Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Festive Ghost clearly wasn’t willing to let a juicy morsel slip from his grasp. He poked at my face for a while, then curiously lifted my eyelids.

While he circled around studying us, the others were gathered around the bright red bridal sedan chair, making a commotion.

“Is there a bride inside? Or is it empty?”

“I think it’s probably empty. Otherwise, if it were that heavy, how would they carry it all the way up here?”

Several paper effigies had round patches of blush painted on their cheeks and eerie smiles on their faces. They cupped their hands toward the crowd. “Naturally, there is a bride.”

“There really is a bride? Then can you have the bride give us wedding candy?”

“Can the bride come out so we can take a look?”

One bold guy leaned in front of the sedan chair and reached out to lift the curtain. A paper effigy immediately stepped forward to block him.

“Young man, that would be against the rules.”

The paper effigy smiled as it extended a hand. With a flip of its palm, a piece of milk candy wrapped in red paper lay there.

“There’s plenty of wedding candy to go around. If you feel it isn’t enough, after eating the candy, you may also go drink the wedding wine. When the time comes, the bride will naturally come out to receive the guests.”

Xiaoyuan asked in surprise, “Drink wedding wine? Up here on Mount Tai? For real? How are you supposed to hold a banquet up here?”

“Yeah, open flames are prohibited on Mount Tai. They confiscated my lighter down below just now. You can cook and set up a feast here? You’re lying, right?”

“Exactly. Just let the bride come down now so we can have a look, hahaha!”

The guy from earlier was unwilling to give up. He hopped to the side and tried to lift the sedan curtain again. With him stirring things up, the others joined in, calling for the bride to get out of the sedan chair and let everyone see her.

The Festive Ghost could no longer spare any attention for us. In a flash, he appeared in front of the crowd.

“What are you all making such a fuss about?”

A cold wind suddenly whipped up from nowhere, and the temperature around us seemed to drop several degrees in an instant.

Everyone felt their scalps prickle.

Xiaoyuan shrank her neck and hid behind a few boys.

“Y-you move so fast.”

“You were just over there. How did you get here in a blink-”

“Did I?”

The Festive Ghost curled his lips and stared at Xiaoyuan with a sinister expression.

“I follow them year-round carrying sedan chairs. I built up my legs.”

“Everyone, if you don’t wish to drink the wedding wine, that’s fine. Have a piece of wedding candy and share in a little good fortune.”

The Festive Ghost handed out the candy one by one. Each piece was about the size of a grape, wrapped in red paper and giving off an enticing fragrance. Some people couldn’t resist tearing off the wrapper and eating it the moment they got one. A few others didn’t eat theirs and instead stuffed the wedding candy into their pockets.

The Festive Ghost fixed his eyes on them.

“Why aren’t you eating? Are you unwilling to share in our joy?”

His eyeballs were especially large, his expression was sinister, and with that strange grin on his face, the crowd couldn’t hold out. They had no choice but to cooperate and eat the candy.

Jiang Haoyan leaned in and whispered, “Why is he so determined to force people to eat the candy?”

“It’s a rule of a ghost marriage. Once you eat the wedding candy, you have to give a wedding gift-and the gift is ten years of your yang lifespan.

“The Ghost Gate is nearby. These wandering ghosts fear the ghost officials inside, so they definitely wouldn’t dare kill people on a large scale here. But holding a ghost marriage is different. Once you accept the wedding candy, it’s the same as entering into a contract with them. Whether they take ten years or twenty years of your yang lifespan, the underworld won’t interfere.

“After eating the wedding candy, you still have to attend the banquet. Once there, you’ll end up eating all sorts of things from the underworld. At the very least, you’ll be plagued by bad luck for years after you return. Add in the borrowed lifespan, and for anyone with a weak birth chart, it’s entirely possible they’ll get into an accident and die a violent death.”

Ji Kang was shocked.

“Then are we just going to stand by and watch them die?”

“Didn’t I save them just now? They refused to listen. That’s their fate. Besides, our main goal right now is to save Hua Yuling. If we follow them to the banquet, we won’t be able to make it back before dawn. We can’t afford that delay.”

At the mention of Hua Yuling, Ji Kang immediately fell silent.

The person who had abducted Hua Yuling hadn’t demanded a ransom or named any conditions. They had only said that Hua Yuling was on Mount Tai and told me to find her. It was so abrupt and vague that I couldn’t guess their purpose at all.

So before we set out, I performed a divination.

Kan below and Kan above, two trigrams stacked together-the Kan Hexagram. Great misfortune.

Kan represented water, and also danger. Two Kans overlapping meant danger upon danger. We absolutely could not create any more complications.