Some people's destinies are sealed the moment they are born.
I am that kind of person.
I was the sole male heir of three generations in my family. Just because a fortune-teller said my birth hour was inauspicious, my five elements incomplete, my yin overpowering my yang, and that I was naturally fated to eat the dead's rice, I was given away as an adopted grandson to an old bachelor in the same clan who ran a coffin shop.
The old bachelor, in his fifties, had suddenly gained a big grandson, so naturally he treated me like a precious treasure.
From as far back as I can remember, I rode on his shoulders almost every day; he practically worshipped me like an ancestor.
While other children my age couldn't even afford shoes and wore pants with the backside split open, I achieved absolute Wahaha freedom, drinking one bottle and tossing another without a single pang of regret.
My entire childhood was soaked in a honey jar, pampered to the point of reaching the heavens.
Of course, nobody is perfect; Old Bachelor Grandpa was wonderful in every way, except for one thing: his mouth was too incessant.
Every day he would nag in my ear about how many houses and how much land our ancestors had acquired relying on this craft, and how glorious they had been.
Like a storytelling artist, he would ramble on all the way from the Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang dynasties down to the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
At first, I found it quite novel and even felt proud of my ancestors' glory.
But after a while, like Sister Xianglin, he would repeat it eighty times a day until calluses were practically growing in my ears, and I grew annoyed.
Thinking I didn't believe him, Old Bachelor Grandpa even took out our family heirloom, the Manual of Exotic Coffins, from the offering table to show me, telling me that this was proof of our ancestors building coffins for high-ranking officials and noble families.
Yet he never anticipated that because of this Manual of Exotic Coffins, he would lose his life, and I would embark on a path of no return.
Old Bachelor Grandpa was a stubborn man. Every single day, he eagerly hoped someone would come to order a coffin from the Manual of Exotic Coffins so he could restore the glory of his ancestors; he was completely obsessed.
I had looked at the drawings of the coffins in the Manual of Exotic Coffins—they were truly all sorts of weird and bizarre shapes, and the craftsmanship was extremely complicated. Some even required a dozen different woods mixed together to build, and every single model was exorbitantly expensive.
I knew very well that Old Bachelor Grandpa probably wouldn't have a chance to build a coffin from the Manual of Exotic Coffins in this lifetime.
With the promotion of cremation, sales of wooden coffins were already small. People thought solid wood coffins costing a few thousand yuan were too expensive, so who would be willing to spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy these bizarrely shaped coffins that even required years of work?
Unless they had a screw loose.
Hard work pays off. In my senior year of college, Old Bachelor Grandpa actually waited for someone with a screw loose.
I received the good news when it was already past nine o'clock in the evening. Over the phone, his voice was trembling with excessive excitement, and he kept repeating to me, "The ancestors have spoken! Someone is ordering a coffin from the Manual of Exotic Coffins! You and I are going to make a fortune!"
I was quite happy for him too. After waiting for decades, he had finally waited for a big sucker with a screw loose—truly not an easy feat.
Old Bachelor Grandpa was getting old and could no longer do heavy physical labor. My final exams would be over in two days, and then I would go back to help him.
Who would have thought that by noon the next day, I would receive a call that something had happened to him.
The call came from my biological grandfather, telling me that Old Bachelor Grandpa was sinking fast and urging me to hurry back to prepare for the funeral arrangements.
All along the way, I recalled every little moment spent with Old Bachelor Grandpa. My heart ached so much I wished I could fly back to see him one last time.
When I arrived home and saw Old Bachelor Grandpa, my mind practically exploded.
Both of his arms were cleanly severed from the forearms, the wounds jagged as if they had been brutally sawed off, and there was a blood hole the size of a finger in his chest, continuously oozing black blood.
His condition was terrible; every breath he took bubbled blood from his mouth.
Seeing me, his eyes widened, and using his very last ounce of strength, he signaled that he had something to tell me.
I pressed my ear to his lips.
"After I... die, absolutely do not... touch coffins anymore! Staying alive is what matters most!
Burn the corpse... cremation!"
These intermittent words drained away his final vitality, and he stopped responding altogether.
"Grandpa..." I wailed and burst into tears.
That Old Bachelor Grandpa who had carried me on his shoulders since I was a child had left me forever.
"Little Feng, don't be too sad. Everyone has this day coming.
The dead are the greatest; let him rest in peace!
Hurry up and arrange the funeral!" My biological grandfather patted my shoulder and comforted me.
"No way!" I widened my eyes and roared.
If he had died a natural death, or even from a sudden illness, I would have personally crafted a coffin for him and given him a grand funeral.
Yet he had always been robust, and now his hands were gone, and his body was covered in bloody holes.
He was clearly murdered!
I had to find the killer and avenge him.
"What kind of stunt are you trying to pull?" My biological grandfather seemed a bit angry and asked.
"I refuse to let him die in obscurity!
The killer must pay the price!" I replied.
Hearing this, my biological grandfather hesitated with his words, flicked his sleeves, and walked away.
He brought over a large group of old men from the clan, all shouting at me about letting him rest in peace and leaving him an intact body, trying to persuade me to hold the funeral as soon as possible.
Instead, holding the axe Old Bachelor Grandpa used during his lifetime, I sat in front of the bed, taking a stance that anyone who dared touch the corpse would have to fight me to the death.
By noon the next day, the forensic friend I had invited finally arrived.
Under my frantic threats with the axe, the stubborn clansmen finally stopped interfering and performed an autopsy on Old Bachelor Grandpa.
However, the results of the autopsy were something I simply could not accept.
"Jiang Feng, both of your grandfather's arms have jagged wounds—they were sawed off! The blood hole in his chest clearly shows five finger marks; it was brutally gouged out by fingers. There is a strange toxin in his blood that will require a complex testing process to identify specifically what poison he was poisoned with!
However, one thing is certain: this was an unnatural death—it was murder!" Holding the autopsy report in one hand and patting my shoulder with the other, Feng Long comforted me as he spoke.
Feng Long's judgment drove me to utter despair.
My mind was filled with images of Old Bachelor Grandpa undergoing inhumane torture before his death.
As an old bachelor who built coffins and never offended anyone his entire life, why did he have to die such a miserable death?
If I didn't get justice for him, I would dishonor the Wahaha I drank as a child!
I did not report the case to the police because I knew very well that even if the police caught the killer, the maximum penalty would be a firing squad.
Old Bachelor Grandpa had died such a miserable death; only by making the killer die even more miserably than him could it soothe the hatred in my heart.
After sending off my forensic pathologist friend, I hired a professional funeral service crew, put on mourning garments, and buried Old Bachelor Grandpa.
After the funeral was over, I began searching for clues regarding the murder of Old Bachelor Grandpa.
I charged the cell phone he had used during his lifetime, wanting to check who he had been in contact with before he died.
After turning the phone on, I discovered that all the call logs had been deleted.
It seemed the killer's mind was extremely meticulous; dragging him out into the open would not be that easy.
Yet I would never give up!
Suddenly, I remembered that right before Old Bachelor Grandpa died, he had called me to say someone wanted to order a coffin recorded in the Manual of Exotic Coffins.
His death was definitely related to this matter.
I immediately ran to the offering table and took out the Manual of Exotic Coffins, wanting to see if any clues had been left behind.
Sure enough, the page on the Seven-Absolute Coffin in the Manual of Exotic Coffins had a prominent fold.