Chapter 5 Iron Coffin

Zhang Qishan looked at it and immediately stopped. His mind had been wandering and he was in a daze just now, but when Qi Tiezui reminded him, he also felt that there was something wrong.

The obvious difference was the heavily reinforced armor on the last car that was thicker and welded more tightly than all the others, but Zhang Qishan vaguely felt that there was another kind of difference. After thinking about it, however, he still couldn’t figure out what was causing the uncomfortable feeling.

“Fortune teller, don’t keep me in suspense and just tell me. If it makes sense, you won’t have to go in the last car.”

“Fo Ye, you underestimate me.” Qi Tiezui glanced at Zhang Qishan, who had pulled him along twice just now. It was very humiliating, so he definitely had to get him back. He took Zhang Qishan’s hand, led him a few steps to the platform, turned, pointed to the engine car, and explained it bit by bit.

“There are mostly disordered coffins in this first car. Some have stone outer coffins and some don’t have outer coffins at all, but they all have numbers on them.” Qi Tiezui said. “Based on the markings, most of these coffins came from the same tomb. I don’t know if you noticed, but these coffins are all generally the same size. So, that means they’re probably the coffins of those who were buried with the main coffin. And all those people being transported in the other car were living there. The car next to the escorting car is the last car.”

“You mean that the first car is the burial chamber, and the last car all those people were guarding is the main tomb, which should be—” Zhang Qishan paused. “The tomb owner’s main coffin?”

“Exactly, Fo Ye. The tombs around Changsha have coffins as big as houses. Ever since you came here, you must have at least gone into a few of them. Take a look. Doesn’t the last car look like a huge coffin with its shape and size? (1)

Zhang Qishan turned to Lieutenant Zhang, “All those not surnamed Zhang need to leave the station.”

Lieutenant Zhang nodded, stepped forward, and started shouting orders. Many soldiers “not surnamed Zhang” broke rank and trotted out of the station, looking relieved. The train was strange, after all, and no one wanted to get involved. A soldier wearing a gas mask ran past, and Zhang Qishan grabbed him, pulled the mask off, and handed it to Qi Tiezui.

Qi Tiezui fervently shook his head no. “Fo Ye, you’re underestimating me again. I didn’t wear one in the first few cars, so why would I in the last one?”

Zhang Qishan couldn’t help but laugh as he put on the gas mask and walked away, leaving Qi Tiezui standing there confused and thinking to himself, Zhang Qishan, you bastard. You don’t play fair. He immediately caught another soldier, took his mask, and put it on.

As he followed Fo Ye to the last car, Qi Tiezui looked at everything through the gas mask and couldn’t help thinking over everything. At first, he thought that this was a Japanese armored train with important goods inside, and the people inside were afraid that the guerrillas would blow up the railroad tracks, so they sealed the cars with iron armor. But the sleeper car had also been completely welded shut with iron plates, and all the people inside had died. No matter how he looked at it, something evil was afoot.

The corpses they had seen just now had all suffered terrible deaths, and he was afraid it was either parasites or an infectious disease. Did the Japanese spies drive this kind of train to Changsha in order to cause a plague to break out and destroy the army’s morale?

But why were there so many coffins on the train? Did infectious diseases even come from coffins? He was afraid Fo Ye had put on the gas mask for this very reason, but wasn’t it a little too late?

After the iron sheet on the last car had been welded open, Qi Tiezui found that it was just as he had expected—the car held a wooden outer coffin. The wooden outer coffin’s surface was rotten and soft, and the inside had become calcareous, so Zhang Qishan used the butt of his gun to smash a big hole in it. This time, Qi Tiezui climbed in first and found that the wooden outer coffin wasn’t very tall, the ground was covered in straw, and two or three bodies with guns were lying on the ground. Qi Tiezui looked down, saw that the bodies were in the exact same position as the ones that had been lying on the beds, and knew in his heart that he had been right. There was a huge sarcophagus behind the corpses that had been placed in the center of this outer coffin room. It was so heavy that the outer coffin was sagging a little at the bottom and there was nothing else in the whole car besides the sarcophagus.

When Zhang Qishan approached with a lantern, they could see patterns and some strange marks on the coffin, which were pieces of black iron that had been poured onto the coffin’s surface. They covered the gap between the coffin and the lid, and were engraved with many Taoist-like symbols that were very complicated. Zhang Qishan and Qi Tiezui looked at each other.

“The coffin has leather and comes with iron. Iron contains gold (2). It’s a whistle coffin.” Qi Tiezui, who said the mnemonic phrase handed down from older generations, was already starting to realize what had happened on this train. This last car was a complete outer coffin chamber, which the Japanese had dug out and then covered in iron armor to disguise it as a train car. The corpses with guns must have been the guards on duty, and seemed to have died directly while on duty.

This behavior was really incredible. What did Japan need an entire tomb for? If they were robbing the tomb for goods, then it was fine to just open the outer coffin and take the gold and silver out. This tomb was just a pile of rotten wood, so if they really liked it, then it would have been more convenient to dismantle it first and then transport it. Why dig out the whole outer coffin chamber and take it all away?

Qi Tiezui figured it had to be related to the sarcophagus in this outer coffin chamber, which had been sealed with molten iron. Such a sealing method was something ancient grave robbers used to do. Legend had it that in ancient times, when the landscape was fierce and the feng shui of many blessed places was destroyed, the corpses found in underground ancient tombs easily changed into zombies. If grave robbers were in a place that cultivated zombies or encountered an evil coffin, then they would dig a hole on the spot, melt their weapons, seal the coffin with the molten iron, and leave a hole at the top of the coffin big enough for only one hand to pass through. When the molten iron condensed, he would put his hand into the hole and explore the contents of the coffin. If there was any change in the coffin, he would cut off his arm to save his life.

Because there was a hole in the coffin like a whistle, it became known as a whistle coffin. There were actually two possibilities in which later generations could see this kind of coffin: one was when the whistle coffin had been emptied, so it was just an empty shell with no value; the other was when the corpse in the whistle coffin changed at that time and someone left without his hand. The contents were still in the coffin, so later generations who found the whistle coffin might not necessarily find an empty coffin, but one with the contents intact.

But if you wanted to reach your hand inside, what happened next depended entirely on whether you were lucky enough, which was where Qi Tiezui’s mnemonic phrase stemmed from.

There was a number one painted on the sarcophagus, along with a phrase below it: “Main tomb chamber”. The floor was about to collapse under the coffin’s weight, which meant it had to be full of things.

“The coffin was sealed with molten iron, and there are words engraved on the iron sheet. They must have been carved by the master who hung the mirror on the train.” Qi Tiezui wiped his glasses and put them back on, revealing a kind of expression unique to feng shui masters: “If we take three steps at most, there must be iron nails placed on the floor. Lieutenant, have all the others at the scene who have the sign of the snake (3) stay back.”

With that said, Zhang Qishan bowed his head and took a few steps back. Sure enough, both men saw that the perimeter of the outer coffin chamber was surrounded by nails, completely enclosing the sarcophagus.

<Chapter 4> <Table of Contents><Chapter 6> 

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TN Notes:

(1) You can thank Tiffany for this whole paragraph.

(2) Per Tiffany: “Iron contains gold” refers to how there might be treasures inside the whistle coffin.

(3) I believe he’s talking about the zodiac sign.