The doctor said it was a very strange case, because injuries like these usually only happened after a fall from a great height. How could simply pushing a box lead to this?
Of course, the doctor had no idea that it wasn’t an ordinary box, but a “haunted box.”
Mrs. Ho had her leg put in a cast and received IV fluids at the hospital. Her two sons discussed how to deal with the situation. Clearly, the box was haunting their entire family. If they didn’t take care of it, who knew what might happen next?
The old woman insisted that she was a vegetarian, prayed to Buddha, and did good deeds. She hadn’t wronged anyone.
The older brother went to the post office to find out who had sent the box, while the younger son, using his shady social connections, went to an old rural temple to ask for a talisman to ward off evil spirits.
The investigation revealed that the sender was a man from the county named Lưu Tiềm. Knowing the box hadn’t appeared out of nowhere and had a clear origin, the brothers felt somewhat reassured. They poured chicken’s blood and dog’s blood over the box, pasted a talisman to ward off evil spirits on it, then wrapped it in rags.
The younger son also invited three “buddies” from his rough crowd to come along.
He said, “Those guys once beat me so badly I was bedridden. None of them holds back when they throw a punch.”
Lưu Tiềm’s home was in a village not far from town. When they asked about him, the villagers all looked confused and wary. Seeing the car packed with fierce-looking men, they hesitated for a long time before finally giving directions.
When they arrived, they understood why the villagers had acted that way.
The gate to Lưu Tiềm’s house was covered with a large sheet of white paper, on which two lines of bold black writing read: “May you soon escape the sea of suffering” and “Await the day of reincarnation.” According to local custom, the gate was covered with white paper only when an entire family had died suddenly within a short period.
Everyone got goosebumps. They found a villager and asked for more details, and learned that all four members of Lưu Tiềm’s family had died within five days.
The deaths in Lưu Tiềm’s family had come very suddenly.
Lưu Tiềm’s eight-year-old son died first. Some time earlier, the boy had nearly drowned, which led to acute pneumonia. He died in the hospital just a few days later.
After her son’s death, the boy’s mother became mentally unstable. One day, while cooking at home and watching her three-year-old daughter, she had an accident.
That day, she was using a pressure cooker. Normally, once the food was done, the cooker would hiss as it released pressure. But that day, it made no sound at all. Thinking something was wrong, she carried her daughter over to check, then accidentally turned the pressure-release valve. The pressure cooker exploded immediately.
Both mother and daughter died before they could be taken to the hospital.
Unable to bear the shock of losing both his wife and child, Lưu Tiềm secretly drank half a bottle of pesticide and killed himself.
Within just five days, all four members of Lưu Tiềm’s family had died.
5
The urn sent to Mrs. Ho had been mailed the day after Lưu Tiềm died.
However, the parcel collection point at the entrance to the village—the place responsible for handling deliveries—insisted they had never received anything like it. The employee there also swore that Lưu Tiềm hadn’t come by before he died, and certainly couldn’t have come after.
“If there were ghosts, I’d remember!” he said.
The brothers couldn’t investigate any further, and they couldn’t figure out what connection Lưu Tiềm’s family had to their mother. After discussing it, they decided to go to Lưu Tiềm’s grave with the urn, smash it, and burn the pieces to ashes.
As they burned it, they muttered, “If you still won’t stay in your grave, we’ll dig up your corpse, grind your bones to ashes, and make sure you remain a wandering ghost forever, unable to reincarnate!”
They said this to “put the fear of God” into the person buried there.
But the next morning, when the brothers went to the hospital to visit their mother, they found a square box wrapped in newspaper inside the bedside cabinet.
Shuddering, they opened it to look. Just as they’d expected, it was another urn.
While the two men were still stunned, Mrs. Ho suddenly let out a terrible scream. She half sat up, flailing her arms and legs, her mouth moving as if she wanted to say something, but no sound came out. After a while, she managed to say just one word: “My leg!”
Smoke rose from beneath the blanket covering her legs, carrying the unmistakable stench of burning flesh.
They hurriedly pulled back the blanket and saw that Mrs. Ho’s left leg looked like a smoldering log, billowing with white smoke. As soon as it came into contact with the air, it burst into fierce flames.
The hospital room descended into chaos. They finally managed to put out the fire, but by the time Mrs. Ho was taken to the emergency room, her entire left foot had been burned to blackened charcoal. It crumbled at a touch.
The incident was so bizarre that the hospital administrators immediately arranged a private room for Mrs. Ho. At the same time, they summoned the older son and said, “Mr. Ho, this is beyond what our hospital can handle. I’ll contact a higher-level hospital in the city or province to take care of her. For now, we’ll provide nursing care and do everything we can.”
In other words, they were politely asking them to leave.
The brothers looked at their mother groaning in the hospital bed and knew things had become serious. They remembered what the fortune-teller named Mr. Li the Half-Immortal had told them earlier. At first, they’d thought he was just trying to swindle them out of money, but now, looking back, he might really have seen something.
They went to Mr. Li the Half-Immortal’s house. The moment he saw them, he waved them away. “I told you the other day, but you didn’t believe me. Now it’s come to this. No one can help you anymore.”
The brothers hurriedly pulled out cigarettes and offered them to him, pleading desperately. Taking one, Mr. Li the Half-Immortal sighed and asked, “What did you do with those urns?”
The older brother answered, “We smashed the first one. Burned the second. Threw the third into the river. Chopped up the fourth and burned it, too. The fifth is still there. We haven’t dared touch it.”
When he heard this, Mr. Li the Half-Immortal furrowed his brow and explained, “The coins your mother picked up on the road were payment for her life, used to trade for her remaining years. On the seventh day, the urn that was delivered was the final signature. Just holding it meant you’d signed the contract and confirmed the deal.”
“If you keep the urn, you’ll at least die peacefully. But you destroyed them one by one. Each time you destroy one, the direct consequence falls on the body of the person whose life was bought. There are seven urns in all, corresponding in turn to the limbs, abdomen, chest, and”head.”
“The first one you smashed, and her left arm ended up with shattered bones. You burned the second, and her left leg was burned to a crisp. You threw the third into the water, and her right arm will rot. The fourth one, you chopped up and burned, and her right leg can’t be saved either.”
“Good thing you haven’t touched the fifth one. Otherwise…”
The brothers exchanged a look, their faces deathly pale. They hurriedly asked, “Master, is there still any way to save our mother?”
Mr. Li the Half-Immortal said, “My spiritual powers are too meager to undo this. The only hope is to find the person behind the purchase of the old woman’s life and persuade them. That might save her.”
The brothers told him everything they had managed to find out.
Mr. Li the Half-Immortal said, “If the old woman’s right arm acts up tomorrow morning, I can perform a ritual to find out who bought her life.”
The older brother asked, “So there’s no way to save my mother’s arm?”
Mr. Li the Half-Immortal sighed. “Keeping her alive is already a blessing. Disability is hard to avoid. We can only wait and see how serious it will be.”
He looked at the brothers, hesitated for a moment, then said, “Actually, there’s another way. I can perform a ritual to transfer all the old woman’s pain and injuries to her closest blood relatives in the direct line.”
Her closest direct-line relatives were the two brothers themselves.
The two men looked at each other and remained silent for a long time.
Seeing this, Mr. Li the Half-Immortal changed the subject. He told them that if they wanted him to perform the ritual tomorrow, he would need them to prepare a few things, then wrote them a list.
6
Around late morning the next day, shortly after eleven, Mr. Li the Half-Immortal appeared in Mrs. Ho’s hospital room.
He replaced the curtains with thick black ones, set up a small altar, and arranged incense, candles, and joss paper on it. The urn was placed right in the center of the altar, after its lid had been opened with care and solemnity.
Mrs. Ho’s right wrist was tied to a red cord with three old coins hanging from it, leaving her hand suspended in the air.
Mr. Li the Half-Immortal stood beside the bed, holding a peachwood sword as he waited for the auspicious hour.
According to him, noon was the exact moment of the day when yin energy was strongest, contrary to the common belief that it was when yang energy was at its peak.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Ho groaned in pain and cursed Heaven. “I’ve done good deeds all my life. Why has this disaster befallen me? If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve listened and joined that foreign religion. Maybe then I wouldn’t be suffering like this now. How can anyone go on living like this?”
She still seemed not to understand what was about to happen.
Her two sons kept telling her, “No matter what happens, Mother, you have to listen to the master. This is to save your life.”