The Painted-Skin Shop and the Yin-Yang Ledger

[Kintsugi aesthetics + underworld big shot + secret identity revealed + mutual salvation] [Beautiful proprietress with a body like shattered porcelain x scheming Judge who has watched over her for a hundred years]

On a rainy night in Jiangcheng, Skin-Painting Shop No. 444 opened its doors. It mends no living people, only the bones of the dead and shattered souls. Its proprietress, A-Man, is a monster without a heart. She stole a courtesan’s nose and a ghost chef’s tongue, then used kintsugi to piece herself together into a breathtaking beauty.

The shop also has a bookkeeper of unknown origins, Mr. Lu, who keeps a ledger of Yin and Yang recording the debt she has owed for a hundred years: “Three thousand to mend antiques, but to mend a heart... you’ll have to repay me with your life.”

A-Man thinks he’s a bloodsucking capitalist, unaware that he is the underworld’s only night watchman. Then one day, a hundred thousand Yin soldiers descend, ready to skin and dismember her. The scholar who only ever counted the books snaps his pen and tears apart the sky screen.

“I am Lu Zhidao, Judge of the Bureau of Rewarding Good.” “Who dares lay a hand on her?”

Only then does A-Man realize that the ledger of Yin and Yang records no debt. It holds the heart he has guarded for a hundred years.

“Everything has a crack. That’s where the light gets in.” Welcome to the Skin-Painting Shop.