Old Wang pulled a roll of kraft paper from his waist. As he unrolled it, a Seven-Star Sword imprinted with the Tai Chi Eight Trigrams was revealed. I was shocked—how had he brought this onto the train?
He paced around the Heaven Coffin, as if calculating something.
I knew something about yin corpses (shadow corpses), which are what ordinary people call zombies. Their formation is extremely demanding: in feng shui, purple qi 东来 (coming from the east) symbolizes mountain ranges as dragon veins. The corpse must be buried in a "broken mountain"—the last segment of the dragon vein, about 30 chi deep—surrounded by water qi. It needs a willow wood coffin with locust wood planks, the corpse placed with its mouth open, triggered by black cat blood. If the body doesn't decay after decades, it becomes a yin corpse.
Old Wang later told me that with the array's eye broken, and the twelve children infused with mercury and sealed by the array for a millennium, the resentful souls within them had long since grown powerful. The chance of them reanimating was high.
"Master Wang, how can I help?" I asked.
He sized me up and said calmly, "Can you operate an excavator?"
"Pardon?" I was confused. He pointed to a nearby excavator. "Can you? It's too deep for just us two to dig."
I shook my head, speechless. I'd expected him to set up a ritual altar, wave yellow talismans, ring an Eight Trigrams bell, chant exorcism spells, and sacrifice a chicken to invite the ancestors. Instead, he was seriously asking about excavators.
As he clicked his tongue and smoked, lost in thought, he suddenly turned to me. "Go find the armed police. Tell them we found a Yuan-Dynasty tomb and ask them to send a construction team."
"Won't that delay us? What if the children in the coffins reanimate?" I worried.
"Don't fret. The archaeology team will be here within two hours," he said confidently.
"How do you know?" I asked, astonished.
He scoffed, "Don't you read the news? Liao-Dynasty relics were unearthed nearby recently—they didn't release the exact location, but it's not far. Archaeologists swarm to tombs like flies to dung."
He explained it was a last resort: most able-bodied villagers were already incapacitated, and sealing the Seven Xuan Guan had made them as fragile as porcelain dolls, their life force so weak that any exposure to evil qi could be fatal.
I followed Old Wang's advice and returned to the village entrance, only to be detained by armed police. After blood tests, fingerprinting, and a brief explanation, the commander called for backup. Watching workers erect barbed wire, I felt a chill—clear that the village had been abandoned.
As Old Wang predicted, four people arrived before dark. The leader was a portly middle-aged man in a shirt, wearing round glasses with a neck so short it seemed to vanish into his body, his eyes shrewd. Beside him was a middle-aged man with a SLR camera, both pointing at the tomb, followed by a young man and woman, likely fresh graduates.
The portly man, surnamed He and called Professor He, examined the ground with a magnifying glass. After circling the site, he turned to Old Wang and me.
"Did you uncover this tomb?"
"The villagers did. It caused strange illnesses, and we're here to help," I said.
"Nonsense. Illness is illness—what does it have to do with this tomb?" Professor He dismissed us.
Old Wang, seeming to dislike dealing with intellectuals, pushed all questions to me. Before I could explain further, Professor He snorted, "Fortunately, you didn't damage the tomb. Judging by its shape, it's a Khitan tomb influenced by Han culture, lacking typical Khitan features but with Tang-Dynasty remnants. The circular burial arrangement and cypress wood decay suggest it dates to 1054—Northern Song Dynasty, in my estimation."
I began to understand why Old Wang disliked intellectuals. Their academic posturing made my head throb. When would they realize that if the corpses reanimated at night, Zhoujiazhuang would be devastated?
"Ahem." I interrupted their discussion. "Professors, when will we start excavating? It's getting dark. If the corpses reanimate and hurt someone..." I paused, "By the way, Professor He, can you operate an excavator?"