Chapter 201
Chapter 201
The whole affair began with the torrential rain a few days earlier…
Scattered across the outskirts northwest of Lianghe Town were a little over a hundred households.
In theory, the place should have counted as a small village.
But it sat right next to Lianghe Town–you could even see it directly from the classroom buildings of Lianghe District Middle School–so it was more or less considered part of the town.
Most of the hundred-odd families there bore the surname Bai. Their homes occupied a small, flat valley ringed by several peaks–the sort of terrain known as a ba in Sichuan and Chongqing–and so the place was called Baijia Flats.
One resident of Baijia Flats was a man named Bai Fugui. True to the prosperous name he bore, he really was quite wealthy!
A few years earlier, he had used his connection with Boss Duan to open a cannery on the outskirts of town. He bought fruit from Boss Duan’s orchards, processed it into canned goods, and sold it wholesale.
Business was said to be booming!
His goods were sold not only in the county seat of Fubei County, but also to supermarkets in several neighboring county seats and cities, which regularly came to him for wholesale orders of canned fruit.
That was how Bai Fugui had vaulted into the ranks of Lianghe Town’s rich.
And once a man had money, naturally he wanted to build a house!
Bai Fugui was no longer young, had not received much schooling, and held fairly traditional views. He still could not get used to the idea of buying an apartment in one of those commercial residential complexes built by property developers…
To him, cramming so many people into a single building was just like packing them into the cans he made! The very thought made him uncomfortable.
He would much rather live in a grand courtyard house of his own in the suburbs–one like Boss Duan’s Duan Family Manor.
And so Bai Fugui decided to expand his existing home.
The residential plot originally allocated to him was quite large, but he had been poor when he was young and had not used even one fifth of it.
Now it was perfect!
He could stay within the law and live in comfort at the same time!
Unfortunately, he might have used up all his luck on his factory and business…
His beloved mansion had barely been completed when the once-in-a-century deluge struck–and continued for three days and three nights!
Baijia Flats stood on relatively high ground, so the rising river did not flood it.
The problem was… Baijia Flats itself was surrounded by mountains on three sides. Days of unrelenting rain triggered a flash flood!
It was not particularly large and caused no casualties.
But on the mountain behind Bai Fugui’s home–the side nearest his newly built residence–the flash flood triggered a landslide and brought part of the slope crashing down.
Rocks and earth tumbled down and smashed apart the wall around his backyard.
The courtyard was a complete wreck.
That alone would not have been too serious. As long as no one was hurt, the worst it would cost was some extra money. He could hire workers to clear the yard and build another wall.
Then something happened that left Bai Fugui shocked, frightened, and plagued with worry.
While clearing the rocks and soil piled in the backyard, the workers discovered a coffin inside the debris!
The coffin had clearly been buried within the mountain.
When the days of rain brought the slope down in a landslide, it had tumbled along with hundreds of tons of mud and rock and landed inside Bai Fugui’s courtyard…
That was a serious problem!
Ordinary people were deeply superstitious about coffins.
If a coffin did not belong to one of their own relatives, most would avoid even looking at it. A single glance was enough to frighten them!
And this was an old, nameless coffin that had rolled out of a mountain in a landslide, with no telling how long it had lain buried underground!
The mere thought was enough to make an ordinary person’s scalp crawl and gooseflesh rise across their skin.
How much worse was it when the thing had slid straight into their own courtyard?
Bai Fugui was beside himself!
As soon as his family called him with the news, he abandoned negotiations over a wholesale order worth more than a million yuan. After apologizing to the customers who had traveled from far away, he hurriedly drove home to Baijia Flats from the outskirts on the other side of town…
He entered the house, crossed the front courtyard and central courtyard, and reached the backyard.
Sure enough, the workers stood in a circle, whispering among themselves with fear on their faces.
His wife and three children watched from far away as well.
“What’s going on? How could a coffin roll down in a landslide? Make way. Let me take a look.”
Bai Fugui spoke loudly.
He felt apprehensive too, but in front of outsiders he had to show a composure that would not falter even if the sky collapsed–that was one of the principles by which a businessman conducted himself.
When the workers saw that the owner had returned, they moved aside to clear a path.
The foreman breathed a sigh of relief and hurried over.
“Boss Bai, you’re finally back! Take a look. That thing is sitting right in the middle of the courtyard. The men and I found it buried in a heap of sticky red sandy soil while we were clearing away several large rocks. It looks… terrifying.”
Bai Fugui said nothing more and followed the direction of the foreman’s finger.
Sure enough!
A coffin rested squarely in the center of his backyard.
At a glance, Bai Fugui could tell that it was unlike any ordinary coffin!
No ordinary coffin would be tightly wound in countless strands of thin black thread!
Nor would its lid be covered in strange, dark-red talismanic symbols. Bai Fugui could not understand what they meant, but their sinister air alone made his eyelids twitch.
And no ordinary coffin would have bizarre bones embedded in its lid–bones that made his scalp prickle at the very sight of them!
No wonder the workers had refused to touch the coffin again the moment they dug it out of the heap of mud and rubble. Every one of them had retreated to a safe distance.
They were not fools. One look was enough to tell them there was something deeply sinister about it!
An ordinary coffin buried on the mountain accidentally sliding into someone’s home would have been unlucky enough.
But an eerie, wicked-looking object like this?
Trembling, Bai Fugui followed the foreman around the coffin, keeping about a meter away as he gave it a cursory inspection.
After a moment’s thought, he asked tentatively, “Foreman Liu, on top of your regular wages, I’ll give you another five thousand yuan. Find a few men to carry this coffin away and dispose of it. What do you say?”
Five thousand yuan was no small sum in the year 2000!
It was especially tempting to day laborers who made their living through physical work. Even the foreman found the offer extremely attractive.
The coffin did not look very large. In fact, it was noticeably smaller than an ordinary coffin. Six men could probably have carried it away with relative ease…
That would give each of them more than eight hundred yuan.
It was as much as they normally earned from over two months of backbreaking labor!
A flash of longing and delight crossed Foreman Liu’s face, but reason quickly reasserted itself. He shook his head desperately.
“No, no! Boss Bai, it truly isn’t that the boys don’t want to help. If it were anything else, we’d haul it away for free. It’d just take a little muscle.”
“But there’s something far too sinister about this thing! I’ve always counted myself a brave man. Sometimes when I used to visit relatives in the countryside, I’d travel alone at night, and even passing a burial hill never scared me.”
“But I don’t know why–the moment I look at this coffin, my chest feels tight and panic grips my heart for no reason. It’s as if something terrible is about to happen at any second!”
“And it isn’t just me. All the other boys feel the same way. This coffin definitely isn’t something ordinary people should touch. I suggest you stay away from it too, Boss Bai. Hurry and find an expert, some accomplished master who can deal with it. You must have heard of Coffin-Bearer Cao over on the east side of town…”
Bai Fugui was not the sort of stubborn man who refused to listen to advice.
Foreman Liu’s words made a great deal of sense to him.
He stopped trying to persuade the workers and told them to suspend their work for the time being.
Then he set about finding a master who could deal with the eerie, malevolent coffin that the landslide had washed out of the mountain and deposited in his courtyard.
As one of the wealthy men in town, Bai Fugui had broad connections and access to plenty of information.
After making a few inquiries, he learned that Coffin-Bearer Cao of the coffin shop on the east side of town was indeed highly capable, but generally did not deal directly with strangers.
Anyone who wanted to reach him first had to go through a coffin carrier named Big Bull as an intermediary…
Bai Fugui promptly worked through a few acquaintances and tracked down Big Bull and his three companions in less than an hour.
With business at their door, Big Bull and the others naturally had no reason to refuse, so they went with him.
When they arrived at the backyard of Bai Fugui’s home… Big Bull’s expression changed abruptly the instant he stepped over the threshold, before he had even reached the coffin!
It was still dusk. The sun had not fully set–half of it still hung beyond the mountains–and darkness had not yet fallen.
Yet Big Bull could already feel a cold, gloomy, vicious, and malevolent aura rushing toward him!
He could even smell the stench of decay in the air.
Beside him, Bai Fugui hugged his arms around himself as he voiced his concern.
“Why does it feel so unusually cold tonight? I’m wearing two thick layers, but I’m still freezing. Brother Niu, won’t you catch cold in just that one layer?”
Big Bull waved a hand and replied, “Don’t worry, Boss Bai. Our internal fire burns strong and our bazi are hardy. We also eat plenty of warming, nourishing foods, so we almost never catch colds. Besides, this chill isn’t coming from the weather. My guess is that coffin is causing it.”
“So wait here, Boss Bai. Don’t follow us inside. Even if there isn’t any immediate, physical danger, the corrupt baleful qi alone could make you ill and harm your health. It might even bring you bad luck afterward!”
Bai Fugui was terrified on the spot.
At the same time, he secretly congratulated himself for heeding Foreman Liu’s advice and promptly finding experts who understood such matters.
Otherwise, the consequences could have been unthinkable!
He thanked Big Bull over and over, deeply grateful.
When Big Bull, Ergou, and their two companions entered the innermost part of the backyard and examined the coffin up close, all four sucked in a sharp breath!
The coffin displayed all three of the signs that coffin carriers dreaded most.
It was a truly vicious and malevolent coffin!
The first sign was a ground-sinking coffin…
As the name suggested, the coffin would grow heavier and heavier on its own, crushing the ground beneath it and slowly sinking into the earth.
No matter how heavy an ordinary coffin might be, it could hardly shatter the surface beneath it and force the ground to cave in!
The coffin before them, for example, had already sunk at least an inch and a half–as if it had been set into the earth.
It certainly had not looked like this when the flash flood first swept it down with the landslide. Otherwise, the workers and Bai Fugui would have noticed during the day.
This ominous sinking must have begun only within the short span since dusk!
The second sign was…