A doubt in Yan Sanhe’s heart was resolved.

That mother and daughter were also killed by the black-clothed men, just with an added fire.

So who set this fire?

Was it the black-clothed men?

To imitate that fire in the Great Qi imperial family and frame Wu Guanyue and his son?

Or was it the person who rescued her?

To cover up his act of substitution?

“Chen Pi, since you discovered the dirty soles, then…”

Yan Sanhe stared at him. “Did you think carefully about what caused the dirt on the soles?”

Yan Sanhe’s memories of those eight years in the Zheng family hadn’t recovered yet, so she wasn’t certain why Mother would appear on her bed in the dead of night, with dirty feet at that.

Chen Pi quickly lowered his eyelids, not daring to meet Yan Sanhe’s gaze. “I don’t know. I can’t figure it out, and I don’t dare think about it carefully.”

Wrong!

He was lying.

Yan Sanhe looked at this room and suddenly asked, “You haven’t married or had children yet, have you?”

“People like us deal with dead bodies every day—what decent family’s daughter would dare marry in? Marry those indecent women back, and they just become troublemakers.”

Yan Sanhe: “You just said you became what you are now because of that corpse preparation.”

Chen Pi nodded.

Yan Sanhe: “It was that female corpse’s feet that made you become what you are now, wasn’t it?”

Like a drop of cold water falling into a hot oil pan.

Chen Pi suddenly became furiously angry, his two skeleton-like eyes bulging out.

“You’re talking nonsense! You’re spouting lies! I didn’t… it wasn’t those feet, it wasn’t!”

“You didn’t what?”

Yan Sanhe’s gaze darkened. “Didn’t secretly touch them a few times while washing those feet?”

As the words fell, both Chen Pi and Xie Zhifei’s expressions changed almost simultaneously.

Chen Pi’s face was full of ferocity and grief. If not for Xie Zhifei’s blade-like gaze fixed on him, he probably would have already rushed forward to tear Yan Sanhe to shreds.

Yan Sanhe met Chen Pi’s gaze directly.

He said this was the only woman’s feet he’d ever seen.

He said the feet were white and tender.

He was incoherent.

He didn’t dare meet her eyes.

At thirty years old, he still hadn’t married or had children…

Under the gazes of both Xie Zhifei and Yan Sanhe, Chen Pi gradually shrank down bit by bit, becoming more shriveled, more like a dead person.

Yes.

Chen Pi’s drooping eyelids moved.

When no one was paying attention, he secretly touched those feet a few times.

No woman was willing to marry him. Even widows with children despised that his hands had touched dead people.

He finally met a girl who didn’t mind, but the girl’s parents wouldn’t agree, saying they couldn’t afford to lose that face.

So marriages in their profession were mostly between funeral families intermarrying.

But he was unwilling.

Marrying a girl from a funeral family meant their future children would also have to do this work, generation after generation—wouldn’t it never end?

He was determined to marry a woman from outside, but not a single outside woman was willing to marry him.

And so it went, delayed year after year.

He was a normal man. Though he dealt with dead people all day, he still had the desires of the living.

Although that corpse had been laid out for two days and had a heavy corpse stench, those feet were frighteningly white, frighteningly tender.

He truly couldn’t resist and played with them in his hands a few times. Who knew he’d have nightmares that night?

A few days later, he heard about the intestines and cowhide matter. Combined with the dirt on that female corpse’s feet, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

He didn’t know exactly what was wrong, just an intuition—an intuition of fear.

He feared both that his touching the female corpse’s feet would be exposed and that the officials would come asking him about the intestines.

For half a month straight, every night he dreamed of the Zheng family’s youngest son coming to claim his life.

It was also from that time that he vomited whatever he ate, growing thinner day by day.

When Chen Pi entered his apprenticeship, his master had told him one thing:

He said: Don’t think the dead just lie there motionless—they can actually talk. It’s written on their faces, on their bodies.

Elderly with filial children had clean bodies without any smell of excrement or urine.

Those with unfilial children had sores all over.

Those who died of illness had yellow energy on their faces—resentment, malevolence.

Those who died unjustly couldn’t close their eyes.

“Pi’er, in our profession, we must have reverence for the dead. For those who were murdered for their wealth, sometimes we must speak for them, redress their wrongs, accumulate some karmic merit for our next life.”

Chen Pi wanted to ask: Master, how do we speak for them, redress their wrongs?

They arranged for me alone in Haitang Courtyard, choosing me precisely because I was young and inexperienced, because I had a blind old mother above and younger brothers and sisters below.

I’m just a worthless life. For the nobles to crush me would be as simple as crushing an ant. I could only keep my mouth shut!

Chen Pi forcefully tore open his cotton robe, ripped off his undergarment, revealing a skeleton frame.

“Miss Yan, look at what I’ve become! I never feared touching dead bodies, never feared sleeping in a mass grave at night. I, I…”

His skeleton-like face twisted rapidly.

“Just because I touched that woman’s feet a few times, just because I re-coiled the intestines, I became this half-human, half-ghost appearance. This retribution is enough, isn’t it?”

Yan Sanhe slowly leaned forward. “So Qian Chengjiang didn’t die peacefully in his sleep. He was silenced.”

Chen Pi’s whole body trembled, extreme fear appearing on his face.

“Don’t you still have a third strange thing you haven’t told me?”

Yan Sanhe said, “For instance, when you were preparing corpses in Haitang Courtyard, someone was watching you the whole time. Otherwise you wouldn’t have said ‘when no one was paying attention’?”

Chen Pi couldn’t speak a single word.

Who exactly was this girl called Yan Sanhe?

How, how could she know as if she’d seen it with her own eyes?

“Qian Chengjiang personally watched me, along with quite a few Embroidered Uniform Guards.”

“So after Qian Chengjiang died, you became even more afraid?”

Yan Sanhe didn’t wait for Chen Pi to answer, continuing on her own:

“He was the one who arranged for you to enter Haitang Courtyard. You feared that one day you too would die this mysteriously.

“You couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, lived in constant fear and paranoia every day, growing thinner and thinner until you finally became a living skeleton?”

Chen Pi couldn’t say a word.

She’d guessed everything right, absolutely everything.

All these years, whenever he closed his eyes, he saw those white and tender feet. Whenever he ate, the food in his bowl became those bloody intestines.

He vomited violently even from drinking water.

For the first eight years, he could still go out to prepare corpses, but these past two years he’d become afraid to even leave the house, always feeling everyone looked at him strangely, wanting to kill him.

Only hiding under the covers, wrapping himself up tightly, did he feel safe.

Yan Sanhe stood up, reached out, and pulled Chen Pi’s undergarment and cotton robe together, then took the quilt from nearby and covered him with it.

“Tell me.”

She coaxed gently, “Exactly what was strange about the death of Ministry of Justice Vice Minister Qian Chengjiang that made you so afraid?”