Haunted Houses’ Chronicles – Vol.1, Chapter 4

As it was getting dark, the two of us followed the familiar path to get to the villa. There were people in the neighbouring houses, but not much light was turned on. Besides, each house was separated from the next by quite some distance, so it was even more obvious how solitary and gloomy our villa looked. If I had known earlier that this place would give me so much trouble, even more so than the first house, I definitely would not have bought it. 

Qin Yiheng took the lead to push the door in and I followed right behind. If he stopped, I stopped; if he moved, I moved.

After a few rounds, Qin Yiheng halted at a corner of the villa and told me that this was it. He asked me to stand here and to not move no matter what.

He told me, “If I tell you that you can run, you must risk everything and run out, but remember to not raise your head while you run – you must keep staring at the ground.”

Whatever he said was gospel to me. Yet, I was still shaken to the core. I asked him if it would actually be safe to stand at this spot.

He pointed to his face and said, “Look at us both now. Don’t we look like those dirty paper dolls that got buried with the dead but not yet burnt? Don’t worry. You just need to make sure to not move.”

I now realised why he made me up until I looked like a ghost. I had an impression that I had heard of such rumours somewhere. It was believed that New Year’s Eve was a notably special day of the year. At the very moment the two years met, there would be a gap between yin and yang¹. The glutinous rice boiled at that exact moment would become something that belonged to neither world. I couldn’t comprehend all the details, but I understood that in my current state covered with glutinous rice, my ‘humanness’ stopped emitting. That said, I didn’t just stand there idly. I gathered all my mental energy, eyes fixated on the main entrance. I had to figure out the best route to run without raising my head, else I might hit something.

¹ 阴阳 [yin yang], as explained in the previous chapter, is lit. translated as “negative – positive” or “darkness – light”. In Chinese culture, there are many aspects where the concept of yin and yang could be applied to. In the case above, Yin refers to the world of the dead, while Yang refers to the world of the living.

After having me stand at the corner, Qin Yiheng walked to another spot. Neither of us brought any lighting equipment. There was only a bit of light coming from the main door while the rest of the place was completely engulfed in darkness. I looked around to find that he had blended into the darkness, no longer within my sight.

Cold sweats kept streaming down as I was terribly nervous. To be honest, I was curious about what I would see, but at the same time I was afraid that I would have to see ‘something’. These feelings were all tangled up. 

After standing there for a while, I could vaguely hear a rattling sound. It sounded somewhat like someone knocking on the door, yet also somewhat like someone stomping away. Either way, my hair was standing on end. Indeed high profit would be accompanied by high risk, to the extent that the risk might be life-threatening. I nagged myself that after this whole thing was over, I wouldn’t touch this line of work ever again. As I was deep in thoughts, the sound disappeared.

I held my breath and listened carefully. There was absolutely no movement. I wanted to call Qin Yiheng’s name, but I was afraid that it would break the procedure that he told me, so I could only enduringly wait.

After about a minute, the rattling sound suddenly became violently louder.

“Run for the entrance!” Qin Yiheng shouted.

As though hearing the starting pistol, I hastily dashed out with my head down, completely forgetting how weak my legs were feeling just a second ago. To think that I could still maintain a sense of direction even in such a crisis – for this, I had to admire myself. 

With my head still down, it took me only a few seconds to pass the entrance. Qin Yiheng also appeared. He quickly took a firecracker from his bag, lit it up with a lighter and threw it in through the main door. Instantly, the explosion made a deafening noise.

Before I could ask him what was happening, he told me to remove whatever item on my body that was red. I pondered the idea and figured that there were a few red cards in my wallet. The more nervous I was, the less obedient my hands became. As I managed to dig out the cards while trembling with fear, quite some time had passed. The sound of the exploding firecracker had ceased, and the neighbouring villas had caught on with the noise. Many people opened the window to look over, bringing the commotion to a new point.

Qin Yiheng looked at the cards I pulled out and chose one with the most red. He said, “If you feel that something is pulling you, just throw this card toward the direction of the pulling force.” He then spat on the card and stuffed it back into my hand.

I held the card in my hand with all sorts of mixed feelings. How could all of his methods be this disgusting? But after going through this pattern for a few times, I had almost gotten used to it. Holding on to the card was my only choice now. 

At this point, I was unsure if it was my psyche tricking me, but I felt like something was pulling my hand. This wasn’t an illusion – it was real! I could sense that this force wanted to drag me into the villa, but I was so anxious that I entirely forgot about the card. I just instinctively called out to Qin Yiheng to come rescue me.

Upon hearing my cry for help, he yelled at me to throw the card. Like waking up from an enchanted state, I threw the card in the pulling force’s direction. Not even a blink later, that force disappeared. I froze on the spot, thought about it for while yet still couldn’t understand whether what just happened was real.

Qin Yiheng let out a breath of relief as he saw that I was fine. He relented that today had to be our lucky day. As everyone from other villas were looking in from their windows, the yang energy was relatively strong, else no one knew what outcome was waiting for us. He then pulled me to a bright place, where the two of us finally could sit down and gasp for some air.

I asked him what he was doing inside the villa. Qin Yiheng pouted, saying that he found someone’s eight characters of birth², wrote it down on a piece of paper, then pried off the floor and buried it there. My jaw dropped as he told me that the birthday had to be written with a woman’s menstrual blood, but because we were in a hurry, he had to resort to using a female dog’s instead. In the end, we still came out of this whole ordeal unharmed, so it seemed that the ritual could be done in this manner.

² 生辰八字 [sheng chen ba zi], lit. translated as “eight characters of birth”, refers to the eight Chinese characters that record the exact timing of a person’s birth. The time, day, month and year of the person’s birth each represents two characters, forming a total of eight.

I listened to him rambling, thinking that I had probably gotten myself involved with a professional tomb robber. To tell the truth, I had no guts to continue on. I asked him what it was that tried to pull me.

Qin Yiheng shook his head, admitting that he also didn’t know. The red card was smeared with his spit so that it could hold some human energy, or to put it bluntly, what I did was sacrificing a small part of ‘humanness’ to save the whole me. He then continued on about his act of burying someone’s eight characters of birth in this villa, which was equivalent to changing the identity of the owner of the tomb. This was the same as trying to push someone out of his place of residence, so ‘that thing’ became really angry. But in this way, the person whose birthday was written on that piece of paper would likely soon suffer a tragedy – at best, his lifespan would be cut short.

To be honest, this method was awfully detrimental, but there was no better way. Humans always behaved in this manner. The both of us were not ones who wanted to save the world – we only lived for ourselves.  When I asked Qin Yiheng whose birthday it was, he refused to tell me and kept affirming that we were both safe now, and that everything had been settled.

But after such a show that Qin Yiheng and I put on at the villa, I wondered what the tycoon would have to say about it. It was totally out of my expectation that the next day, the tycoon came to see me again, offering to raise the price to 300,000 yuan. Qin Yiheng and I discussed for a while to figure out a fitting plan. Qin Yiheng turned to me, claiming that by looking at how agitated the tycoon was, he could finally understand what was going on.

The villa transformed into a tomb was in fact prepared by the tycoon himself. The artist who died in the place had to have some connection with the tycoon. This whole act was called “tomb snatching”.

Letting someone who had the same eight characters die in place of you – this required a formation created by a professional master. The tycoon was trying to take away the painter’s lifespan. It was possible that the female model also died for the same reason. As he was trying to take away a living person’s lifespan, not that of a dead person’s³, the coffin had to stay above ground.

³ 阴寿 [yin shou], lit. translated as “negative lifespan”, refers to the lifespan given to a dead individual. The concept rises from the practice of celebrating the dead’s birthday as if they are alive. In contrast, 阳寿 [yang shou], lit. translated as “positive lifespan”, refers to the lifespan of a living person.

By letting us go into the villa, the tycoon likely wanted us dead to bury together with the painter and the model. Perhaps because the resentment of the dead painter and the model became to strong to be contained, the tycoon had to do this to us. Qin Yiheng guessed that every time the tycoon learnt that the resentment was getting overwhelming, he would trick other people to enter the place and have them die there. There might be a few other deaths before we came. Now we had managed to meddle with the place, the formation probably had been destroyed. If everything went according to plan after this, the tycoon’s lifespan would be the same as that of the person whose eight characters were buried by Qin Yiheng. 

We made nearly 200,000 yuan just by making a few trips to this villa. However, that was also the first time I had such close contact with ‘supernatural beings’ and even felt their existence. As we got back home, both of us did not feel the least bit of happiness over earning so much money. Rather, we felt as though we were chewing on failure.

That said, after the experience, Qin Yiheng firmly believed that we were extraordinarily lucky people, to the extent that it would be a waste if we passed on the opportunity to make that sort of money.

I didn’t give any comment. I knew that to me, the temptation of money was always strong, but I was also scared of encountering more disasters like that in the future.

He comforted me, saying that it was unlikely to meet with such a powerful case again within this lifetime, for there should be very few of such formidable masters in existence. I felt relieved after listening to him, and I was tempted to make money again after a few days of rest. Qin Yiheng’s methods were indeed quite gross, but as I carefully considered them, they didn’t seem so unbearable after all.

_______

Michelle’s elaboration time!

What exactly was the deal with the tycoon?

Firstly, we need to understand that the tycoon had claimed the ownership of this tomb by, for example, burying his name and eight characters in the place.

Then, he killed the painter and the model in the villa and had them buried inside a coffin that stayed above ground. Since both the painter and the model had the same eight characters as the tycoon, by killing them, he essentially cut short their destined lifespans and ‘absorbed’ their remaining lifespans into his own. Of course, this had to be aided by a proper formation set up by a master. It should be noted also that this concept of ‘tomb snatching’ is entirely invented by the author. No, people actually don’t do such a malicious thing in real life xD.

How did Qin Yiheng mess up the formation?

He buried someone else’s eight characters into the villa. This had two possible effects: Firstly, it added an unintended item into the formation, thus breaking its original effect and stopping the tycoon from ‘absorbing’ the painter’s and the model’s lifespans. Secondly, the new eight characters would now replace the tycoon’s eight characters, but it remained that he was the owner of tomb (let’s say, the tomb was now registered under his name but someone else’s eight characters). As such, the formation activated a new effect: giving the tycoon the same destined lifespan as that person.