Chapter 70: Grave Relocation 3; Unearthing
Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
The body of the deceased was taken back to the Kou family’s ancestral hall and placed in the courtyard. The dead man’s girlfriend was also taken to the ancestral hall and locked up. Kou’s father and the others heard the noise and came to see the dead body. They were shocked to see it. Kou Xuanling told them everything he knew. After listening to the whole story, Kou’s father pondered, “Although few people know about the ancient tomb at Tiewei Mountain, it was not a secret until 20 or 30 years ago. The older generation knew of it, but the tomb could not be entered. These two people should have heard of the previous information, and not believe that the tomb is dangerous before they dared to trespass?”
Chen Yang: “Tiewei Mountain has an ancient tomb?”
“Yes.” Kou Xuanling nodded and said: “But as my father said, few people know that now. I don’t know if it’s because of the tomb, but the mountain is very gloomy with fog in the morning and afternoon, and no sunlight’s going in. There are very few animals. One will feel gloomy just walking to the foot of the mountain, it is a very unsettling feeling.”
“Has the tomb been there for a long time?”
“I don’t know, at least a thousand years. It is written in the family tree, and the tomb cannot be touched. Back when the location of the Kou family ancestral temple was placed here, there were two reasons, one is the Bijia mountain’s good Feng Shui, the other is the Tiewei Mountain, we need to keep an eye on it to avoid the things inside coming out.” After a pause, Kou Xuanling added: “I do not know what is hidden inside the tomb, but the Kou family’s ancestral records about the tomb seem to only mention it with a few words, there were no details.”
Chen Yang said to Kou’s father: “There is something in the body of the deceased, Uncle Kou, you should come to see.” After saying that, he took a knife and gently slit the skin of the deceased, inside were adult thumb thick black snakes. They were about seven or eight centimeters long, they all rushed out of the skin after Chen Yang slit it open. The deceased had just died not long ago, but when the skin was cut open, there was already no blood flowing out. “Uncle Kou look, his body is full of these black snakes. It should hatch after his death and will grow very fast. I remember that at first it was as thin as silk threads, and it grew rapidly after feeding on flesh and blood.”
Kou’s father has not answered, but next to Kou Xuanling, Lu Xiuzhi who was a backdrop all this time, glanced at the squirming black snakes and whispered, “Griefing Filth.”
Chen Yang, “What?”
Kou’s father only then remembered the existence of Lu Xiuzhi, he previously knew that Kou Xuanling brought back two friends, but has been ignoring Lu Xiuzhi. Even he didn’t know why he had overlooked Lu Xiuzhi, but now that he noticed him, he realized that he was also a good-looking person. This kind of person should not reasonably be unnoticed, perhaps some people have a low sense of existence.
“These black snakes are indeed the result of Griefing Filth,” Father Kou nodded his head, and then asked Lu Xiuzhi with appreciation in his eyes, “You know they’re Griefing Filth from just one glance?”
Lu Xiuzhi said, “I read it in a book.”
“Then you must have read a lot of books.” Father Kou laughed.
Chen Yang felt that Kou’s father looked at Lu Xiuzhi like a father-in-law who was very satisfied with his son-in-law. He lowered his eyes and said, “What is a Griefing Filth? We just burned the corpse with lychee branches, even the skin was intact.”
Kou’s father said, “The Griefing Filth is an evil thing produced in thousand-year old tombs. The thousand-year old tombs’ have grievances, filth, and gas accumulating. They would pile up when the tomb is cut off from vitality. The Griefing Filth normally forms snake eggs, they will hide in water. If someone eats them accidentally, they will live in the human’s body since humans have the suitable temperature for them to hatch. After they hatch, there is blood and flesh as their nutrients, so they grow very quickly. It is very difficult to form Griefing Filth, except for the ancient tombs where the grievance is very strong.”
“The deceased must have intruded into the ancient tomb of Tiewei Mountain and he accidentally ate the eggs of the Griefing Filth. The filth gathered in the throat of the deceased to hatch and blocked the trachea. The deceased had difficulty in breathing, so he scratched his throat and died of suffocation. After death, the Griefing Filth all hatched out.” Chen Yang guessed the cause of death based on the wound of the deceased and the growth rate of the black snake, he asked, “The fire cannot kill the filth, is there any way to remove it?”
“Use salt.” Father Kou sent someone to bring salt: “Salt has the effect of corrupting evil things.” The black snakes reacted violently and tried to escape, but after a short time they curled up into a ball and gradually melted into black water. “This black water will be covered with lychee leaves to remove the evil spirit lest it accidentally mixes into the water that people drink from. They will get sick from drinking this.”
Chen Yang received the salt from father Kou, the four others’ hands also held a bowl of salt. Several people were waiting, the body of the dead man was writhing, the skin caved in then bulged out. Some time later, the skin cracked open, the black snakes inside squirmed out crazily, after a while the ground was covered in black snakes.
Chen Yang and the rest were quick to pour the salt. After he had used all the salt in his hand, he stepped back. Behind him, Kou Xuanling and Lu Xiuzhi took his place and continued to pour salt, melting all the Griefing Filth into black water. After purifying the area with the salt, they used lychee leaves to cover the ground and set it on fire to expel the evil.
Chen Yang looked back: “The girlfriend of the deceased seems to know something.” He reminded Kou Xuanling: “I remember when she said she was going to take revenge, when we proposed to burn the corpse, she said ‘it’s too late’.”
“Let’s go and ask.” Kou Xuanling just proposed to go with Chen Yang to ask the girlfriend, the man guarding her rushed over and shouted: “The woman killed herself!”
The deceased’s girlfriend committed suicide, taking down the curtain rope to hang herself alive. Before she died, her eyes were staring straight ahead, and the walls and floors next to her were full of scratches from the struggle. Chen Yang said after checking out the scene: “The rope is not high enough to hang her.”
The victim’s girlfriend could kill herself even though the height was not high enough to hang herself, which means she had a strong will to die and was full of hatred. She will turn into a powerful ghost and come back to take revenge. Kou Xuanling half squatted in front of the deceased’s girlfriend and said after a long time of silence: “She likely did not know the Kou family very well.”
As a family of Tianshis, she killed herself and became a powerful ghost to take revenge, which can only be described as foolish.
Lu Xiuzhi stood behind Kou Xuanling, he lowered his eyelids and his eyes were full of fondness.
Chen Yang leaned down to touch the face of the deceased’s girlfriend, pausing when he felt something behind her ear. He then plucked out a long needle from behind her long hair around her ear. Another long needle was pulled out from the other ear, he threw both to the ground. Then he continued to pull out more needles from the throat and joints of the dead girl’s limbs.
Kou Xuanling’s mouth was slightly opened: “What’s going on here?”
“A long-lost technique in which long needles are inserted into the joints of the limbs to seal the seven orifices. Within three or four hours of death, the soul that is leaving the body is sealed up, pretending to be alive to deceive the ghost soldiers so that they can take revenge on the enemy. This is similar to the means of creating a walking corpse. Quanzhen, Zhengyi and Maoshan have similar techniques. Look at the scratches on the ground, in fact, they are runes.” Chen Yang pointed to the messy scratches on the ground and the wall. When looking closely, they did look like characters. “This is a technique in the Ghost Arts, the name is not known. This kind of corpse is called Blade Sinned Ghost. They have a lot of strength and are not afraid of the Tianshis Taoist weapons because they still retain their three souls and seven spirits. Unless it is a weapon that can shake the three souls and seven spirits out of the body. Otherwise they are very difficult to deal with.”
The ‘Spellbook of Ghosts Arts’ recorded the origin of the Blade Sinned Ghost, which combined the formation and the long needle to imprison the soul in the body and could be used to kill people. Because this kind of ghost needed a trigger to act, it would see the person who triggered the mechanism as the target. Therefore, in addition to being created and used by someone else, it can also be used to turn itself into a Blade Sinned Ghost. One of the characteristics of a Blade Sinned Ghost is that it will not die with their eyes closed, unless their resentment has been put to rest.
“So she will create a specific symbol and wait for us to trigger it.” Chen Yang opened the eyelids of the deceased’s girlfriend and made them open wider. He saw the shadow of himself and Kou Xuanling in those pupils, one left and one right. The symbols are the two of us.”
Kou Xuanling: “What do you mean?”
Chen Yang pointed to the eyes of the deceased’s girlfriend: “She took the images of the two of us as specific symbols and put them into the pupils. As long as they see us, they will definitely kill us.”
Kou Xuanling was speechless for a long time: “What did we do?”
“Probably because she thinks we ruined her plans…… Well, I know why she said those strange words now because she knows this kind of magic. So after her boyfriend died, she made him into a walking corpse to take revenge on the townspeople. Then the two of us destroyed her boyfriend’s body, so she wants revenge.”
Kou Xuanling is quite shocked: “Such a strange brain circuit. Did she have no idea what she’d done with her boyfriend? The town’s people advised them not to go into Tiewei Mountain, when they ran into trouble, she believed it was the townspeople that killed him. After that, she turned around and hated us, this is illogical.”
Kou Xuanling was used to thinking cause and effect, which is an important part of logic. To put it bluntly, the couple’s mode of thinking is completely detached from cause and effect, there is no logic, he does not understand.
Chen Yang: “There are many people without logic.” After that, he snapped his fingers in front of the deceased’s girlfriend and closed her eyes.” Well, it can be reported to the police now, let the police handle it.”
Kou Xuanling: “You broke her circle?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” Kou Xuanling was suddenly interested in Ghost Arts, “Are all Ghost Arts a combination of such formations and spells? That’s quite interesting.”
Lu Xiuzhi suddenly said, “You are not suited to the Ghost Arts.”
“Huh?” Kou Xuanling looked up: “I know, I just think it’s a bit interesting. I am not gonna learn it, but having more understanding of it is good too.”
Lu Xiuzhi said nonchalantly, “I also know about Blade Sinned Ghosts.” Kou Xuanling replied with a short “oh” and praised him. Lu Xiuzhi pressed his lips together slightly and said, “I also know about the Griefing Filth, and that they could be exorcized with salt. I also know a lot of lost Taoist Arts and ghosts.”
Kou Xuanling said, “Really?”
Lu Xiuzhi paused for a long time, said implicitly: “If you want to know, I can tell you about all of them.”
Kou Xuanling was happy and pulled Lu Xiuzhi away to talk. Chen Yang squinted at the two. When he went back to his room, he passed by the front yard and found that Kou’s family had dug out the river god statue from the water pond in Bijia Mountain. It was placed in the ancestral garden. Chen Yang scanned it twice and went back to his room to accuse Lu Xiuzhi and Kou Xuanling in the group of always acting like no one else was in the room.
But he was quickly mocked back, and Hehe Mao Master: [Brother Chen, have you considered whether you are qualified to say this?]
Tianshi Zhang, the 67th generation: [You are even worse with Director Du. ]
Buddhist old man: [What goes around comes around. ]
Chen Yang touched his nose in embarrassment and quit the group to harass old Du: [……this is what happened, then they say we were usually worse than them. Weren’t we always very careful?]
Du Shuo replied immediately: [Yes.]
Chen Yang: [?????? So few words? ]
Du Shuo: [Next time, we can let them see how we look like when we are not considerate. ]
Chen Yang couldn’t help himself, then remembered Lu Xiuzhi: [He gave me a familiar feeling, but I’m sure I haven’t seen him before. I’m sure I’ve never met him.]
Du Shuo: [If he is a threat, it will eventually show. ]
Chen Yang felt that Du Shuo was right, so he left aside the matter between Lu Xiuzhi and Kou Xuanling and talked about the strange events that happened in the Kou family’s ancestral tomb and the ancient tomb of Tiewei Mountain: [Tiewei Mountain is a clever name, it is also known as Vajra Mountain in Buddhism. Outside the small thousand worlds is a small thousand Tiewei Mountain, outside the middle thousand worlds and the big thousand worlds are two other Tiewei Mountains. Between the Tiewei Mountains are places with no light or the sun, the eight levels of hell are located there. The sun and the moon have such great power and virtue that neither daylight nor moonlight can enter between the two mountains. The sun and the moon are so powerful and virtuous, but neither could shine into the place between the mountains.]
Half an hour later, a message came from Du Shuo: [Is there only one Tiewei Mountain? ]
Chen Yang froze for a moment and realized what Du Shuo meant when he asked: [There is indeed only one. ]
Du Shuo: [You can pay attention to the relationship between Tiewei Mountain and Bijia Mountain. ]
Du Shuo’s hint was like an oasis in the desert. Perhaps the destruction of the Bijia Mountain water source was related to the ancient tomb in Tiewei Mountain. The black snake also appeared in the pond in Bijia Mountain, although it was not the same species as the Griefing Filth. Chen Yang: [I will pay attention ^v^, you pay more attention to resting, don’t be too busy, Remember to miss me.] After typing the message, he opened the emojis tab and sent him two rows of roses.
After a while, Du Shuo replied: [Be good. ]
Chen Yang received the reply and immediately lay down on the bed. He rolled several times, burying his face in the pillow and smiling so much that his eyes couldn’t be seen anymore. After a while, he sat up and opened the gallery on his phone. Most of the pictures were either of Du Shuo alone or of the two of them together. Chen Yang flipped through the pictures and mumbled, “I miss old Du a bit now.”
He was looking at the photos and thinking about Du Shuo, and he soon fell asleep without realizing it. The phone slipped out of his hand and happened to be hanging dangerously by the edge of the bed. He didn’t pull on the covers, and fell asleep sitting on the bed and leaning on the pillow. He was sure to have a sore back the next day when he woke up.
The phone finally fell off the edge of the bed, and when it was almost on the floor, a hand reached over and steadily caught the phone and put it on the bedside table. Du Shuo, who was dressed in gold with wide sleeves, picked up Chen Yang, changed his sleeping position, and stretched the thin quilt folded at the end of the bed to cover Chen Yang. Chen Yang was sleeping, but he felt the familiar scent of his body and relaxed into a deeper sleep.
With a smile in his eyes, Du Shuo rubbed Chen Yang’s cheek with his big palm and leaned down to give him a good night kiss. He entered a few words into Chen Yang’s phone: If assistance is needed, you can find the Fengdu Official of this region.
The Kou family’s ancestral home was an antique building, so the doors and windows are in the style of ancient architecture, while the furniture inside is very modern. The window in front of Chen Yang is not closed tightly, there is an arm-thick seam. Looking inside through the gap, there was no one else but the sleeping Chen Yang.
Kou Xuanling was puzzled: “What?”
Lu Xiuzhi shook his head: “Nothing.”
Kou Xuanling walked forward to close the window tightly. He and Lu Xiuzhi left side by side, their footsteps were very light, their voices were also light: “Didn’t we have a flashlight? Why are you using a lantern? Even the roads aren’t clear.”
Lu Xiuzhi: “You can not see the road?”
Kou Xuanling: “No. I can see clearly. I mean the candlelight is dim, and it is not as convenient as a flashlight.”
Lu Xiuzhi laughed lightly, “We are having a nightly chat, it’s better to use candle light.”
Kou Xuanling was amused.
In the darkness, a figure was sitting in Chen Yang’s room. The figure was Du Shuo, he had not left yet, so he heard the conversation between Lu Xiuzhi and Kou Xuanling. At that moment, a gleam of surprise and interest flashed in his eyes, and then he disappeared and returned to Fengdu.
At dawn, the Kou family got up and went to the small hall. After breakfast, they went out to move their ancestral graves on Bijia Mountain. Chen Yang joined them for breakfast and went up to the mountain afterwards. The matter of moving graves could be big or small, and it was necessary to pick a time to do it, but now the situation was urgent and they had to move it as soon as possible.
When Chen Yang arrived at the place, he found that the Kou family had already set up the altar and inserted the first three incense sticks, and the Taoist banner was moving in the wind without any sign of breakage. It seemed that the previous breakage was a reminder of the impending disaster, but now it had agreed to move the grave. Father Kou picked up the shovel and shoveled the ground three times, then handed over the shovel to others to dig and open the coffin. There was also a rule for this; when relocating a grave, the first three shovel must be done by a direct descendant or if that is not available, it must be done by the so-called ‘Fully Blessed Person’, which means that the relatives of that persona are all alive, and the family is harmonious and loving.
The time for opening the coffin must not be past noon, as the sun is at its peak and can easily burn the ancestor’s soul. At the end of the digging, someone wrapped a rope around the wooden coffin and shouted, “It’s time to pull up the coffin!”
The next moment there were several people carrying a reed mat to cover the upper end of the wooden coffin, Kou Xuanling was among these people. The mat was used to cover the top of the coffin to prevent the ancestor’s spirit from being injured by the sunlight when the coffin was raised, and the person carrying the mat must be a descendant.
The wooden coffin was pulled up and the next step was to open the coffin to collect the bones. The person who opens the coffin shouts, “Open the coffin! Anyone who is in conflict with the ancestor’s signs or eight characters should turn their backs to avoid collision.” Then he announced the Chinese zodiac signs that clash with the ancestors’, and all those people turned their backs. This practice wasn’t actually worried about hurting the ancestors, but worried about the corpse in the coffin clashing with the living.
“Open the coffin!”
The lid of the coffin opened and inside was a complete corpse. Father Kou and the others went up to pick up the bones and sealed them in the urn in order with special instructions to his children who were watching: “When you pick up the bones of the other ancestors, remember not to arrange them in a messy way, not to arrange them wrongly, and not to mutilate the bones. You must be careful.”
The next step was to move the graves of the other ancestors to open the coffins. Everything went smoothly. Near noon, they stopped opening the coffins and covered them with black cloth. They will come back after noon to open the rest of the coffins. After such a busy morning, everyone was very tired. They ordered two people to look after their ancestors’ graves on the mountain while the rest of them went down to rest.
On the way, Chen Yang asked Kou Xuanling, “Where is Tiewei Mountain?”
Kou Xuanling pointed to the back of the mountain halfway up the mountain: “It’s at the back of Bijia mountain, where the terrain is rather strange. The back of Tiewei Mountain also has two big mountains. They overlook Tiewei Mountain, causing the sun and moon to be unable to reach Tiewei Mountain so it is gloomy there year-round. I don’t know what the owner of the Tiewei Mountain Tomb has offended, and why they were buried in the Tiewei Mountain. There is no wind or water, there isn’t even the bare minimum of Qi in that place.”
Chen Yang: “So no one knows who was buried in the ancient tomb?”
“I really don’t know. As I’ve said before, the ancestors of the Kou family did not record about that. The ancient tomb in Tiewei Mountain already existed when we settled here. I wanted to report it to the state to see if it had any cultural research value, but……” Kou Xuanling deliberated his words and said, “Anyway, once you go near Tiewei Mountain, you will know that people can not go in. Our ancestors had broken into it before and only came out with the warning that we should only guard it and never go in. Even the Tianshis can not do anything about it, how can ordinary people go in there?”
“Then it’s really very ominous.”
The sun was so hot at noon that when one looked up, all one could see was a halo of light. It was as if the eyes would go blind if looked at for too long. The two men who looked after the tomb of their ancestors were resting in the pergola they had set up, drinking herbal tea and talking about the world, but their eyes were constantly watching the wooden coffin that had been dug up to prevent the wind from blowing away the black cloth covering the coffin. Suddenly an evil wind blew up, lifting sands and rocks.
The two men were blown by the sand and could hardly open their eyes, so they rushed to the tomb of their ancestors and pressed the black cloth down. Even the altar table was blown down and the banner was blown off but not broken. The two men re-lit incense and worshiped at the altar, they then put the banner back up.
They did not notice that just as the sand was blowing, a black snake came out of the withered grass and swept away the red stick inserted in front of the tombstone. The stick was inserted in front of another remote and inconspicuous tombstone. The tombstone was surrounded by withered grass, and the soil behind the tombstone was moist and loose, as if it were a newly dug grave.
The two looked at each other, and both felt uncertain, “The wind was strange.”
“Yes, it’s a strange sandstorm. The sun is hot, there should not be such a big sandstorm.” The two of them checked all the graves again and found that the red stick in front of one of the tombstones indicating that the grave was to be moved was missing.
In the afternoon, Kou’s family came back to move the grave again. They dug the grave according to the red sticks. When they dug into the remote and inconspicuous graves, some people felt strange, but they did not have time to think about it. After digging deeper and deeper, they found that the grave was muddy. When the coffin was finally pulled out, a person holding the rope got frightened and let go. The coffin quickly fell back down into the pit. Chen Yang saw the situation and immediately pulled the rope back to prevent the coffin smashing back to the bottom of the pit.
Kou Xuanling and Lu Xiuzhi also came forward to help, and shouted: “Don’t stand there! Pull the coffin up.”
After the coffin was pulled up and laid flat on the ground, they saw that it was a beautiful bronze coffin. The coffin definitely did not belong to the ancestors of the Kou family. The Kou parents came around to look at it, looking extremely grave and serious. A coffin that did not belong to the Kou family ancestors appeared in the Kou family’s ancestral tomb. They only now discovered the situation, so they have to be cautious about it.
Chen Yang crawled forward to see the bronze coffin and found four ancient characters written on it. Kou Xuanling came over to take a look and said, “Open coffin for death.”
Chen Yang raised his eyebrows: “You know these ancient letters?”
Kou Xuanling said, “I don’t know. But it is exactly four words, also written on a coffin, so I just imagine it is that.”
Chen Yang pushed Kou Xuanling away, indicating that he did not want to see him. Lu Xiuzhi said, “It is true that the four words are ‘Open coffin for death’, it is a script of the Jin Region during the Warring period.” The Warring Period Script was the collective name for different regions’ scripts during the Warring period, of which the Jin system was the main script system used by small states such as Wei and Zhao.
As Kou Xuanling said, in most cases, if four words are written on a coffin, it is likely to curse the person who opened the coffin. Basically, there is no real curse effect, unless there is something hidden inside the coffin. When people do open the coffin, those things come out and kill people.
Chen Yang: “Do we open the coffin?”
The Kou family was hesitant, they had no idea how such a strange coffin could appear in the Kou family’s ancestral tomb. There was a red stick placed in front of the tomb as well.
Chen Yang looked at the excavated soil and the overturned tombstone: “This tomb seems to be a new tomb, but the tombstone is not new. The bronze coffin was transported from another place and buried here.” He turned back to Kou’s father and said: “We should open the coffin, it is clear that it wants you to open the coffin.”
Kou’s father pondered for a moment, waved his hand and said: “Open the coffin.”
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