At the end of the long street, on a moonless night, a door quietly opened.
Behind the door is the intertwined scent of tung oil and sandalwood. It is the place in the world that you least want to set foot on, but you will eventually arrive. I grew up here, the daughter of a coffin shop, and was born with the bad luck that others avoid.
My mother said that our business is not only to bury corpses, but also to bring souls back home. There is a kind of coffin called the "Yin-sending coffin", which can bring the lonely souls who have died in a foreign land back to their homeland to rest in peace according to the guidance of the ghost.
Until that day, a noble man came to the capital. My mother accepted the extraordinary business with a smile, picked up the red lacquer compass that she never left, and disappeared into the morning mist.
She never came back.
The government said that she died of a sudden illness. The nobleman was "sympathetic" and rewarded her with fifty taels of snowflake silver, and ordered me, a coffin girl who had just turned sixteen, to inherit her mother's business.
No one saw my trembling hands as I pried open my mother's empty coffin late at night, and no one knew the shocking warning on the blood-stained note on the bottom of the coffin: "Don't trust people wearing official boots."
At this moment, a pair of cloud-patterned official boots were parked on the stone steps outside the shop.
The noble man left and returned, handing over a warm jade pendant. His smile did not reach his eyes: "This is the best reward for your mother. From now on, you will follow me."
The jade pendant was turned over, and under the candlelight, it was clearly engraved with the military badge number of my father who had been in the army for many years and had no news.
My mother's disappearance, my father's clues, the warning of the empty coffin, the solicitation of noble people... All the threads were suddenly twisted into a cold rope and silently wrapped around my neck.
I know that since I took over the jade pendant, I will no longer be on the road to the world.
Rather, it is to guide the soul and earn one's life——
The coffin leads to the underworld.
