The old caretaker of the cemetery disliked these days of unceasing snow—not just because the cold weather made his already overburdened joints ache, but also because the snowy weather always reminded him of things from a long time ago.
Things that were not so good.
Like the rebellion fifty years ago, the frost calamity thirty years ago, the great collapse in the southern district seventeen years ago... such heavy snowfall seldom brought anything good.
The old man rubbed his hands together and glanced back at the cemetery, now also covered with snow.
The boundaries of the cemetery's paths were blurred by the snow, and the vast white ground was marked only by footsteps sketching out the route to the morgue and the caretaker's lodge, the gas lamps had been extinguished, and the dark lamp posts stood like dead tree trunks in the snow, looking rather lonely.