The Ghost Leaves the Coffin is a long supernatural suspense novel by Miao Qimiao and one of his earliest published works, serialized on platforms such as 17K and Baidu Novels. It runs to over 1.1 million characters and was completed at the end of 2020. The story is set in the novel's fictional "Otherworld Great Ming Dynasty": here the dynasty's chronology is displaced from that of the historical Ming, spiritual energy is abundant, and ancient martial arts and Daoist arts have developed to an inconceivable degree—while also breeding a great many malevolent entities. Besides the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern and Western Depots, the court establishes four great "Secret Bureaus"—Immortal, Spirit, Shaman, and Ghost—specifically to handle supernatural incidents. The protagonist, Xie Bangui, is the son of Xie Wuxie, a Golden Coffin constable of the Ghost Bureau. Xie Wuxie died in the line of duty when his son was three; Xie Bangui was raised by two senior constables of the Ghost Bureau and naturally joined it to fill a post when he came of age. But the two masters do not know that since the age of fifteen their disciple has no longer been the original Xie Bangui—a foreign soul attached itself to him through a mysterious wooden coffin, inheriting his body and with it the mission and fate of a Ghost Bureau constable. Before his initiation, his master left only one injunction: "Do not ask what is inside the coffin unless you truly open it; do not ask what is buried in the grave unless you truly dig it up." And the Ghost Bureau's way of doing things—"killing ghosts and men alike, guarding the land and robbing tombs, being both human and ghost"—makes the job far more dangerous than imagined. Thereafter, Xie Bangui leads the Ghost Bureau's people in a night raid on the Den of Evil Ghosts, a bloody battle against the Execution Platform Demon, an encounter with the Soul-Hooking Cart, and a clever breaking of the Skeleton Lock; he survives ghostly vengeance, matches wits with the Peach Blossom Phantom, uncovers the Poison Coffin, and enters and leaves the village among the tombs—escaping death again and again, getting drawn into the covert rivalry among the four Secret Bureaus of Immortal, Spirit, Shaman, and Ghost, and gradually closing in on the truth of his own origins. The work combines the jianghu flavor of wuxia with supernatural horror, building a "jianghu of sorcerers" that comes to rest on questions of gratitude and vengeance, intrigue, and human choice.
在灵异网文里，《鬼出棺》常被当作“术士江湖”这一写法的起点。作者苗棋淼自述，他起初写玄幻屡屡碰壁，是书店老板一句“你的风格偏诡异，为什么不试试灵异”点醒了他；他于是把武侠与灵异嫁接，借《倩女幽魂》里燕赤霞那种侠气、正气与放荡形骸，塑造出主角谢半鬼，并进一步设想：既然侠客有江湖，术士为什么不能有自己的江湖？ 因此本书最可贵的不是吓人的桥段，而是它的“世界观骨架”：四大密衙并立、鬼衙亦正亦邪的行事逻辑、捕快以差事谋生却又身负宿命的处境，都让故事在惊悚之外多了一层江湖的苍凉。作者当时尚未形成成熟风格，文笔与结构难免有生涩之处，他自己也坦言这“并不算成功的作品”，但书中那种人鬼相争时不肯一味逃命、敢于出手反击的劲头，以及结尾“传奇终有遗憾”的余味，仍能让人读出一个写作者摸索自我风格的诚意。 如果你喜欢带江湖气的灵异冒险，或者想看看后来《鬼抬棺》《大先生》等“术士江湖”系作品的源头，这本书值得一读。需要提醒的是，它是网络连载小说，非正式出版物，市面上流传的多为网友整理的校对版电子文本。
Miao Qimiao is a Chinese online author known for suspense and supernatural fiction. Public information about him is limited, and neither his dates of birth and death nor his nationality are clearly recorded. The library currently holds ten of his works, including Gui Chu Guan, Di Xiansheng, Shen Yin, Da Xiansheng, Gui Men Guan, Xie Qi'er, Yangjian Jie Ming Ren, and Shenhua Jinqu. These titles fall mainly into categories such as premium fiction, horror and thriller, suspense and mystery, and supernatural suspense, with some also leaning toward social fiction and male-oriented fiction. Judging from the titles and categories, his writing often revolves around imagery such as coffins, yin and yang, fate and destiny, and hidden spaces, creating tense and eerie narrative atmospheres that give him a recognizable presence among readers of supernatural suspense.
