Chapter 40
Chapter 40
The White Sedan Chair!
Seeing it left no room for doubt-the Bai Family was definitely behind this.
In that same instant, a terrifying thought flashed through my mind.
Li Qingying was a martial artist who required very little sleep. How could she have fallen into such a deep slumber at the Cai Family home tonight?
And how could she have failed to notice such a massive commotion outside?
The truth was clear: we had been set up!
But Cai Bin had been introduced by Tang Xun. Was Tang Xun trying to harm us?
Wait, I had only asked Tang Tang earlier and hadn’t actually gotten in touch with Tang Xun. Perhaps I was mistaken?
Could Cai Bin have used Tang Xun’s name as a front while actually conspiring with the Bai Family?
Countless possibilities swirled in my head, but by then, the White Sedan Chair was already charging toward me!
I spun around, intending to bolt back into the room, but when I turned, the room was gone.
In the blink of an eye, the White Sedan Chair descended over me.
A moment later, I found myself sitting firmly inside it.
I struggled to break free, but I felt as though I were bound by invisible ropes, completely unable to move.
The White Sedan Chair drifted along, floating toward an unknown destination.
After an indeterminate amount of time, the sound of wailing drifted in from outside.
There was weeping mixed with singing, though I couldn’t quite make out the lyrics. A specific term surfaced unbidden in my mind-Crying Marriage.
Legend says that for women of old, marriage was dictated by parental command and the word of a matchmaker. Before the wedding, they didn’t even know what their groom looked like.
On the day of the wedding, once they entered the bridal sedan chair, they would always weep. This was the Crying Marriage.
They cried for the sorrow of leaving home.
They cried for the uncertainty of their future.
In more extreme cases, some girls were destined to be dead the moment they wed!
They knew that even if the man they were marrying wasn’t dead yet, he wouldn’t live much longer. The marriage was merely a ceremony to “ward off ill luck” for the dying groom.
The sedan chair swayed rhythmically as the sobbing grew more piteous. My head throbbed with increasing pressure, and in my dazed state, I seemed to fall into an Illusion Mirror.
On a rural path overgrown with weeds, a bridal sedan chair advanced at a leisurely pace.
The sound of gongs, drums, and suona horns played incessantly, interspersed with the soft whimpering of a woman.
On a small slope to the west of the path, three girls about fifteen or sixteen years old lay prone. Their eyes were wide as they watched the sedan chair approach, their faces filled with distress as they whispered among themselves.
“Ah Rong is really going to be the second wife of that old man who’s old enough to be her great-grandfather.”
“When that old man came to Ah Rong’s house to look her over, I snuck a peek. His yellow teeth have almost all fallen out, and you could smell that ‘old man scent’ from a mile away.”
“I heard the old man is a wife-curser. He’s already taken over a dozen successive wives, and not one of them lived longer than a month.”
“Do you think Ah Rong will last a month?”
The three girls fell silent for a while.
The one on the right suddenly spoke up. “Ah Hong, I heard your parents are looking for a husband for you too, right?”
Ah Hong’s eyes instantly turned red. “Yes. My brother has reached the age to marry, so my parents made a deal with the Fang Family for a marriage exchange.”
The other two girls turned deathly pale. “A marriage exchange? They’re trading you to that sickly lung-disease ghost of the Fang Family?”
Ah Hong covered her face and wept.
The girl in the middle, Ah Mei, said despondently, “Is it true… that none of us can escape this fate? Ah Rong, Ah Hong, and then there were Ah Xia and Ah Juan a couple of years ago, and even more before them… Why? Why were we born in these mountain hollows? Is it truly impossible to ever escape this misfortune?”
The sound of the suona and drums gradually faded into the distance. On the small slope, the three girls held each other and wept bitterly.
Exhausted from crying, Ah Hong suddenly said, “I heard Granny Bai from the Rear Mountain Small Temple say that once we marry and perform the Affairs of the Duke of Zhou, our bodies become filthy. We’ll have to spend the rest of our lives constantly atoning for it. If we want to change our fate and ensure a good future in the next life, we have to… depart… before our bodies are broken.”
Ah Mei was confused. “Don’t they say that the Underworld doesn’t accept those who take their own lives? That they can’t enter the cycle of reincarnation?”
Ah Hong wiped away her tears and said, “Granny Bai said she can help us with a Release from Suffering.”
…
A gentle breeze lifted the right curtain of the White Sedan Chair. I jolted awake from the Illusion Mirror and instinctively looked toward the right.
In the darkness of the night, as the White Sedan Chair passed by, there was a small slope on the right side.
Crouched on that slope were three girls wearing Red Wedding Dresses with Black Hemp Ropes hanging around their necks. Their eyes, streaming with bloody tears, were fixed intently on me…
My hair stood on end. I closed my eyes and looked back at the slope, but the girls were gone.
What was that Illusion Mirror just now?
Those three girls on the slope looked exactly like the ones in the painting-the ones who had stood at the palace gates and led me inside.
Were they calling out to me for help?
And who was this Granny Bai from the Rear Mountain Small Temple that Ah Hong mentioned?
Did she have something to do with the Bai Family?
What happened next? Did Ah Hong, Ah Mei, and the other girl get married? Or did they…
As I pondered, the White Sedan Chair came to a halt.
The curtain lifted on its own. I looked out to see weeds growing everywhere; as far as the eye could see, the land was desolate.
Yet, in the midst of this wasteland, a Small Temple stood abruptly before the sedan chair.
The temple doors were wide open, and the interior was brightly lit. In the Main Hall, directly facing the entrance, sat that high-and-mighty Goddess Statue.
In the hands of the Goddess Statue was the very painting that should have been hanging in the Cai Family’s small living room.
A ghostly wind blew, and the scroll unfurled.
The sunlight in the painting turned into a round, blood-red moon, and the palace transformed into the Small Temple.
The temple was decorated with lanterns and streamers, filled with flickering shadows.
Before my very eyes, young girls wearing Red Wedding Dresses with Black Hemp Ropes around their necks walked out of the scroll one by one.
They stepped out of the Small Temple and approached the White Sedan Chair, forcibly dragging me out and surrounding me as they pulled me toward the temple.
I couldn’t move. My legs felt as if they were filled with lead; I couldn’t budge an inch.
But I knew in my heart that if I were dragged into that Small Temple tonight, my fate would be the same as the girls in the painting.
My soul would be trapped in that scroll forever, dressed in a Red Wedding Dress, hanging from a beam by a Black Hemp Rope.
Condemned to fall into hell for all eternity!
At that thought, I bit down hard on the tip of my tongue. The moment I was about to be pulled over the threshold of the Small Temple, I sprayed a mouthful of Tongue-Tip Blood into the building.
Granny had said that if one is trapped by Evil Spirits or falls into a Nightmare, Tongue-Tip Blood can provide a temporary escape.
To these Dirty Things, Tongue-Tip Blood is a substance of ultimate Yang.
As the blood sprayed inward, a chorus of miserable shrieks erupted from the Small Temple.
However, the screams lasted only a moment. More and more girls emerged from the scroll, and the area was shrouded in thick black mist and gusts of yin wind.
The first spray of Tongue-Tip Blood is always the most effective; after that, one’s energy dissipates. I needed time to gather my strength again.
Just as I was at my wits’ end, with one foot already being forced over the threshold, the light click of a crossbow trigger cut through the night. An arrow whizzed past my ear with a sharp whistle, accurately piercing the unfurled painting.
With a sudden *thump*, the short arrow exploded into sparks. Talisman Fire instantly ignited, and the Talisman Spell wrapped around the Goddess Statue like a net…