Chapter 17: Seizing Yang, Exchanging Life at the Wild Maoshan

I had no idea who this Xiao Sun was. Twenty minutes later, a young man with glasses, slender and refined in appearance, drove a heavily modified Haval H9—transformed into a monstrous beast—directly to the grave of Zhang Zhi Yuan.

“Mr. Jiang,” he greeted anxiously after getting out of the car, making his way to my grandfather.

My grandfather nodded, then called me over. “This is Sun Tianyu, our client,” he introduced.

Then, turning to Sun Tianyu, he introduced me, “This is my grandson, Jiang Huai.”

I nodded at Sun Tianyu, still puzzled by the situation. My grandfather continued, “Alright, let’s open the coffin. We must finish before dawn.”

Sun Tianyu said to me, “Come with me.”

He retrieved two industrial electric drills from the back seat, connected them to his car’s power supply, and handed one to me.

Gripping his drill tightly, Sun Tianyu swallowed hard. At the edge of the grave, he looked at me and asked, “Shall I help you? Open the coffin?”

I was about to agree—it would be much easier with help—but my grandfather stopped him, insisting that I do it alone.

Fine, alone it is. With both drills in hand, I jumped down into the grave.

The roar of the drill against the concrete was deafening, making my ears ring. Wary of my recently healed eardrums, I stuffed cotton balls into my ears.

With the noise dulled, I felt much better. As I drilled through the thick cement atop the coffin, my mind wandered—what was the connection between Sun Tianyu and Zhang Shancai’s daughter? Why had my grandfather agreed to open the coffin at Sun Tianyu’s request at such an odd hour?

By five thirty, the sky had already begun to brighten. Finally, I broke through the cement layer covering the coffin lid.

Stretching slightly, I aimed the drill at the coffin board itself.

After several more thunderous bursts, I broke through the planks entirely.

Setting the drill aside, I peered inside the coffin.

What I saw would haunt me for the rest of my life.

There was no odor of decay, only a heavy stench of asphalt.

The smell emanated from the corpse’s skin. The woman looked as though she had bathed in a pool of tar—her entire body covered in thick black pitch.

More disturbingly, her eyes were wide open and her mouth agape, as if she had died mid-roar.

Long bloody scratch marks covered the inside of the coffin.

I stood there, frozen as if struck by lightning.

Even a fool could see what had happened—the woman had been buried alive and suffocated to death in the coffin.

The depth of the bloody marks on the coffin walls bore testament to her utter despair.

Was she Zhang Zhi Yuan?

Countless questions flooded my mind.

As I climbed out of the grave, a cold wind swept over me, sending a chill down my spine.

Hell on earth could be no worse than this.

Sun Tianyu saw me emerge and immediately rushed to the edge for a look. As he passed me, I instinctively grabbed his arm.

He frowned, puzzled. “What are you doing?”

“What’s your relationship with Zhang Zhi Yuan?” I asked.

He claimed he had nothing to do with her.

That left me even more confused. I looked at my grandfather, perplexed, then released Sun Tianyu.

He stepped to the edge, uttered a brief cry of shock, and then I heard a dull thud—he had fainted and tumbled headlong into the coffin.

My grandfather, exasperated, hurried over. “Why didn’t you stop him? What are you standing there for? Get him out of there!”

A little later, Sun Tianyu lay unconscious in the back seat of his own car, while my grandfather and I stood beside the coffin, both of us frowning deeply. By now, the first rays of dawn were upon us, but our faces showed no sign of life.

“Within the Black Sha Coffin lies the living dead. Stealing life and exchanging fate—the Wild Maoshan Art,” my grandfather recited.

The Wild Maoshan arts are a double-edged sword. They can save lives—or take them without a trace.

It is not the art itself that is evil, but the hands that wield it.

The technique of stealing life to exchange fate can either restore or destroy. It is said this method can revive someone who has been dead no more than seven days.

First, one must find a person whose birth date and time match the deceased. This substitute is buried in place of the dead. Seven hours before burial, a ritual is performed. The substitute’s body is coated in black resin—asphalt, as I had just seen—and he is fed a secret concoction that induces a deathlike state.

Once the resin dries, the deceased’s birth date and name are carved into the substitute’s back. He is then sealed in the coffin, which is cemented shut and buried.

When the substitute awakens inside the coffin, he slowly dies in utter despair. The original deceased then absorbs the remaining lifespan of the one who died in his place.

The practitioner must then capture the substitute’s soul and scatter it, leaving no trace for the underworld to find—no evidence of this stolen fate.

This is the vilest of dark arts. Though it can save lives, all beings are equal—who has the right to sacrifice one life for another? To do so is to defy the heavens.

When my grandfather tried to teach me this in the past, I swore I would never learn it; I’d never need it, I said.

But he told me that just because I might not use it didn’t mean others wouldn’t. I should learn it not to practice, but to recognize and counter it.

The most useless phrase in the world is “I thought.” I thought I’d never encounter such things in my life—yet at eighteen, here I was.

I turned to my grandfather. “Grandpa, who is this in the coffin? You oversaw Zhang Zhi Yuan’s burial, so—?”

He cut me off with a wave. “You little brat, are you suspecting me now? Enough nonsense. Get down there and bring the corpse up. And check if there’s a corpse-suppressing talisman carved on the lid near her feet.”