Grandpa’s living soul entered Trần Lục Hạ’s body, but the spirit and body were incompatible, so he couldn’t control it. Every now and then, he could only blurt out a few strange words.
Trần Viễn Chương thought his sister was depressed and paid no attention, making the misunderstanding grow.
The next step was to put everyone back where they belonged. But it’s easy to invite a spirit in and hard to send one away.
Trương Bưu wasn’t important. He was no good, so I could force him out.
But Hồng tỷ and Madam Giang were innocent. We couldn’t just deal with them any way we pleased.
Hồng tỷ was easy to talk to. She said she was a widow with no children, and hoped the Trần family would burn offerings for her every Qingming Festival and on the first day of each lunar month from then on.
Trần Viễn Chương solemnly agreed and wrote Hồng tỷ a promise that he would burn offerings for her.
Madam Giang sat silently on the sofa. After a long while, she said coolly,
“I’ll tell you what I want in a few days.”
As soon as Grandpa recovered, the first thing he did was rush to the hospital, grab Trần Xương Lâm, and slap him hard several times.
“How did I end up with a turtle of a son like you? You don’t even recognize your ancestors, and you’ve wrecked this fine home!”
After being beaten, Trần Xương Lâm shuffled out of the hospital, looking miserable and leaning on his cane.
The Hakka have a custom: people over eighty rarely go up the mountain to burn incense. But this time, Grandpa insisted on finding Thái Công’s grave himself.
The group marched up the mountain in high spirits, with Trần Viễn Chương carrying his father on his back.
At the summit, Trần’s father pointed his cane at a mound of earth, still unconvinced.
“I moved the grave from here. I remember Grandpa burying him here. I couldn’t have gotten it wrong!”
Smack!
Grandpa Trần brought his cane down hard on his back. Trần’s father bowed respectfully.
“Madam Giang, would you please tell this old man whether my father’s grave is here?”
Madam Giang glanced at him, then looked at Tống Phỉ Phỉ and me.
“I’ll tell you if you two agree to one condition.”
Before I could say a word, Trần Viễn Chương dropped to his knees with a thud.
“Linh Châu, say yes! As long as we find Thái Công’s grave, I’ll join your Tiandihui right away!”
Great. The loop was complete.
When she saw me nod, Madam Giang breathed a sigh of relief.
“My husband and I were buried together. Now I want you to find his urn and bring it back.”
Trần Xương Lâm jumped up, despite his lame leg.
“Impossible! Absolutely impossible! I dug up an urn—just one. How could there have been two?”
Madam Giang pressed her lips together and gave a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “That’s right. My husband and I were buried near your grandfather. But later, a landslide hit this mountain, and both my husband’s grave and your grandfather’s were swept away.”
Everyone asked in unison,
“Where did they go?”
Madam Giang calmly pointed southwest.
I blinked. Southwest was nothing but a vast stretch of ocean.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ drew in a sharp breath. Madam Giang looked at her sympathetically.
“That’s right.”
Trần Viễn Chương was still squinting and looking around like an idiot.
“Where? Where’s my Thái Công?”
The Trần family’s Thái Công’s grave had been swept away more than a decade ago. The ocean stretched endlessly, its waters deep blue. Searching for someone underwater really was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Phỉ Phỉ, let’s go!”
Trần Viễn Chương clung tightly to my leg.
“Don’t go, Linh Châu!”
Grandpa Trần gripped his cane, his aged face flushed with excitement.
“If you find my father’s urn, the Trần family will pay any price!”
Tống Phỉ Phỉ tugged gently at my sleeve. “Thái Công is a relative of my family too. All right, let’s go underwater!”
Madam Giang said there was a burial chamber at the foot of the mountain. She thought her husband’s urn and Thái Công’s had been swept into it.
Two words immediately came to mind: sea burial.
During the Ming dynasty, coastal regions once had a “Sea Burial Order,” which ruled that people who died at sea could not be brought ashore in coffins; they had to be buried underwater.
In some places, people believed that the souls of those who died at sea remained in the ocean. If they were buried on land, their souls would be incomplete and they would be unable to reincarnate.
Ordinary sea burials were very simple: choose a sunny day, avoiding noon, when yang energy was strongest and the soul would have trouble resting; and avoid stormy days, which might anger the sea gods and stir up rough waves.
After choosing a day, the coffin or urn was taken aboard a boat, which was left to drift out to sea.
When the waves were calm and the wind had died down, that meant the boat had reached the right place.
The family would then lower the coffin or urn into the sea.
If the waves pushed the coffin back, the ceremony had to stop. They would burn incense and apologize, because the soul did not want to leave; forcing the burial could bring about a vengeful return.
If all went well, they would wait three quarters of an hour for the coffin to drift away before returning. The coffin must not face toward home, lest the “homesick ghost” come knocking and disturb the family.
Once home, they must avoid seafood for seven days and not fish in the burial area for forty-nine days.
That completed the sea burial.
But there was another kind of sea burial, completely different.
In dangerous places, such as sea whirlpools or submerged reefs, a special living person had to be used to suppress the spirits. The sea burial became part of a sealing ritual.
A Ming dynasty book, “Tales of Marvels from the Southern Sea,” records that Zheng He’s fleet once buried rebels in the waters around No Return Island and offered their blood to appease the dragon’s resentment beneath the sea.
Ordinary sea burials rarely had graves. But the kind Madam Giang described involved building a grave underwater, so it had to be the second kind.
Those buried there served both as anchors and as offerings, meant to suppress something terrifying beneath the sea.
To show their sincerity, the Trần family had Trần Viễn Chương accompany us underwater and prepared all the necessary equipment.
As I put on my oxygen tank and went underwater, my heart thumped wildly.
People have an instinctive fear of the sea. Luckily, the weather was beautiful that day, with brilliant sunshine. Light streamed down, turning the ocean into an aquarium: fish swam by, and the coral shimmered like something out of a fairy tale.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ and I swam along, marveling as we watched Trần Viễn Chương.
“He’s such a good swimmer! Look at him go—he’s flying along. It’s like he’s being sucked in, not swimming!”
He even waved to us.
“Wow, he’s moving that fast without even using his arms or legs!”
“Huh?”
“What?!”
“This is bad! That idiot’s been swept away by an underwater current!”
Without stopping to think, I hurried after him and grabbed his ankle.
A powerful force surged through my arm, nearly dislocating my shoulder.
I put all my strength into pulling Trần Viễn Chương, and could feel the oxygen in my tank running out fast.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ swam over and urgently signaled to me.
I understood what she meant: against an underwater current like this, I couldn’t pull him free. We had to break the current.
If you get caught in one yourself, you have a chance of escaping only by swimming across it.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ looked around, swam to the side, and picked up a rock the size of a head. She swam above us, and then the rock—and Tống Phỉ Phỉ—were swept into the underwater current.
The rock slammed into my waist too, dragging me into the whirlpool.
“Shit!”
I only had time to let out two bubbles before my whole body felt like it had been tossed into a giant washing machine.
My oxygen tank ran dry. I sank into darkness, unable to breathe.
Far away, a faint glimmer appeared, and instinctively, I swam toward it.
“Ugh!”
To my astonishment, I realized I was clutching a small boat, just big enough for two or three people. Its hull was grayish white, made from thin white slats fitted together.
Before I could get a good look, I saw a woman’s body floating faceup beside the boat.
The corpse… was rather pretty, and looked familiar.
“Damn it, Tống Phỉ Phỉ!”
Using my arms like oars, I swam over quickly and hauled her aboard.
A little while later, I spotted Trần Viễn Chương floating beside us too.
Only after I’d pulled them both into the boat did I look around at this strange place.
We seemed to be in a cave. Its ceiling was jagged with rock and covered in blue-green glowing algae, casting enough light to make out the cave dimly.
“Avatar?”
Tống Phỉ Phỉ blinked, not quite awake yet, looking rather foolish.
“Heaven?”
Yeah, and there was an even bigger idiot beside her.
The water was still. After rowing for a while, I started to get tired.
Trần Viễn Chương picked up one of the white slats hanging over the side of the boat.
“Oh, this boat even has two oars!”
He picked one up to examine it, then let out a horrified scream and threw the “oar” at me.
I picked it up, my face paling. “What oar? It’s clearly a human arm bone! This is a bone boat!”
Tống Phỉ Phỉ turned pale too.
“Linh Châu, I remember a legend…”
I clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Don’t say that!”
Legend has it that a bone boat can carry people to the underworld.
What is the underworld? It’s a place beyond the jurisdiction of the netherworld’s authorities, a realm of demons and ghosts run rampant, where anyone who enters is as good as dead.
“It’s an urn!” Trần Viễn Chương suddenly exclaimed, excited.
“It has to be my grandfather! Hurry, row over!”
On the black-as-ink sea, an earthen-colored urn drifted in the distance.
Trần Viễn Chương was strong. Using his hands as oars, he raced over and hugged the urn to his chest.
Before he could smile, he froze.
I looked up and sucked in a breath. The sea was covered in urns—black, yellow, brown, white… They stretched thickly across the water, with no end in sight.
Tống Phỉ Phỉ’s mouth fell open. She murmured,
“Trần Viễn Chương, do you have that many grandfathers…”
It wasn’t just the sea. As the boat moved forward, I realized those “mountains” weren’t mountains at all, but piles made of countless urns.
I swallowed hard.
“Trần Viễn Chương, look—there are two mountains of Thái Công over there.”