My grandpa seemed to have known it all along. He just hummed in acknowledgment and then fell silent. When I went into the house, I saw him writing spirit tablets with a brush. He wrote eight names in one go, but "Wei Daqiang" wasn't among them.

I didn't understand what was happening, and my grandpa wouldn't let me ask. But I felt uneasy!

Our house was at the end of the village, and anyone coming down from the mountain had to pass through our yard. If they saw the sickle head had fallen off and nothing had happened, wouldn't they drown us, grandpa and me, in their spittle?

I was so anxious that I could only squat in the corner of the wall and secretly peek outside. Before noon, the whole village was in chaos. Several groups of people were running towards the mountain, wailing and crying. I even heard someone shout, "The mine collapsed!"

The coal mine really had collapsed, and all nine men who had gone down were trapped inside. According to those who came down from the mountain, the nine men were the same group my grandpa had encountered working.

The villagers dug outside the coal mine for two days and one night before finally digging the men out. Eight of them had died, and only Wei Daqiang was still alive.

I originally thought my grandpa was quite amazing, that whatever he said would come true.

But before night fell, the families of the eight men surrounded our yard. The men were banging on the door, and the women were cursing, saying that the eight men had been cursed to death by my grandpa.

If my grandpa hadn't made the coffins, they wouldn't have died. The group of people insisted on coming in to fight my grandpa to the death.

I was so scared that I held onto my grandpa tightly, but then I heard someone shout from outside, "What the hell are you doing? Stop it, all of you!"

I peeked through the crack in the door and saw that it was Wei Daqiang. He was being supported by others.

When Wei Daqiang reached the door, he shook off the people supporting him and knelt on the ground with a thud, slapping himself in the face several times. "Grandpa Niu, I was wrong! I didn't listen to you, and they're all dead!"

"The day the mine collapsed, we were trapped inside. The entrance to the coal tunnel was on fire, and they were all so scared that they wanted to run deeper inside."

"I ran a few steps with them before I realized that they weren't running at all! They were floating along the ground! Wasn't that seven ghosts leading the way?"

"I was so scared that I didn't dare follow them. I found a place with water and lay down, drinking a few mouthfuls of the water on the ground when I was thirsty, waiting for someone to come and save me."

"The water was coming up from underground. Wasn't that the Yellow Springs water you mentioned?"

"While I was lying on the ground waiting to be rescued, every now and then, I saw the people who had run out earlier come back one by one, calling me to go with them."

"They were hiding in the shady parts of the mine tunnel, calling me again and again. No matter how they called me, I didn't dare move."

"You said that not entering the Yin capital would save my life. If I had let them call me away, wouldn't that have meant entering the Yin capital?"

"Grandpa, you're my savior!"

Wei Daqiang kowtowed repeatedly outside, "Grandpa, I shouldn't have ignored your words! If I had believed you then and not tried to earn that money from the underworld, they wouldn't have died!"

Wei Daqiang cried and cried until he fainted. His family took him away, and the people surrounding the yard didn't dare say anything more about fighting to the death.

According to the older generation, if a great immortal points you in a direction and you don't listen, you can't blame anyone else! If you go looking for trouble with the great immortal again and anger them, the whole family will suffer.

The villagers didn't dare to cause trouble for our family, but no one came to take the coffins away. If they didn't take the coffins away, my family's business would be a loss.

But my grandpa wasn't worried at all. He even told me, "Someone will definitely come before the seventh day."

For those six days, my grandpa kept making me memorize a book. Even if I didn't understand what it meant, he had to make me memorize the whole book first.

On the sixth day, he started packing my things, moving food, drinks, clothes, and everything into the cellar. He even set up a bed inside the cellar and told me to sleep there.

You know, the cellar is where we in the Northeast store cabbage and turnips. It's dug several meters deep into the ground. Just going down there makes people shiver from the cold. How could anyone live there?

At that time, I refused to go down no matter what, and I kept asking my grandpa what was going on.

My grandpa said, "The dead people the villagers brought back from the mine aren't real. The people who really died are all lying in the gully! The dead can't come out of that place."

When I heard that, I was immediately terrified. "If they aren't the people who originally went down into the mine, then what did they bring back?"

My grandpa said, "Those are the people who came to capture Wei Daqiang. He's the only one who survived out of the nine, so the other eight definitely won't agree. They'll all come looking for Wei Daqiang to take him back."

My grandpa spoke as if he were giving his last instructions, "If Wei Daqiang wants to live, he has to come find me tonight. If I protect him, he can protect you. Tonight, no matter what happens, don't come out."

My grandpa said, "I definitely won't survive tonight. But you have to live. You have to live to avenge me and your father. Otherwise, not only will our Lao Niu family die without descendants, but we'll all become wronged and wandering spirits, never able to clear our names or get revenge."

I refused to listen to anything and just hugged my grandpa, crying.

My grandpa saw that I was crying too hard and finally agreed to stay with me until night, but when he left, I had to listen to him.

I anxiously waited until night, and as soon as it got dark, the village was in chaos. I heard them shouting about corpses rising from the dead, and then I heard someone shout, "The dead have turned into mud men!"

My grandpa grabbed me and threw me into the cellar, and I fainted.