The dimly lit room was piled high with scraps of colorful fabric, frozen on the floor like a spilled painter’s palette.
On the left, a dress form wore an unfinished corset; the whale bone supports jutted out at the ribs, making it look like an opened-up corpse.
“Hiss~”
Liang Lai exhaled sharply, trying to calm herself.
She stepped on a sticky clump of thread and looked down to find it was a dark red embroidery thread, which in the shadows looked like congealed blood scabs.
A black shadow suddenly flickered in the corner mirror, but upon closer inspection, it was just a pearl-trimmed mourning dress hanging on a hook, its pearl-studded sleeves gently swaying in the breeze.
The deepest part of the room held an oaken counter riddled with wormholes, and on its surface sat a grotesque doll.
Its body was pieced together from various scraps of fabric, but sewn onto it was a genuine cat skull; the hollow eye sockets stuffed with two faded glass beads.
The whole scene was rather eerie, making Liang Lai shiver involuntarily.
She cautiously glanced behind the counter and noticed a middle-aged man with a beard dozing off, his head bobbing as if he might topple from the chair at any moment.
“Hello?”
Liang Lai tentatively greeted him.
The tailor shop owner’s snores abruptly stopped, and he almost reflexively jumped up from his chair. When he saw her, a brilliant smile stretched across his face.
“Good day, beautiful lady. Are you here to buy some fabric, or perhaps to have a garment custom-made?”
Since leaving the Church, Liang Lai had found a place to change out of her Saintess Attire into plain clothes, even adding a cloak that covered the upper half of her face.
She no longer worried about the tailor recognizing her as Church personnel.
She recalled what Asterys and Delucia had told her.
“Give me a piece of the finest fabric—something that can mask my original aura. I want to be the brightest moon shining tonight.”
After saying the line in full, the tailor’s smile froze, then quickly faded. He circled around her and moved toward his shop’s door, glancing left and right before hanging a “Pause Business” sign and locking the door.
Liang Lai’s heart skipped a beat, but the tailor bypassed her and motioned with his hand for her to follow.
Without hesitation, Liang Lai matched his pace.
The tailor pushed aside a cabinet stocked with bolts of fabric, revealing a hidden door behind it.
He pulled out a key, inserted it into the lock, and turned it a few times. With a soft “click,” a pitch-black staircase leading underground was revealed.
“Come on, follow me.”
The tailor beckoned again.
Liang Lai hesitated for a moment but then resolutely followed.
It wasn’t that she regretted coming, but human instinct fears darkness and the unknown.
She quietly gripped the hem of her cloak and kept a vigilant eye on her surroundings in case something unexpected happened.
The hidden passage was short; after a minute’s walk, they arrived at a new room.
The small room was pitch dark until the tailor lit a candle, casting flickering light that revealed the scene inside.
At the candle’s trembling glow, Liang Lai’s pupils constricted sharply.
Translucent thin membranes hung from all four walls, fluttering lightly like drying rice paper.
Each membrane preserved delicate pore textures and shimmered with an eerie mother-of-pearl glow in the candlelight.
In the corner, several clay jars were piled up, soaking swollen fingertips and earlobes that looked like silver fungus swollen by rainwater.
“Top-quality fetus membranes,” the tailor said as he hooked one up for display.
“Skin from a young girl’s back, tanned with beeswax.”
The thin membrane crackled sharply, revealing the blue-purple network of capillaries beneath.
Liang Lai’s stomach twisted.
“This—” she pointed at one of the membranes, “this one’s fake, right?”
The tailor chuckled softly, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.
“Why don’t you guess which ones are real and which aren’t?”
Liang Lai shuddered and silently uttered “Amitabha” before suddenly remembering she didn’t worship Buddha but God. She hurriedly smacked her own mouth twice.
“God bless…”
She lifted her clenched hands to her chest.
The tailor burst out laughing.
“You’re such a timid girl. Of course, I wouldn’t kill someone just to make these things. They are real, yes, but all naturally deceased young people—either starved to death or died in accidents. I wouldn’t kill anyone just for these.”
Hearing this, Liang Lai finally breathed a sigh of relief and patted her chest.
“That’s good, that’s good.”
After saying this, she hurriedly pulled out the face illustration she had drawn last night and respectfully handed it over.
“This is the face I want made—just the face, please!”
The tailor took the drawing and laid it flat on the table, glancing it over.
“Oh, this one’s easy.”
He then reached out to Liang Lai again, making a “weighing” gesture with his hand.
Liang Lai immediately understood and handed over her gold coin pouch.
Though unsure of the exact price, more was always better.
As a Saintess, she was never short of money.
Previously, when she said she “regarded money as dung,” it was to describe her lofty character; now, she said it because she genuinely had enough money to throw away.
This gap made Liang Lai feel somewhat bitter inside.
The tailor opened the pouch, glanced at it, and grinned widely.
“All right! Just sit tight. I’ll work overtime on this order! You watch—it’ll be done fast!”
Such was the power of money.
Liang Lai forced a couple of polite laughs and moved a small stool to the corner farthest from the membranes, bored and half-dozing as she observed her surroundings. Eventually, the tailor grew impatient and handed her a book to read, which helped her endure the three hours.
After three hours, the tailor returned carrying the freshly finished skin, packed into a bag, and handed it to Liang Lai.
“Here you go, miss. It’s ready. Be careful, this stuff is fragile. Remember, it can be used three times. When you’re done, you can come back for more. But note—don’t soak the Human Skin in water for too long, and don’t expose it to sunlight too much.”
These instructions matched exactly what Delucia had told her yesterday, and Liang Lai had already committed them to memory.
She accepted the bag, nodded lightly, and followed the tailor back out of the secret room into the sunlight.
Just as Liang Lai’s spirits lifted and she was about to leave the alley, she suddenly heard the sharp crash of a jar hitting the ground, followed by a series of piercing screams.
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