Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The native place of those five coffins was a rather remote village, but it wasn’t too far from us.

We set out at noon, and if things went smoothly, we should arrive before dark.

Only after the truck carrying the five coffins finally left the construction site did Zhang Qing let out a long breath.

He pulled out a cigarette and offered me one. Since Master Tian had been with us when we came looking for him this morning, the conversation had been a little awkward the whole time. He was clearly curious about Jiang Shuang and me suddenly showing up.

“Brother Long, what’s your surname?”

“Long. Long Changdong.”

I don’t know if I was being overly sensitive, but when Fan Qian, who was sitting in the passenger seat, heard my name, he suddenly turned and looked at me. But he quickly turned away again.

“Brother Long, you’ve been driving for a long time, haven’t you? Our site’s old hands flat-out refused to take this job. Why did you suddenly come looking for us?”

“We have some connection to those five coffins.”

I didn’t explain further. Zhang Qing was the kind of man who knew how to read people, so he didn’t press the matter. He only sighed and said, “As long as they can be sent back safely, that’s good. Let’s just hope nothing strange happens again.”

“How did the police know where these coffins were supposed to be sent?” I asked.

“When the police came on the first day, they opened the coffins for inspection.”

Zhang Qing didn’t hide anything. “There were identification plates inside each one, and the deceased’s name and native place were carved on them very clearly.”

“Since they weren’t ancient coffins and there might still be family members out there, the police didn’t confiscate them. They checked with the local authorities, confirmed that all of them had died of natural causes, and then had us send them back.”

Fan Qian, sitting in the passenger seat, curled his lip and let out a cold snort.

I ignored him and kept asking Zhang Qing, “When you opened the coffins that day, did you see the remains?”

Zhang Qing took a hard drag on his cigarette. “We did. They were all wrapped in cloth. You might not believe this, but of the four that were opened, not a single one was an adult. They were all children.”

“Children?” I felt Jiang Shuang, huddled behind me, shudder violently.

“That’s right. Sigh, what a sin. Besides the empty coffin, the others weren’t just nailed shut. The coffin mouths had all been sealed with wax too. It took a lot of effort to pry them open.”

Zhang Qing worked in construction. Finding things under old buildings that were about to be demolished wasn’t something he was seeing for the first time.

Those five coffins had clearly been buried under the flower bed on purpose, and the timing matched perfectly too-twenty years ago.

“Back then, Jiaxing Commerce was incredibly popular around here. When I was a kid, my family wanted to rent a storefront there, and we had to pull strings and ask around for people to help. Who would’ve thought they were up to something like this behind the scenes?”

“Was there anything else in that empty coffin?” I asked again.

“Yes. There was a piece of rotten wood, also wrapped in white cloth, but no remains.”