A Streetwise Bone Setter

In an old alley in Jiangcheng stands Huichuntang. Lin Sanzhen runs an unregistered bone-setting shop: he owes the medicine wholesaler 12,000, owes 7,600 in rent, and has 82 yuan in his drawer.

He has a skill no one else possesses: he can set a broken bone in three breaths and reconnect severed tendons. The price is that the same injury appears on his own body. Set a severed arm, and his sense of touch dulls for three days; reconnect three tendons, and his qi sense goes blank for thirty days. He can't use this skill for free, and he can't use it too often.

He can't change the price, so he can only change how he collects payment: those who can't afford treatment get their names written in his ledger. Seven days later, he'll collect the principal plus interest. If they can't pay, the ledger itself will remember: that entry becomes a Debt of Humiliation, and the debtor will be forced to bow their head in public.

The first to owe him was Su Yan of Zhenyuan Hall. Her younger sister's right arm had three severed tendons, was two inches too short, and needed 50,000 yuan to fix.

The second to try to skip out on payment was Feng Biao, the owner of this alley. He takes a thirty percent cut and wants Lin to accept the debt as well.

And above them all looms the Martial Arts Association's rule: the city's restoration quota is allocated once a year, and saving someone from an alley means taking a spot from someone on the official list.

They all think he'll just bow his head. No one has asked what a man who suffers for everyone else will use to settle the final account.