88: Weeping Before the Memorial Portrait

Burning the meal for the dead, also known as cooking for the dead, was a ritual by which one could establish contact with the departed if it was prepared in the proper way.

It was a rather obscure practice, far less common than spirit-inviting rites. After all, there were rarely cases in which someone had only just died and needed to be questioned at once.

Since I was already here, I might as well take it in stride.

Though I still held a deep prejudice against that woman, looking at it from another angle, this was a chance to sharpen my skills and build experience.

So I told Zhao Gen to prepare the things needed for the ritual meal.

Just as I was speaking, a sudden, thunderous crash erupted from the coffin beside us, the one holding Zhao Bayi.

This was not the first time I had heard noises from within a coffin, but a sudden blast like that still startled me badly. Zhao Gen was even more terrified; he flopped down onto the floor.

The sound was tremendous, as though someone were striking the inside with a sledgehammer. And that was only the beginning. The coffin began to tremble, as if Zhao Bayi were struggling inside.

“It’s making noise again,” Zhao Gen said, his face drained white, his whole body shaking.

The bench supporting the coffin was already groaning under the strain of the vibration, and I grew anxious as well. At this rate, the bench would sooner or later give way and the coffin would crash to the ground.

A coffin kept in the house must never touch the floor. Once it did, ill fortune would follow.

When I came, I had no idea I would need to do this, and I hadn’t brought even a single talisman. I swept my gaze around the room, looking for something that could suppress the coffin, and then I noticed the shattered eggshells on the floor.

Zhao Gen had said that before the woman left, she told him to prepare ten eggs scented with incense. Whenever Zhao Bayi became restless in the coffin, he was to smash eggs against it.

That day, the coffin had rumbled three times, and three broken eggs already lay on the floor.

I did not know why incense-scented eggs could suppress Zhao Bayi, but the urgency of the moment left no room for thought. I rushed to the doorway, grabbed an egg from the basket, and smashed it hard against the coffin.

The coffin, which had only a moment before been clattering, fell silent the instant the egg struck it.

That easy?

I stared in blank amazement. If I had not tested it myself, I would never have imagined that incense-scented eggs could suppress a corpse rising into unrest. I could not understand how my grandmother had failed to know such a simple method.

Once the coffin settled, the front hall grew quiet again. I looked at Zhao Bayi’s coffin, my teeth biting my lower lip, and tried to figure out why this had happened.

The egg fell, and the coffin calmed, but under my spiritual sight I could clearly see that at the spot where the egg had struck, a surge of resentment had seeped out and merged with the rest.

This was highly abnormal.

Resentment is invisible, yet it still exists. Like air, it cannot pass through solid objects. When I first entered and saw the resentment around Zhao Bayi’s coffin, I had assumed it was seeping through some crack in the lid. Now, having seen it with my own eyes, I knew I had been wrong.

The incense-scented eggs did indeed suppress the corpse, but clearly they had another effect as well. Otherwise, why would the resentment inside the coffin not emerge earlier or later, and why would it not come out from anywhere else, but only from the place struck by the egg?

The question nagged at me so much that I almost rushed into the room to ask the woman why, but I stopped myself before taking a step.

From her attitude earlier, I knew that even if I went in to ask, I would only be humiliating myself. She had treated me with even more indifference than she had Zhao Gen, a stranger who had come to her door early in the morning.

Since the eggs could suppress Zhao Bayi, I did not overthink it. I called Zhao Gen over and urged him to hurry up and prepare the remaining things so I could cook the ritual meal for Zhao Bayi as soon as possible and find out what he was really up to.

Just as I had barely begun speaking, the coffin, quiet for only three minutes, suddenly let out another deafening crash and began shaking violently again, just as before.

“Damn it.”

I had not expected Zhao Bayi to start making trouble again so soon. I dashed to the doorway, snatched up another egg, and hurled it hard at the coffin.

I thought the egg would silence it, but after it burst against the wood, nothing changed. The coffin kept shaking.

It did not work?

I froze, then instinctively looked down at the eggs in the basket. Maybe the one I had just thrown had not been properly scented. I picked up another and smashed it against the coffin.

Hope turned to despair. Just like before, the egg shattered against the coffin and had no effect at all.

Two eggs in a row had failed. That told me trouble was brewing.

There were ten eggs in all, each one scented with incense. The first four had worked, yet these last two had not.

There was only one explanation for that. Either these two eggs had not been properly scented, and therefore failed to achieve the intended effect, or something had changed inside the coffin and Zhao Bayi could no longer be suppressed by eggs.

The truth was easy enough to verify.

I picked up a third egg and smashed it against the coffin. Still nothing. Then I took a fourth and threw it as well. Still nothing.

By then I was certain: it was not that the eggs had lost their power. It was that Zhao Bayi in the coffin had changed since before.

There were many ways to suppress a corpse, but I had nothing ready to hand here.

As the coffin rocked more and more fiercely, I gritted my teeth, stepped onto the bench beside it, and climbed onto the lid. The resentment swirling around the coffin suddenly surged toward me, clearly meaning to stop me from interfering.

Ordinary people, when struck by resentment, might suffer a minor illness at best or a chronic affliction at worst. But I was not afraid, because while studying under my grandmother, she had carved special incantations onto my body.

Those protective incantations could block harm from yin energy, resentment, and similar forces.

Since I had nothing else, I would have to suppress the corpse with blood.

The wound on my palm, which I had injured earlier while saving Xu Buhuo, had only just scabbed over. Enduring the pain, I tore the scab open with force until fresh blood welled up.

Using my finger as a brush and blood as ink, I began to write.

The swirling resentment made it hard to see under my spiritual sight, so I simply closed it and quickly inscribed the incantation across the coffin lid. Zhao Bayi, sensing that I was about to suppress him, made the coffin tremble even more violently.

“Come hold this down,” I growled at Zhao Gen, who was already too frightened to think. He snapped out of it and hurried over to brace one end of the coffin.

With that opening, I continued drawing the spell.

When the incantation was complete, I stood atop the coffin and gave a low shout. My hand seal moved with my step, and I stomped hard down on the lid.

A heavy thud rang out, and Zhao Bayi’s coffin finally settled.

Suppressing a corpse with blood was more effective than using eggs. Unless Zhao Bayi became even fiercer, he would not be causing such scenes again anytime soon.

I climbed down from the coffin and wiped the blood from my hand with something nearby before sinking into the chair beside me. I had already been hungry, and after using such force just now, my limbs felt weak and loose. Zhao Gen came up to thank me, and since my stomach was cramping with hunger, I could only ask whether there was anything to eat.

When he said there were only noodles, I told him to bring me a bowl at once.

After Zhao Gen went out, I opened my spiritual sight again. For a moment I thought it had failed, because I could no longer see the resentment around the coffin. But after looking more carefully outside, I confirmed that my sight was indeed open.

The resentment that had earlier coiled around the coffin seemed to have dispersed entirely now that Zhao Bayi had been suppressed.

Strange.

As I paced around the coffin, I kept trying to recall everything Zhao Gen had told me before. Even after he brought the noodles over, I still could not figure out what hidden problem was at work here.

But instinct told me that this was no ordinary case of a corpse rising.

After much thought, I finally concluded that only by cooking the ritual meal for the dead could I understand what had truly happened to Zhao Bayi.

Preparing that meal required quite a few things, and they were a mixed assortment at that. Night had already fallen, and Zhao Gen’s household had only some of them on hand. Thinking of this, I told him to hurry and prepare the rest at dawn.

After things quieted down, I burned incense and paper offerings for Zhao Bayi, and prayed in my heart that the blood-written suppression spell on the coffin lid would hold him down completely. Otherwise, we would have another miserable night ahead of us.

The mysterious woman had gone into the room after returning and had not come out once. Though I was curious about what she was doing in there, the memory of her terrifying presence quickly killed any thought of investigating.

I was exhausted, and by rights I did not need to keep vigil with Zhao Gen. But seeing his sallow face and lowered, weary eyes, I could tell he had not rested properly since his father’s trouble began, so I stayed to keep watch with him.

A funeral hall is a cold place for the dead. If no paper is burned, it only grows colder. At my request, Zhao Gen lit more incense, burned a great deal more paper, and even brought in a brazier, making the hall much warmer.

“L-Little master...”

I do not know how much time had passed when, just as I was dozing in a haze, Zhao Gen’s trembling voice suddenly jolted me awake.

Looking up, I saw him staring wide-eyed at the front of the coffin, as though he had witnessed something utterly horrifying.

“What is it?”

I stood and walked over, following the direction of his gaze. One look was enough to make my whole body shudder.

At the front of the coffin, blood-red tears were slowly streaming from the eyes in Zhao Bayi’s portrait.