Yin Yang Diviner

I couldn't sleep that night.

The talisman for protecting the house was still in the hotel room, and the new "calming talisman" that my second grandfather had pasted up was also neatly affixed to the headboard. The cinnabar on the talisman paper gleamed dark red under the dim light, like an eye that wouldn't close. He had his purse tucked close to his body, copper coins tied to his wrist, and a compass pressed under his pillow—he had done everything he could, but his eye just wouldn't close.

With my eyes closed, I could see the coffin lid at the bottom of the pit, soaked in a murky yellow liquid.

As soon as I closed my eyes, I heard that sigh coming from underground.

At three in the morning, I decided not to sleep anymore. I sat up, turned on the bedside lamp, and took out the book "An Outline of Yin and Yang" that my second grandfather had given me from my backpack. I turned to the chapter on "corpse-raising grounds." The vertically arranged traditional Chinese characters looked like ants under the light. I read line by line, and when I got to one paragraph, my finger stopped.

"A place where corpses are kept is where yin energy is concentrated. A coffin placed on top of another is called 'double burial.' The upper coffin absorbs the yin energy of the lower coffin, and the lower coffin takes away the corpse from the upper coffin. The upper and lower coffins devour each other, and over time, strange creatures will inevitably emerge. To break a double burial, the upper coffin should be placed first, then the lower one; the order must not be reversed. If it is reversed, the lower one will be frightened and flee, while the upper one will rise up and devour people."

A chill ran down my spine. It turned out that my second grandfather's insistence on opening the old master's coffin first, before dealing with the things underneath, wasn't out of caution, but out of adherence to tradition. If the order was wrong—if the bottom coffin was touched first—the old master's white-haired corpse would immediately rise, and the things underneath would escape.

"Those below are frightened and flee, while those above rise up and devour people."

I closed the book and looked out the window at the night. The sky in the direction of the cemetery was darker than elsewhere, as if someone had splashed ink onto that canvas. There were no stars, no moon, and not even the outline of the mountain ridge was visible; only a thick, impenetrable darkness pressed heavily over the valley.

Just as dawn was breaking, my second grandfather came to knock on the door.

He changed his clothes—a black, double-breasted jacket with extremely fine red embroidered runes on the cuffs and collar, barely visible unless you looked closely. He wore black cloth shoes, also embroidered with the same red runes. Standing in the dim light of the corridor, he resembled a piece of ebony wood, soaked in the scent of incense, salvaged from the door frame of an old house.

"Wear this today." He handed me a set of clothes that were neatly folded.

It was black. The same as what he wore when he performed rituals at home, with red embroidered patterns on the cuffs, but the patterns were simpler than his, with only three water ripples. I took it, and the clothes felt heavy in my hands, not from the fabric itself, but from something sewn into the lining—it rustled to the touch, like crushed herbs and cinnabar.

"This is our family's 'traveling attire'," said the second grandfather. "We don't usually wear it. Today, as we open the coffin at the bottom, we don't know how deep that thing is. Wearing this will give us an extra layer of protection."

I put on my clothes. The moment the fabric touched my skin, a very faint herbal scent wafted up from the collar, bittersweet, just like the tea my second grandfather often brewed. The copper coin on my wrist seemed to sense something, warming slightly, as if in response.

I didn't eat breakfast. It wasn't that Boss Li hadn't prepared anything; it was that my second grandfather wouldn't allow it. "When opening a coffin for the dead, one shouldn't have food in their stomach. Food is yang in nature, which clashes with the yin energy in the coffin, and the food will churn in your stomach." That was his exact words. I drank half a cup of warm water, and that was enough to get by.

When I went up the mountain, the sky was still gray. But it wasn't the uniform leaden gray of yesterday—today's gray was layered, pressing down from overhead, spreading up from the foot of the mountain, and gathering in the valley from all directions. The densest part of the clouds was above the cemetery, like an inverted gray palm, fingers spread, palm facing the valley.

Boss Li followed at a distance with four young men. He didn't dare walk in front today, and didn't even dare look in the direction of the grave. He kept his head down and muttered something under his breath. I listened carefully, and he was chanting the Rebirth Mantra—I don't know where he learned it from, and his pronunciation was mostly wrong, but the fear he felt was real.

The grave pit looks exactly the same as it did yesterday.

The old man's coffin was carried twenty paces away, bound with ink line, and weighed down with seven talismans for suppressing the corpse. The coffin lay quietly in the grass, the talismans fluttering gently in the wind, but none of them were blown away—not because the wind wasn't strong enough, but because the talismans refused to move.

The water at the bottom of the pit was even more than yesterday. A murky yellow liquid had been continuously gushing out from the cracks in the coffin lid all night, accumulating to a depth of about two inches and completely submerging the lid. The surface of the water was as calm as a mirror, reflecting the gray clouds in the sky, completely still.

The scraping sound stopped. The sigh stopped too. The entire grave was eerily quiet; not even the slightest sound of water seeping into the soil could be heard.

Second Grandfather stood by the pit, looking down for a long time. Then he took out a compass from his cloth bag, held it in his palm, and extended it horizontally above the water. The pointer on the compass remained motionless at first, but after about three breaths, it began to slowly rotate—not swaying left and right, but rotating in the same direction, circle after circle, very slowly but steadily, as if being pushed by some unseen force.

My great-uncle stared at the spinning hands, his brow furrowing slightly. I had never seen him show that expression before. It wasn't fear, but rather the sound of him trying to identify something—like someone hearing a distant sound and trying to determine its source and distance.

"It's not a white zombie down there." He put the compass away, his voice low. "It's 'Swallowing Yin'."

"Swallowing Yin?" I haven't read this term in "An Outline of Yin and Yang".

"Coffin upon coffin, the upper coffin absorbs the yin energy of the lower coffin, and the lower coffin steals the corpse energy of the upper coffin. Over fifty years, the thing in the lower coffin has swallowed the old master's corpse energy and the yin energy from the ground. It didn't become a zombie, it turned into something else." The second grandfather took out an inkwell from his cloth bag, pulled out the thread, and dipped the end in a mixture of black dog blood and cinnabar. "It's now half yin and half yang, half corpse and half living. It can't come out during the day, but it can hear us talking."

The copper coin on my wrist suddenly felt hot. It wasn't a continuous heat, but rather like something had flicked it from the outside, making a soft clanging sound as the coin struck my wrist bone and trembled slightly.

My second grandfather glanced at me, his gaze settling on the copper coin: "It heard you."

He tied one end of the ink line to the root of an old locust tree beside the grave, walked around the grave, tying a knot every three feet, and attaching a yellow talisman to each knot. Seven talismans and seven knots encircled the entire grave. Once the ink line was taut, it gleamed with a dark red light in the hazy sky, like a circle of red-hot iron wire.

"Go down and pry open the coffin lid," the second grandfather said to the four young men.

All four men turned pale at the same time. The tall, thin man stammered, "Sir, down there...that thing down there..."

"It can't move during the day. It can't get out unless the whole coffin is lifted up." The second grandfather took something out of the cloth bag and handed a portion to each of the four people—it was glutinous rice wrapped in red paper with minimalist runes drawn on it. "Keep it in your mouth, don't swallow. No matter what you see, don't open your mouth or make a sound."

The four people put the glutinous rice into their mouths. Boss Li also wanted to put some in, but his second grandfather stopped him: "You are of the Li family bloodline. The thing below has absorbed your great-grandfather's corpse energy for fifty years, and it is most sensitive to your blood. Stand outside the line, don't come near."

Mr. Li felt as if he had been granted a pardon and took several steps back until he was outside the area marked by the ink line.

Four young men, carrying crowbars, waded through the puddles and descended to the bottom of the pit. The water was above their shoes, and the murky yellow liquid rippled around their feet. The tall, thin man walked in front, the tip of the crowbar pressed against the gap in the coffin lid, his hands gripping the end of the crowbar, the veins on the back of his hands bulging.

"pry."

The coffin lid emitted a long groan. It wasn't the creaking of wood under pressure—it came from inside the coffin, like a sigh, echoing, squeezed from deep within the throat of someone who had been pressed down for a very long time, finally waiting for the weight on their body to ease a little.

The tall, thin man nearly spat out the glutinous rice in his mouth. He clenched his teeth tightly, his cheeks bulging as if he were holding two walnuts, and he didn't loosen his grip on the crowbar. The other three men also gritted their teeth and exerted force, and with all four crowbars working at the same time, the gap in the coffin lid went from a thin line to a finger's width, and from a finger's width to three fingers' width.

No white steam rose from the cracks. No murky yellow liquid oozed out. There was only a smell—not a foul smell, but an extremely cold smell, like all the frost and snow of winter had been pressed into a coffin and sealed for who knows how many years. This smell spread along the surface of the water, leaving a very thin layer of ice ripples on the surface wherever it passed.

The coffin lid was completely pried open.

The four young men stepped back simultaneously, their backs pressed against the pit wall, crowbars held horizontally in front of their chests, their eyes fixed on the inside of the coffin. The tall, thin man's Adam's apple bobbed as he tried to swallow the glutinous rice that had risen to his throat.

I stood at the edge of the pit and looked down.

Inside the coffin lay a "person." They wore clothes whose color was now indistinguishable, the fabric so rotten it resembled soaked paper, crumbling into powder at the slightest touch. Their hands were clasped together in front of their chest; their fingers didn't have the long fingernails of the old man, only segments of grayish-white finger bones, the cartilage between the knuckles having dissolved into a translucent, gelatinous substance.

The face. It wasn't grayish-white, but a bluish-black, as if something had seeped into it from within. The features were clearly discernible—eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, nothing was missing. The eyes were closed, the eyelids sunken, revealing that the eyeballs were gone, leaving only two dark, hollow eye sockets.

But the corners of his mouth weren't flat. Unlike the old man, whose lips held a faint, almost imperceptible curve, as if he were smiling, the face in this coffin had its lips turned downwards. It wasn't a smile; it was—anger. A silent anger revealed when someone had suppressed it in darkness for countless years, and finally, the roof was lifted, and the first ray of light shone in.

Second Grandfather squatted down by the pit, holding a silver needle in his hand. His gaze swept over the bluish-black face, finally settling on the downward curve of the corner of the mouth.

"It's been swallowing for fifty years, just one step away from completion." He twirled the silver needle halfway between his fingertips. "If we don't deal with it today, in another forty-nine days, it will push open the coffin lid and come out on its own. At that time, this mountain valley, within a radius of ten miles, will be utterly devastated."

The tips of the silver needles gleamed with a cold light in the hazy sunlight.

The bluish-black face in the coffin seemed to have its lips turned down even further.