Daomu Biji: Restart

The basin of candles was too heavy so I slowly put it down. As the light moved down, the face of the leather figurine woman sank into darkness once more. The smell of the burning wax filled my nose and there was silence all around except for Fatty's breathing.

I slowly stood up and looked at the leather figurine woman’s wrist, which had originally held two jade ears. They were gone now, and in their place was a brass metal strip that was already green with rust. I hadn’t seen this kind of thing before.

This thing is really fucking haunted, I said to myself. Was it true that the souls of people who drowned were trapped in water? Was there a ghost possessing this leather figurine woman?

I remembered Poker-Face saying that only I could see this leather figurine woman and he couldn’t see it at all. I thought of the rhinoceros horn legend again. Was the thing I was looking at now really something from the netherworld? Did Poker-Face want me to follow the ghost out?

I couldn’t see the leather figurines’ feet when we were in the water before, and all the figurines in the main tomb chamber just now wore Chinese robes that covered their feet. Under the candlelight, I could clearly see that this leather figurine woman’s feet were covered in rotten gold silk satin boots. Heavy objects had been placed in the skin of both feet to prevent the leather figurine from falling over, but it was still just human skin. The supporting gold wire stretched inside was an inflexible structure, not a machine, so the knees couldn’t bend. That meant it couldn’t walk over here.

And if it didn’t walk here, then someone either moved it here or it floated over. If someone really did move it, then I didn’t hear a thing at all. But if it floated here… I couldn’t even imagine what that would look like.

I swallowed. The leather figurine still hadn’t moved.

This scene was really like a nightmare. The surrounding air became colder, but I didn’t know if it was an illusion or a manifestation of the air from the netherworld.

The horse and chariot pit was down below, the main tomb chamber was further ahead, and up above me was a tomb passage with a strange little hole. All the other exits were buried under mud so I had nowhere to hide even if I wanted to.

The expression on the leather figurine woman’s face was still the same as before without any changes. I focused my attention on the metal strip in its arms and found that it was a copper ruler.

I paused. When we came out of the waterway earlier, the last thing I had said to it was, “I don’t want this, I want something that can help me get out.” Then when it reappeared, the things in its arms had changed.

Did it understand me and was giving me what I wanted? Could the thing in its arms help get me out?

I thought about it and knew that it was impossible. This was an ancient tomb under Pingtan county. At that time, the Xu people in the South Sea country were all from Minyue and spoke the ancient Min dialect. I had studied it before and found that there were traces of the ancient Min dialect in the Wuchuan dialect in Guangzhou.

So, this leather figurine woman should be from Fujian during the Han Dynasty.

What I had said before was in Mandarin, so there was no way it would understand me if it really was possessed.

I plucked up my courage. I still remembered some of the Southern Min dialect, but I really didn’t know the difference between the ancient Min and modern Fujian dialects. Fujian's language family was so complicated that I had trouble understanding it even if I only went a mountain over. This was Pingtan county, so the dialect was somewhat different from the Fuzhou dialect. But the Fuzhou dialect and Southern Min dialect were completely different (1).

I got so confused that I didn’t even know what dialect I used when I asked, "Did you understand what I said? Are you giving me that thing?"

The leather figurine woman didn't respond. I was just about to continue asking when the copper ruler suddenly fell off its wrist, dropped to the ground, and bounced into the basin.

I looked at it for a moment before going up and taking the copper ruler out. It turned out to be a dinglan ruler.

Dinglan rulers and luban rulers were collectively called yin and yang rulers. Luban rulers were considered yang rulers because they were used to build homes, while dinglan rulers were considered yin rulers because they were used to build tombs. Any tomb or shrine being built had to be measured with this ruler because its size was quite different from luban rulers (2).

Considering how this ruler was brass and dinglan rulers first appeared in the Song and Yuan Dynasties (3), it didn’t appear to be a burial object in this ancient tomb. Uncle Three must have brought it in, so it probably had something to do with the feng shui array Qi Yu had set up.

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TN Notes:

(1) Here’s a map if you were getting confused like me lol. Fujian is the whole province in Eastern China (so it encompasses both Fuzhou and Pingtan County). Southern Min is a Sinitic language spoken in southern Fujian and surrounding areas.

(2) Dinglan ruler: pic and info here. Luban ruler: pic and info here.

(3) Song dynasty (960-1279). Yuan or Mongol dynasty (1279-1368).