The moment the ice coffin cracked open, I saw Zhang Qingyang’s pupils contract. The man who had crushed a blood corpse’s cervical vertebrae with his bare hands was now trembling slightly.
“This isn’t a Western Zhou tomb...” The vajra umbrella in his hand clattered to the ground. “These jade figures are breathing.”
Following his gaze, I saw seven jade figures arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper, rhythmically drawing in and exhaling cold air. Faintly visible inside their abdomens were curled-up shadows, like fetuses not yet full term. Most horrifying of all, each figure had a familiar bronze fragment embedded between its brows. It was made of exactly the same material as the key in the hidden compartment of my pawnshop counter.
Yue Nu’s silver bells suddenly rang wildly, and the bug jars at her waist burst one after another. “They’re calling my name...” She backed away in terror. “In the voice of that Miao girl who was buried alive as a sacrifice three hundred years ago...”
I gripped the compass my father had left me. Its needle was spinning backward. When the last bronze fragment fell from a jade figure’s forehead, countless faint sounds of people kowtowing suddenly filled the entire ice tomb. Our reflections on the ice walls slowly stood up, each wearing a strange smile that wasn’t our own.
