This coffin home had originally belonged to the Li Family. It had included communal housing, farmland, granaries, a schoolhouse, and other properties, rather than being a place specifically used to store coffins. Later, the Li Family declined, and after their descendants sold off the land and moved away from Heishui City, the estate was left vacant.

After several more years of exposure to wind and rain, the two characters for “Li Family” fell off the plaque, leaving only the words “Coffin Home.” When He Chunhua saw that, he decided it must be Heaven’s will. So the place became Heishui City’s public coffin home, a place to temporarily house coffins.

Places where the dead were kept tended to have the heaviest yin qi. People had suggested long ago that the morgue be moved outside the city, but during He Chunhua’s tenure as commandery administrator, Heishui City had never gotten around to the project.

Later, Commandery Administrator Hu took over, and...