Wang the Limper's frantic screams still echoed in their ears, venomous fangs hooking into everyone's nerves.
A sudden chill shot down Li Erwa's spine. He leaned against the cold coffin, the icy touch at his fingertips spreading through his veins, chilling him ten times more than the storm when he'd searched for his father. His gaze swept unconsciously over the heavy, pitch-black cypress coffin. Its dark, glossy lacquer reflected the distorted faces of himself and the surrounding villagers, as if the coffin had become a deep, turgid, polluted pool. What lay inside... was it still his kind-faced father, the man praised by everyone in the village?
The heavy box sat silently in the center of the room. In the dim, flickering candlelight, it seemed to radiate a heavy, cold gaze that pierced the wood, silently locking onto Erwa's back, freezing him to the core. Melted candle wax from the bier dripped slowly down the coffin's edges, snaking like blood.
Fourth Day, Early Morning: Time for the Funeral Procession.
The sky remained oppressively low. Thick, leaden clouds pressed down on the mountain ridges as if poised to crash down and swallow the tiny village. Not a breath of wind stirred; the air hung thick and suffocating. Sticky, stagnant dampness clung to every patch of skin.
Eight bearers – the strongest young men the village could muster – surrounded the black coffin. Heavy carrying poles, thick as a man's wrist and made of seasoned mountain bamboo, were slotted and firmly lashed to the coffin ends.
"Heeeaaave—up!" roared Li the Third, the lead bearer, his voice rough and loud.
The eight men swallowed hard, tendons bulging on their foreheads and necks! Their feet dug into the muddy ground, backs arched, every ounce of strength pouring into the lift! The thick carrying poles groaned and creaked under the strain of eight sets of iron-muscled arms.
The coffin refused to budge an inch.
It sat immovable on the plank bier, like a lump of lead welded to the earth by an invisible mountain.
"Damn it, what devilry is this?" Heiniu growled, sweat and mud streaking his face. A flicker of fear showed in his wide eyes, quickly drowned by stubborn anger. "Again! I don't believe it!"
"Heeeaaave—up! Up! UP!" The guttural shouts rose again.
Eight shoulders strained once more. Their stomping feet churned the mud into bubbling slop, sinking them ankle-deep. The air filled with the sour tang of sweat and labored breathing. The black coffin merely rocked slightly, then settled back onto the wet planks as if fused to the bier itself. It felt as though whatever lay within harbored a heavy, terrifying determination not to leave its home.
A low murmur rippled through the funeral procession. Images from the night before flooded every mind: Wang the Limper's blood-smeared, desperate face, his broken spectacles dangling, his shrieking warning. The same people who had cursed him for nonsense now felt an icy, bone-deep fear crawl up their spines like a thousand cold insects silently gnawing towards their brains.
Eyes darted and met, then skittered away. Fear spread like an invisible plague. No one spoke, yet Wang the Limper's words echoed in their skulls like the vilest curse.
"More men!" Li Erwa pushed through the crowd, striding forward. His voice was hoarse and trembling, veins throbbing at his temples. His eyes were fixed on the coffin, as if trying to pin down any potential living thing inside with his glare. "Hold it! Whatever it takes, my father goes up the mountain today!" He grabbed an empty spot on a pole and slammed his shoulder against the cold wood.
Four more young men gritted their teeth and squeezed in. Over a dozen hands and shoulders now shouldered the dark funerary box.
"Heeeaaave—YAAAH!"
This time, the head of the coffin lifted a grudging inch!
Just then, a small pool of thick liquid began to seep slowly from a corner of the coffin base near one of the poles... It wasn't ordinary rainwater. It was a deeper, darker hue, almost ink-like, carrying a faint, indescribable scent – sickly sweet, like stale blood mixed with melted candle wax. A single drop of the black, viscous fluid gathered in a moisture-swollen knot in the wood of the pole. It trembled in the dead, still air for a moment, then—
Plop.
It fell, landing squarely beside Li Erwa's mud-caked canvas shoe.
Erwa froze as if struck by lightning. All his strength vanished. He stared dumbly downward.
The ink-like, filthy sludge was quickly swallowed and diluted by the muddy water at his feet, leaving no trace. But the cold, slimy sensation it left ignited a freezing blast deep within Erwa's soul! It hadn't felt like water... more like... the slime of some living thing!
A sudden whirlwind tore across the threshing ground, whipping up scattered spirit money like ghostly white butterflies. They slapped against the bearers' sweaty, fear-streaked faces and hands, feeling like the scratch of cold fingernails. The wind also caught the white funeral banners at the coffin's corners, making them snap and rustle like a chorus of lament.
"Go... go!" Erwa's voice was raw, like sandpaper. He shouldered the pole again, refusing to look at the coffin base.
Under the unimaginable weight, the dozen men moved with labored, dragging steps, sinking deep into the rain-sodden mud. Each footstep pulled up wet sludge and the fetid stench of rotting roots. The winding funeral procession moved silently out of the muddy village and onto the path leading deeper into the shadowed ancestral graveyard woods behind the village.
The black coffin swayed slightly with the arduous progress, groaning and creaking on the straining shoulders of the men.
Inside the coffin, Li Erwa's father – the man who'd been honest and hardworking his whole life – his feet, said to have been icy cold from the mud and gore at his death, seemed to be digging their heels in with all their might, clinging fiercely to the rough, pale sackcloth lining the bottom.
The procession moved further away, swallowed by the denser shadows of the mountain slope. Those who had stayed behind at the village entrance to watch them leave down the yellow-earth path didn't disperse. They looked up at the sky. The thick, black, leaden clouds churned and roiled with increasing violence, seeming ready to crash down. A mountain wind suddenly whipped up, howling through the gaps between the desolate fields and crumbling mud-brick houses with a sharp, mournful wail.
Someone sniffed the air hard and muttered softly:
"What's that smell?"
It was like... the scent of decay, something long buried and rotted boneless, yet bloated by the rain... silently seeping into every crack between brick and tile in the village.