The Hakka people have practiced relocating graves for a long time.
Relocate a grave nine times, bury the dead nine times; bury them ten times, and the family prospers for ten thousand years.
The more often you move a grave, the more prosperous your household becomes.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ had a maternal aunt who married into a family in Mai Châu.
For this grave relocation, she came to attend the ceremony with her birth family.
I surveyed the area, looking around and nodding to myself.
The grave was on a gentle hillside, high up but not treacherous. It offered a view of the magnificent scenery all around while also feeling as solid and steady as a mountain.
Mountains embraced it on both sides, forming the configuration known as “Azure Dragon on the left, White Tiger on the right.” With such a fine dragon-and-tiger burial site, they still wanted to move the grave.
Rich people really are the worst!
“The auspicious hour has arrived. Break ground!” the feng shui master ordered. At once, two strong young men took up shovels and began digging.
The grave wasn’t very deep, and before long they uncovered a black coffin.
“Ah!” A scream shattered the stillness on the mountain.
I sucked in a sharp breath and stared at the scene before me, stunned.
During a grave relocation, families usually put up a frame and drape it with red cloth to keep sunlight from shining directly onto the coffin and disturbing the deceased.
A young man nearly six-foot-three had been standing quietly off to the side. Maybe the heat had made him dizzy, or something, but all of a sudden his foot slipped and he pitched forward.
As he fell, he grabbed the bamboo pole holding up the red cloth.
The bamboo was barely as thick as a wrist. How could it possibly bear his weight?
The bamboo snapped. Wrapped in the red cloth, he rolled into the pit and slammed onto the coffin lid with a deep, heavy thud.
How could anyone cause such a disaster?
“Mom! Mom! Grandma! Auntie!” Tống Phỉ Phỉ let out a scream of her own.
Everyone rushed over in a panic, trying to pull the young man off the coffin lid. He kept thrashing wildly, struggling to free himself from the red cloth tangled around him.
He was huge and unbelievably strong, moving like a one-man army. The people trying to pull him free tumbled into the pit one after another like dumplings boiling in a pot.
“Crack!”
When the sixth person fell into the pit, I heard the coffin lid crack.
The feng shui master looked ready to cry. “You jinx! Stop moving! That coffin lid can’t take much more!” he shouted.
The young man flinched at the shout and thrashed even harder.
“Crack! Crack!”
The coffin lid shattered.
One, two, three, four—four people fell right into the coffin.
Why only four? Because the coffin was full. There wasn’t room for anyone else!
What a sight to behold.
“Who’s that idiot?”
Tống Phỉ Phỉ’s face was ashen, and her voice sounded like it was grating through clenched teeth.
“Trần Viễn Chương, my aunt’s nephew.”
That name sounded familiar.
Then I remembered. He was the target of our mission this time.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ and I had been forced to join a ridiculous sect called the Bái Nguyệt Hội.
A few days ago, the sect gave us a mission: recruit people into its ranks and bring powerful families into the fold.
Our first target was the Third Branch of the Trần family in Mai Châu.
At first, Tống Phỉ Phỉ and I couldn’t understand it. The Trần family’s Third Branch had fallen on hard times, and its wealth and manpower were nothing like they used to be. Why recruit them?
Now I understood.
An idiot joining an idiot sect. A perfect match!
“Uncle, I really didn’t mean to…”
“Get out! Get out of my house right now!”
Trần Viễn Chương lowered his eyes, his face ashen as he was driven out of the house. He was lucky—if they weren’t family, being beaten to death would have been the least of it.
The grave relocation had been completely ruined. They would have to choose another day to move the grave, and the descendants would have to kneel before the ancestral altar for seven whole days to atone to their ancestors.
During those seven days, no one was allowed to eat meat or fish.
As I watched Trần Viễn Chương walk away with slumped shoulders, I could almost hear a tragic soundtrack playing behind him.
“Hey, Trần Viễn Chương, wait!”
Trần Viễn Chương turned around, hopeful.
“Want to join the Bái Nguyệt Hội?”
His big eyes gleamed with innocent idiocy.
“Huh?”
“The annual dues are only ten million.”
“Huh?”
“Join, and we’ll give you three catties of eggs and a jug of cooking oil.”
“Huh?”
I was getting a little annoyed.
“You think that’s too little? I’m paying for those three catties of eggs and that jug of oil out of my own pocket!”
Trần Viễn Chương started crying.
I’d rarely seen a grown man break down crying in front of me like that, snot and tears streaming everywhere. He even blew a huge bubble with his nose.
“Waaah! I shouldn’t have come, really! Boo-hoo, if I hadn’t come to the grave relocation, I wouldn’t have broken Grandma’s coffin. Why am I so unlucky? I don’t want to live anymore!”
Trần Viễn Chương gave up completely, dropped onto the ground, and wailed.
As he howled, Tống Phỉ Phỉ and I carefully edged farther away from him.
That guy was so unlucky. What if his bad luck rubbed off on us?
The Trần family’s Third Branch had had a truly remarkable run in recent years.
It used to be the most prosperous branch.
But everything changed after a grave relocation ten years ago.
The Third Branch traded in cloth. A fire burned its warehouse to the ground, destroying all the goods and killing several workers.
That shipment had been a rush order for a customer. The Trần family had to pay a huge penalty for breaking the contract, and burial expenses and compensation for the workers alone cost two hundred million in cash.
That blow left the Trần family unable to recover for years.
Afterward, Trần Viễn Chương’s father lost interest in the cloth business and went into cross-border shipping with someone.
When business began to pick up, they relocated the grave for a second time. A month later, their ship sank.
After that, the Trần family fell completely out of Mai Châu’s upper circles.
Trần Viễn Chương’s father couldn’t accept it. Gritting his teeth, he decided to relocate the grave for a third time.
After the move, he was in a car accident and was still in the hospital. That was why the Trần family’s First Branch had sent Trần Viễn Chương to attend this grave relocation.
I frowned as I listened.
“Could the new grave site have bad feng shui?”
Trần Viễn Chương sniffled, looking miserable.
“No. Every time we’ve moved the grave, we’ve hired the Trương family’s feng shui master. The Hakka people take feng shui extremely seriously, and the best masters in the country are from this region. I’ve heard of the Trương family—they’ve practiced feng shui for more than ten generations and are very famous. The last time we moved the grave, Master Trương himself chose the site. My father was scared at the time and didn’t dare pick an exceptionally auspicious site, so he settled for one that was moderately auspicious. And yet this still happened…”
Tống Phỉ Phỉ and Trần Viễn Chương were relatives, after all, and seeing him like this, she felt deeply sympathetic.
“Linh Châu, let’s go see how he’s doing at his house.”
Looking at Trần Viễn Chương’s features—his full forehead, high straight nose, and bright eyes—he was clearly destined for wealth and status.
It seemed there really was something seriously wrong with his family’s ancestral grave.
“If I help you solve your family’s problem, will you join the Bái Nguyệt Hội?”
When Trần Viễn Chương heard that I was a Maoshan Taoist, his eyes lit up brighter than an Audi’s headlights.
“I’ll join, I’ll join! I’d join the Tiandihui too, not just the Bái Nguyệt Hội!”
Over the years, with each grave relocation, Trần Viễn Chương’s family had moved twice as well: from a villa in the city center to a large apartment downtown, then from the apartment to an old house in the suburbs.
I looked at the lush green vines covering the courtyard walls and felt a little disdainful.
“Cut all this stuff down. The yin energy is too heavy, and it breeds mosquitoes.”
Trần Viễn Chương hurriedly put a finger to his lips.
“Shh! My mom planted them. She won’t let anyone cut them down. She says this old house looks like a forest castle.”
Tống Phỉ Phỉ rolled her eyes.
“What castle? It’s a haunted house in the suburbs!”
In feng shui, vines covering a house’s walls are called “fēi luó shā,” and are said to invite gossip, lawsuits, and family discord.
From a scientific standpoint, vines can block light and ventilation, creep into cracks in the walls, and damage the structure.
As Tống Phỉ Phỉ was explaining all this with great enthusiasm, a middle-aged woman in a qipao silently appeared behind the door like a ghost.
“What she does is none of your business!”
Trần Viễn Chương sheepishly scratched his nose. “Mom, this is Tống Phỉ Phỉ, Grandma’s relative. You’ve met her before. And this is Lục Linh Châu, she’s…”
Mrs. Trần reached out and clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up. Our family doesn’t welcome them. Get out!”
Trần Viễn Chương looked awkwardly at his mother and pleaded with her.
“Mom, don’t be like this. They came to help our family.”
Mrs. Trần put her hands on her hips and glared.
“Don’t you understand? I said get out!”
Trần Viễn Chương glanced at his mother and said softly, “Mom, don’t get mad. I’ll take them away right now.”
When we rounded the corner, Trần Viễn Chương stopped and secretly peered over the wall. Once he was sure his mother hadn’t followed us, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“I suspect my mom’s been possessed.”
Trần Viễn Chương’s mother, Trương Yến, came from a traditionally patriarchal family. She had eight sisters and one younger brother. Growing up in that environment, she was gentle and mild-mannered—the ideal dutiful wife and devoted mother men liked.
But five years ago, after the grave relocation, Trương Yến changed. She became fierce and domineering, and what she said went.
If anyone displeased her, she’d curse them out mercilessly, from heaven to earth.
She didn’t just love to curse people out; she also refused to do any housework. Even Trần Viễn Chương’s eighty-year-old grandfather had to wash his own clothes and sweep the house.
Before, Trương Yến had doted on her younger brother from her birth family, always thinking of him whenever she had anything good. Now she’d cut ties with him. Last year, when he came to borrow money to buy a house for his son, she chased him out with a feather duster.
Back when the family had money, she lived frugally. Now, with the family on the verge of bankruptcy, she spent recklessly, insisting on buying whatever she fancied, even if the whole family had to go hungry.
After hearing all this, Tống Phỉ Phỉ solemnly concluded, “Your mom isn’t possessed. She’s come to her senses.”
Trương Yến, now that she’d “come to her senses,” was indeed hard to deal with.