Lin knelt on the cracked riverbed, his fingertips brushing over an exposed shinbone. Silt mixed with broken shells flowed out from his fingers, quickly hardening into grayish-white lumps under the scorching sun. This was the seventh day that the Yellow River had stopped flowing.
The turbid waves of the past disappeared, and the riverbed was like the belly of a giant beast that had been cut open, exposing white bones and rusted weapons. The diversion notice of the Sanmenxia Reservoir upstream said that this was a routine maintenance, but the old people in the village squatted in front of the Dragon King Temple to burn paper money, saying that the river god would always drain his own blood before taking people away.
"Lin! There''s something here!" The shouts of his cousin Dazhuang came with the sound of shovels hitting each other. There were seven or eight figures gathered in a depression three hundred meters away, and the semicircle posture reminded Lin of the crows overlooking the grave at a funeral.
He smelled a foul smell when he approached.
The dark coffin was inserted diagonally into the mud, with nine wrist-thick iron chains cross-bound, and the iron spikes at the ends deeply wedged into the riverbed. The coffin was covered with dark red spells, as if written with blood mixed with cinnabar, and the edges were charred and curled as if licked by fire. The most bizarre thing was the gelatinous black liquid seeping out from the gaps in the coffin lid, pungent white smoke rising from the dripping places, and corroding the river clam shells into honeycomb-like holes.
"During the Republic of China, the coffins of criminals were sunk. Opening such coffins will shorten your life..." The old village chief stepped back with his jujube wood cane, while several young men clenched their shovels and moved forward. Lin grabbed Da Zhuangju''s hand with the crowbar, and the hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up - he heard the sound of nails scratching inside the coffin.
Three green-headed flies hit the spells on the coffin and instantly exploded into a sticky slurry.
"Wait for the Cultural Relics Bureau..."
Lin''s dissuasion was drowned out by the sound of iron prying. The six men held the crowbars and shouted in unison. The coffin lid moved a palm width away with a tooth-grinding friction sound. The moment the black mist gushed out, Da Zhuang let out a scream that was not like a human voice.
When Lin rushed over, he saw his cousin''s face melting. The skin was drooping and dripping like wax oil under high temperature, revealing pink muscles and white cheekbones. The right hand wrapped in black mist had finger bones visible, but it still held the crowbar tightly.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"Close the coffin! Close the coffin!" A hoarse roar came from outside the crowd. Lin looked up and saw a hunched black shadow staggering towards him with a bronze bell stick. Half of his blue-gray arm was exposed under his sheepskin coat, and it was covered with tattoos similar to the coffin face spell.
At the moment the coffin lid closed with a bang, Lin''s right arm brushed the edge of the coffin. The birthmark suddenly exploded with burning pain, and the scene in front of him was distorted and smudged like spilled paint--
Countless naked bodies struggled in the rainstorm, and the iron chains penetrated the scapula and strung them into a blood-colored bead curtain. The official in the python robe and jade belt swung a knife to cut off the right hand of the sacrifice, and the severed palm fell into the boiling Yellow River. Half of a face that looked very similar to him emerged in the waves...
"If you don''t want to die, spread the black donkey''s blood!" The bell stick hit the ground heavily. Lin suddenly woke up and found that the old man who called himself Zhou was pouring the dark red liquid in the pottery jar into the coffin. The blood plasma hit the black fog and made a fried sound. The coffin suddenly trembled violently, and the nine iron chains were stretched straight.
The dark red blood oozes out from the bottom of the coffin, winding into a snake-like trajectory on the dry riverbed, pointing to somewhere in the northwest. Lin''s birthmark jumped, and the burning pain rushed up his arm to his temple. He pulled open his sleeves and found that the originally brown birthmark had turned scarlet and glaring. Upon closer inspection, it was the outline of the terrain of Lop Nur.
Two thousand kilometers away, in the heart of Lop Nur.
Su held down the wildly vibrating Pisces jade pendant. The coordinate numbers on the GPS screen were strangely overlapping themselves. When she checked the longitude and latitude for the third time, the instrument suddenly went black, and when it lit up again, blood-colored lines appeared - exactly the same as the talisman that the archaeological team had copied in the Loulan tomb last year.
"Su! There is a discovery at the No. 3 survey point!" Amid the noise in the intercom, the assistant Xiao Wang''s voice was crying, "It''s... it''s Professor Peng''s backpack..."
The sand dunes cast a giant python-like shadow in the twilight. Su held tightly the last letter her father sent before he disappeared. The words "Don''t believe the ''I'' of the Yellow River" on the yellowed letter paper were dyed bloody by the setting sun. She didn''t notice that the yin-yang fish in the center of the jade pendant was slowly rotating, dividing her reflection into two silhouettes that were moving away.
The blood oozing from the coffin suddenly boiled. Zhou''s face changed drastically, and he swept the bell stick across to knock away two villagers who tried to touch the coffin: "Go! It''s calling..."
Thunder exploded over the Yellow River. When the first drop of rain hit the talisman on the coffin, Lin clearly heard the crisp sound of the chain breaking from the ground.