The Ghostlight Market is full of oddities, and ghost Physician Tushan Yun was hardly remarkable. Nor did he wi…
The Ghostlight Market is full of oddities, and ghost Physician Tushan Yun was hardly remarkable.
Nor did he wish to be.
If possible, he would have spent eternity hunched beneath his oversized hood, concealing his face, his body, even his entire existence.
He was born a child of shadow. The midwife screamed in horror upon holding him: his crimson eyes and snow-white fur were seen as omens of doom. His father recoiled; his mother tried to save him but failed. Days later, he was abandoned in a river ten miles from the village, drifting aimlessly, his first taste of misfortune, a portent of all that followed.
The bamboo basket carrying him was intercepted downstream, and the hands that lifted him plunged him into a living hell.
He became the circus master's "child", a caged monster for the amusement of nobles.
For years, under their disgusted, curious, probing stares, he longed only to vanish. If I am such a creature of darkness, he often thought, why force me into the light? Let me rot and die unseen.
But Rong Sangshui changed what should have been a festering end.
Rescued, gathered up, brought to the Ghostlight Market, for the first time, he learned that even freaks like him had a place. Later, Xue Chou paid a fortune for medicines that healed most of his scars. Sometimes, walking the riverbank, he would stare at his now-ordinary reflection and feel dazed.
He began to wonder: Could I live a normal life?
But the wounds on his soul refused to heal. A decade on, he still flinched from human eyes, from the mundane world's every touch. So he remained in the Ghostlight Market, becoming one of its own.
Years of suffering forged him into a healer. Now, Tu Shanyun is the most renowned doctor in the Ghostlight Market, sought by those desperate to live... or die.
They call him Physician Tu, cold, averse to company, a strange man.
Tu Shanyun found this reputation deeply satisfying. He needed those masks, to bury his wretched past, and the rot festering beneath.