The next morning, outside the Prefectural Yamen, rows of shriveled corpses lay neatly arranged on the ground. The prefect, Li Mu, stood in front of them, his face pale. This was the fifth batch of corpses.

The first corpses had appeared several months back, but at that time, no one thought much of it. Refugees had been flooding the region, and death was an everyday occurrence. A few corpses were hardly a concern. 

But then, a second bunch appeared, followed by a third, and then a fourth. The corpses began turning up almost every month, the frequency of the incidents steadily...