Daomu Biji extra1 part10

The black water in that coffin felt very strange. Seen from above, it wasn't like looking at water held in a container, but like the water in a well. The water wasn't pure, and debris could be seen to be deposited underneath, but if I looked deeper, I couldn't see the bottom of the coffin at all. It was as dark as an abyss, and gave me the illusion that the coffin was connected to another world.

Of course, this was impossible. The coffin wasn't deep, only about the height of one arm. The water wasn't like ink, so how could such an illusion be created? I felt that it may be due to precipitation that a large amount of impurities were deposited at the bottom, preventing the light from passing through.

Just as I was thinking all of this, Biao Gong poked his crowbar into the black water and stirred it. As expected, the water in the coffin darkened and many floating objects could be seen. The smell of traditional Chinese medicine was also more intense.

I didn't know if the black water was poisonous, but no matter what was inside, it was definitely unwise to touch it with bare hands. After muttering a few times, Biao Gong called my father to help and asked him to clean up the water.

As he spoke, he picked up the washbasin we used for burning paper money from the floor and dumped the ashes out so we could use it to hold the water. Then another old man clenched his teeth and inserted a crowbar into a slit in the coffin, prying a bigger gap out of the side with a crunch. The black water immediately flowed out of the gap and into the basin.

My father went to help, bringing three washbasins to catch the water. When one was full, he poured it into the ditch outside the back door of the ancestral hall. Even watching from a distance, I felt sick, but I could finally see the black water wasn't pouring out as fast now.

The first thing that emerged was an outstretched hand that had rotted and blackened in the water. The hand was claw-like and seemed to want to reach out to grab something.

Obviously, this person's death wasn't peaceful. In general, when a dead person was placed in a coffin, he would lie flat, but this posture made one feel that the person had died in a strange way.

Biao Gong's brow furrowed and he leaned over to look at the hand carefully. After looking at it for half a day, he suddenly took a breath and said, “Huh?”

Everyone else turned to look at him. He grabbed a pair of chopsticks, picked up something from that hand, and waved it in front of us: “What do you think this is?”

When we got closer, we found it was a river snail the size of a nail. The cover of the snail's shell hadn't been closed, but it was still unexpectedly alive.

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Chapter end

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