Chapter 3

Chapter 3

As my memories snapped back into place, I stared at the paper couple sitting upright on either side of the long table. They were the exact pair Yang Hong had asked me to deliver.

Judging by the way the room was arranged, and by the photograph of Yang Yan on the table, this seemed to be the fake wedding Yang Hong had prepared for that female ghost.

Then the person who had called out to me from inside the house just now should have been Yang Hong himself.

But something still felt off.

Where had all those guests in the courtyard come from?

Were they really villagers from around here?

And if so, why had they said tonight was the day to send the bride back to her maiden home? Wasn’t this supposed to be the wedding day?

With my head full of questions, I simply walked into the room, intending to find Yang Hong and get some answers.

But the moment I stepped through the doorway, the door slammed shut behind me with a bang.

Everything around me went deathly silent. The courtyard that had been brightly lit a moment ago was swallowed by darkness in an instant.

It took my eyes a long while to adjust before I finally made out a faint glimmer in the gloom.

The two red candles were like a pair of ghostly eyes in the night. In their dim yellow halo, I discovered that the long table holding the photograph was covered in dust.

At the same time, the stale, moldy smell of something sealed away for years rushed into my nose.

I went straight to the long table, picked up one of the candles, and held it up to shine around the room.

Sure enough, dust and cobwebs were everywhere. This farmhouse had clearly been abandoned for a very long time.

The bright, clean scene I had seen earlier seemed to have been nothing but an illusion.

I was just about to head back into the courtyard to take a look when, the moment I turned around, I caught sight of someone standing in the middle of the inner room to my right.

It was a woman dressed in a bright red bridal gown.

A faint wash of moonlight seeped in through the window and fell across that red dress, making it look as if it were bleeding.

One of my hands slowly moved to my waist. Fortunately, my Soul-Whip was still there.

This Soul-Whip, made from eleven sections of peach wood, had been given to me by an old Daoist priest I had accidentally saved when I was a child.

Back then, the old priest had said to me, “You have the face of an asura and the heart of a bodhisattva. In this life, you’re destined to make your living between yin and yang.”

I slowly drew the Soul-Whip and turned to face the woman head-on.

Her cheeks were deathly pale, and most of her features were hidden behind her loose, disheveled hair. I couldn’t see what she looked like clearly, but my instincts told me she wasn’t very old.

We stood there in silent confrontation as waves of cold, sinister wind slipped in through the cracks around the door.

Then the woman suddenly lifted her chin and slowly opened her mouth at me. Clumps of dirt began falling from between her lips, one after another.

My brows knitted tight. I was just about to strike first when another shrill howl suddenly rang out from outside the window.

The front door of the house was smashed open with a bang, and that bright red bridal sedan appeared in the doorway.

I turned back to look at the woman again, but the room was already empty.