Late at night.

Apart from the guests staying overnight, there are no outsiders in Yoshihara. On the streets that were extremely prosperous a few hours ago, there are now silent.

The curfew since the Edo era still plays a role today.

Whether it is the great world that makes money every day or the small world that makes barely survive, they tacitly close the store, allowing people who have worked hard for the day to have some of their own time.

People in this industry are always exhausted, and there may be only a few people who make a lot of money. Most people must brainwash themselves in their spare time in order to stubbornly continue their life tomorrow.

However, before closing the door, the owner reminded the servants not to forget to change the candles in the lanterns outside the door.

So the question is, since there is no one outside, isn’t that a candle lighting an unnecessary move?

Actually not.

Japanese people like to make some things that are particular about doing, such as the lights at Yoshihara this night were originally lit for the dead.

In the deep night, a cart departed from Horiuchi Hospital in Edojicho.

This is the only regular hospital in Youguo, Jiyuan. There are several doctors in it, but they all know the diseases they treat, and most of them are incurable infectious diseases, so the mortality rate of patients is always high.

An older and more steady man held a cart, while two younger ones were holding each other on both sides of the cart, muttering words, probably some Shinto and Buddhist mantras, slowly moving towards the edge of Yoshihara.

When pressing over some uneven ground, the squeaking sound of wheels will be very harsh, and a gap will be opened on both sides of the windows on the upper floors of the roaming girl's house.

However, they are not scolding the streets because of their interruption of beauty sleep.

The wandering girls looked at the bodies swept up by grass in the car, and the girls who were dying and dying in the dead. They looked fearful, mocked, or sympathized, but they eventually became like a pool of stagnant water as the sound went away.

Who knows if there will be them among the people who are lying in the car or wrapped in straw mat tomorrow?

The end of the cart is the Rashomon River bank close to the outside of Youguo (the place where Fuji and Taro came from).

In Japan, Torii means the junction between the gods and the human world; while Rashomon means the junction between hell and the human world.

From this we can see that a place with these three words mixed in the name is definitely not a good place.

After the older man stopped the cart, he clasped his palms and muttered to the living and dead people in the car. Then he didn't say anything, and used gestures to signal the other two to start to act.

The two of them had no fear in their expressions, and chanting spells was just a habit.

One of them, two of them, skillfully carrying the straw mat on their shoulders, crawled through the short door hole, and then came to the most ominous street in Yoshihara.

As long as you enter this small gate, no matter who it is, you will feel a sense of urgency and restraint. You will never believe that this broken place is actually part of Yoshihara.

There are no lights leading the way on this "street". Not only is it very dim, the road is extremely narrow, and one person can pass easily, but two people must squeeze their shoulders and rub them forward.

The houses close to the city walls are small and short, densely connected into a line. They all look less than 2 meters long and less than 1 5 meters wide, and they can only allow two or three people to lie flat next to each other.

Most of these houses are black and lacquered. Even if there is light, they are extremely drowsy. From time to time, crying and cursing come from inside, and occasionally crazy laughter will appear, indicating that the people living inside have some mental problems.

When I heard someone passing by outside, some people shouted loudly: "Hold the dead and leave quickly! There are still customers here!"

"It's your turn tomorrow, why are you anxious?"

The older man spoke a terrible curse, but his tone did not contain hostility, but rather a bit like a blessing.

"Then I'm so eager! Get out of here!"

The woman in the room heard the coachman reply, and her voice became a little sharper, and then she turned into a rustling whisper, obviously talking to the guests.

These small houses are also Yoshihara's girls' houses, but they are just small and insignificant, and are also places where "self-employed" receive cash-strapped guests, and have become a world of success.

However, these women were either sick or old and old, and were driven out of the world by people, but they had no other way to make a living, so they stayed here to survive.

All men and women who have been wandering here have long been awakened. Those who are waiting for themselves must die tragically, sickly or violently, so they speak mostly sarcastic and cynical.

However, the three people who transported the corpse obviously did not take these bad words seriously, and skillfully responded to their kind greetings, which gave them more comfort during the journey of transporting the corpse.

No matter how miserable a living person is, it is better than a dead person.

Soon, they followed the narrow path and arrived outside Inari Torii at the end of the Rashomon River.

Outside Torii, there are two slightly larger houses, and the left is black, which is used to temporarily store dead bodies.

There were lights flashing in the room on the right, and an old doctor with mediocre medical skills lived, known for his hatred of Western medicine. Those patients who have not yet died completely but Horiuchi Hospital did not want to save will be sent to him for rescue.

But most of the time, all this doctor can do is hospice care services. After all, he lacks medicine and money. He is old and his mind is not normal sometimes.

If these patients are powerless even him, they will be transported to Jingxian Temple together to be buried in a hurry after they die.

The three of them sent the straw mat wrapped around their shoulders into the dark room, and put them on the ground casually. By doing this for many years, they soon lost their awe of the dead.

"You search for any money-exchangeable things on the body. I'll go to the next door to find Dr. Komori."

When the older man said this, he did not hesitate at all, and it was as normal as asking someone to wash his hands before eating.

As the lowest class of Yoshihara, the reason why they are willing to take on this job is to see if they can get something from the dead. After all, they can't do the job that can make money from the living.

Sometimes it is a worthless hairpin, bracelet, and sometimes it is a complete cloth. Although it cannot get rich overnight, it is better to accumulate a lot than simply cleaning the girl's house.

After saying this, the older man went to the next door, leaving only the young man rolling the straw mat back and starting to search the corpse. Nothing would be easily let go of the corners of his clothes and the gaps between his hair.

The taller ones flipped over and said, "Although you are dead, we are still alive. We can make us live a better life, and you can feel at ease if you die."

Another shorter continued, "Yes, we have to take you to Jingxian Temple tomorrow morning, so these things are treated as rewards. If you have any grievances, go and ask those bad shop owners for trouble, but don't come to us."

After saying that, he took a necklace from the corpse's neck, curled his lips and put it in his clothes.

"Oh, nothing good is left behind, and today it's probably in vain."

beside.

The older man knocked on the door of the cottage next door, and the door opened quickly, but he was stunned for a moment and couldn't help but take a step back.

"Who are you? Where is Dr. Komori?"

He asked nervously.

Standing inside the door was a stranger, wearing a green vertical striped bathrobe, with a normal figure and a pair of narrow yellow eyes.

So far, his appearance is pretty normal.

But there were strange X-shaped scars on both sides of his cheeks and forehead. It was not like it was caused by accidental injuries. It should have been deliberately tortured by others before, and it looked very tragic.

"Dr. Komori has a terminal illness and goes home and waits for death."

The man in green calmly spoke straight and had no sympathy at all, and even had a little excitement in his eyes, "I am his nephew. I will take over his job from now on."

After saying that, he sniffed and said in confusion: "Why, today there are only corpses, no living patients?"

Can this person distinguish between living and dead by just smelling? The middle-aged man thought curiously.

Moreover, his uncle is suffering from a terminal illness and pretends to be sad. Oh, it’s really a thing of the past.

He originally wanted to talk about Dr. Komori's illness, but the other party seemed to have no interest in talking about it at all, and he didn't even mention his own name, which could be said to be quite rude.

"There are two patients behind. The store owner who was so sad that he was unwilling to spend money to treat them. Dr. Horiuchi asked me to bring them here with me, and I am still outside the door."

The middle-aged man replied.

"Then what are you waiting for? Why don't you bring them here quickly?"

The man in green said domineeringly, his eyes full of impatient expressions, "Don't waste time, it will be bad if it expires... the disease will be difficult to cure."

He licked his lips as he said, as if he was suppressing a desire that could not tell outsiders.

The middle-aged man did not feel the other doctor's kindness at all, but instead felt a little creepy.

His years of experience in Yoshihara told him that it would be better not to have a relationship with the person in front of him in the car, and there would definitely be no good ending.

"Then you wait, I'll go now!"

After saying that, he returned to the next door and left with the two of them as if they were urged and rushed.

"This guy is quite alert, but unfortunately he won't live long."

The man in green looked at the backs of the three of them and muttered: "Belarus (a severe disease unique to Japan, not Hong Kong feet), does cancer and pneumonia have? Speaking of which, I'm a little tired of eating these flavors in those big hospitals. I hope you can give me some new flavors..."

"Speaking of this, if you have infectious diseases, the general taste level should be richer."

After a while, the two younger ones in the trio returned here with two dying figures, one big and one small.

As for the cart, he said he didn't want to come back, and he was only willing to wait outside the door.

"Doctor, the person is here. A little girl was seriously injured and another woman had a disease of yasu. The people from Horiuchi Hospital said that they should not be able to survive tonight."

"I have the final say whether I can survive or not."

The man in green smelled the scent of surprise to him a few meters, and his expression became impatient, "Please help them in and let them lie down, and then you can leave."

However, his tone of treating others as slaves immediately made the two young men angry.

They were unhappy and directly put the two people on their backs on the ground rudely, leaving them moaning in pain without any response.

"Hey! What do you mean? Doctor Komori had allowed us to take their things away before. You didn't want to take them all by yourself, right?"

Another one also said, "Even if you are willing to give them no money to treat them, it is your business. We will always have to pay some rewards if we spend our efforts to move people, right?"

The man in green was stunned for a moment, but he didn't expect that these two people would dare to talk to him like this.

I originally planned to let them go, after all, according to the Proudra Taro, there is one important thing to do tonight, and he doesn't have time to eat so many people.

"Since you want to pay..."
To be continued...