Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Unsealed Coffin

The three scarlet beams frightened us so badly that we thought some fiend from hell had descended upon us. It was truly terrifying. The light was not bright exactly, yet not dull either; its color was like red wine, and it sent a chill through the heart. Looking along the beam, I was nearly scared senseless, for there stood, I saw, three black coffins, one knows not when placed beneath the red glow.

Ghost Face Zhang furrowed his brow and stared at the coffins in the light for a long while, too astonished to speak. But Iron Crutch Liu, who had just regained his composure, showed a touch of bravado. He stepped forward, saying nothing, and was about to go examine the three black coffins.

“Get back!” Ghost Face Zhang shoved his chest, and Iron Crutch Liu stumbled backward several steps before steadying himself. “Third Brother! The business has come knocking, so hurry up and do it. If we wait any longer, the greens will be cold. Don’t stop me. I...”

Smack.

Before Iron Crutch Liu could finish, Ghost Face Zhang’s palm thrust against him. With a slight burst of force, Iron Crutch Liu landed flat on his backside.

“Idiot! You cripple, still not understanding after all this way? First those looping stairs, then that three-headed monster, and did the pressure trap just now not teach you anything? Do you still not understand how dreadful this place is?” Ghost Face Zhang seemed to have been shaken out of his wits by the mechanism hidden in those three tubes. He was more frightened than he cared to show. For Ghost Face Zhang, Third Master, who usually played the role of the vanguard among the Nine Gates of Peking, to become so cautious at this moment only proved how deeply this place had struck fear into him.

Iron Crutch Liu let out a long sigh and got to his feet. “I was rash. Since you put it that way, it does make sense in both reason and feeling. You’re the backbone of this team. As the saying goes, if you do not follow the one in command, you can work yourself to death for nothing. I’ll listen to you then.”

Ghost Face Zhang nodded and huffed through his nose. He advanced another three or four steps with great care, his gait like a model’s catwalk, every movement so silent it seemed sound itself had been swallowed. Seeing nothing strange happen, he waved us forward. Only then did we imitate his steps and cautiously move in behind him.

I studied the three black coffins standing beneath the red glow. Each was nearly three meters high and at least seventy or eighty centimeters wide. Compared with ordinary coffins, they were enormous. The craftsmanship was exquisite as well, clearly made from a single block of fine fir. In the Qing dynasty, the so-called “Thirteen-Yuan Fir Coffins” were made from premium fir. Fir, as we call it, was favored in old times because of its excellent preservative qualities, and most ancient coffins were made primarily from fir or nanmu. Of course, golden-thread nanmu ranked even higher than fir; in the Qing dynasty there were even precious coffins known as “golden-thread nanmu lined with darkwood,” worth hundreds of taels of silver and reputed to be “imperishable for a thousand years.”

Around the eaves of the coffin lid was wrapped a sheet hammered from celestial iron, decorated with intertwined vine motifs similar to the ornamentation on tomb doors. Upon those vines, layer upon layer of floral patterns made from cut iron gleamed as if in full bloom, exquisitely refined, carrying that ancient sense of grandeur and simplicity. It was splendid without being vulgar, imposing without being rough.

Though these three coffins were of very high grade, what puzzled me greatly was that all twenty-eight nail sockets on the lids were empty; not a single coffin nail had been driven in. It was truly baffling.

After looking them over, Iron Crutch Liu could not wait for me to ask and blurted, “What did I say? The coffin nails are all gone. Someone must have scooped them up first. What are we waiting for? Wait any longer and we’ll be leaving empty-handed.” With that, he waved a hand. “I’m not staying out of it. I need to take something and go. I can’t make this trip for nothing.”

“Exactly, Third Brother,” Dragon King chimed in beside him. “We’ve climbed knife mountains and jumped into cauldrons of oil all the way here. It’s practically like ‘exercise the body to defend the nation.’ And several of our men have died besides. The compensation alone should be at least two hundred thousand for each of them. Whether there’s any gain or not is one thing, but you’ve got to make up our losses here.”

Ghost Face Zhang gave the two miserly old men a sidelong glance, his face full of contempt. “You two old fools have lived all these years for nothing. Use those dog eyes of yours and take a proper look at what’s in the nail sockets.”

He lit a cigarette and clamped it in his mouth.

Hearing this, the two old men seemed a little uncertain. They exchanged a look and nodded, then advanced another couple of careful steps, like men crossing a minefield. They were only five or six meters from the coffins now. They stopped, narrowed their eyes, and studied them closely. They had barely looked for a moment before both drew in a sharp breath.

Seeing that their faces had gone green, Ghost Face Zhang gave a cold snort. “Understand now, you brats?”

That single word, “brats,” was dripping with abuse, yet the two old men did not dare utter a word in reply. Instead, they backed away awkwardly, wearing ingratiating smiles. Dragon King nodded again, a faint smile on his face and a trace of embarrassment in his expression. “Third Brother, then what do you make of these three coffins?”

Ghost Face Zhang took a drag on his cigarette and deliberately blew the smoke into their faces, making the pair cough hard. He snorted. “You saw it yourselves. The nail sockets along the coffin edges are packed with rust from celestial iron. I’m certain of this: when these coffins were set here, they never intended to seal the lids shut. So, what happens next, I need hardly say.”

The two old men were even more frightened after hearing that and hurriedly nodded. “Then, then according to you, we just stand by and do nothing here?”

Ghost Face Zhang drew in a long breath of smoke and slowly let it out. “The material around the coffin edges is all celestial iron. You know what it means to seal a coffin with celestial iron. If there’s anything inside these coffins, it’s no doubt something formidable. They used celestial iron to suppress it and keep it still. If we pry these coffins open, the effect of the celestial iron on the eaves will be gone.”

Celestial iron, also called meteor iron, was said to be a nickel-iron from outer space. Its hardness and density were similar to the iron we use today, though its internal cross-section differed from ordinary iron. The reason may be that, as a meteor passed through the atmosphere at temperatures above two thousand degrees Celsius, its surface partially melted, causing changes in its internal structure. This meteor iron carried a unique cosmic element and magnetic field. In Esoteric Buddhism, it was regarded as a gift from heaven, believed to be indestructible, and thus called celestial iron. Most of it was made into ritual implements such as the phurba and vajra dagger, and it can generally be counted among the four great Esoteric implements: bell, vajra, phurba, and axe. Of course, it was also used in other forms, either mounted on Buddhist images or fashioned into miniature Buddhas and the like; there is no need to dwell further here.

After Ghost Face Zhang laid out his reasoning, silence again fell over the scene. After a long while, Iron Crutch Liu finally could not hold back any longer. He struck the ground with the twin-pronged tool in his hand and said, “How about this? I’ll use my double-pronged tool to test how deep this coffin water runs. Who in the business doesn’t know my skill at ‘one-crutch coffin probing’? Today I’ll put in a real effort and do a ‘single-crutch probe of the three coffins in the Heavenly Pool.’”

“Enough, enough! Crutch-man, stop talking old nonsense here. That was ten years ago. Back then, you lost one leg doing your one-crutch coffin probe. If you go probing these three coffins today and lose another leg plus both arms, you’ll be nothing but a lump of meat. We’re not carrying you back. You can stay down here at the bottom of the Heavenly Pool as a dead weight.” Kaleidoscope said with a face full of mockery, shooting a sidelong glance at Iron Crutch Liu.

I suppressed a laugh. That Kaleidoscope really had a poisonous tongue. If Ghost Face Zhang had not arrived in time just now, he would have been pierced clean through by Iron Crutch Liu’s double-pronged tool. Yet here he was, still provoking him. Truly, he was a man who never remembered the beating after the feast.

As for Iron Crutch Liu’s “one-crutch coffin probe,” I really had heard my master mention it more than ten years ago. It was said to have happened in an ancient tomb somewhere in Yunnan. Buried there was a strange coffin known as the Five-Vase Soul-Luring Coffin. Its form differed greatly from ordinary coffins; it was a celadon coffin fired from the kilns of the Song-dynasty Houtian窑. At the four corners stood four bizarre crocodile-dragon motifs with open mouths, and at the center of the lid was a crocodile-dragon with an upturned dragon mouth. It looked both imposing and uncanny. Back then, Iron Crutch Liu had used the double-pronged tool in his hand to investigate that Five-Vase Soul-Luring Coffin, but through a moment’s carelessness he ruined his left leg and became a cripple, eventually fitting himself with a prosthetic. Several later chapters will focus on that incident.

“Kaleidoscope, cut it out. Back then none of you dared touch that Five-Vase Coffin, and even the eldest, second, and third brothers got separated. Yet you still dare laugh at me, Iron Crutch Liu?”

“Save it. That Yunnan tomb still hasn’t been opened, so what are you two arguing about?” Ghost Face Zhang snapped, cutting them both off with a single sentence.