While digging up their mother’s grave in search of gold, unfilial children froze in horror beside her coffin upon finding a spine-chilling note: ‘The secret was in the meal you just ate from the offering tray!’
I. THE SYMPHONY OF THE PARASITES
In a certain poor city, where rows of time-faint level-four houses leaned against each other beneath the murky dust of red dirt roads, stood an old moss-covered house lost amidst the hustle and bustle. There, time seemed to stand still within the damp, foul stench of poverty and malice nurtured day by day.
The owner of the house was a woman bearing a scrawny body, withered like a dry twig battered amidst the storms of life. All her life she stooped to shoulder the burden, scrimping every grain of rice and drop of sweat to raise three children into adulthood. Yet, what she received at the twilight of her life was not care or a warm inquiry, but scorn, contempt, and endless nagging from the very ones she had torn from her own flesh to bear.
The three children—three incarnations of bottomless greed and utter ingratitude—had long regarded the elderly mother as a thorn in their eyes, an obstacle blocking their path to wealth and prosperity. In their eyes, the mother was not a parent, but a money-making machine whose value had dried up, leaving only one thing of worth: the rumors of a hoard of gold accumulated from ancestral times, hidden discreetly somewhere within this old house.
The mother’s final days passed in a dark, cold room. Not a single tear of sympathy, not a single bowl of hot porridge offered with reverence. They surrounded her not to care for her, but to coerce and mentally torture her in order to extract the location of the massive fortune they believed she was hiding away.
— “You’re old, what the hell are you keeping wealth for to take down to the grave? If you know what’s good for you, confess where the gold is hidden, or don’t blame us for being unfilial!” – the eldest child yelled loudly, throwing the bowl of medicine fiercely onto the shattered floor, pitch-black medicinal liquid splashing all over the mother’s scrawny legs.
The second child added in a harsh, knife-sharp tone: “That’s right! Living long wastes our food and rice, yet you keep clutching onto wealth. Just hurry up and die out of our sight so we can divide the land and gold!”
The youngest child stood nearby, arms crossed, staring at the mother with cold, emotionless eyes as if looking at nothing more than an animal.
The mother lay on the rotted bed, her sunken, murky eyes gazing past the three children. Not a single word of complaint escaped her dry lips, not a single tear of grievance fell. In those eyes, the flashing light was not fear, but a chilling tranquility, as cold as a frozen lake in mid-winter. She knew clearly that the limit of endurance had run out, and she had also prepared her final gift for those who bore the name of her biological children.
A few days later, the mother drew her final breath in utter solitude. The space of the small house sank into a gloomy mourning hue, yet deep beneath that funeral facade lay extreme elation, giggles emanating from the kitchen as the three children began counting down time to execute their plot to plunder the entire fortune.
II. THE OFFERING MEAL AND THE ELATION OF THE BEASTS
That night, after the few sparse neighbors left and the incense smoke from the altar had just managed to thin out in the tranquil space, the three siblings gathered around an old, worn wooden table placed right in the middle of the house.
On the table was laid a simple offering meal according to traditional rituals: a plate of white sticky rice, a small boiled chicken, and a jar of medicinal wine steeped from forest roots that the late mother had carefully kept hidden inside an earthen jar in the corner of the house.
— “Finally, the old hag is dead! From now on, this estate, this house, and the mountain of underground gold beneath this floor will completely belong to us!” – the eldest child threw his head back and laughed loudly, his greedy eyes staring fixedly at the earthen wine jar, greed plainly exposed across every twitching muscle on his face.
— “We must quickly drain this offering wine to perform the excavation rituals, finding out the hidden gold spot before dawn,” – the second child fidgeted restlessly, hastily picking up three chipped porcelain cups, pouring out the swirling, amber-colored wine from the earthen jar.
The rich, slightly pungent aroma of traditional medicinal wine rushed straight up their noses. Without a shred of suspicion, without the slightest bit of worry, all three raised their wine cups, clinking them hard together with a harsh, echoing clink in the empty room.
— “Come on, bottoms up! Cheers to wealth and prosperity from now on belonging to us three siblings!”
All three threw their heads back and gulped down the burning wine. A warm feeling spread from their throats down to their stomachs, carrying a slightly astringent aftertaste but quickly overshadowed by joyous intoxication and the imagination of glittering gold bars waiting for them beneath the cold earth.
They ate ravenously, hurriedly swallowing the food on the offering tray with frantic eagerness. To them, etiquette or reverence toward the deceased was merely a meaningless farce. The only thing of value right now was gold, money, power traded away with the very life of the mother who had just passed away.
III. THE COFFIN OPENING AND THE BROKEN MIRROR
When the final cup of wine was just drained, the flickering oil lamp cast three distorted shapes against the mottled lime wall. Without waiting another second, the eldest child grabbed an iron shovel and a crowbar left in the corner of the porch, signaling his two younger siblings to head out to the small garden behind the house—where the mother’s corpse had just been temporarily and hastily buried before awaiting the formal burial ceremony according to local customs.
The murky moonlight was obscured by heavy black clouds, blanketing the desolate garden in a mournful, lonely hue. The chirping of crickets blended with the hurried, ambitious breaths of three humans going wild over wealth.
— “Dig fast! Dig deep down beneath the roots of that ancient banyan tree, I’m sure the old hag hid the chest of gold right at the bottom of the grave!” – the youngest child panted, tossing away shovelfuls of dirt while whispering urges, sweat pouring profusely down his forehead.
The iron shovel striking the hard soil produced harsh, jarring sounds. After nearly an hour of frantic physical labor driven by material starvation, the crude wooden coffin finally surfaced beneath the soggy mud.
Without a shred of pity, without a shred of respect, the three children lunged forward like starving beasts. They used a crowbar to pry open the rusted nails gripping tightly onto the coffin lid.
Creak… Snap!
The sound of rotted wood snapping tore through the quietness of the dark night. As the coffin lid cracked open, a strange scent—a blend of camphor, damp earth, and a pungent herbal aroma—rushed straight up their noses.
The eldest child lunged forward, his hands trembling as they poked inside the pure white shroud to search for the heavy gold bars he had always dreamed of. Yet, that greedy hand touched no precious metal at all. Instead, it touched a sharp, freezing surface.
— “What… what is this?!” – the eldest child screamed in panic, hastily pulling his hand back.
Under the flickering flashlight, they stared in shock inside the coffin. There was no gold, no jewels, no valuable land deeds.
Lying quietly amid the white shroud was merely a bronze mirror smashed into sharp, jagged pieces, reflecting a bizarre, shimmering light, and a handwritten letter penned in the scrawled, harsh handwriting of the late mother.
The second child tremblingly grabbed the paper, bringing it close to the flashlight to read aloud every word written on it:
“The gift I left behind is the secret you just drank during the offering meal.”
IV. THE VIOLENT DEATH AND THE KARMIC VERDICT
The room spun. Time seemed to freeze in a deadly moment.
The eldest child widened his eyes, his mouth agape but unable to emit any sound. The paper slipped from his hand straight down into the filthy mud. Instantly, a burning, freezing sensation like thousands of acupuncture needles began blazing from his chest up along his throat.
— “Cough… cough…” – the eldest child clutched his neck tightly, collapsing to the ground, his legs convulsing violently.
From the corners of his mouth, a streak of purple, dark as printing ink, slowly welled up, dripping down onto the dewy night weeds.
The second and youngest children panicked utterly, stumbling backward to collide hard with the trunk of the banyan tree. Terror gripped their minds as they realized that gut-wrenching pain was also beginning to attack their bodies. The medicinal wine jar! The offering meal! The liquid they had just drunk to the very last drop with joyful smiles earlier… turned out to be the chalice of poison distilled from deadly herbs hidden deep within the primeval forest, silently prepared by the mother for a fateful reunion.
— “Mother… you are… too cruel…” – the second child stammered, his eyes bulging, hands clawing at his throat as if wanting to tear out the toxic substance choking his trachea.
But it was already too late. The toxicity took effect at a dizzying speed, completely paralyzing the central nervous system and destroying blood vessels within the chest in the blink of an eye. All three collapsed next to the open coffin, where the broken mirror coldly reflected distorted faces twisted by agony, despair, and belated regret.
The cold moonlight shone down on the small garden in the poor city, embracing the three cooling corpses beside the deep pit and the empty coffin. Greed had dug its own grave to bury the bloodthirsty ones, leaving behind a chilling warning about karma: no act of unfilial impiety can escape the ultimate verdict of natural justice.
