Old Yao woke me up early the next morning. I saw he already had dabs of mud all over his body; it seemed that he had started working alone before dawn.

I felt a little embarrassed after looking at him. Old Yao hurriedly took me to the pit. He had dug close to three meters deeper, finally exposing part of a blood-red coffin that was under the layer of soil. My stomach tightened at sight.

I would have never thought that this grave contained one of those child-mother linked coffins.

These two coffins had been buried together, one on top of the other. In this case, it wasn’t the child-coffin nurturing the mother-coffin, but the mother giving nutrients to the child. This sort of grave could suck the Yin energy within the neighboring dozens of miles and create an evil ghost very easily!

Old Yao looked excited as he smiled at me. I didn’t say anything and started digging.

Li Mazi saw the red coffin the moment he woke up. He changed his tune in a flash. “Old Yao, you do have keen eyes!”

Old Yao kept digging, not even deeming to spit a single word.

We were busy the whole morning. We removed the soil, clearing all the way down to reveal the base of the second coffin when the afternoon came.

This beautiful, crimson coffin was just half the size of an ordinary coffin. I had never seen this kind of coffin before.

Old Yao was somewhat excited as he held a crowbar, ready to open the coffin. I thought about giving him a hand, but he waved at me, asking me to stay put on one side.

The way Old Yao opened the coffin was swift and precise. Also, he lit up a white candle by the coffin before doing so.

Li Mazi and I pinched our noses the moment the coffin lid was pried open. However, we didn’t smell the stench of the decomposed body. We only saw a mass of red air lingering around the coffin.

Old Yao was scared, and he quickly moved aside.

I knew it was resentful energy, similar to Li Xiaoling’s! It seemed that the goldfish bracelet had originated from here. After a few seconds, the white candle Old Yao had lit up flickered and extinguished. Grave robbers had another rule: they would leave the grave goods untouched whenever the candle went out by itself. Otherwise, the evil soul in the coffin would take their lives.

Old Yao was surprised. He picked up the candle and placed it inside his bag.

Li Mazi and I walked forward and were dazed by what we saw. A woman around

 twenty-

five or twenty-six years old lay inside the coffin. There was a thin layer of make-up on her face; her phoenix eyes were outlined, and her lips were red. She looked like a movie star. She wore a red cheongsam, and from the style and patterns of the fabric, her dress had been made during the time of the Republic of China.

So many years had passed, but her corpse had yet to decompose. It was obvious that the otherworldly item had preserved it.

Old Yao suddenly pulled the hem of my shirt, pointing at the woman’s wrist. I followed his finger, and I was shocked by what I saw—the woman was wearing three goldfish bracelets on her wrist!

I gently pulled the collar of her dress and saw black bruises on her neck. 

Is this woman Ruan Lingyu? The famous movie star during the Republic of China period who committed suicide under the pressure of rumors?

We searched the coffin. Although Ruan Lingyu was a movie star, she had only been buried with the three goldfish bracelets and a black-and-white photo where she was posing with a handsome man. The man in the photo was of course Tang Jishan, Ruan Lingyu’s last lover.

Although Ruan Lingyu had been a socialite, she had been raised in the countryside. She was all alone in Shanghai, so she had to try her best to survive and succeed; she had tasted her fair share of hardships. She had once been married to Zhang Damin, a hardcore gambler. Not only had he lost all the savings and properties Ruan Lingyu had struggled to earn, but he had also forced her to drink with other men to pay off his debts.

Ruan Lingyu couldn’t endure such a life. She divorced Zhang Damin and later met Tang Jishan, the major shareholder of the film and television company she was working for. Tang Jishan was a handsome and caring gentleman, and he wholeheartedly took care of her. Ruan Lingyu had been unable to resist his charm. Soon after, they started living together, becoming a golden couple, a talented man and a beautiful woman that everyone admired.

However, Ruan Lingyu’s ex-husband had continued trying to exploit Ruan Lingyu. He had spread a lot of bad rumors about her; one rumor had been multiplied to ten and then to a hundred. The rumors said that Ruan Lingyu had become a slut that anybody could sleep with, and she eventually couldn’t bear the pressure and humiliation. She decided to hang herself with her stockings. She had only left a sentence in her suicide note, “Gossip is a fearful thing.”

Since Ruan Lingyu had loved Tang Jishan deeply, those who took care of her funeral had buried her with a photo of them together…

It seemed that Ruan Lingyu’s resentful energy had been absorbed by the four goldfish bracelets, who had then reached the level of a Ghost King after being buried for a few decades inside this red coffin!

Li Mazi lowered his voice to ask me, “Little Brother Zhang, I think she's the cause of everything. What should we do now?”

I frowned as I pondered for a long time. However, I couldn’t find any solution.

Old Yao suggested, “Burn!”

Right, the fire would burn her grudge and resentment away. Ruan Lingyu will be able to reincarnate after that. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as the saying went.

I nodded. “Good, let’s find some wood!”

We crawled out of the pit and found a lot of dried wood in the forest, placing all of it on top of the red coffin. There was a bottle of aged liquor inside Old Yao’s backpack. I took a sip and then sprayed it directly over the coffin. After that, I lit my lighter and threw it on the liquor-stained coffin.

A high flame rose with a burst. Among the loud, burning sounds, I seemed to hear a heart-rending howl.

The big fire lasted for two hours, burning the two coffins into ashes.

I waited until the fire had completely subsided and went inside the pit to look. The three goldfish bracelets were lying quietly amid the ashes. Old Yao picked up his stuff, and we shoveled the soil to refill the grave. Then, we headed back home with complex emotions.

On the way back, Li Mazi asked me, “What had happened after all?”

I gave him a simple explanation.

Ruan Lingyu’s reputation and dignity had been destroyed by rumors. After committing suicide, her soul remained inside the goldfish bracelets, unable to move on. That is, until Old Yao robbed the grave, taking one of the four goldfish bracelets and selling it to Li Xiaoling. Later, she also killed herself under the pressure of rumors. Her resentful energy had merged with Ruan 

Lingyu’s, and

 vengeance ensued. That was why the lip-sewing incidents had taken place at the University.

Rumors came from their mouths, so the best revenge was to sew their mouths shut!

Tang Shuangshuang had fabricated malicious rumors, and she was the first one to harm Li Xiaoling. Of course, she had also been the first one who got her mouth sewed shut. However, as time ticked by, Li Xiaoling’s resentful energy had been constantly growing; sewing lips was no longer enough to vent her anger. That was why she had killed Tang Shuangshuang and Wang Nan.

Everything had started with an ill-intentioned rumor.

Except for Tang Shuangshuang, the others were just curious and amused to see someone else in trouble. However, they had also contributed to spreading the rumor that Li Xiaoling was a mistress, forcing Li Xiaoling to kill herself, also harming themselves in the process.

As the saying went, you could eat whatever you wanted, but you couldn't talk irresponsibly.

I shot Li Mazi a glance as I thought of this. This pal of mine was very talkative, and he spouted a lot of nonsense. Perhaps I would also sew his lips shut one day if my mood got the best of me.

A few days later, Zhuang Ning had finally recovered. She gave me a call. 

“Everything at school is okay now. No more people got hurt. Is it really over? How are you going to deal with Li Xiaoling’s goldfish bracelet?”

“If you like it, you can keep it as a souvenir. If you don’t, just find a place to bury it! However, remember to bury it with many tongues,” I said.

“Tongues?” Zhuang Ning was bewildered.

“Yeah, chicken tongues, duck tongues, ox tongues, or pig tongues. Li Xiaoling hated the people who were spreading rumors. I guess she would feel better if you bury those tongues along with it.” I laughed.

“You’re a villain!” Zhuang Ning laughed and hung up the call.

After returning to my antique shop, I spent the whole next week using Baidu to search for suicidal cases.

I regretfully found that many female students had ended their lives because of malignant rumors in the past few years. They were beautiful young girls that people admired and should have had a bright future, but some malicious people had deliberately harmed them. The people who had once liked them had turned on them, also starting to spread vicious rumors. Under the severe pressure, they ended up committing suicide. Although I had subdued the goldfish bracelets, I knew this story would never have an end.

As long as people fabricated rumors, new goldfish bracelets would appear to sew their vile mouths shut!