Chapter 49
Chapter 49
In her field of vision, the locust tree’s low-hanging canopy was also overlaid with a red shadow, leaving an eerie, deep silhouette against the pitch-dark night sky.
Although the red bridal veil hanging before her eyes still obstructed her view, and her feet in the embroidered shoes still throbbed with piercing pain, here she was not the one who needed to worry.
The Bride in Red followed close behind and drifted silently down in front of Xie Qingling.
Locust trees gathered yin energy. There was so much of it here that things seldom seen would often reveal their true forms.
Xie Qingling saw a pair of feet in three-inch embroidered lotus shoes descend over the small lawn before a low factory building.
The feet merely drifted above the grass, never truly touching down.
The Bride in Red hung rigidly in midair, her red robes falling around her. The night wind stirred the hem, making it unfurl slowly like a blossoming red lotus.
She no longer wore her red bridal veil, but Xie Qingling still could not see her face. Her head drooped, and long black hair fell down both cheeks, covering most of it.
The thick hair reached all the way to her ankles, hanging in a tangled mess from her head like dried grass and snarled hemp. Even now, it seemed to be growing longer, like weeds running wild in the wilderness.
The hair fell to the ground and crawled like little snakes, creeping toward Xie Qingling.
A swishing sounded. Wherever the hair licked across the green grass, the yin energy of the River of Forgetfulness’s water clinging to it immediately ate into the blades. They blackened, lost their vitality, and swiftly withered.
The hair crept closer to Xie Qingling, closer and closer. Soon it reached her feet and deftly wound around her ankles.
When the bronze gong sounded and the suona urged the bride onward, she would take Xie Qingling’s feet and head.
Just then, singing gradually drifted toward her, now near, now far, insubstantial and elusive. The song was ethereal and eerie, the voice trembling. It was the Bride in Red’s own voice:
“We drank from the same well, trod the same stone-paved road;
“Lived in the same village eighteen years, played together until we were grown.
“By day we shared a bench; by night, an oil lamp’s glow;
“Spinning hemp, we shared a basket; in the mill, we worked the same grindstone…”
In the blink of an eye, the Bride in Red arrived with the song.
Her hair looped behind Xie Qingling’s back and wound around her neck.
In the next instant, a face suddenly appeared before Xie Qingling.
The Bride in Red suddenly closed in, almost face-to-face with her. Her face pressed against Xie Qingling’s. Through the strands of black hair falling beside those cheeks, Xie Qingling abruptly saw a pair of eyes with only jet-black pupils and no whites.
Those eerie, yin-filled eyes stared at Xie Qingling, as though a hand held her very fate by the throat.
Everything was ready.
The Bride in Red needed only to exert a little force, and she could take Xie Qingling’s feet and head as she wished, ending tonight’s chase.
But…
At the moment she was about to claim her spoils, the Bride in Red suddenly discovered that, even with her hair wrapped around Xie Qingling’s body, she could do nothing to her.
Her hair seemed to have stopped obeying her.
Some powerful, unseen force seemed to be preventing it all.
Something that might be called bewilderment appeared in the Bride in Red’s black eyes.
At that moment, Xie Qingling smiled.
It was a radiant smile. To a ghost, however, it was more frightening than any malicious spirit.
“General Golden Shackle! General Silver Lock!” Xie Qingling called loudly. “I’ve brought you something to boost your performance stats!”
“Please, take your posts at once and apprehend this malicious ghost!”
In an instant, the canopy of the locust tree behind Xie Qingling stirred without a breeze.
The short grass on the ground suddenly bent to one side, bowing though there was no wind.
Some presence had descended.
Xie Qingling could not see them. But she could feel the Bride in Red’s hair around her neck and ankles trembling in terror, so frightened that it wanted to flee.
Soon, the Bride in Red let out a high, piercing scream of misery, as though enduring tremendous pain and torment. Xie Qingling hurriedly covered her ears against the sudden cry.
An immense force jerked the Bride in Red violently backward, dragging her embroidered shoes across the ground. Her body, which had grown considerably more solid through yin energy, abruptly became light and insubstantial again, like a wisp of vapor.
Xie Qingling could dimly make out shackles fastened around the Bride in Red’s neck.
The Bride in Red’s mournful cries still rang through their surroundings.
With her ears, Xie Qingling “watched” this long-overdue judgment and arrest.
[Good must be rewarded and evil punished, but the divine posts stand vacant. Golden Shackle and Silver Lock do not know where to find the Judge who decides life, death, and passage into reincarnation. Yet they cannot allow the Bride in Red to continue wreaking havoc in the mortal realm. Loathing evil, Golden Shackle and Silver Lock have decided to judge the Bride in Red in the stead of the Office of Punishing Evil.]
[A family had a fair daughter, married at twenty. Wedding red clashed with funeral white in baleful force; she died along the bridal procession’s route. Her wronged soul hunted passersby; to see her was to die. Alone she wandered by the River of Forgetfulness, roaming free for eighty years.]
[Golden Shackle and Silver Lock have sentenced the Bride in Red to death. With the Soul-Extracting Whip, they have ended her pitiable, loathsome existence as a ghost.]
Beside her ears, the Bride in Red’s piercing cries stopped abruptly.
Xie Qingling cautiously lowered her hands.
The world around her was quiet again.
Gone was the cold that made her feel she had returned to the depths of winter. Gone, too, was that icy gaze that clung like maggots to her bones. The yin energy in her body dispersed, and warmth gradually returned. Xie Qingling felt as though she had come back to the world of the living.
It was over.
Even the most vicious ghost was nothing but a flailing weakling before Golden Shackle and Silver Lock.
When it came to apprehending malicious ghosts, these two were professionals.
From the moment they acted to the moment they destroyed her, only the blink of an eye had passed.
Yet Xie Qingling’s feet still stung, and everything before her eyes was still blood-red.
The Bride in Red was dead, but the danger did not seem entirely over.
Her curses on Xie Qingling remained.
Although the Bride in Red could no longer come to reap Xie Qingling’s life, the three-inch lotus shoes on her feet and the red bridal veil over her head still hindered her walking and vision.
She had to find a way to get these two wretched things off.
By now, her earpiece’s communications function had returned to normal. Just as she was about to activate it and ask the other members of the department for help, her vision suddenly blurred. A moment later, it returned to normal.
Even the three-inch lotus shoes that had troubled her so much no longer held her toes in a tight grip.
Had the curses been lifted?
Xie Qingling froze, not understanding what had happened.
Could it be that after a ghost died, the measures it had put in place lost their effect as well?
[Golden Shackle and Silver Lock have finished their work of judging the malicious ghost. They put away the Soul-Extracting Whip and turn their gaze upon you. Kindhearted passerby, they still remember you. To thank you for showing them the way, the two generals have decided to lend you a hand.]
[General Golden Shackle reaches out and lifts off your red bridal veil. General Silver Lock bends down and removes your three-inch embroidered lotus shoes. They place the Bride in Red’s belongings before you. You may decide freely whether to keep them or discard them.]
A neatly folded red bridal veil embroidered with mandarin ducks playing in water appeared in her field of vision.
Beside it was a pair of three-inch embroidered lotus shoes with golden-yellow tassels hanging from them.
These were her spoils now.
Xie Qingling picked up the red bridal veil and the embroidered shoes.
[With Golden Shackle and Silver Lock’s blessing, the Bride in Red’s two belongings have become very different from what they once were.]
[Lotuses bloom with every step; grace shines in every sway. The Bride in Red’s mother sewed these three-inch embroidered lotus shoes with her own hands, pouring her profound love and hopes into them. But for the wearer, these shoes represent a terrifying curse. Whoever puts them on will be stripped of the ability to move, becoming a flower that can only stand in place to be admired.]
[Mandarin ducks play upon the water; may the couple enjoy a hundred years of harmony. The Bride in Red embroidered this red bridal veil herself, covering it with her hopes and dreams for the life ahead. Yet this vivid red veil blocked her vision and covered her black eyes. Anyone who wears it will lose their sight and be plunged into darkness. Without a kindly groom to lift the veil, the wearer will remain in darkness forever.]
Two cursed objects with negative effects, then.
They sounded very useful.
Anyone robbed of both movement and sight during a fight would be little different from meat on a chopping block.
Xie Qingling happily wrapped the two items up and hung them at her waist.
“General Golden Shackle, General Silver Lock, thank you both for tonight,” she said to the empty space beneath the locust tree.
Her conversation with thin air finished, Xie Qingling decided to leave.
It was already the early hours of the morning. The night was late, and she was exhausted.
Walking back from here was plainly impractical. Even using the Swiftstride Ghost would not be enough to cover the enormous distance back to the office.
So Xie Qingling decided to ask the other members of the department for help.
She activated her earpiece, and the call connected immediately. Every member of the department was present. Apparently, they had been holding a meeting before Xie Qingling joined the group call.
At the sound of her joining, the earpiece fell silent for a moment. Then Ling Fang’s furious voice rang out. “Xie Qingling?! Are you still fucking alive?!”
“…Still alive. I’m at the City God Temple.” Xie Qingling had never heard Ling Fang sound so irritable. She spoke quietly. “The Bride in Red is dead. I’m the hero of the hour, you know.”
Careful, but not cowed.
Surely he would not give her a furious dressing-down at a time like this… would he?
“Good. Very good.” Ling Fang’s voice held both the comfort of profound relief and the sound of gritted teeth, a tangled mixture of emotions. “All of you, go bring her back to me.”
“Now. This instant. Bring her before me.”
A perfectly synchronized chorus of “Copy” came through the earpiece.
But after a short wait, Dai Xingyu suddenly said, “But Director, what about you? Where are you?”
Oh, right. After taking Xie Qingling away, Ling Fang had vanished too.
Ling Fang was silent for a moment, then said, “Old Yu, come find me at the pedestrian overpass.”
As soon as he said it, he added, “Just you.”
“Copy,” Yu Wei replied.
Only after ending the call did Ling Fang let out a long, heavy breath. He felt as though his heart, liver, spleen, and kidneys had all been put through a wringer. In short, panic gripped his heart, fury burned inside him, and he was about to die of rage.
Dragging his lower body, left immobile by the curse from using the Wooden Hawk, he crawled laboriously along the ground, trying to get farther away from the occasional passing cars.
Just then, Ling Fang heard a clink. Someone had tossed two coins in front of him.
“Poor thing,” the passerby said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a disabled beggar in Future City.”