Ziren Hall, as it is called, is a shop for washing and dressing the dead.
In the entire Xinxiang area, there are only two or three such places.
Apart from graveyards, Ziren Hall is where the dead are most likely to appear.
The shop opens early in the morning, with a middle-aged woman in a gray hemp outfit sitting at the entrance.
Perhaps due to her constant dealings with corpses, Lou Yi always felt her face was much stiffer than that of ordinary people.
Upon seeing the ragged Lou Yi arrive, the woman asked expressionlessly, "What do you want?"
Lou Yi squeezed out a smile, "Sister, do you need any help here?"
"Hm? We're not hiring now." Realizing he wasn't there for business, the woman's face turned cold, and she sneered, "Besides, we only hire acquaintances. What if there's a little thief..."
Lou Yi cursed his bad luck silently but, needing help, forced a smile and said, "I can do anything, and I don't need any pay..."
Unexpectedly, upon saying this, the woman's expression changed, and she shouted, "You little rascal, trying to steal our family craft?"
As soon as she finished speaking, two men, one big and one small, rushed out from inside the shop, each holding a thick wooden stick, glaring at Lou Yi.
Lou Yi fled in a panic, feeling extremely embarrassed.
"Damn, I messed up!"
Lou Yi ran a long distance, standing there and gasping for breath.
After thinking for a moment, he realized what the problem was.
He sometimes still viewed matters from a modern perspective, believing that for a dirty and tiring job like a funeral master, offering to help for free would not be refused.
But he didn't consider that washing, dressing, and restoring the dead, in this era, was seen as a precious skill that could be passed down, something people depended on for a living, afraid that an outsider like him would steal the knowledge.
Looking at it this way, there's no need to go to the other two places; he would have to take a risk. Lou Yi steeled his heart.
...
Determined, Lou Yi prepared himself.
The most important thing was to borrow a shovel.
The Lou Family originally had one, but after lending it to a fellow villager, it was never returned. After his father Lou the Scholar passed away, it became a lost account.
In this era, metal tools were exceedingly precious.
A good shovel could sell for a hundred wen.
Returning to Erhe Village, Lou Yi shamelessly visited his neighbors.
"Uncle Geng, could I borrow your shovel? I'll return it in a couple of days."
"Our shovel was lost long ago; why don't you ask someone else?"
"Auntie Gao, I wanted to borrow..."
"Oh dear, it's really unlucky timing. We need it to loosen the soil for the corn these days, can't do without it, sorry..."
After asking five or six households, not one could lend him one, and he didn't know if their reasons were true or not.
'When you're poor, everyone is against you, and nothing goes smoothly!'
Feeling somewhat dejected, Lou Yi went to the Gu Family, not really hoping, and asked, "Auntie Gu, do you have a shovel?"
After waiting for a moment and getting no response,
Lou Yi was about to turn and leave.
A man in his thirties came running out, thrusting a shovel into Lou Yi's hands.
"Thanks, Brother Yong." Lou Yi said happily.
"No big deal." The taciturn man, Gu Yong, waved it off indifferently.
"I'll return it to you soon." Lou Yi said, walking away cheerfully with the shovel.
And when Gu Yong returned home, he quietly asked his mother, "By doing this, Butcher Qi might not be happy."
"What can he do, tear down our house?" Auntie Gu asked disdainfully, "Those fair-weather friends, were they ever shorted when Lou the Scholar was around? We in the Gu Family can't be ungrateful!"
"Mother is right." Gu Yong nodded in agreement.
...
Returning home, Lou Yi rarely grabbed two handfuls of rice and cooked a thick porridge, filling his stomach.
Soon, night fell.
Lou Yi took a deep breath and stepped outside his home.
Carrying an axe in his arms and a shovel in his hand, wearing a straw hat, his clothing layered twice over, almost no skin was exposed.
The doors of every household were closed, with occasional oil lamps casting light through paper windows.
The entire Erhe Village was bathed in a silent moonlight.
Only the wind howled.
'With an axe and a shovel, ordinary wild beasts are no match for me.' Lou Yi silently encouraged himself as he headed east.
He proceeded cautiously, using the faint moonlight to navigate the village's dirt roads.
The road was difficult, and the coarse hemp pants were torn by grass blades.
Finally, after about an hour, he reached the largest graveyard in Xinxiang, a vast wasteland overgrown with wild grass and shrubs.
Looking around, all he saw were hemispherical mounds and upright tombstones.
'Woo...'
A weird sound came, unclear if it was the wind or something else.
Lou Yi almost lost his grip on the shovel.
"The great river flows east, the stars in the sky join the Big Dipper, ahem, join the Big Dipper..."
"No, that's not fitting, let's change the song."
"Compassionate and merciful Guanyin, saving those in suffering and distress, Guanyin..."
Lou Yi sang to bolster his courage as he walked inside.
He found a place with dense grass where it wouldn't easily be spotted by others, ready to dig a grave.
"Huh, why is there burned paper and fresh melons and fruits?"
Lou Yi discovered a fresh grave nearby, with a roughly hewn black tombstone engraved in white:
[Tomb of the Late Chen of the Wei Kingdom
Named Fugui
Born in the thirty-second year of Jingfu
Died in the eleventh year of Emperor Yongxing
Aged fifty-four
Erected solemnly by his filial sons, the Chen family]
The current emperor of the Wei Kingdom was called Emperor Yongxing.
"Sorry, old Chen, I'll apologize in person in the Underworld one day."
The fresh grave was loose and easy to dig. Bowing in apology, Lou Yi chose it as his first target for experimentation.
He took up his shovel, bent over, and began to dig the grave.
As time passed, the mound gradually lowered from convex to concave, accumulating soil on both sides.
Lou Yi was all sweaty, with a dry throat, feeling more exhausted than chopping trees.
He regretted not bringing a water pouch.
After digging less than a meter deep, Lou Yi saw a hint of red.
Revitalized, he continued to dig.
A red coffin emerged from the pit.
Lou Yi knocked on it; the sound was solid and of good quality, suggesting old Chen's family was quite wealthy.
The next task was even more troublesome.
The coffin lid was nailed down, making it difficult to remove the nails, as they were firmly fixed.
The shovel alone wasn't enough.
Lou Yi even had to use his axe to chop off a corner of the coffin just to barely get the lid off.
A foul stench assaulted his nose.
In the moonlight, what met his eyes was the corpse of a man in his fifties or sixties, dressed in red, with plenty of rouge on his face, seemingly smiling.
Whether it was an illusion or not, Lou Yi felt the corpse's eyes seemed to open a sliver, sending a chill down his spine.
He wasn't being cowardly; he had lived two lives and never experienced such a scene.
Steeling himself against his inner turmoil, Lou Yi extended his right hand slowly toward the corpse.
...