Borrow Life from the Human World

Pei Yuan worked in Yizhuang, Qingshi County for seven years, washing the bodies of the dead, nailing coffins, and digging pits. He finally saved seventeen taels, which was only twenty-two cents short of being able to buy Zhang Luyin and leave this rotten city where even the dead were in debt. Until one rainy night, a porter's body picked up from the Shahe River was brought to Yizhuang, and there was a page of charred paper in front of him. He can borrow the skill that the deceased was most proficient in during his lifetime; but by borrowing the skill, he has to take over the deceased's unfulfilled wish. If the debt is not repaid, it may harm one's body or life, or it may be eaten away by the memory of the deceased. Pei Yuan originally thought that he only had to send back a pot of hot rice for the porter. But when he followed the husks on the soles of the corpse's feet, the black needle on the heart, and the key hidden in the mouth, what he saw was a deal in which living people were used to make martial arts medicine: the dock gang was responsible for arresting people, the medicine hall was responsible for opening the furnace, and the county government canceled their names for them. In the end, even the corpse had to receive a small burial fee for the murderer, and the traces were buried in a mass grave. According to the death register in Qingshi County, Pei Yuan himself had died of an epidemic three years ago, his body was burned, and his old registration records were all sold out. How can a person who is dead on paper survive in the world? Since this world likes to settle human lives into accounts, he followed the nameless corpses to investigate, and borrowed the skills of the dead to speak on their behalf to see who should pay back the old accounts of life and death in the world.