Professor He showed unwavering resolve, wielding a pickaxe and shouting, "Stay back! All of you!" His portly figure twisted comically as he brandished the tool.
Villagers murmured while elderly men shooed away curious children. A kid pointed and whispered, "Gou'er, do you think it'll jump up?"
"Who knows? It's terrifying," another replied.
An adult chased them off. "Go tend to your father—no loitering here!"
Professor He's boar-like roars drowned out the chatter, but my eyes were fixed on the child in the coffin—the first yin corpse I'd seen. I tilted my head at Old Wang. "Do these things bite?"
"Not yet," he said sagely. "Such demons can't harm people until midnight when yin energy peaks. Yang energy is too strong during the day for their resentful souls to draw on."
I swallowed, amazed yet disturbed. "Wicked."
Old Wang snorted. "You haven't seen worse." He explained the twelve children were force-fed mercury, had holes drilled in their heads, chests, and feet to fill with mercury, eyes replaced with pearls, silver powder applied, and inverted Eight Trigrams carved on their backs. Orifices were sealed with cinnabar to trap their souls.
The cruelty was unimaginable—living sacrifices doomed to millennium-long imprisonment.
"Intellectuals need a good beating to listen," Old Wang grumbled, then told villagers, "Those born in the Year of the Horse or Dragon go home. The rest, get gasoline from working tricycles."
Zhou Jianguo asked nervously, "Master, will burning them cure the village?"
I nodded, though unsure. The evil qi was trapped in the children; eliminating them should help. But the central stone coffin gave me misgivings—it was too.
As Zhou fetched gasoline, Old Wang and I approached the archaeologists.
"Don't come near! This is national treasure—millennium-old living sacrifices are historical breakthroughs! You can't destroy them like the Cultural Revolution destroyed relics!" Professor He was defiant, his team ready to fight.
Old Wang's next words stopped him cold. "Remember the Taoist from Mawangdui?"
"How do you know about him?!" Professor He gasped.
"Now scram before I make you!" Old Wang pulled a palm-sized jade tablet from his robe. "Recognize this?"
Professor He gaped like he'd seen a monster. Old Wang silenced him, saying, "I've lost weight—no wonder you didn't recognize me."
I was stunned—Old Wang was a hidden master? Professor He's eyes showed loathing and awe.
After Old Wang revealed his identity, Professor He relented. We opened the twelve coffins. When I tried to touch one, Old Wang snapped, "Don't! Their souls could latch onto your yang energy and reanimate!"
"Seriously?"
"Trust me."
We approached the central stone coffin, feeling icy drafts with each step. Peering into the circular gap, we saw five skulls stacked like a pyramid—red, brown, gold, black, green—matching the Five Elements. Below them was a bronze Eight Trigrams diagram.
These skulls were dyed with:
Red (fire): cinnabar, chicken blood, saltpeter, and child's eyebrow powder;Brown (earth): grave soil and ashes;Gold: gold plating;Black (water): water from a drowned man's stomach;Green (wood): rare poisonous herbs.
Chosen for their Five Elements (life patterns), they formed a yin feng shui array with the ancient beasts and twelve seated corpses—clearly meant to suppress whatever lay beneath the diagram.