I saw her again twenty years later.
At the time, I was a mortician at Qinglongshan Funeral Home.
The job is simple: to stitch up mutilated corpses so that the deceased can see their families one last time with dignity.
Although these days there are no cruel punishments like beheading, dismemberment by five horses, or waist-cutting as in ancient times.
However, the condition of the corpses that require our help in preparing their remains is no less complex and tragic than that of the remains of those who suffered severe torture in ancient times.
Especially the bodies of those involved in car accidents, their appearance is even more unsightly.
Either the head was separated from the body, or the body was cut in half at the waist, with organs spilling out all over the ground.
...
Before the girl's body was brought in, my colleague Su Mingyang and I received a notification from the curator, Sister Wu, saying that there was a big client and we should be on standby at any time.
At 11 p.m. sharp, a medium-sized van slowly drove into the funeral home.
As soon as the car came to a stop, a tall, thin man got out of the passenger seat.
Eight burly men then got out of two more Maybachs.
Sister Wu quickly went to greet her.
After exchanging fewer than two sentences, the man waved for the eight men who had come to drive the cargo box.
As the carriage door opened, a huge black coffin appeared before our eyes.
The coffin was carved with images of Qilin and densely packed mantras for rebirth, and it was bound with hemp rope in a nine-square grid pattern.
In the center of each square of the 3x3 grid, a copper bell is tied.
At the end of the rope knot, a rune was drawn in cinnabar. While we were examining the coffin, Sister Wu and the man finished their conversation.
"Chen Yan, you and Xiao Su take them to Hall 3," Sister Wu called out to us.
Upon hearing this, both Su Mingyang and I were taken aback.
Judging from their demeanor, they certainly don't seem like the kind of people who would put a corpse in Hall 3.
Shouldn't it be like the luxurious large freezer in Hall 1 or 2, or a suite?
Hall 3 is the worst morgue in our area.
It is a single-story house built with hollow bricks.
Inside were three stone mortuary beds, without even a refrigeration function.
If it's hot, the smell will come out within half a day.
However, Hall No. 3 has an advantage that Halls No. 1 and No. 2 cannot match: it allows people to keep vigil and burn paper money to worship the deceased.
Unlike Halls One and Two, where only electronic incense can be lit and no one can stay overnight to keep watch.
Upon arriving at Hall Number Three, the eight people put down the coffin and hurriedly left.
"Hey, why are you running away! Aren't you going to leave someone to keep watch at night?" Su Mingyang shouted at the eight men.
But not a single one turned back; they ran even faster.
As soon as the group left, Su Mingyang couldn't wait to start pulling the ropes off the coffin.
Taking burial items from the dead is already an open secret in this industry.
Even if they don't take it now, they'll take it before it's burned, and the family won't come back looking for it anyway.
Even if they come looking for us, we can just say these things can't go into the crematorium and return them.
"Don't move!"
I quickly reached out and grabbed his arm.
Su Mingyang was startled by my sudden action: "What are you doing?"
I glared at him: "Are you out of your mind? Do you know why there's hemp rope wrapped around the coffin? It's to prevent the corpse from rising from the dead, so they use the Nine Palaces Soul Locking Knot to suppress the soul."
Su Mingyang scoffed dismissively.
"Stop with those feudal superstitions, like the Nine Palaces Soul Locking Knot or the Eight Trigrams Soul-Suppressing Coffin Nails. Those are all old feudal beliefs. I don't even know how many corpses I've burned. If you're so capable, let's see if it can 'explode' something."
Seeing that I was standing still, Su Mingyang urged again, "Hey Lao Chen, if you don't open the coffin, how are you going to prepare the body for burial?"
That makes sense.
Before I could even speak, Su Mingyang had already unlocked the Nine Palaces Soul-Locking Knot.
He arrogantly declared, "Now that we're on our turf, dragons have to coil up and tigers have to lie low. If any dare to rise from the dead, I'll throw them into the crematorium and pop them into popcorn."
No sooner had he finished speaking than a loud "bang" came from inside the coffin.
The coffin lid was slightly pushed up with a crack.
It looked like there were two hands inside, pushing upwards with all their might.
Su Mingyang's hand, which was reaching for the coffin lid, suddenly froze in mid-air. His legs went weak, and he sat down on the ground with a thud.
His eyes were fixed on the trembling coffin, and he could barely speak.
"I...I...I..."
The sound stuck in his throat, and he couldn't utter the next word for a long time.
Although I have no emotions and don't know fear, my body instinctively took a few steps back.
This instinct is not based on emotional fear, but rather on a self-protective mechanism that the body has evolved over a long period of time.
Just like when a person encounters a wild beast that suddenly pounces on them, their body may automatically trigger a stress response, such as dodging or running away.
With another muffled thud from the coffin, Su Mingyang finally came to his senses.
"Holy crap! It's come back to life!"
He screamed and scrambled toward the door.
I turned around and rushed out.
When I got to the door, I turned around and closed the iron gate, then picked up a piece of rebar that was on the ground and wedged it horizontally onto the doorknob.
Unless that thing inside can break the solid rebar, it definitely won't be able to get out.
By the time I finished doing all that, I found that Su Mingyang had already disappeared.
When I found him, the kid was squatting in the corner of the warehouse, hugging his legs and trembling, his face deathly pale.
"What's going on... This can't be... How could a corpse come back to life? It's never happened before..."
"Hallucinations, all hallucinations!"
Su Mingyang was a body transporter at the crematorium, and he went out to the field much more often than I did.
It's no exaggeration to say that he has moved more corpses than many people have crossed bridges.
But at this moment, he was so frightened that he was somewhat out of his mind.
After about ten minutes, Su Mingyang calmed down a little, but his eyes still showed some fear.
"Old Chen, you heard that sound just now too?"
I nodded and said, "I heard it, it rang twice."
Su Mingyang's face darkened further, and he swallowed hard. "Do you think... it's possible that she's not dead? Like those cases online, it's a case of feigned death, and the knocking we heard earlier was her calling for help from inside?"
It is indeed not uncommon for people to be pronounced dead by the hospital and then cremated at the funeral home.
A few years ago, a few of my buddies were drinking together and ended up all suffering from alcohol poisoning and then appearing to be dead.
One of them had some influence locally, and his family used their connections to get him to be the first to burn the 'first furnace' (a type of incense burner).
As a result, everyone else survived the next day.
Another case involved a young woman.
A few hours before preparing to move the crematorium furnace, they encountered a crematorium worker who was lustful.
Who knew that halfway through the work, the corpse suddenly woke up, almost scaring everyone to death.
There are countless cases like this, especially in the past when medical technology was underdeveloped, and countless people were burned alive.
I thought for a moment and said, "We'll know once we go back and take a look."
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