Cultivating Immortality, Starting as an Executioner on the Scaffolds

Pei Rang is the youngest executioner in Lingyang Prefecture. He was picked up from a mass grave at the age of two and condemned to the lowest social status. In this life, he is fit for only three things: sharpening blades, bringing them down, and wiping them clean.

But he has a hemp-paper notebook that no one knows about. In it, he records the bone structure of every condemned prisoner. He learned to read bones at seven, practiced with a blade at nine, and recognized people in the death cell at eleven. Even with his eyes closed, he can tell whether someone is a woodcutter or a scholar, and whether they are truly dead or merely pretending.

In the autumn of the twenty-seventh year of Chengping, just before the autumn executions, the fifth prisoner slipped him a blood-written note. It contained only four words: I am not Chen Jiu.