Not yet faded

"Chief Constable Zhou, my grandfather's resting!"

Lu Mingyue hurried out of the house. Looking at Zhou Biao, who had entered the courtyard, she pointed toward the main room and explained in a low voice.

Five years had passed. Old Lu was already sixty and had long since lost the vigor of his earlier years.

Fortunately, Old Lu's appetite was still good. He could eat and drink just fine; he simply slept a little more than before.

"Well, look at you, all grown up! Are you really going to take over Old Lu's work?"

Zhou Biao was an old acquaintance of the grandfather and granddaughter. He had survived the bloody clash between the county office and the Twin Blades Gang back then, though someone had sliced off his left ear. Over the years, he had been promoted to chief constable and put in charge of keeping order in the city.

That was why the street thugs called him One Ear behind his back.

Lu Mingyue, however, found Zhou Biao easy to warm to. He was a familiar face, after all. He had even suggested that she stop working as a corpse collector and offered to find her a husband someday, so she could marry and live an ordinary life.

"You're joking again, Chief Constable Zhou. Apart from my grandfather and me, who else in Yangguan City would be willing to do this work?"

Lu Mingyue poured Zhou Biao a cup of tea and made her plans clear.

"As for marriage, I'm not interested. Yangguan City is only so big. Who doesn't know I grew up with my grandfather and have handled more corpses than I can count these past few years?"

"Even if a family agreed to take me in, with this sort of work behind me, I wouldn't be welcome once I married into it. They might be polite to my face, but who knows if they'd call me a harbinger of death behind my back?"

As she spoke, Lu Mingyue glanced at the main room and heard Old Lu stirring awake inside.

"You don't have to marry someone in Yangguan City. I have acquaintances in Baima City and Linhe City. I guarantee I can introduce you to a family you'll be happy with!"

Zhou Biao drank his tea and thumped his chest as he spoke. After so many years as a constable, he could read the look in a person's eyes. Naturally, he knew how outsiders mocked his missing ear.

But the young girl before him had never mocked him.

He had watched Lu Mingyue grow up, too, and thought of her as his own little sister. He could not bear to see her spend her whole life dealing with corpses.

"Baima City and Linhe City aren't far, true, but I don't have a family to back me up. Uncle Biao, surely you know how hard life is with their in-laws for women who have no family of their own?"

Lu Mingyue smiled, took the empty teacup, and jogged over to help Old Lu out after he opened the door.

"Zhou Biao, you brat, you're trying to talk my granddaughter into marriage again! Are you hoping I'll have no face to meet the old master?"

Old Lu's hair was entirely white, and his back was bent. The moment he reached the doorway, he hurled that rebuke at Zhou Biao.

Perhaps because he was old and knew he did not have many days left, Old Lu had long since stopped bowing and scraping to anyone.

Zhou Biao might be chief constable, but to him, he was simply someone he had watched grow up.

Zhou Biao treated Lu Mingyue as a younger sister, and Old Lu treated Zhou Biao as a son.

With death approaching, he naturally remembered how the old master had raised him in his youth. That was why he particularly disliked Zhou Biao talking to Lu Mingyue about marriage and having children.

"Ha! Old Lu, that temper of yours just keeps getting worse!" Zhou Biao did not take offense. He simply dropped the subject of Lu Mingyue and turned to official business. "You remember the Second Elder of the Twin Blades Gang, the one who escaped five years ago? The prefectural authorities finally caught him. Once they learned he was from Yangguan City, they sent him back..."

When Zhou Biao first mentioned someone from the past, Old Lu's eyes were still cloudy, but as he listened, they grew clear.

"The second master? I remember him. I was the one who prepared his son's corpse back then..."

That dead lad had been killed over the immortal cultivation technique belonging to Master Shen's family.

Afterward, the Twin Blades Gang had killed Master Shen, and the county office had wiped out the Twin Blades Gang.

Those past events rose before Old Lu's eyes, and his heart suddenly could not help rising into his throat.

The Twin Blades Gang's second elder had escaped back then. Had he obtained the immortal cultivation technique belonging to Master Shen's family?

In any case, in just these few years, Master Shen's family had lost its mainstay and long since fallen into ruin. Other members of the clan had divided up or seized their property, and the Shen Household no longer counted for anything in Yangguan City.

"That second elder's dead. He committed crimes back then, but he was still from Yangguan City. The county magistrate is kindhearted, so he wanted you to tidy him up, and then we'll take him away for a proper burial."

As he spoke, Zhou Biao fished a small lump of silver from his waistband and tossed it to Lu Mingyue from some distance away.

"Only two taels?"

Lu Mingyue caught it. Without even looking, she could tell its weight by touch.

"Be satisfied with that. His family fled long ago, and now there's nothing but a corpse. It's only because our county magistrate is kindhearted that he's willing to pay a little reward!"

Zhou Biao rolled his eyes at Lu Mingyue, turned, and strode away with a wave.

"You two had better hurry. He died three days ago, and getting him here took another day. It's high summer. If you don't deal with him soon, he'll stink!"

"Grandfather, you rest. I'll go bring him back!"

Lu Mingyue helped Old Lu settle into the reclining chair beneath the eaves, then briskly went to wheel out the handcart. Old Lu had no intention of going along.

"Go on, go on. Bring me back a pot of April Green while you're at it. Who knows how many more mouthfuls I'll get to drink..."

"All right!"

Hearing Old Lu lament how little time he had left, Lu Mingyue answered, sadness stirring in her heart.

They had lived under the same roof for twelve years, after all, and her grandfather had saved her life. How could she not be sad?

Her grandfather had only aroused those uncomfortable suspicions in her for a month or so back then. Once the Twin Blades Gang was destroyed, he had returned to normal and never again shown the slightest curiosity about the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth.

After five years, Lu Mingyue felt that her grandfather had given up on the chance to become an immortal.

Now that he had little time left, Lu Mingyue instead felt that her former suspicions of him had been somewhat base and selfish.

I must make sure Grandfather has good food and drink!

Wiping her stinging eyes, Lu Mingyue jogged to the county office and saw the corpse of the Second Elder of the Twin Blades Gang.

The very first look gave Lu Mingyue a fright.

In her memory, the Second Elder of the Twin Blades Gang had been a burly middle-aged man, no longer young.

But...

Although the man before her had tightly closed eyes, a pale face, and not a trace of life in him, he was distinctly several years younger than the second elder Lu Mingyue remembered!

"What, even you can get frightened by a corpse?" Standing beside her with his hands behind his back, Zhou Biao noticed Lu Mingyue's distraction and could not resist teasing her.

Lu Mingyue knew that she alone had noticed the subtle changes in the second elder's body.

Perhaps it was because she had opened her Spirit Mansion?

"No, I was just feeling a little reflective."

Coming back to herself, Lu Mingyue lifted the second elder's corpse onto the handcart, secured the Corpse-Wrapping Cloth, and turned to Zhou Biao.

"Chief Constable Zhou, send someone to collect the body in two hours. Don't leave it until tomorrow!"