Human dimension reduction

After arriving at the inner courtyard, the guide was replaced by a middle-aged servant woman. She glanced at Qiao Zhou, hesitated to speak, hesitated for a moment and still didn't say anything. The naive foreigner who didn't wink, followed Lan Yin firmly.

They finally came to a small courtyard, and this time there were finally bursts of crying. Lan Yin walked in carrying the box, and bumped into several people walking out.

The people who came out were of different heights, short, fat, and thin. There were old men wearing long robes and jackets and round glasses, a middle-aged man in long gowns, and a foreigner in a suit and leather shoes. Most of them also carried a suitcase in their hands. The old man He also brought two young men, one on the left and the other on the right, surrounding him like a vajra protector.

As soon as they saw Lan Yin, those Chinese people were stunned for a moment, and then their expressions changed. The middle-aged man didn't say anything, but just took a deep look at Lan Yin, then turned his head and left. The old man frowned, with a displeased expression on his face, and kept muttering "Unlucky! Unlucky!" He swung his sleeves and swayed his feet quickly, looking like he wanted to disappear from Lan Yin's sight in a second.

Only the blond foreigner, he obviously didn't understand how the surrounding atmosphere had changed, but his eyes lit up the moment he saw Qiao Zhou, Vincent's beauty was obviously a big killer for foreigners with the same aesthetic inclination device.

"You were called in too? I must say, you came a little late, the child has returned to the arms of the Lord... God bless him, ah, if he has faith..."

The man said something in English to Qiao Zhou, and Qiao Zhou gave him a half-hearted smile. He didn't bother to deal with the doctor's accusation, and said casually, "Thank you for telling me, I'm here to tell that child—"

Qiao Zhou thought for a second, then answered the words smoothly: "The requiem mass."

The doctor was stunned: "You are a pastor? Sorry, I didn't recognize it..."

There was some doubt in his eyes, because Qiao Zhou's clothes and the pastor really couldn't match each other.

But Qiao Zhou looked back quite calmly, with an expression of "do you have any questions", which made the man scratch his head in embarrassment: "Oh...then where is your church? Maybe I can go there to do it worship……"

At this moment, Lan Yin walked between the two of them with a serious face and carrying a box. His face was expressionless, and his body was full of murderous aura, as if an immortal in the sky killed the mortal world with a sword.

After such an interruption, Qiao Zhou smiled at the man logically, and followed Lan Yin into the yard without answering his question.

Those who were crying in the courtyard were a few young maids, probably the maids who served the seventh young master. The master died, and their whereabouts were unknown. They were crying so heartbroken.

The door of the bedroom was wide open, Qiao Zhou glanced around, there were only a few maidservants in the yard, with white belts tied around their waists, they couldn't see the child's parents, not even a person in charge, as if someone died here was irrelevant like a character.

Lan Yin was familiar with this scene, so he drove straight into the bedroom. The tables, chairs and furniture inside were all elegant and expensive mahogany, and there were celadon vases on the cabinets. There were small Western trains, automatic clocks, and mechanical ships on display. Fei's various jade ornaments, it is obvious that the Seventh Young Master who died young is not some poor little unfavored.

This makes his posthumous treatment all the more strange.

Behind the screen, the curtains of the bed were rolled up, and a child about ten years old was lying on the quilt, with high cheekbones, a thin layer of skin on the cheeks sticking to the bones, a pale, thin body, and sunken eye sockets. , only the round eyeballs prop up a thin eyelid, as if he died of malnutrition and starvation, and there are still marks of pain on his face.

The young master of the Wan family looks like he was starved to death. If you say this sentence, it will be on the headlines of the Shanghai Evening News.

Qiao Zhou stretched out his hand, and gently and quickly inspected the body of the Seventh Young Master. No trauma was found. The child's skin is delicate and there is no trace of abuse. Unless it is dissected, the specific cause of death cannot be seen.

Lan Yin opened the box on the side, turning a blind eye to Qiao Zhou's inspection of the corpse, and lined up all kinds of bottles, cans, knives, scissors, forks and signs in the box on the table, and while wearing gloves, suddenly said: "I'm not hungry. dead."

He seemed to hear Qiao Zhou's heart, and said calmly, "The doctor has seen many times, and he can eat and sleep, but he doesn't gain weight."

Hearing this, he seemed to have known about Seventh Young Master's symptoms for a long time.

Lan Yin's eyes fell on Qiao Zhou's hands, and he paused for a moment on the gloves covering his hands: "There is another pair of gloves, do you want to change?"

The gloves on Qiao Zhou's hands were not thin medical gloves, so it would definitely be inconvenient to work with, but Qiao Zhou shook his head and rejected his offer, stepped back a little, and gave Lan Yin his seat.

Lan Yin glanced at Qiao Zhou's hands again, lowered her head and lifted the quilt to expose the child's body: "The four sent away earlier are the same."

Qiao Zhou frowned: "The same?"

He just remembered that when he went back to the clinic with Lan Yin that day, on the way Lan Yin mentioned that Wan's family had a bad family style, and four children died in five years, all of them violent deaths.

Lan Yin used the word "unexpected death" instead of "disease death".

"Isn't this a disease?" Qiao Zhou asked softly.

Lan Yin stretched out her hand to untie the child's clothes, gave a low hum, and briefly explained: "There is no sickness, it is the sign of the end of life."

A child of about ten years old, who is not sick, is dying?This sentence sounds very unreasonable, especially when there are several such children appearing in a row, it is even more unreasonable.

There were soft footsteps outside the door, and a young girl came in with a shroud in her hands, bent over to Lan Yin, and said in a soft voice, "The clothes that the wife ordered to prepare, please trouble Mr. Lan."

She put the whole set of clothes, shoes and socks beside the bed, and she didn't dare to look at Lan Yin from the beginning to the end. After putting down her things, she walked out of the room as quickly as if her butt was on fire.

Qiao Zhou looked at her back, Lan Yin was still indifferent, and continued with what he said just now: "The Wan family also asked me if I could find out the cause of their death."

Qiao Zhou turned his gaze to him, and heard this top-notch Yinshi, who can visit the underworld with a lamp and invite the souls of the dead to talk, with a calm and innocent face: "I don't know."

The doctor with silver-gray hair had an indescribable expression: "You... really don't know?"

He implicitly hinted: "Didn't you ask?"

Lan Yin tilted her head and stared at Qiao Zhou for two seconds, then suddenly raised the corners of her mouth, with a small arc, like a fox that had captured prey showing off its power, and the smile only appeared for a short moment: "They didn't want me to ask, and they didn't entrust me , and don’t give money, what do I do.”

In fact, this reason is not complete.

The work of a mortician is divided into two aspects: encoffining and interrogation. Most morticians can only do encoffining, but interrogation is a difficult job. Not only does it require talent, but also the ability to deal with ghosts, and more importantly Yes, most of the yin masters are short-lived, and every time they ask yin, they will more or less consume their yang life.

Lan Yin doesn't have too much obsession with life and death, it's good to live as long as he can, and it's good to die when he reaches his age, so every time someone comes to ask him to ask questions, he doesn't refuse, but at the same time, he doesn't catch up The habit of looking for death, don't ask him to ask, and he doesn't have the extra curiosity to waste his life.

All in all, this person is just a drifter, doesn't take anything seriously, and treats everything equally, including his own life.

He didn't tell the story, because now he suddenly felt that it would be nice to live a little longer.

Lan Yin used a bamboo clip to pick up silk and stuffed it into the dead man's mouth, and stretched the thin and dry cheeks to fit a child's plumpness. For the skin tone, a little pink was pressed between the eyebrows, and it took several hours to basically complete the contouring.

The skinny child had a plump and round face, a small mouth with a natural blush, playful eyebrows and eyes, and bulging cheeks. If there were no magic tricks used by the Wan family, he should have looked like this.

The shroud sent by the servant girl was a thick royal blue color. The clothes were densely embroidered with the Chinese characters "Fu" and all kinds of dark embroidery. The gold thread and satin were tightly pressed. The last crease on the clothes, when I stood up again, the sky outside was already dark.

The girls who were crying in the yard left at some time, and no one was lighting the lights in the yard, but the lights in the room were turned on, which is why Lan Yin didn't notice that it was getting late.

Qiao Zhou was sitting not far behind him, still holding the book of poems in his hand, and was slowly flipping through them under the light next to him, without any impatient look on his face.

"ended?"

Sensing Lan Yin getting up, Qiao Zhou closed the book, turned his body and glanced at the bed, his eyes widened in surprise: "Lan, you are really amazing."

Lan Yin was used to being flattered and praised by others, so he just felt that what the person in front of him said was particularly to his liking.

"Are you hungry? Tell them to bring food?"

Facing Lan Yin's inquiring gaze, Qiao Zhou nodded without hesitation, and ordered some food by the way: "There must be fish without thorns."

Lan Yin responded without changing his expression, and walked out, intending to stop a servant to get food from the kitchen.

But as soon as he walked out of the yard, before he stopped a servant, a young man in a new style of clothing and a top hat hurriedly walked towards him. There were two anxious-looking male servants beside him, who kept talking to him. What words seemed to be persuading, but also seemed to be hindering.

When the group got closer, Lan Yin realized that there was another person behind the young man, a young girl wearing a plain jacket and skirt and carrying a rattan box. This was probably the reason why the two male servants stopped him.

"Young master...Young master! The master will get angry when he finds out!" A person tried to dissuade him, "The seventh young master's departure is not unexpected, everyone is mentally prepared, and it has been agreed to invite Mr. Lan over a long time ago. He is already here in the afternoon. It's here, and this sudden encounter is about revenge...Young Master!"

"Then why don't you settle the money for him? My Wan family is short of such a man's wages?" The young man retorted sharply, with a serious expression on his face.

"It's not a matter of money or not! The Wan family used to hire Mr. Lan, who in Shanghai is as skilled as him? Hey hey hey! Master!"

The young man was impatient to listen to him, raised his arm and pushed the man away, leading the young woman behind him to stride forward, and saw Lan Yin standing at the gate of the yard.

"You are..." He stood still, lost his mind for a moment when he saw Lan Yin, and reacted randomly, his brows raised high, "You are the embalmer invited by my father? Thank you for coming, but You are no longer needed here, let the housekeeper settle the money for you later, and you can leave."

Lan Yin's eyes turned around him, and she didn't respond to her sudden dismissal. Her eyes calmly fell on the two male servants with embarrassing and helpless expressions behind him: "Dinner, thank you."

The male servant was already ready to accept Lan Yin's anger. Most of the embalmers had weird tempers, and this outstanding embalmer in front of him was even more difficult to get along with. I didn't expect that the other party didn't respond at all, and just asked for it indifferently. meal?

Ah this...

The male servant was stunned for a few seconds, and quickly realized: "Hey, okay, I'll tell the kitchen to prepare it, Mr. Lan, is there anything you want to eat?"

Lan Yin still said in the same flat tone: "Fish, don't stab."