Volume 1 Chapter 31: The Dead Come Back to Life

  "So we were planning to hold a funeral for your grandmother, but then something strange happened that very night."

  "What's strange?" Hong Jun asked.

  "Yes. Here, when someone dies, they are not buried immediately, but rather laid out at home for three days. After your grandmother died, a coffin was immediately made for her and she was placed in it that same day."

  However, before the funeral procession, the coffin placed at home is not covered with a lid and is placed in the middle of the main hall. The coffin placed at home requires family members to keep vigil, that night it was me and your eldest uncle who kept vigil, I was 10 years old and your eldest uncle was 15 years old.

  We were both quite young at the time, and although there was a coffin in front of us, perhaps because it was our own mother inside, we didn't feel scared. Although I had lost my mother, as a young child, no matter how sad I felt, I cried all day during the day and then for two or three hours at night, until midnight when my throat was hoarse from crying and I was exhausted, so I slowly stopped crying. Your grandma's coffin was placed in the main room, and the two of us burned incense on one side while chatting idly on the other.

  "This thing, I still don't understand it to this day." Father lit a cigarette, took a desperate drag, and then looked at Rui Xin beside him before extinguishing the butt. "I was keeping vigil at the time when I suddenly heard creaking sounds coming from inside the coffin. The sound was like someone scratching their fingernails on wood."

  At first, I didn't pay attention to it and thought that I cried too much today and my spirit was a bit dizzy. The person lying in the coffin is my mother, she's already dead, how could there be another voice? Moreover, when I rubbed my eyes again and listened, I couldn't hear any sound anymore, at this time I had already determined that I was just hallucinating a little.

  I picked up a yellow paper, handed it to the fire basin, and watched as the flames danced. Suddenly, I thought of my mother being sent to the crematorium the next afternoon, also to be purified by the fierce fire, and would become like this yellow paper, turning into a small pile of gray ash. My nose turned sour, and tears flowed again.

  You, listen. Big brother's words suddenly interrupted my crying, I wiped my nose, big brother pointed at the coffin, his face looked extremely terrible, as if he was scared by something terrifying.

  What's wrong? I asked my brother, but he didn't answer. He just shook his body and kept moving backwards. I thought to myself, what's going on with you? Just as I was about to ask again, I heard a loud "ah" from him, and he scrambled to his feet and stumbled out of the gate. As soon as he went out the door, he turned back and looked at me, his face full of fear.

  What's wrong with him? Afraid to even keep vigil for his own family, how cowardly. I thought to myself, watching him run out the door and disappear into the dark night, and couldn't help but let out a bitter smile as I turned back around.

  As soon as I turned around, I was shocked by the scene in front of me. The indoor temperature seemed to drop suddenly by tens of degrees, and a nameless chill surrounded me.

  Because I see, my deceased mother, at this moment, is sitting upright in the coffin, staring blankly at me with a strange smile on her face.

  She, she suddenly came back to life."

  "What?" Hong Jun was shocked and almost fell off his small stool.

  "Yes, he's come back to life." His father nodded.

  "Was it that Grandma had just started to choke on her grief for a moment and wasn't really dead, and after a while, she came back to life?" Rui Xin's expression was quite calm, unlike Hong Jun who was startled. He calmly analyzed the situation. This made Hong Jun's face turn red with shame, unable to handle things as well as a girl, how embarrassing. He despised himself.

  "No. We checked carefully during the day, and she was indeed dead. By the time we were preparing for the funeral at night, her body had already cooled down." His father's words denied Rui Xin's idea.

  "Then, is it really a rebirth from death?" Rui Xin furrowed her brow.

  "I didn't know, at that time I suddenly saw a dead person come back to life. Although it was my own mother, I was still scared out of my wits. I just sat there on the ground, motionless, with my eyes wide open in terror, staring at my mother. In my heart, I actually wanted to quickly get up and run away like my older brother, but my body wouldn't listen to me, it couldn't move at all, I was completely stunned." When Father said this, his face still showed a hint of fear, as if the incident had just happened, which shows how severe the shock he experienced at that time.

  "If I were in that situation, it wouldn't just be a matter of being scared silly, I would definitely faint on the spot." Rui Xin chimed in softly, and her father looked at her with gratitude.

  Like that, I foolishly stared at my mother. My mother coldly stared back at me. After who knows how long, she spoke up. Eldest son, your four younger brothers are coffin guards and three of them have already died. The remaining one will be taken away by someone soon. You all must not stop them, otherwise our entire village will be finished. After saying this, my mother tilted her head back and fell silent once more in the coffin.

  "What happened next?" Hong Jun couldn't help but ask as he saw his father close his mouth.

  "Let me tell you what happened later." A man lifted the door curtain and walked in. The newcomer's face was full of wrinkles. In the bright and clean room, his gray hair stood out particularly.

  "Old Uncle." Seeing this person, Hong Jun hurriedly stood up. It was the village's fortune teller, Old Diatou.

  Lao Jie Tou is over 70 years old and a distant relative of Hong Jun. An elderly aunt in the Hong family is his mother, making him Hong Jun's uncle by relation. He is a well-known figure in the village for his accurate fortune-telling skills, not only predicting life and death but also helping people find lost items like chickens or ducks with pinpoint accuracy. However, he has an eccentric personality, being very particular about who he helps, sometimes rushing to assist while other times refusing outright. Even during the tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution, when brutal criticism was rampant, his temperament remained unchanged, and he became even more selective about who he would help.

  Hong Jun was one of those who never gave him a chance to calculate his fate.