Chapter 80 The Livor Mortis

Chapter 80 The Livor Mortis

I was a little shocked by what that girl said. “Come again?”

She waved and asked me blankly, “What did I say?”

“’The tiger lacks wings. Lame people can't go across the river’,” I replied.

The girl shrugged; she said she didn’t know what this sentence meant. “The tiger lacks rings and lame people can go across a liver?” She repeated my words but with totally different meanings.

I didn’t want to deal with this so I just asked her: “So, what’s your name?”

“I’m Cang Shushu, but my friends always call me Hamster.”

Hamster? Well, this girl was really cute.

If this girl worked in my shop, I would get more customers.

I asked her directly: “What’s your expected salary?”

She replied: “What are you offering?”

I thought for a while and told her, “The average salary is two thousand and five hundred. I will give you another thousand, so what about three thousand and five hundred?”

This girl had a good appearance and quality. She was cute and gentle, and this was in congruence with our studio’s philosophy - low-key luxury.

I had to give her a higher salary to draw her in.

Hearing this, she looked happy and nodded: “Wow! That is so much for me.”

“It’s only the beginning. You will get a commission if business is good,” I told her.

She smiled and narrowed her eyes into thin cracks: “So, boss, how about this - I only want three thousand, OK?”

I thought I had misheard. Damn, didn’t she want to earn money?

She continued and said she would reduce the five hundred but the salary would include three meals a day.

“Three meals?” I asked her.

Cang Shu nodded and said, “Yes, three meals.”

I thought for a while and figured it was only a small amount of money. I said: “You can eat as much as you like.”

“Really? Boss, you are really a good man.” She took my hand and looked at me with admiration.

I felt so high and noble when she looked at me like that. I laughed and said: “Just so-so. Well, you can start work now. Let me give you a simple training.”

“Boss, but I didn’t have any food yet, what about… ” She covered her stomach and looked at me in embarrassment.

What?

This girl came to the interview hungry? Well… She was cool.

I called to Feng Chunsheng and told him to order four dishes, as she would also join.

“All right.”

We were not stingy; we would invite her to lunch, since she asked.

As Feng Chunsheng was leaving to order the food, I saw him beckoning to me discreetly.

I told Cang Shu to wait a bit, and that I would be back soon.

Then Feng Chunsheng and I went out to order.

When we went out of the door, he asked me: “Shui, that girl said ‘The tiger lacks wings, the lame can’t go across the river,” right?”

“Yes, but she denied it,” I said.

Feng Chunsheng asked me, “What’s the meaning of ‘A tiger lacks wings’?”

I said, “Actually, my master once told me there were four kinds of tattoos we should never do. One of them was the ‘nine dragons pull coffin’. The second was the ‘black tiger with four wings’.”

There was a legendary animal - the black dragon, which was a dragon with two wings.

The dragon followed the clouds and the tiger followed the wind.

Where there was the black dragon, there was the black tiger. There were four wings on the back of the black tiger.

The black tiger without wings…

“This girl is a little strange.”

Feng Chunsheng told me that when you looked at her up close, she was a cute little girl, but when you looked at her from a distance, there seemed to be something odd about her, especially if you saw her back.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

Feng Chunsheng told me that when he was watching Cang Shu she was not a hamster, but a black tiger. He could feel her magnificent power, and she was rather brave.

He said her back made him feel the great power of a woman, and that power seemed to come from the ground.

I stared and said: “Really?”

I really didn’t want to care so much. I had already made one of the four taboo tattoos, and nothing bad happened on me. I didn’t have to be afraid if there was a ‘black tiger with four wings’ on that girl.

It was not easy to find someone who could work these days.

I told him not to think too much of it. She was a kind girl and couldn’t be a liar.

But I was wrong indeed, because she had tricked me.

We ordered four dishes: stewed pork medallions in brown sauce, braised pork, shredded pork with vegetables, and sautéed lettuce with diced fish in black bean sauce. I also told the waiter to give us the whole rice cooker for convenience. That full rice cooker should have been enough for all of us.

That girl really was a hamster. Her eyes shone as the smell of the rice reached her nose.

Feng Chunsheng and I put down the dishes on our table and went to the bar to get a few beers.

It took only three or four minutes for that girl to wolf down more than half of the food. Now she was greedily scooping up more rice. She took the rice spoon and piled a mound of rice into her rice bowl. Then she pressed the rice flat with the spoon to make room for more, and continued piling more and more into the bowl. Eventually, she started eating huge mouthfuls of it.

We were very surprised and froze on the spot, watching her for a long time.

Then she noticed us and looked up suddenly. She smiled at us in embarrassment: “Sorry, Boss, I was too concentrated.”

“It’s OK.” I waved my hands, and swallowed when I saw the empty dishes. Then I asked her: “Cang Shu, do you often eat like this?”

“Yes.” She nodded quickly.

I just had nothing to say.

Feng Chunsheng and I didn’t eat anything, while Cang Shu finished all of the dishes by herself.

I felt I was wrong to only deduct five hundred for her meals.

Good heavens, this girl could eat enough for several people. I thought it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to deduct her entire salary for the meals.

I went to Cang Shu and said with a smile: “Hey, hey, Cang, Cang, let me tell you something… Well, I won’t deduct anything from your salary and pay you three thousand and five hundred per month; then you can go and order food by yourself with that money. Is that OK for you?”

“But, boss… You told me to eat as much as I can.” She looked at me with puppy eyes

Well, OK.

I had no way to refuse her… She looked pitiful.

I had to accept that every meal for her would cost seventy or eighty Yuan.

I stood up and said: “All right… you can eat as much as you like.”

So, she stayed in my shop.

In the afternoon, during the break from Cang Shu’s training, Feng Chunsheng came to talk to me. He said he had ordered good food this afternoon, and she ate so much because she didn’t have such delicious meals before. She might not eat so much in the evening.

I thought the explanation was reasonable… but… She ate six whole bowls of rice.

Maybe she could earn two thousand and five hundred from me per month, but it would cost her four thousand and five hundred per month to pay for all the food.

But the only comfort was… Cang Shu was a hard-working girl. She was willing to do everything. In the evening, she would clean the studio so well we might think we had hired someone from a cleaning company.

Feng Chunsheng looked at Cang Shu and said to me with a smile: “Well, Shui, she’s OK. She eats a lot, but she works very hard at the same time.”

I shook my head and said: “I don’t care how much she eats, but I wonder… Does she have something to do with that ‘black tiger with four wings’, and is that why she eats so much?”

I’d heard from my master that the black tiger with four wings was a big eater. It could eat mountains of food. It was very powerful, strong and brave.

This girl had a similar character to that tiger.

“I don’t know, but I can feel this girl is just unusual.” Feng Chunsheng had the same feeling.

It was around seven or eight o’ clock in the evening when Cang Shu left work. Feng Chunsheng and I were also ready to go home, but then a girl came in.

It was a quiet and tall girl, but she seemed strange because she covered herself with long-sleeved clothes and wore gloves on her hands.

It wouldn’t be strange to dress like that in the winter, but this was summer and it was rather hot outside.

She came in and asked: “Who’s the Yin and Yang Tattoo master?”

“It’s me,” I replied to that girl.

She smiled. She had a very dignified appearance with good temperament, and she appeared very gentle when she smiled, too.

Then she told me: “May I ask you something?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

She asked me: “Do you know about Yin and Yang?”

“Of course he does. He makes Yin and Yang Tattoos.” Feng Chunsheng said with a smile.

Actually, I didn’t know much about it, but Feng Chunsheng could probably answer her question.

Then that girl smiled to Feng Chunsheng and said: “Then I want to ask you for advice.”

After that, she pulled up her long sleeves and said: “Well, please look at this.”

I saw many purple patches on her body.

Those patches were scary because they were connected to each other.

Then I said: “This is… livor mortis.”

I had inked some dead people in the past, and I could find these patches on them. I also heard from Mr. Guan that those patches were actually formed by the blood pooling after the heart stopped beating, but they only appeared on dead people, and never on a live person.

She didn’t get angry or nervous when I said ‘livor mortis’. She only stared at me and asked, “Livor mortis? Are you sure?”

I nodded and replied: “Yes… I’m sure.”

“All right.” Then she smiled and said: “So, can you help me? ‘Yin and Yang Tattoos; tattoos of Yin and Yang. Life and death; riches and honor; a safe journey’. Can we do business?”

I waved my hands and refused.

I just wanted to take it easy and calm down after dealing with so many strange things recently.

But this girl offered me a price that I could never refuse… One hundred thousand Yuan.

“Help me remove this livor mortis, and I will pay you one hundred thousand.” She stretched one finger.

One hundred thousand… That was a huge amount of money for one tattoo.