The rain roared.
Droplets struck Shen Yi’s face one by one, streaming down his cheeks. He clutched the red string in his hand, mouth agape, half-crouched on the ground, not daring to speak.
The Ghost Groom was a mere fraction of an inch away, standing directly behind him. He wore a red wedding robe clearly dressed as a groom yet his head was draped in a red bridal veil.
A sudden gust of wind blew, tossing Shen Yi’s wet hair and fluttering the Ghost Groom’s red veil. As it swayed, Shen Yi caught a glimpse of the face beneath.
Shen Yi froze.
The Ghost Groom had eyes that were a vibrant, fresh red identical to Wen Mo’s and a shock of messy hair as white as winter snow. A strange fragrance wafted from his body.
The Ghost Groom suddenly raised his hand. He extended the umbrella toward Shen Yi, tilting it over him. The torrential rain above was blocked by the red umbrella, the sound of the downpour turning into muffled thuds as water cascaded off the edges.
Shen Yi stared at him blankly, forcing two words out of his dry throat: “A-Mo?”
The Ghost Groom tilted his head. He didn’t answer. Suddenly, white mist began to spread around them, enveloping the ruins and making the Ghost Groom’s figure appear ethereal.
He gradually vanished into the mist, his body turning transparent. A wave of panic hit Shen Yi’s heart; he called out “A-Mo” once more and instinctively reached out to grab him, but his hand caught only empty air.
The Ghost Groom had disappeared.
With a thump, the red umbrella fell onto Shen Yi’s head.
“Damn it!” he cried out in pain, clutching his head for an umbrella to fall from such a height and hit him, it was surprisingly painful.
The umbrella rolled away. Shen Yi rubbed his head, and when he looked up again, the white mist had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The red umbrella lay in the dirt nearby.
The man in the suit stood there with wide eyes and a deep frown, staring at him in shock. Shen Yi, still rubbing his head, met his staggered gaze and thought to himself: Is it really that big of a deal? He’s just a Ghost Groom.
“What’s with that look?” Shen Yi asked. “Haven’t you seen a ghost before?”
Yan Pan pointed behind him: “It’s not about the ghost. It’s behind you.” Her tone was calm, but she enunciated the last two words deliberately, making her emphasis clear.
Shen Yi, still clutching the back of his head, turned around.
A red wooden bridal sedan sat there silent, lopsided, and positioned directly behind him. The sedan wasn’t particularly large or small, but it looked as if it had been neglected for a long time. The red wood was covered in a thick layer of dust that was currently being washed away by the rain. A massive, vivid red “Double Happiness” character (囍) was printed on the front curtain. The character filled the four corners of the curtain completely, quickly becoming soaked by the rain.
Shen Yi stood up. He looked at the sedan in silence for a moment, then lowered his head and opened his palm. The red string lay quietly in his hand.
Did it have something to do with this?
As soon as he found it, the Ghost Groom appeared, followed by the sedan… it was hard not to suspect a connection.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Shen Yi turned to see the suit-man and Yan Pan approaching. Shen Yi lowered his right hand, which held the red string, and casually stuffed it into his pants pocket.
This didn’t escape the eyes of the two veterans. They both glanced down at the hand hiding the object.
“What did you find?” The suit-man smiled. “Take it out and let me see.”
Shen Yi looked innocent: “It was nothing.”
“Stop playing dumb. When something suddenly appears, it’s definitely because a player found an item and triggered a ‘switch’,” the suit-man said. “This game is no different from a horror RPG. Players push the plot forward by completing tasks, and they can find clues through exploration and investigation. Clues serve as hints for solving the plot to clear the game, but finding them can also trigger the next sequence.”
“Clearly, a plot sequence was just triggered. Neither this lady nor I found anything, so it has to be you,” the suit-man continued. “Take it out, Shen Yi.”
Shen Yi looked into his eyes. The suit-man’s eyes were crinkled in a smile, but it wasn’t a sincere one. There was calculation and scheming within them a truly blatant shrewdness.
Shen Yi tilted his head: “What exactly are the game rules we ‘sinners’ have to follow again?”
The suit-man chuckled: “Diverting the subject?”
“No, I truly don’t remember,” Shen Yi said. “What are they?”
The suit-man smiled and opened his mouth to speak, but Yan Pan interrupted from behind him.
“Nothing special,” Yan Pan said. “Strictly speaking, you don’t need to eat or sleep. There are Butchers hunting at night, so focus on avoiding them. Once you are hunted or killed by ghosts, you stay here forever. Otherwise, just do your tasks, end the evil within the game, find the Guide, and you can leave. If you really can’t clear it, you can try to kill the Night Watchman, but no human has ever achieved that.”
“Thanks.” Shen Yi nodded his thanks to her, then spread his hands to the suit-man. “See? Where does it say I have to hand over everything I find?”
The suit-man smiled: “Who’s asking you to hand it over? Aren’t we teammates? Whatever you found…”
“Who was it that said I was a ghost earlier?”
“…”
The smile on the suit-man’s face stiffened. Yan Pan let out a snicker.
“Enough. Let’s carry the bridal sedan back first,” Yan Pan said. “We lost a person, so carrying this is going to be a bit more work.”
“Right, let’s get it back first,” the suit-man agreed. “But just the two of us will carry it.”
“Why?”
The suit-man shot Shen Yi a disdainful look: “He might be a ghost. Besides, we don’t know what he found just now, and he won’t even show us. It’s hard not to suspect he’s harboring some ill intent. For safety’s sake, let him walk in front while we two carry it.”
“Carrying it with just two people is going to be a real strain…”
“A strain is better than being dead, right?”
Yan Pan was speechless. She shrugged and conceded.
Shen Yi was thus excluded. Wen Mo, perched in the tree, watched them discuss for a few more moments before they took their positions at the front and back to lift the sedan.
Shen Yi went to pick up the red oil-paper umbrella from the ground. He held it, examining it from top to bottom, but seeing nothing wrong, he closed it and took it with him.
The suit-man lifted the front of the sedan while Yan Pan took the back. With the two of them urging him to lead the way, Shen Yi pulled Wen Mo’s jacket over his head like a hood, clutched the umbrella, and walked forward.
Wen Mo rubbed his head, thinking to himself that things weren’t looking good; he had forgotten to tell Jiang Yi last night that it was actually okay to use an umbrella.
The three left the ruins and headed toward the old woman’s house. Shen Yi had no burden and walked easily at the front. However, the two behind him were getting slower and slower.
The man in the suit was already drenched in sweat. He wiped his forehead half of it was cold sweat.
Something isn’t right, he thought.
At first, carrying the sedan wasn’t difficult. At the very front of the sedan, where the two handles were, there was a horizontal bar connecting them. Though two people carrying a whole sedan is a strain, the suit-man only had to shoulder the front bar, so it wasn’t overwhelming. In fact, when he first lifted it, he found the thing was strangely light, almost as if it were made of paper.
The suit-man was a veteran of three levels; such an anomaly made his heart sink instantly, and suspicion flared. But he quickly told himself that this village was strange to begin with, and once you lift it, you can’t put it down the old woman had said never to look back. Looking back would mean death.
He could only wait until they got back to the house. The old woman’s courtyard was full of living people, and it was broad daylight. The Ghost Groom had also just appeared without harming anyone; carrying the sedan back should be fine.
Since the sedan was light, he carried it for a portion of the journey. But then, things changed.
The sedan grew heavier.
With every step, it gained weight. By the halfway point, the sedan was so heavy it felt as though three or four people were sitting inside. The suit-man’s shoulder ached sharply as if the bone were about to snap. He walked with a hunched back and a bent torso, his body curled as if he were about to crawl on the ground, nearly crushed by the weight.
The rain grew heavier, blurring his vision. He haphazardly wiped his eyes, gasping for breath as he continued forward. It was so heavy that the suit-man felt a stitch in his side, and his legs began to tremble like lead.
Suddenly, a silvery, bell-like laughter rang out from behind him.
The suit-man’s whole body stiffened, and he didn’t dare move. He stopped in his tracks. The laughter continued, and the suit-man suddenly realized it was coming from behind him from inside this bridal sedan.
The suit-man’s breath hitched.
“Hooo.”
A blast of freezing air blew against the back of his neck, making the man shudder violently. Before he could react, a cold hand reached down and touched his face. This hand was like a block of ice, so cold it made his face ache. The suit-man didn’t dare move, his pupils trembling. He lowered his gaze and saw that the hand was deathly pale, with long, sharp, blood-red fingernails.
“Am I heavy?”
An eerie voice whispered in his ear.
The suit-man suddenly realized that the voice wasn’t coming from the sedan. It was coming from him. The weight that was nearly crushing him wasn’t from the sedan he was carrying either.
It was on his back.
He tremulously lowered his eyes further and saw a pair of legs hanging over his shoulders, a red wedding skirt fluttering against him. A pair of hands cupped his face, and the laughter continued without end.
“Am I heavy? Am I heavy?”
The suit-man was drenched in cold sweat. He opened his mouth, but before he could answer, a freezing ghostly hand covered it. His pupils shrank violently. A third ghostly hand reached down from above, covering his eyes which were red with terror and tears.
The rain poured down.
The sound of a bone snapping rang out clearly in the rain.
“?”
Shen Yi, walking at the very front, paused. He instinctively wanted to turn around but suddenly remembered the old woman’s instructions. He stopped himself immediately.
Keeping his eyes forward, he called out loudly: “Did something happen?”
“No,” the suit-man said. “Keep moving. If you stop, we can’t move either.”
His tone sounded a bit off.
Just as Shen Yi was about to ask more, Yan Pan added from the back: “Why did you stop? Let’s hurry. The rain is heavy and this thing is heavy, too.”
Hearing this, Shen Yi couldn’t very well stay and investigate, so he turned and continued forward. But after taking a single step, he heard a clatter.
Shen Yi paused again. He turned his head and saw the stone-pile shrine by the road. For some reason, the little stone Bodhisattva statue had fallen out of the shrine and was lying face-down on the road. Its head was completely shattered, leaving only the body intact.
The stone Bodhisattva lay there like a headless corpse in the middle of the road.
The three of them carried the sedan back to the old woman’s courtyard. A village woman ran out to meet them. Seeing that they had brought it back, she signaled for them to place it in front of the gate. After all, the courtyard gate was too small; such a sedan wouldn’t fit through.
Once the sedan was set down, Yan Pan let out a sigh of relief and walked out from behind it. Rubbing her shoulder, she stepped forward and said, “I’m exhausted. This sedan really is heavy.”
“Is it okay to look back now?”
Yan Pan was already by his side. She raised her hand and delivered a hard slap to Shen Yi’s back: “It’s fine now!”
Shen Yi flinched from the slap. He clutched his shoulder and hissed: “Don’t hit so hard!”
Yan Pan gave a chuckled snort and walked into the courtyard: “Let’s go in and report.”
“Okay.”
The man in the suit also walked over. Shen Yi looked up and saw that he still had that same smiling face. When Shen Yi looked at him, the suit-man smiled and nodded without saying a word, brushing past him and walking straight in.
Shen Yi watched his receding figure, blinking twice. The man looked fine, but Shen Yi felt inexplicably that something about him was entirely wrong. He stood in place, staring thoughtfully at the suit-man’s back with Wen Mo’s jacket still draped over his head.
Yan Pan poked her head out from the house. “What are you dazing off for!” she shouted. “Come in and hand in the task!”
The shout snapped Shen Yi back to reality. He quickly responded and ran into the house.
The house was still dim. Shen Yi took Wen Mo’s jacket off his head and gave it a couple of shakes, sending a spray of water flying.
The old woman still sat in the shadows. Yan Pan stepped forward and said, “Old lady, we’ve brought the bridal sedan back.”
“Good…” the old woman rasped. “Good, good… thank you for your hard work.”
“The others aren’t back yet… those tasks take time. You all should wait for a while. Feel free to walk around the village.”
“Remember to come back by evening.”
Outside, the rain showed no signs of stopping. The sky showed no signs of clearing.
The three walked out of the courtyard. Shen Yi wrung out Wen Mo’s jacket, gave it a whirl, and draped it back over his head to use as an umbrella.
“She said we can walk around the village,” Yan Pan said. “That means we can ‘investigate the case.’ Shall we go together?”
She wasn’t talking to Shen Yi; she was looking at the man in the suit. The suit-man smiled and waved her off: “No, I’m going to investigate on my own.” He finished speaking and left, walking into the rain with his hands in his pockets.
“So uncooperative.” Yan Pan glanced at Shen Yi. “Then I’ll go investigate on my own as well. Be careful.”
Knowing she wouldn’t want to investigate with a “ghost” like himself, Shen Yi nodded, accepting it gracefully: “OK.”
Yan Pan left as well. With both of them gone, Shen Yi didn’t rush off. He opened his mouth wide in a yawn and stretched his limbs forcefully, letting out a sound like a human reverting to a primitive state before lowering his arms. He let out an “ugh” and smacked his lips twice.
There were still many things he couldn’t understand. But most importantly, he had to figure out what was really going on with this village.
Covering himself with the jacket, Shen Yi hopped forward into the rain, making a “thud” sound with his mouth to provide his own sound effect, and then jogged toward the east end of the village.
At the east end of Yang Zhuang, there was a big slope. At the bottom of the slope were fields, and at the top was a household.
In the wind and rain, one half of the iron gate of this house was hanging open, creaking as it swayed back and forth. Shen Yi looked up at this house one he had seen in his dreams and for a moment, he couldn’t describe the feeling in his heart. In his dream, this was his home.
This was the old Jiang family home.
The desolation was visible to the naked eye. Much like Wen Mo’s home, it clearly hadn’t been lived in for a long time. The iron gate was rusted beyond recognition, and an unidentifiable stench drifted from the courtyard.
Shen Yi frowned, covering his nose as he pushed open the creaking half-gate and walked into the yard. The courtyard was overgrown with weeds, and puddle after puddle lay on the ground. The tree in the front yard had withered and died, and trash was strewn everywhere.
The lounge chair beneath the tree was still there, and upon it sat a rotting corpse. It had been bloated by the water, the entire body swollen and deathly pale beyond belief.
Shen Yi couldn’t tell who it was. But it was likely the source of the stench. Shen Yi stepped forward, intending to get a good look at who it was, when suddenly, something fell from the sky and crashed down in front of him with a thud.
“Whoa!”
Shen Yi flinched back in surprise, letting go of his nose. With that, he let out a gag, nearly vomiting from the stench in the courtyard. He quickly covered his nose again.
Then, Wen Mo stood up in front of him.
Shen Yi froze. He looked at Wen Mo for two seconds before realizing that the thing he hadn’t seen clearly falling from the sky was Wen Mo.
Wen Mo’s expression was very poor, his brow deeply furrowed, looking at him with a gaze full of bitter resentment. It was as if he were blaming him for something.
Shen Yi was bewildered; he didn’t quite understand what Wen Mo was blaming him for. He hadn’t done anything.
Amidst his thoughts, Wen Mo let out a silent sigh and began to sign to him.
【You are not allowed to investigate anymore.】 Wen Mo signed. 【I am sending everyone out right now. You are not allowed to investigate anymore.】