Yin Yang Diviner

After Lao Liu and I exerted tremendous effort, we finally managed to pull the skeleton wrapped in rags out of the crack in the wall.

Second Grandfather took it and placed it on the coffee table.

The bones that came into view were extremely fine, grayish-white in color, like chalk that had been soaked in water and then dried in the sun.

Each strand was wrapped at the end with a small clump of black, fluffy substance—the remnants of the wall ghost's resentment, dried up and crumbling into powder at the slightest touch.

I counted twice, seven bodies, no more, no less.

Seven pairs of hands that had not yet taken shape, and seven pairs of eyes that had never been opened, were sealed inside this wall for who knows how many years.

Second Grandfather took out a piece of dark blue coarse cloth from the bag, spread it next to the coffee table, and moved the seven skeletons over one by one.

His hands were incredibly steady as he moved them, his fingertips supporting the tiny bones as if he were cradling a newly hatched chick.

Seven skeletons were lined up on a coarse cloth, each curled up from head to toe, maintaining the position they were in when they were in the womb.

"The fetus died before full term, and its soul was incomplete." The second grandfather folded the four corners of the coarse cloth in half and tied them into a bundle.

"An incomplete soul cannot be buried directly; it must be 'summoned.' The scattered fetal soul is summoned from within the wall and reunited with the bones before burial."

He took a copper bell out of his cloth bag.

It wasn't the old bell given to it by the corpse-driving craftsman from western Hunan, but another one—smaller and older, its body polished smooth and shiny, the clapper made from a small piece of peach wood.

He held the copper bell in his palm and walked to the torn wall.

The black fuzz in the wall cracks had dried up completely, revealing the aged mortar at the bottom of the interlayer.

Second Grandpa inserted the copper bell into the crack in the wall and shook it gently.

The ringtone wasn't the crisp sound I'd imagined—it was a muffled sound, like it was being enveloped by something, with a very short trailing tone, as if it had just left my lips and been sucked into the wall.

"The fetal soul is not yet formed and cannot respond to human speech." The second grandfather took the copper bell back from the crack in the wall.

"But it will answer the bell. The sound of the bell belongs to metal, and metal can attract souls. Unformed souls cannot hear human voices, but they can hear the sound of metal."

He placed the copper bell next to the coarse cloth bundle and sat down cross-legged.

I sat down too.

The living room light had stopped flickering. Old Liu had taken that woman to the hospital. Only my second grandfather, me, and the dark blue bundle on the coffee table remained in the room.

The sky outside the window darkened, not because it was dark, but because clouds gathered from all directions, swallowing up the last rays of the setting sun.

"To summon the soul, you must recite the 'Induction Incantation'." Second Grandfather took out a piece of yellow paper from his cloth bag. It wasn't a talisman, but a handwritten copy.

The paper was burned, leaving a ring of scorch marks. He handed me the handwritten copy, on which lines of text were written in neat small regular script.

"In the beginning was a spirit, which took form before it was formed. Before it was complete, it broke, and its soul drifted away. The sound of metal guided it, and the earth's energy sustained it. The seven spirits returned to the bones, and the three souls entered the tomb."

It's not a scripture from the Taoist canon; it was compiled by people in the field themselves.

Every word was written down after it was used; the strokes looked like marks etched on bones. I read them aloud with my second grandfather.

The first time I read it, the words tasted astringent in my mouth, like chewing uncooked rice grains.

The second time, the astringency lessened, and the words began to warm up.

The third time, the warmth travels down from the throat to the chest and then to the lower abdomen.

The copper bell rang by itself, a very soft sound, as if someone had stuck a finger out from a crack in the wall and gently flicked the edge of the bell.

Inside the bundle, the skeletons of seven fetuses stirred slightly.

It wasn't that it came back to life—it was as if something extremely light floated out from a crack in the wall, fell into the coarse cloth, and merged with those grayish-white bones.

A very faint scent, like the smell of earth after rain, wafted out of the bundle.

It's not fishy, ​​it's raw. It's the energy that a seed holds back in the soil before it sprouts.

Second Grandfather put away the handwritten copy of the incantation for inducing conception.

"The spirits have returned. They were trapped in the walls for decades, unable to cry, laugh, or even feel fear. But they could understand the golden voice and recognized the earthy scent. You called them out of the walls, and they followed you."

"Let's go find a place to bury them." He tied the bundle and stood up from the sofa.

Outside Liuhe Town, there is a wasteland along the riverbank, overgrown with wild reeds.

My second grandfather walked in front, and I followed behind carrying the bundle.

The reeds rustled in the wind, and their ears of grain turned white in the twilight, like countless tiny hands waving in the wind.

Second Grandpa found a high spot on the riverbank, squatted down, and pressed his hands into the soil.

The soil is sandy; it crumbles as soon as you squeeze it in your palm.

"Sand and soil belong to the yang element, and riverbanks are connected to water vapor. If one is buried here, the spirit of the unborn child can follow the water vapor and be reborn into the next family."

He put the bundle on the ground and took out a peach wood sword from the cloth bag.

It wasn't meant for slashing—he drew a circle on the sand with the tip of his sword, and inside the circle, he drew an arc, like a clasped hand, the heart of a talisman.

"dig."

I dug through the sand with my bare hands.

The soil was loose. When I dug down to my forearm depth, my fingertips touched a layer of wet sand. River water seeped out from the sand and accumulated in a thin layer at the bottom of the pit.

Second Grandfather put the bundle at the bottom of the pit. As the water rose, the dark blue coarse cloth slowly darkened, turning into a near-black blue.

He took out the seven discarded talismans from the cloth bag—a house-protecting talisman, an exorcising talisman, a five-thunder talisman, and a protective talisman—and covered the bundle with them one by one.

The used talisman's core is empty, but the cinnabar remains. Cinnabar is yang in nature and can warm the earth, keeping the fetal soul warm within it.

I scooped up the sand with my hands and covered the bundle with it, handful by handful.

The soil covered the talisman paper, the coarse cloth, and the seven small, curled-up skeletons.

The pit was filled in, and my second grandfather picked up a flat pebble from the riverbank and stuck it in front of the filled pit. There were no inscriptions; the fetal soul had not yet taken shape and therefore had no name.

"No need to carve it. The river god recognizes it."

Second Grandfather patted the sand off his hands, sat down on a rock, took out a pipe from his waist, stuffed it with tobacco, and lit it with a match.

Smoke rose in the twilight, mingling with the tassels of reeds, and was dispersed by the wind.

"Second Grandfather, why did the person who performed the wall-raising technique seal seven unborn children?"

Second Grandpa took a puff of his pipe, and the tobacco in the pipe flickered.

"The 'nurturing the wall and sealing the embryo' doesn't mean sealing the embryo, but rather sealing the 'unfinished' part. Unfinished things harbor the most resentment—they are cut off before they even have a chance to live."

The practitioner used the resentment of seven unborn fetuses to nourish the wall, giving it a sense of "life." Once alive, the wall could protect the homeowner, ward off evil spirits, and absorb the energy of the living.

"That person sealed seven lives, just for a wall?"

"It's not for a wall. It's for a breath of 'breath'." The second grandfather exhaled a puff of smoke.

"The technique of nurturing the wall originated from the older technique of 'womb storage.' The earliest form of the technique of womb storage was the Buddhist womb storage realm, mandala, which describes the Buddha-nature being stored in the womb of Vairocana Buddha, like a fetus in the mother's womb, unformed but complete in all aspects."

Later, the sorcerer altered its form, replacing "Buddha-nature" with "resentment," and "possessing all" with "devouring all." Sealing seven unborn fetuses within the wall wasn't for guarding the house; it was using seven unfulfilled lives to nurture a "fetal resentment" within himself.

"A hidden resentment within the womb?"

"Resentment hidden in the wall is like a fetus hidden in the mother's womb. Over time, the resentment takes shape and becomes a 'resentful fetus'."

The day the vengeful spirit breaks through the wall is the day the practitioner is reborn through that vengeful spirit.

That man was already terminally ill. He used this wall to nurture the vengeful spirit, hoping that after his death, his soul wouldn't enter the cycle of reincarnation, and he could be "reborn" from within the wall through the vengeful spirit.

The river breeze bent the reeds down, then they stood up again.

The ears of grain gleamed white in the twilight, like countless tiny hands waving in the wind.

Did he succeed?

Second Grandfather tapped his cigarette ash.

"No. For a vengeful fetus to develop, at least seven premature fetuses are needed. After being sealed inside a wall, they must absorb the life force of a living person every seven years."

After that person died, the house changed owners, and later it was demolished and a new residential complex was built. The walls were sealed inside the bedroom, and there were no more living people for it to devour. The vengeful spirit starved for over seventy years until it dissipated.

He stood up and looked at the filled-in pit.

Pebbles stood upright in front of the pit, their surfaces covered in sand, which rolled down one by one as the river wind blew them away.

"Only when it disperses can these seven fetal souls leave. Bury them here today, and in their next life they will be reborn into good families, born at full term, and grow up safely. They will remember this river, remember this patch of reeds, and remember someone chanting the incantation for them at dusk. Not remember you—but remember the taste of 'life'."

It was completely dark.

The reeds on the riverbank rustled in the night wind, their ears of grain turning white under the starlight, like countless tiny hands that could finally move freely.

My second grandfather put away his pipe and walked back the way he came. I followed him for a few steps and glanced back.

The pebbles stand upright on the riverbank, starlight falling on their surfaces, giving them a very faint silvery-white sheen.

The skeletons of the seven fetuses in the bundle were now lying quietly deep in the sand.

The river water seeped through the sand, soaking the dark blue coarse cloth, wetting the seven pieces of discarded talisman paper, and lifting up the seven wisps of fetal souls that had never opened their eyes.

Following the moisture, the river breeze, and the direction in which the reeds sway, I slowly walked away.

When I returned to the alley entrance, the shadow of the old locust tree was stretched long by the moonlight, extending all the way to the base of the bluestone tablet.

Second Grandfather stopped under the locust tree, looked up, and gazed at the moonlight filtering through the canopy.

"That copper bell used for inducing labor was left by your great-grandfather," he said.

"Your great-grandfather delivered babies his whole life, more than a hundred children. That bell was hung on the door frame of the delivery room by him—it would ring as soon as the door was pushed open."

The bell rang, and a child fell to the ground. As he left, he told me that the bell had collected the sounds of over a hundred children falling to the ground, and that anyone in the business could use it if needed.

"There is no more suitable ritual implement for guiding the fetal soul."

He pushed open the vermilion gate, and the hinges creaked open.

The bamboo leaves in the courtyard rustled in the moonlight. On the stone table sat the camphor wood box, next to which was Zhenyuan. The dark mirror reflected the moonlight, and the golden light deep within the yang membrane shone steadily.

I took the fetal induction bell out of the cloth bag, put it back in the box, and arranged it side by side with the Bagua seal, the copper bell, the five emperor coins, the peach wood sword, the ink line, and the lightning-struck wood.

Seven old items, seven stories.

Today there's one more thing—not the ritual implements in the box, but the seven wisps of fetal souls on the riverbank who are finally able to be reborn with the help of the water vapor.

They have no names, no shapes, and don't even know what it feels like to be "alive".

But after being imprisoned for decades, they were finally laid to rest. May they find peace in the earth.