then there was Master Ma, who did a bit of everything but excelled at none of it.
People generally sought him out only when they could not find the other two and still needed a practitioner. He charged the least of the three.
As for what the man meant by "more and more": lately, no matter whether someone had died peacefully, their corpse curled up when the appointed auspicious hour arrived. It had happened more than once.
So when someone died these days, the Yin-Yang Practitioners recommended cremation whenever possible.
If that was not possible,
they urged the family to bury the body quickly.
The longer a body lay unburied, the more tightly it curled.
If