Chapter 1.11 River Snail (Extra)

There were many strange things in the world, but this was the first time I had encountered one myself. Several of us stared at the snail and looked at it carefully, unable to speak.

The coffin was completely sealed and no liquid had spilled during the trip over. The snail must’ve been inside the coffin, but this coffin had been buried for nearly a hundred years. How could the snail still be alive?

“Don’t tell me, our Wu’s family’s ancestral grave is really…” an old man whispered from the side. Biao Gong snorted and brought the snail to one side of the ashtray with his chopsticks. “Don’t say anything, let’s look at it again,” he said.

We continued to look at the coffin while the basin catching the black liquid filled up. The black liquid overflowed, but everyone else was too busy to take care of it so I had to continue dumping it out.

After less than ten minutes, the whole body was revealed.

We looked down and only took a single look before everyone fell silent.

I don’t know how to describe what I saw—it was a small, wet corpse that hadn’t decayed completely but had kept its approximate shape because of the antiseptic medicine.

But what made our hair stand on end were the countless large and small snails that were attached to the body. They were black and white and almost completely covered the whole body, making it look like it was covered in pustules at first sight.

My father began to retch after he got an eyeful. He stumbled and almost fainted as he rushed out of the ancestral hall and threw up in the courtyard, regardless of etiquette. I was completely terrified and unable to move, the hair all over my body standing on end.

The corpse was stuck in a strange pose with its claw-like hands. It obviously didn’t die peacefully. When I saw that its huge mouth was practically full of snails, there was a brief moment where I felt as if my own mouth was uncomfortable.

Once again, Biao Gong used chopsticks to pick one up and we clearly saw the snail’s shell cover slowly closing up. We immediately felt a chill on the backs of our necks: these snails were all alive! How did they survive? Even if they ate the corpse, there wasn’t enough oxygen in the coffin. Moreover, the turbid liquid was likely to be highly toxic.

After a long silence, he put the snail onto the ashtray with the other one and said to the man beside him, “Old Si Tou, why don’t you call Wu Sanxing and Cao Er Daozi in.”

Old Si Tou paused, “Why, A Biao? Those two will rip each other’s heads off.”

“Let them come in and have a look; otherwise, I don’t know how to convince them that our old ancestor left us a coffin full of snails. If they want to fight, let each of them get a plate and go back to fry it themselves.” He threw the chopsticks into the brazier and knelt down in front of the shrine to offer incense.

<Extra 1.10> <Table of Contents><Extra 1.12>

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Updated 11/21/2021