Daomu Biji extra 1 part9

It was quite common for there to be liquid in a coffin. When a coffin is sealed, wooden nails are used to secure it, and then all the gaps are sealed with clay lime and a cement-like substance made of rotten fishing nets. If this procedure was done perfectly, the body would rot in an absolutely enclosed space and all the water from the body would remain in the coffin.

Sixty to seventy percent of the human body is made up of water, which is a staggering amount. This is especially evident when the body decays and the small bones are hard to find under all the water.

This kind of water is called corpse fluid, or coffin fluid. Of course, some coffins weren't tightly sealed, and there was water in them from accumulated water in the tomb's burial chamber. In our case, the volume of coffin fluid was large, so that was why Biao Gong asked.

My father answered with great certainty—I had also caught a glimpse at that time— that there was really no water in the ancestral tomb. So this coffin fluid must not be rainwater, let alone corpse fluid. With so much water, I was afraid the body was fatter than Shaq.

Neither was possible, which left only one extreme situation—the liquid may be antiseptic medicine poured into the coffin when it was buried. This was indeed more likely, because this coffin's black water emitted a strong smell of traditional Chinese medicine.

There was also an interesting legend here, which I might not have mentioned before—in ancient China, people used the liquid in coffins as a medicine guide. This legend sounded strange, but its origin was reasonable because the antiseptic medicine poured into coffins contained a very rare ingredient, which was lost in the late Ming Dynasty. If the world wanted to use this drug, the only way was to have the patient go to a tomb to find the liquid containing this ingredient.

However, there were too many quack doctors at that time, and they were misinformed. As a result, many patients vomited and had diarrhea because they drank the liquid from the ancient coffins. In addition, arsenic and cinnabar were placed in the coffins to prevent insects from getting in and to keep the coffin dry. The liquid in the coffins was highly toxic and instantly killed people.

This bad habit spread to modern times, and Lu Xun was also deeply affected by it—he hated traditional Chinese medicine for a reason.

I felt uneasy when I looked at this coffin's black water, and knew that if there was anything in the coffin, it would have sunk to the bottom. I didn't know what would happen, but the feeling that the large volume of water would overflow quickly creeped me out, and I kept imagining something terrible under there.

Biao Gong and the others naturally weren't afraid. They put down the crowbars, gathered together by the edge of the coffin, and carefully looked into the black water.

It was black water, of course, but the cloudy light formed the illusion that it was ink. Biao Gong lit up one end of some paper money and held it close to the water.

When I looked at it from a distance under the firelight, I saw that the black water was so deep that it seemed as if there was no bottom.

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Chapter end