Haunting Coin

Seeing Xu Da's embarrassment, the middle-aged man waved his sleeves and shouted, "Children, go play somewhere else."

The mischievous children ran off giggling and gathered together to share the chestnuts.

Du Cao brushed his cuffs, assumed an air of official authority, and said gravely, "Zhong Youshou, patriarch of the Zhong clan, listen well. I am Du Cao, a Minor Seal of the Heaven-Listening Bureau. I have come to your clan today to investigate a supernatural case. Your clan has a tenant farmer named Zhong Erniu. Where is he now?"

Zhong Youshou instinctively looked at the middle-aged man beside him. The man put on a broad smile and said, "Lord Du, you've come for Erniu? What unfortunate timing. Yesterday, Erniu went somewhere, we don't know where, and came back dull-witted and dazed. Then that night, he actually ran into the mountains and still hasn't returned..."

"Nonsense!" Xu Da snapped.

Du Cao raised a hand to stop him, then fixed Zhong Youshou with a dark stare.

Zhong Youshou shuddered in fright and dropped to his knees. Seeing this, the middle-aged man knelt too.

But as for Zhong Erniu's whereabouts, they stubbornly insisted that he had gone missing in the mountains the night before.

The atmosphere grew heavy for a time.

The man who had reported the case could not be found.

Strange!

Wang Qilin looked toward the old people squatting by the wall in the sun. Their faces were deeply furrowed, their expressions wooden.

There was something indescribably odd about them.

The only normal ones were the mischievous children. Having finished their candied chestnuts, they noisily crowded over to ask for more.

Xu Da waved them away irritably. "I paid for these candied chestnuts. Why should I give them to you?"

A mischievous boy with a teapot-lid haircut pulled open his collar and said, "I have money. I'll buy them."

"So do I." The other children all pulled open their collars, revealing copper coins strung on red cords around their necks.

At the sight, Zhong Youshou grew anxious. He hurried to his feet and shooed the children away. "Go, go, go! All of you, go home! Stop bothering the lords while they're investigating!"

"Since Zhong Erniu has gone missing, we won't investigate, then." Du Cao reached out and clamped a hand on his shoulder. "Zhong Youshou, take me to your ancestral hall. Zhong Youfu was an old acquaintance of mine. Since I'm here, I can hardly leave without paying my respects."

He also gave Wang Qilin a meaningful look and whispered, "Little Seven, get one of those copper coins."

Wang Qilin paused. Was something wrong with the copper coins the children wore?

Had Zhong Youshou suddenly driven them away because they had revealed the coins?

According to local custom, when someone in a family passed away, visitors coming to offer condolences ought to be welcomed.

Large clans in particular cared about appearances. The more mourners came, the more prestige they gained, and the higher the mourners' status, the greater the prestige.

Some families were so concerned with saving face that they even hired people to pose as high officials and famous scholars, coming to their doors to say a few words.

Once, a wealthy local landowner had taken things so far as to hire people to impersonate imperial relatives and offer condolences for his dead father. When the deception came to light, it was not long before his relatives came to mourn his entire family.

But the Zhong clan was different. When Du Cao said he wanted to pay his respects to Zhong Youfu, Zhong Youshou and the other man were not pleased at all. Instead, they laughed awkwardly and declined.

In the end, they angered Du Cao. His expression darkened as he said, "You're so afraid of letting me see the deceased. Was there something shameful about his death?"

Zhong Youshou immediately grew frantic. "You mustn't say such things, you mustn't! The patriarch died of a sudden illness. Our ancestors laid down a rule that when a patriarch passes away, the funeral must be kept quiet. We can't make a fuss."

Du Cao said, "Your patriarch and I once entrusted our lives to each other. Now that he's gone, does offering him a stick of incense count as making a fuss?"

Zhong Youshou looked helplessly at the middle-aged man beside him. The man said, "Of course not. This way, my lord. But these two lords weren't acquainted with our patriarch, were they?"

Xu Da widened his bull-like eyes, about to throw his weight around, but Wang Qilin stopped him and smiled. "We'll wait here."

He snatched the candied chestnuts from Xu Da's arms and went to play with the children. Xu Da immediately bristled. "You dare snatch food from a tiger's jaws?"

The ancestral hall stood at the highest point of the inner compound. Du Cao returned before long and led the two away.

Xu Da was seething. "We came all this way, only for the man who reported the case to be hidden away and the chestnuts to be divided up among those little brats. What kind of business is this?"

Du Cao said, "At least you're not stupid. You know Zhong Erniu was hidden away. So where have they hidden him?"

Wang Qilin was about to offer his conjecture when Xu Da raised a hand, signaling that he need not say more.

The three were walking into the fields at the foot of the mountain, where people were driving oxen to plow the land.

Xu Da stared over. An old yellow ox happened to turn its head and glance at him. Man and ox locked eyes, and the old yellow ox turned and ran.

The burly man driving it was about to give chase in a fury when Xu Da rushed forward, grabbed him, and pinned him down in the field...

Before long, he returned with a satisfied smile. "Zhong Erniu really didn't flee into the mountains. He was locked up in the Zhong clan's earthen jail."

At this point, displeasure appeared on his face. "Master Cao, what on earth is this Zhong clan up to? The patriarch's death was strange, keeping his death secret was strange, and a clan this big choosing an idiot as its new patriarch is stranger still!"

Wang Qilin regarded him with newfound respect. "I didn't expect Warrior Xu to have such a fine side beneath that rough exterior."

Xu Da hitched up his belt and snorted. "I have both thick and thin!"

Du Cao led them out of the fields, found a clean rock, and sat down. "That's not all. There are plenty of strange things here, but the strangest are those things hanging around the necks of the children in the inner compound. Little Seven, did you get one of their copper coins?"

Wang Qilin handed him a copper coin. "I did. I coaxed a child with chestnuts into taking it off for me to look at, then secretly swapped it for a copper zhu coin."

Du Cao took the coin and nodded at him approvingly. "Very good. Heh, there'll be quite a show tonight."

Xu Da asked, "Master Cao, what is that copper coin?"

Du Cao toyed with the coin. "What copper coin? This is a haunting coin!"

A look of horror appeared on Xu Da's face. "So this is New Year's money?"

Wang Qilin asked in confusion, "What's a haunting coin?"

Xu Da looked at him disdainfully. "You don't even know what New Year's money is? Lucky money!"

Du Cao gave him a kick. "Pretending to know when you don't! This is a haunting coin, not lucky money, though the two do have some connection. Look for yourselves. What's unusual about this copper coin?"

Wang Qilin had already examined it. He said, "This isn't a copper coin issued for circulation by any dynasty. There's no era name on it, only four characters reading 'peace and safety, suppress hauntings.'"

Du Cao gave a snorting laugh. "Right, 'peace and safety, suppress hauntings.' But it only suppresses evil hauntings when hung on a dead person. Put it on a living person, heh, and it's reversed: 'hauntings suppress safety and peace!'"

Haunting coins were rare objects, coins privately cast by occult practitioners. They were not used in the marketplace, but buried with the dead. Ordinary dead people had no need of them; they were specifically used for those who had died violent or unjust deaths.

These coins were hung on the forehead of the person using them and served two purposes. First, they prevented the deceased from turning into a malevolent ghost or zombie and wreaking havoc. Second, they served as toll money for the dead to use as they traveled through the underworld.

Because every haunting coin had dealt with vicious ghosts and evil spirits, it was extremely rich in yin energy. Placed on children, it could suppress their yang energy and make them resemble departed souls, so that ghosts would take them for their own kind and no longer harm them.

But the children did not understand. They thought the copper coins they wore were currency, so they had willingly shown them to buy chestnuts.

The moment Du Cao saw them, he knew Zhong Erniu's claim that the Zhong clan was haunted was true. Zhong Youshou certainly knew the inside story. He had tried to drive the children away precisely because they had exposed their haunting coins, and he feared Du Cao would notice something amiss.

"So the Zhong clan clearly knows there are ghosts, yet they don't dare let our Heaven-Listening Bureau find out. Why?" Du Cao asked.

"They're up to something. They're doing something they can't let people see," Xu Da answered at once.

Wang Qilin nodded without speaking.

What more did he need to say about something even Xu Da could understand?

What he said was, "Whatever's going on, everything will be revealed tonight. The child without his haunting coin will encounter a ghost tonight. He's a child of the inner compound, precious to them. The Zhong clan will inevitably fall into chaos, and we can fish in troubled waters, head to the earthen jail, and find Zhong Erniu to confront them."

Du Cao gave him an approving glance.

This lad could accomplish things-great things!