Everyone naturally knew their limits. After briefly paying their respects at Old Man Wei's daughter-in-law's grave, Luo Tianhe took out a few silver dollars and tossed them into the air. When they landed, a surprising sight appeared: several of the coins had landed standing upright.
Luo Tianhe tossed the tools he had brought to everyone and warned them, "Be careful to avoid the spots where those coins are standing. Dig slowly from the outside in. When you reach the coffin, don't touch it. I'll open it."
As soon as he finished speaking, he raised a hatchet and chopped down, splitting the wooden marker in front of the grave.
Jiang Cheng had heard of this practice. He'd heard that when opening particularly evil graves, someone had to subdue the grave's occupant first to prevent accidents. Usually, that meant smashing the tombstone with a hammer or splitting it with a single blow. This process was also called breaking the grave—it was meant to break the grave's occupant's baleful energy.
If the occupant was subdued, everything that followed would go smoothly. But if not, they wouldn't be able to take anything from the grave—and the person who tried to break it would suffer terrible misfortune. The usual outcomes were horrific.
That was why the people who dared take on this kind of work were either masters of feng shui or butchers who believed their birth charts were strong enough to protect them. It was easy to tell whether the attempt had succeeded: if they smashed the stone tombstone or split the wooden marker, they had subdued the occupant's baleful energy. But if the tombstone or marker remained intact, they'd better go home and put their affairs in order. They should prepare for their own funerals, because disaster would find them within three to