Chapter 1.9 Black Liquid (Extra)

It was quite common for there to be liquid in a coffin. When a coffin is sealed, wooden nails are used to secure it, and then all the gaps are sealed with clay lime and a cement-like substance made of rotten fishing nets. If this procedure was done perfectly, the body would rot in an absolutely enclosed space and all the water from the body would remain in the coffin.

Sixty to seventy percent of the human body is made up of water, which is a staggering amount. This is especially evident when the body decays, as the small bones are hard to find under all the liquid.

This kind of liquid is called corpse fluid, or coffin fluid. Of course, some coffins weren’t tightly sealed and water got in them from accumulated water in the tomb’s burial chamber. In our case, the volume of coffin fluid was very large, so that was why Biao Gong had asked.

My father answered with great certainty—I had also caught a glimpse at that time—that there really wasn’t any water in the ancestral tomb. So this coffin fluid must not be rainwater, let alone corpse fluid. With so much liquid, I was afraid the body inside had been fatter than Shaq.

Neither was possible, which left only one extreme situation—the liquid may be antiseptic medicine poured into the coffin when it was buried. This was indeed more likely since the black liquid in this coffin emitted a strong smell of traditional Chinese medicine.

There was also an interesting legend here, which I might not have mentioned before—in ancient China, people used the liquid in coffins as a medicine guide. This legend sounds strange, but its origin is reasonable because the antiseptic medicine poured into coffins contained a very rare ingredient, which was lost late in the Ming Dynasty. If the world wanted to use this drug, the only way was to have the patient go to a tomb to find the liquid containing this ingredient.

But there were too many quack doctors at that time and they were usually misinformed. As a result, many patients vomited and had diarrhea because they drank the liquid from the ancient coffins. In addition, arsenic and cinnabar were placed in the coffins to both prevent insects from getting in and to keep the coffin dry. The liquid in the coffins was highly toxic and instantly killed people.

This bad habit spread to modern times, and even Lu Xun was also deeply affected by it—he hated traditional Chinese medicine for a reason. (1)

I felt uneasy when I looked at the black liquid in this coffin. I knew that if there was anything in the coffin, it would have sunk to the bottom. I didn’t know what would happen, but the feeling that the large volume of liquid would overflow quickly creeped me out, and I kept imagining something terrible under there.

Biao Gong and the others naturally weren’t afraid. They put down the crowbars, gathered together by the edge of the coffin, and carefully looked into the black liquid.

It was black liquid, of course, but the cloudy light formed the illusion that it was ink. Biao Gong lit up one end of some paper money and held it close to the liquid.

When I looked at it from a distance under the firelight, I saw that the black liquid was so deep that it seemed as if there was no bottom.

<Extra 1.8> <Table of Contents><Extra 1.10>

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TN Notes:

(1) The pen name of Zhou Shuren, a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature and regarded by Mao Zedong as the most influential Chinese writer who was associated with the May Fourth Movement. He wrote a short story called “Medicine”. The themes focused on superstition and the negative impact of beliefs about traditional Chinese medicine.

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Updated 11/21/2021