Chapter Eight: The Coffin-Sealing Curse

What the exorcist said was a bit too horrifying.

Yet looking at his sweaty face and trembling body, it did not seem like he was lying.

Shocked by this sudden change, I hurried to the coffin and peered inside.

I wanted to see for myself how my squad leader had supposedly turned into a ghost, and why this con man had been scared nearly out of his wits.

In the coffin, my squad leader still lay rigid and straight. His features were unchanged from before: brows knotted, tongue protruding, hands clenched, his face full of sorrow.

But his eyes had suddenly opened.

Those cloudy eyes, wide and vacant, were angled toward me.

In that blur of bewilderment, it was as if he were staring at me, and as if he were staring through everything at once.

At once I understood that just now, when the exorcist had chanted the line about the ancestral masters opening the eyes of heaven, my squad leader’s eyes really had opened.

Though I had not seen it happen with my own eyes, I could easily imagine the terror of it: the moment the willow branch was smeared over his eyes, and he suddenly opened them.

Instinctively, my heart lurched.

Then, strangely, I felt something else.

Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I sensed that those once-dull, unfocused eyes were trying to send me some sort of message.

After all, we had all heard superstitions like this before: that the dead who could not rest in peace had some lingering attachment to the living world, some unfinished concern they could not set down.

In my distress, staring at my squad leader’s half-open eyes, I cried out in anguish, "Squad leader, what is it you want to say? Why have you opened your eyes again?"

In the silence, my sudden cry exploded like a bomb and set everyone in an uproar.

In the chaos, Zhao Hong was just as astonished as I was. He craned his neck to look into the coffin. Little A-Si was too short to see anything and only stared in confusion. Zhao Haikun painfully rolled his wheelchair toward us, but his movements were too slow. As soon as Gui Yuxiu heard that the squad leader had opened his eyes again, she went mad, shaking her heavy jowls as she screamed, "He’s risen! He’s risen!"

In short, the whole scene was in utter disorder.

Among all these people, the most grotesque by far was still that so-called exorcist who claimed to wield the Six Meridian Divine Sword.

At last, the exorcist recovered from his earlier fright. He glanced down at his seven-star vest and immediately realized he had once again lost control.

Then he put back on that cold, dead face of his, trembling all over his skin and bones, and howled at the coffin, "You vile, untimely dead spirit! I have scattered your funeral money and arranged your ghost marriage, yet you still dare bring calamity to the human world! Wait until I invoke my treasure and subdue you!"

As he spoke, he kept shouting some incantation, then hurried out of the squad leader’s funeral hall and dashed toward the incense altar in his own ritual hall.

Amid the confusion, I stood by my squad leader’s coffin without moving, coldly watching him.

I wanted to see how long this con man could keep up his act.

The exorcist, acting in a most uncharacteristic way, took off his vest and revealed a body as thin as a rack of lamb. He gathered his breath and chanted, then suddenly shouted and grabbed a handful of glutinous rice from a wooden box, flinging it hard onto the candles of his altar.

With a flurry of crackling pops, the rice scattered everywhere, carrying the smell of scorching smoke.

Seizing the moment, the exorcist stamped his foot, let out a few farts, and then resumed chanting his broken spell in a nonstop stream.

I simply could not stand this old fraud anymore. Did he think I had never played jump rope before? What he was chanting was not a spell at all, but a children’s rhyme.

Fed up, I spat at him and shouted, "Move faster, damn you! If my squad leader jumps up, he’ll strangle you first!"

At my words, that bastard’s veins bulged all at once. He barked a few times, then suddenly bent down again. I had no idea what he was fiddling with beneath the altar.

Under my mocking gaze, he tinkered for quite a while before finally crawling back out from under the altar.

In his hand was a palm-sized trigram mirror.

The mirror was crudely made; anyone could tell at a glance it was cheap street-vendor junk, the kind that cost only a few dollars. A talisman had been stuck onto its surface, barely giving it any connection to the words "mystic arts."

Yet in this fraud’s mouth, it had become a treasure capable of slaying demons and vanquishing evil.

After taking out the mirror, he advanced step by step toward my squad leader’s funeral hall.

All the while, he did not forget to boast about his precious object, saying, "This sacred mirror was once used to suppress the First Emperor of Qin. I bought it from a tomb-raider on the black market for a thousand yuan. It was blessed by Master Windborne of the Shaolin Temple in Yunnan, and it was even empowered by my family’s inherited Six Meridian Divine Sword..."

Ah. By the time he said all that, I had already gone completely numb.

Did this bastard’s mouth not answer to his brain? Did he just say whatever crossed his mind? And yet how could such a painfully unconvincing fraud have Zhao’s family completely under his thumb?

I truly could not understand it.

At that moment, the shameless windbag finally climbed up onto the funeral dais.

Then, without a word, he handed the mirror straight to me.

"What for?" I asked in surprise.

"You hold the mirror and reflect it onto his face. Then he’ll naturally be subdued, and his eyes will close."

With that, the exorcist shoved the mirror into my hand and kept backing away, as if he greatly feared my squad leader’s face.

I stood there holding the mirror, utterly dumbfounded.

What was this supposed to mean? He was the one performing the exorcism, so why was I the one who had to shine the mirror?

I was thoroughly dissatisfied, and I certainly was not going to do something so absurd. Most important of all, I felt this would be a grave disrespect to the dead.

My squad leader opening his eyes might simply have been a sign that his nerves had not yet died, a natural reaction to the cold water and willow branch that bastard had used.

What was there to reflect at?

I could not stop the Zhao family from making a scene, but I also was not going to help a villain abuse his power. So I did not move the hand holding the mirror. Instead, I tilted my head and asked that bastard, word by word, "Why don’t you do it yourself?"

"I..." The exorcist’s eyes rolled around wildly. After a long while, he finally thought of an excuse: "To shine the mirror on a fierce ghost, it only works if the person is someone familiar with him. You were comrades in arms. You can do it... I can’t!"

I gave a cold laugh and handed the mirror back to him. "If you’re scared, just say so. There’s no need to keep lying here. I’m not doing it, and neither will anyone else."

I had thought that, seeing me refuse to cooperate, he would soften up and get lost. But to my surprise, he snorted at me and instantly shifted from coaxing to threatening.

The exorcist was afraid of ghosts, but when it came to scaring people, he was quite capable. Suddenly, he raised those five spindly fingers again and gestured at me, saying, "If you don’t go, I’ll stab you to death with the Six Meridian Divine Sword!"

Looking at those five fingers that could pierce a tabletop, my heart tightened.

Everything else about him was fake, but the skill in those fingers was real.

Yet all his behavior had already enraged me to the point of boiling over. Even if he did not strike me, I wanted to beat him myself.

In anger, my hand secretly slipped into my trouser pocket, gripping the military knife I carried, the one strong enough to finish him in a single blow.

I had already made up my mind. If he dared make trouble, I would end this infuriating farce in the bloodiest way possible.

Amid Gui Yuxiu’s hysterical shrieking, the exorcist and I stood locked in a stalemate.

He spread five fingers and slowly aimed them at my throat.

Meanwhile, I tightened my grip on the military knife, carefully measuring the veins and bones in his arm.

If he moved, I would strike. If he stabbed, I would kill. If I was maimed, he would die.

The two of us glared at each other, locked in a dead standstill.

Then something happened that broke us both.

At the very moment we were at a knife’s edge, my hysterical sister-in-law Gui Yuxiu, who had been screaming about the dead rising, suddenly rushed over.

She shouted at me, "If you don’t dare shine it, then get out of the way! I’ll do it!"

Then Gui Yuxiu snatched the Qin bone-viewing mirror straight from my hand.

Her astonishing action left us both stunned.

After taking the mirror, Gui Yuxiu immediately aimed it at my squad leader’s head.

"Second Brother, just die in peace! Stop tormenting your brother and sister-in-law. I’ll burn more paper for you later, and let your wife live well with you..."

The chaotic scene suddenly fell silent.

Everyone stared wide-eyed at her actions.

It had all happened too suddenly; none of us had reacted in time. By the time everyone understood what was happening, my squad leader’s face was already caught in the mirror’s reflection.

For that instant, it felt as though my heart had stopped beating.

No one knew what would happen next.

After a brief hush, the exorcist and I rushed forward at the same time and looked into the coffin in stunned silence.

Inside, my squad leader’s vacant eyes were still open.

I reached out to feel for his breath, even lifted his face in my hands, and he still gave no reaction.

That cheap trigram mirror had no effect at all. The exorcist’s lies were exposed without any need for further argument.

"Enough!" I snatched the mirror from Gui Yuxiu and hurled it back at the exorcist, kicking him in the backside as I shouted, "You fraud! Haven’t you made enough of a scene? Get the hell out of here! And spit back every cent of the Zhao family’s money!"

My words won the sympathy of everyone present. Even Gui Yuxiu, who had just been wildly superstitious about his supposed divine might, scratched her head and asked him, "Master, why is Second Brother still keeping his eyes open after we shined the mirror on him? Could he turn into a zombie?"

Little A-Si joined in the clamor as well. "The exorcist’s magic doesn’t work anymore! He’s a fraud!"

Under our relentless heckling, this so-called exorcist quickly lost the upper hand.

Still, to give him credit for his nerves, he could remain alone and stranded in such a state, flipping through the mirror while muttering to himself without panic, "How could it not work? Let this master take a look... I’ve found the reason!"

He had only looked at the mirror once before letting out a ghastly scream, then raised it high for us to see the thing reflected within.

Pointing at the mirror, he suddenly found his confidence again and told us, "You all saw it, didn’t you? Zhao Haipeng has already become a ferocious ghost, and this mirror is the best proof!"

As he spoke, I had already raised my eyes and was staring at the scene inside the mirror.

And in my heart, I could only groan in misery.