Volume 6 Chapter 17 The Whistle Coffin

When San Shu’s flashlight shone on the coffin and he saw the “person” for a moment, he almost had a rash all over his body, his scalp went numb, and he subconsciously backed away and took out the knife in his hand.

It wasn’t that San Shu was timid, but the situation was really weird. In such a secretive tomb, there was a “person” lying on top of the coffin.

In the blink of an eye, anyone would have been scared. During this time of fright, Xie Lianhuan also retreated to the side of Uncle San. He must have never had any problems in the arena, and he was so scared that his face changed, and he retreated so quickly that he stepped on Uncle San’s foot.

Uncle San was almost knocked over by him, but at this time, he turned on the flashlight and saw clearly what was on the coffin. It turned out to be a false alarm. The person on the coffin was a bronze figurine, tightly attached to the black coffin.

The bronze man’s relief sculpture was very strange, with flowing clouds and hair, an exaggerated face, and a bit like the Qin Dynasty’s Hundred-Play Figurines. His limbs were as thick and short as insect legs. The strangest thing was his mouth, which was not smiling or angry, but was actually wide open, as if screaming.

Uncle San looked at it and immediately felt a strange feeling in his heart. Most people pay attention to peace and tranquility, but this iron coffin and bronze man together are indescribably evil and strange, and something is wrong. Is this really the coffin of the tomb owner?

He shone his flashlight around, and the tomb chamber was clear at a glance. There was no other coffin. Obviously, if this is the main tomb chamber, this should indeed be the coffin of the tomb owner.

Uncle San believed in his intuition and was a little uneasy.

In order to take a closer look, he pushed open the interlocking doors and walked over. Upon closer inspection, he was even more surprised to discover that the huge black coffin was actually an iron coffin with carved decorations. What was even more peculiar was that the mouth of the bronze man was actually sunken into the lid of the coffin, creating a deep hole in the lid.

No! Uncle San let out a gasp of cold air as he looked at it, and then he suddenly remembered the clues.

A casket made of cast iron with a hole in it. Could this be the “whistle casket” that the old folks talked about?

The “whistle casket” is a term that was passed down before the liberation, and it goes back more than a hundred generations. Uncle San also heard the old man talk about it. It is said that at that time in the Xiangxi region, there was a warlord with a group of talented people under his command. The leader was named Zhang Yancheng, who was said to be the descendant of Cao Cao’s General Faqiu. He had supernatural powers, and his left hand had five incredibly long fingers that were almost even. He could raise mounds from the ground, taste the soil to find tombs, and was very good at tomb raiding. This warlord fought alongside Sun Yat-sen in the Northern Expedition. Zhang Yancheng was ordered to raise funds for the army, so he used ancient methods to rob tombs and travel north. He was very famous. At that time, there was a saying in Xiangxi, “When Yancheng arrives, the little ghosts jump, and even the King of Hell will change his route.” On the one hand, people were mythologized, and on the other hand, it was also possible to know the rampant tomb robbing activities of Zhang Yancheng.

This person had a special routine for tomb raiding. If he encountered a coffin that had been opened in a place with evil spirits, he would pour cow’s blood into the coffin to observe the coffin’s reaction. If there was a strange noise in the coffin, the owner of the coffin might have turned into a corpse. The soldiers will drag the coffin out of the tomb and expose it to the sun before opening it. If there is no movement in the coffin, then you have to look at the surface of the coffin. In most cases, the cow’s blood will not coagulate and will flow down the coffin to the bottom, which means that everything is fine and the coffin can be opened without harm.

However, there is another rather special situation, which is that after the cow’s blood is poured on, it is like pouring on sand and stones, and the blood seeps into the coffin. This is a more inauspicious sign than a corpse turning into a vampire, which means that the contents of the coffin may not be a human corpse.

If the contents of the coffin are not a human corpse, what is it? The answer is an inexplicable corpse. In China, this kind of thing is collectively referred to as a demon.

At this point, Zhang Yancheng would have someone dig a pit on the spot, sink the coffin in the pit, smear it with mud, melt weapons, and seal the coffin with molten iron. Only a hole large enough for one hand would be left at the top of the coffin. When the molten iron had solidified, he would use one hand to enter the coffin and retrieve the object inside.

When he was exploring the hole, he would have someone use a three-foot lute to cut off his arm. He would tie a “knob” to the tail of a horse so that if he felt anything wrong, the horse could be immediately pulled. The horse would be frightened and run, pulling the machine, and the extremely sharp lute scissors would immediately spin and cut, saving his life.

The coffin that was treated in this way, because there was a hole in it, would eventually become something like a giant iron whistle, so it was called a “whistle coffin.”

Zhang Yancheng used this finger-poking technique only three times in his life, and all three times he was able to get out with his whole arm. The best time he got out was when he took out a 24-scent gold grape from the coffin, which was only the size of a molar and was said to have been hidden in the corpse’s mouth. Zhang Yancheng later joined the warlord’s war and his whereabouts are unknown. Some say he joined the revolution and died in a refugee camp during the Cultural Revolution, while others say he died in Huanggu Tuen. In short, he was a mysterious figure.

There are two common theories about him among the old people. One is that he really had the special skill of finding buried treasure, and that his reputation for being able to probe holes with his fingers was well-deserved. The other is that Zhang Yancheng was a liar who used the common soldier’s superstitious fear of coffins to make ordinary coffins into demon coffins, and then put on a show to raise his own status.

No one knows the truth.

My grandfather believed that Zhang Yancheng was a master, because there was some circumstantial evidence that Zhang Yancheng had sealed the coffin with molten iron. It is said that a bronze coffin similar to the one Zhang Yancheng described was found in the silt of the Yellow River before the liberation. There was indeed a hole the size of an arm on the top of the coffin, but no one dared to reach in. The bold ones used fire tongs, but only managed to pinch out a lot of yellow silt from inside. Later, during the Great Leap Forward, the coffin was thrown directly into the steel furnace for smelting, and no one knows if anything happened.

This iron coffin, although exquisite, is completely different from the coffin that was cast with iron slag.

This is strange. This tomb room with a series of interlocking passages should be the tomb of the owner, but why is the main coffin on the coffin bed like this? Could it be that the tomb owner was not a human being, but a monster?

Uncle San felt a chill down his spine as he thought about this. The tomb was so strange and mysterious, and it was probably not a human tomb. He also thought about what Jude Kao had asked Xie Lianhuan to do, and couldn’t help but feel guilty. Could it be that Jude Kao knew that the tomb owner was not a human being, so he asked Xie Lianhuan to take pictures of it for research?

However, Uncle San was young at the time, and he didn’t take the old man’s words too seriously. Although he was a little scared, he wasn’t afraid. Instead, his curiosity was piqued, and he wondered what was inside.

At this point, Xie Lianhuan also realized that it was a false alarm, and he came over again, looking at the iron coffin with lingering fear. After looking around, he tried to push the lid.

Seeing that his feet were shaking, Uncle San knew that he was still scared. This behavior might be an attempt to show off in front of Uncle San and save face after being scared.

Uncle San felt amused and shone a flashlight at his face to tell him not to waste his effort. If this was a “whistle coffin,” it was obvious that the person who made it and Zhang Yancheng belonged to the same faction. The contents of this iron coffin were definitely not good, and the coffin was not built to be opened by anyone else. To get something from inside, you had to do what Zhang Yancheng did and put your hand into the hole in the coffin.

He climbed up and shone a flashlight into the hole in the coffin to see what he could see.

Looking down through the hole, the inside of the coffin was dark and indistinct. The flashlight was not a very good way to look, and the light was only half way through the hole. It was not a good idea to put your hand in and feel around.

Uncle San thought of the information that Xie Lianhuan had obtained from the foreigner, and felt that his guess was correct: the foreigner was so familiar with the structure here that he must have sent someone in to investigate before them, but why did the person who came in not complete the task? It is estimated that the person was also an old hand in this line like them, and when he came in and found that there was actually such an iron coffin inside, he knew that sealing the corpse in an iron coffin was no small matter, so he gave up temporarily. That is why the foreigner found a half-baked Xie Lianhuan.

In that case, they must not touch the coffin, otherwise they will be used as cannon fodder by this Jude Kao.

However, if they don’t touch the coffin, it seems a bit too cowardly. He and Xie Lianqian came down, and Xie Lianqian went out empty-handed, so it’s okay for him to go out like this. Besides, the coffin looks really tempting.

Uncle San couldn’t make up his mind, but then he thought about it and rationality prevailed. He thought to himself, “According to the experience of our ancestors, the coffin should be touched last. He should first look at the other treasures here. He won’t touch the coffin today, and the tomb won’t run away. Tomorrow night, they will come down again with fire tongs and black donkey hooves, which will be much safer than now.

He felt relieved and let Xie Lianhuan stay here. If they wanted to take pictures, they could take pictures of the coffin. The foreigner understood him and began to search the corners of the tomb chamber for other funerary objects.

This tomb chamber had no ear chamber and was a single space, with a very strange layout. The ancients were particular about the afterlife, and the layout of the tombs was generally modeled on the layout of the tomb owner’s life. That is to say, the place where the tomb owner lived before his death was also like this, and it was impossible to imagine what kind of situation it would be. There were no ordinary burial goods inside, only those priceless huge pieces of porcelain.

(These things, if placed in the present day, would probably be worth more than 3 billion yuan.)

Uncle San looked around the tomb chamber, but didn’t see anything that could be taken out, so he came back. Behind the coffin bed was a wall, so he went around to look behind the wall. There was still some space, but the ground was still empty.

He couldn’t help but curse, thinking to himself, “What a tightwad! How come there’s nothing here? Is the coffin so big and made of iron that the guy stuffed all the burial goods inside? Is this coffin being used as a safe?

It’s possible, he thought, and he couldn’t help feeling a little depressed. At that moment, he suddenly saw the back of the screen wall, with very intricate relief carvings.

The murals were worthless, but the stone carvings in the ancient tomb were priceless. Although the screen wall was very large and it was unlikely that it could be transported out, Uncle San couldn’t help but take a look when he saw it.

When he shone the flashlight, he was very surprised to see that the reliefs behind the screen were not ordinary auspicious beasts or Buddhist images, but rather several palaces with flying eaves, phoenix-shaped roofs, carved beams and painted rafters, all very finely carved. Even the tiles were carved and raised up one by one. Moreover, the appearance of each palace was different, some were two-story, some were one-story, and the visual effect was also far and near, with a sense of order. Uncle San counted and found that there were seven in total, arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper. Between each palace, one could see countless pavilions and towers half-hidden and half-revealed, while other details were obscured by the carved clouds and mists. The background of this relief is a huge mountain, obviously a large mountain, and the composition of the palace is in the lower part of the entire relief. The meaning is clear. This is seven palaces built in a huge valley. The valley is filled with clouds and mist, obscuring and hiding everything outside the palace in a mysterious way.

What does this relief mean? Uncle San was shocked. All the murals in the ancient tombs have a meaning. Either they symbolize something or they praise the achievements of the tomb owner during his lifetime. Does this relief represent the mythical fairyland, or is it praising the tomb owner?

At the time, Uncle San didn’t know that the tomb owner was Wang Zanghai, so he couldn’t make any associations. He told me that at the time, this screen was also priceless. If he could take it out, he would put it in his bedroom and look at it every day.

However, the screen was too large to be transported at that time, and although Uncle San was itching to take it away, there was nothing he could do. After looking at it several times, he wanted to call Xie Lianhuan over to take a picture of it so that he could brag about it to his peers later.

Just as he was about to speak, he suddenly smelled a strange smell, as if something had burned.

He was stunned and wondered what was going on. This was a tomb, so why was there such a smell? He hurriedly ran out of the screen and looked outside. Then he saw a scene that left him speechless.

He saw Xie Lianhuan standing on top of the iron coffin, at a loss as to what to do, and black smoke was billowing out of the mouth of the bronze man on the iron coffin.