A child who had died of the Bone Mute Plague was brought to the Yizhuang funeral home in Lizhou. Uncle Sun wanted to burn the body that night, but Pei Zhao examined the bones and felt that the seventh vertebra was dislocated, locking the body's energy channels. There were knee-shaped pressure marks on the child's back, and the pelvic bones had not yet come apart. He concluded that the child had been buried alive. Using a reed tube to breathe air into the child, he pressed his left hand to the neck and set the bone. The child coughed up black mud and then actually called him "Brother." At the same time, all nine bone markings on Pei Zhao's wrist lit up. His father's words from three years ago, just before his execution, rose up in his mind once more: "I didn't pick you up. You came out of the furnace." A line of rough writing appeared on the genealogy scroll.
