chapter 31

Two nearly burnt-out red candles.

I thought someone in the Du Family liked lighting these things.

But I didn’t expect they were only lit for weddings, and specifically for ancient-style weddings.

In this kind of setting, I couldn’t help but feel a bit strange.

“Be careful…”

Seventh Master whispered a warning: “This villa is very odd, the yin energy is heavy. Du Yuwei’s body should be here.”

Hearing Seventh Master’s words, both Meng Yifan and I felt much less afraid.

We came here for Du Yuwei.

If her body is here, then our trip wasn’t in vain!

Coming out of the bathroom, we entered the living room on the first floor.

The living room was huge, several times bigger than the one in my house.

The furniture and antique decorations in the living room looked extremely valuable. I figured that if you added up the worth of all these things, you could probably buy a house like mine.

But I didn’t have time to marvel at the luxury. I noticed several large, bright red ‘double happiness’ characters pasted on the walls.

Even kids know what those are for.

If someone has those up, it definitely means there’s a wedding celebration.

I thought to myself, someone really is getting married here.

Although I don’t know much about traditional culture, I remember my grandpa telling me when I was little that if a family had a funeral that year, they couldn’t hold a wedding. Doing so was considered unlucky and there were many taboos.

If it was for ‘chongxi’-a ritual to counteract bad luck-it wouldn’t be done this way.

‘Chongxi’ is for people who are about to die, usually an elderly person. The younger generation would quickly get married to bring some joy, hoping it might help the elder live a bit longer.

But Du Yuwei is already dead. Can you really bring her back to life with this?

At that moment, I noticed a painting hanging on one of the walls.

The painting… looked like a wedding scene, but not a Western wedding-it was a traditional Chinese wedding.

There was a bride and groom at the top, guests below.

The painting was done in oil, but the lighting was dim and I couldn’t see clearly who the groom was from a distance.

I hurried closer to take a look. The couple in the painting wore traditional Chinese wedding attire. The woman was dressed in a bright red wedding dress, her head covered with a red veil, so her face was hidden.

The man looked to be in his forties, almost fifty, wearing a groom’s outfit with a big red flower on his chest.

When I looked closely at his face, I was stunned.

That face was very familiar-it was Du Ruhai, the famous entrepreneur!

Damn, the one getting married is Du Ruhai?

His adopted daughter just died three months ago, and he’s already rushing to get married?

I quickly waved Meng Yifan over and pointed at the painting for him to see.

He recognized the person in the painting too, and was just as shocked, staring at it in disbelief.

In the painting, Du Ruhai and the bride sat on either side of a wooden chair, with a wooden table between them. On the wall behind them was an oversized ‘double happiness’ character.

Du Ruhai was smiling happily in the painting-a genuine, heartfelt smile, as if his greatest wish in life had come true and he’d married the woman he most desired.

But this painting… the more I looked at it, the stranger it seemed.

If it was a wedding portrait, why not just take a photo? Why have someone paint it instead?

Even if Du Ruhai liked paintings, since it was hung in such a prominent spot in the living room, shouldn’t the painting be more decorative?

I didn’t see any artistic value at all. Seeing this painting late at night, I even felt a bit creeped out.

And the bride in the painting didn’t even show her face.

Meng Yifan and I kept staring at the painting, almost mesmerized by it.
As I kept staring, I suddenly felt that something was wrong.

Weren’t we here to look for Du Yuwei’s body?

Why was I just staring at this painting?

But for some reason, even though I knew I shouldn’t keep looking at the painting, I simply couldn’t move my eyes away. Even my body suddenly felt out of my control.

It was as if the painting had some kind of magic, deeply attracting me. I desperately wanted to glimpse the bride’s face beneath that red veil.

I wanted to see what this bride really looked like.

But the more I tried to see clearly, the blurrier my vision became. Strange fragments flashed through my mind.

It was a closed room, everything in sight was red.

Bright red ‘double happiness’ characters, bright red curtains.

The groom and bride sat upright in chairs, separated by a square table, with another huge ‘double happiness’ character behind them.

The scene was exactly the same as in the painting!

At that moment, I was standing below the stage, with guests on both sides who had come to congratulate the newlyweds.

But these guests were odd. Though they were here to celebrate, none of them had any expression on their faces. Their faces were deathly pale, like paper figures from a paper effigy shop.

The groom on stage was staring at me. He was Du Ruhai.

Du Ruhai had been smiling, but when he saw me, his smile quickly vanished.

Only then did I realize I was standing in the wrong spot. The guests were all on either side-why was I standing alone in the middle?

That was a bit rude.

Embarrassed, I instinctively wanted to move into the crowd.

Just as I lifted my foot to walk over, a large hand suddenly covered my eyes.

“Don’t look!”

A familiar voice sounded in my ear.

I shivered instantly, recognizing it as Seventh Master’s voice.

“Heaven Soul, return to your body! Wake up now!”

Seventh Master’s voice came again.

As soon as he finished speaking, I felt a heavy slap on the back of my head.

I staggered, almost falling to the ground, and snapped awake in an instant.

When I opened my eyes again, the scene around me had returned to the villa’s living room. There were no guests, no bride and groom on stage.

I exchanged a glance with Meng Yifan. He seemed to have seen those strange fragments too.

For some reason, the two of us instinctively looked up at the painting on the wall again.

“Damn it, still looking!”

Seventh Master grabbed both our ears and turned our heads away. “Didn’t get enough? Haven’t seen enough yet?”

Terrified, we stared at Seventh Master and hurriedly asked him what had just happened to us.

“This painting was made with Corpse Oil-it’s an Evil Painting.”

Seventh Master glared at us fiercely. “If you two had kept looking a bit longer, there would’ve been two more idiots among the guests in the painting. Got it?”

We shuddered in fear and quickly told Seventh Master that we’d just seen the scene inside the painting, and it felt real.

Seventh Master said coldly, “You two were bewitched by the painting just now. Your Heaven Souls had already left your bodies. If I hadn’t called them back, your Heaven Souls would’ve been trapped in that painting forever.”

Meng Yifan swallowed hard. “What happens if you lose your Heaven Soul…?”

Seventh Master replied, “The Heaven Soul is the main soul among the Three Souls. Without it, a person becomes a vegetable. The vegetative patients in hospitals-that’s what would’ve happened to you two.”

I was scared out of my wits.

Just by looking at a painting, I nearly became a vegetable.

What kind of mentality did Du Ruhai have, hanging something so sinister in his home?

And Seventh Master said the painting was made with Corpse Oil-whose Corpse Oil could it be…