My name is Shang Lu, an undertaker at Linjiang City Funeral Home. I am twenty-four years old, poor, afraid of death, and have a bad mouth. My goal in life is to live a stable life until retirement.
Three days ago, I was putting on makeup for Mr. Chen, who died suddenly. I heard him scolding me - "The blush is too heavy, and it looks like a monkey's butt."
Dead men can talk.
From then on, all the strong men in the city started lining up to collect my body. It's not that they want to die, but they want me to do something: listen to their chatter, pass on messages for them, use their strength to send them on their way with dignity. The mafia boss asked me to hide his account books, the old fortune teller asked me to bring his will, and the game guru asked me to type out his unfinished copies.
Dead men tell no lies. So I know everything: who owes whom money, who cheated on whom, whose death was mysterious, who drank medicine from the drug seller.
They said I was the weakest psychic in the city and could only deal with dead people.
But I gradually discovered that this skill has a price. Every time I borrow the power of a dead person, my life span is shortened. And those "big guys" who were queuing up to wait for me to collect the body had all seen the same drug seller seven days before his death.
They said that what the medicine seller was selling was not medicine, but life.
I calculated that at this rate, I could live for another three years.
Three years is enough for me to find out the truth, and enough for me to send away all the ghosts in the city one by one.
——If I am still alive in three years, remember to come to the funeral parlor to find me, and I will give you a discount.
