Chapter One: The Man in the Coffin
I never believed in ghosts—at least not until the summer I turned twenty-one. That was the year I left university and returned to my grandmother's village in the remote hills of southern China, a place where mist clings to the rooftops and people still whisper about omens in the dark.
They called him Master Yan, the last true feng shui practitioner in the region. Not the kind you see on TV waving charms and selling lucky coins, but an old-school master—a geomancer who reads the lay of the land, interprets energy flows, and knows if a house is cursed just by its shadows. My grandmother once said he saved her life, though she never told me how.
It all started with a funeral. A man had died unexpectedly—collapsed while working in the fields. He was only in his forties: healthy, strong. But when they opened the coffin before the burial, his body had turned black as ink. The elders whispered about "corpse poison"—a death so wrong it could bring misfortune to the whole village. They summoned Master Yan.
What happened next haunts me to this day.
He stood over the coffin in silence, his face stone-like. Then he whispered something I couldn't catch, made a red ink mark on the lid, and told everyone to step back.
The coffin moved.
I swear it shifted—just a few inches, but enough to send screams through the crowd.
People scattered, clutching prayer beads and muttering old incantations. I froze. A part of me wanted to run too, but something stronger held me in place. Fear, maybe. Or curiosity.
Master Yan didn't even flinch. He tapped the coffin again with a long, thin copper rod. Later, I learned it was called a Dragon-Seeking Stick—a traditional feng shui tool used to detect "yin energy"—the kind associated with death, decay, and ghosts.
"Poisoned by yin," he muttered. "Buried on a dragon's tail."
I had no idea what he meant. But the look on his face scared me more than the coffin ever could.
That night, he came to our home. My grandmother brewed tea in the ancestral hall. The scent of incense hung heavy in the air. Master Yan sat across from me, silent for a long while.
Then he said, "You have the fate of an yin ming ren."
(Note: 'Yin ming ren' literally means 'person of yin fate' — someone whose birth or destiny aligns with the spirit world, often believed to attract ghosts or be sensitive to the supernatural.)
I blinked. "What does that mean?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he handed me a yellowed book wrapped in red cloth. The cover read: The Hidden Path of Earth and Spirit.
"You'll need this," he said. "They'll come for you now. Best be ready."
Before I could ask who they were, he was gone.
That night, I dreamed of graves that bled and doors that opened into darkness.
Chapter Two: The Dead Don't Knock
It started with three soft knocks.
I was staying in my grandmother's house—a creaky wooden home with paper windows and a tiled roof that groaned in the wind. My room was small but always felt safe. Until that night.
Three knocks.
Slow. Measured.
Coming from the front door.
I checked the clock: 2:14 a.m.
My grandmother was asleep. No one else was supposed to be there. And no one comes visiting at that hour in a Chinese village. It's an old superstition: the living knock fast; the dead knock slow.
I waited, heart thudding. Maybe I was imagining things.
Then it came again.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
I got up. Moved to the window. Pulled the curtain back a fraction.
Nothing. Just the moonlit courtyard. Silent. Still.
I was about to return to bed when I noticed something strange: the incense in the ancestral hall was burning.
I hadn't lit it.
I didn't scream, but my breath caught in my throat. That room hadn't been used since Master Yan's visit.
Then I saw it.
A shadow at the gate. Tall. Motionless. Dressed like a villager from decades past. But its head—it was bent sideways at an unnatural angle, as if its neck had been broken.
Then it turned.
Not its body. Just its head.
I saw the face of the man from the coffin.
I stumbled back. My heart slammed against my ribs. The figure didn't move, but I could feel its gaze—cold, invasive, wrong.
Then the air shifted.
A dry crack echoed through the courtyard. The front door creaked open—not kicked, not pushed. Just… opened. Smooth. Slow. Like it belonged to whatever was coming in.
I backed into the ancestral hall, eyes locked on the doorway.
Then he stepped in.
Not the shadow. Master Yan.
He looked more irritated than surprised, holding a folded paper charm between two fingers. Its edges burned blue. Without a word, he muttered something in an old dialect and flung the charm toward the gate.
The figure howled.
It twisted like smoke in a whirlwind, recoiling violently. The air filled with the smell of scorched mugwort and sulfur.
(Note: Mugwort is a traditional Chinese herb used to ward off evil and cleanse spaces of negative energy.)
Candles snuffed out in one gust.
And then—silence.
Master Yan turned to me. "Didn't I tell you they'd come?"
I could barely speak. "What… what was that?"
He picked up the charred remains of the talisman. "Restless spirit. Still tied to its corpse. Grave positioned wrong. Facing northwest, dead center on a broken dragon vein."
(Note: A "dragon vein" refers to the vital geomantic energy lines in feng shui. Disturbing or misplacing a burial on these lines can invite misfortune or spiritual unrest.)
I was shaking. "How do you know that?"
He handed me a red silk pouch. It was strangely warm.
"Keep this under your pillow," he said. "And tomorrow—we dig."
"Dig what?"
He didn't answer.
Chapter Three: The Unearthed Truth
The next morning, the air was thick with heat and silence. Not even the roosters crowed.
Master Yan showed up at dawn, already dressed in a faded changshan—an old-style long robe worn by traditional scholars and feng shui masters. He carried a small wooden box tied with red string, a rusted spade, and what looked like a bird's skull strung on a black cord. I didn't ask.
He nodded toward the hill behind the village. "We dig there."
I hesitated. "That's where he's buried?"
He gave a grunt that might've been a yes—or a warning.
We climbed the path in silence, passing shrines overgrown with moss and the occasional talisman nailed to tree trunks. As we reached the gravesite, I felt it—a pressure in the air, like something holding its breath.
The grave was fresh. A mound of soil, incense sticks still planted in the dirt, though the ashes had long cooled.
Master Yan circled the grave three times, then tapped his copper rod into the ground. It gave a low, metallic twang, like it had struck bone.
"Dragon vein broken here," he muttered. "A dead pulse."
(Note: In traditional Chinese geomancy, a dragon vein is a metaphysical energy line beneath the earth. A "dead pulse" indicates blocked or disrupted energy, often bringing misfortune to the living and unrest to the dead.)
He handed me the spade. "Start digging."
I stared at him. "Me?"
"You saw the ghost," he said. "You carry its scent."
I didn't argue. Maybe I was afraid of saying no. Or maybe I just wanted to understand what was happening. The earth was damp and heavy. It stuck to my hands and smelled like old iron.
We dug for over an hour before we found it.
The coffin.
Except… it wasn't quite right.
The wood was warped, like it had swollen from the inside. And there were scratch marks—from the inside out.
I dropped the spade.
Master Yan frowned, then reached into his box and pulled out a bundle of black incense, lighting it with a brass lighter etched with trigrams. He muttered a few words under his breath—words I couldn't understand, but which made the wind shift again.
Then he pried open the coffin.
Inside was the corpse—but not as I remembered it. The skin had turned gray, bloated. The eyes… were open.
And worse, the mouth was full of dirt.
Master Yan didn't look surprised. "He tried to climb out."
I gagged.
He pulled something from beneath the body—a small jade figurine, cracked down the middle.
"A suppressor charm," he said. "Buried to keep something in place. But someone broke it."
"Why would anyone do that?"
He looked at me. "You ever hear of hun po?"
I shook my head.
"Chinese belief says a person has two souls. The hun—the spirit that ascends. And the po—the one that stays with the body. If a grave is disturbed, the po can rise first."
"Rise to do what?"
"To return. To find what was lost. Or to feed."
I backed away from the grave.
Master Yan stood and lit another charm, this one gold and covered in ink-black characters. "We burn the body. Re-align the vein. And hope the rest stays quiet."
As the fire caught, a wailing sound rose—not from the corpse, but from the hill itself, like the land was crying out.
I watched the smoke twist into shapes I dared not name. Master Yan dropped the broken jade into the flames.
I turned to him. "What now?"
He stared into the fire, eyes hard. "Now, you train."
"Train for what?"
He didn't answer.
But that night, I dreamed of a hundred coffins opening in unison.