Among the players, the young man with yellow hair ran a hand through his already soaked hair.
The villagers had resumed their frantic preparations for the ghost wedding. Sensing the grim atmosphere, Yellow Hair caught a glimpse of the shifting reality; his expression darkened. He gnashed his teeth in unease before nudging the person next to him.
“This isn’t right.”
“It’s definitely not right,” the player beside him replied, wiping rain from his face with a troubled look. “I originally figured that following the NPCs’ ghost wedding quest would trigger the plot and give us clues to piece together a way out, but now it looks like this wedding quest is the one thing we absolutely should not be doing.”
“Yeah.”
Yellow Hair thought for a moment and made a decisive call. He looked up and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Stop this wedding! Forget about it!”
He strode forward, waving his hands at the villagers. “Stop! The monk is right; doing this ghost wedding is too dangerous!”
The villagers did not react.
Auntie Zhao remained crouched before the fire basin, stuffing another handful of paper money into the flames. The villager blocking the monk continued to laugh, flashing his yellow teeth while spewing filth. The woman by the sedan chair grabbed a handful of white paper money from her basket and scattered it into the sky, wailing the bride’s name.
In the courtyard, the old Village Chief watched them with clouded eyes, remaining utterly silent.
“Hey!” Yellow Hair was getting agitated. “I told you to stop! Do you not understand human speech?!”
The villagers still offered no reaction.
“Auntie Zhao!”
Xiao Fang ran out from the inner yard, cradling two paper figures in her arms. Behind her followed a young man who looked honest and simple, also carrying three paper figures.
“These are all to be burned for Sister Sun and Second Brother Zhang!” Xiao Fang announced. “Granny Wang said that once we burn the paper figures and put them in their coffins for burial, the ghost wedding will be complete!”
“Good, good, good!” Auntie Zhao stood up and hurriedly snatched the figures from her arms. “Quick, give them to me. I’ll burn them all for Little Jiao, so that dead deaf kid won’t be able to bully her anymore!”
“Hey!!”
Yellow Hair was truly losing his mind. He clutched his hair in frustration and cursed, “I told you to stop! What is wrong with you?! Of all the times, it has to be now! These bastards have stopped listening to a single word we say again!?”
The other players grew equally anxious. Anyone with eyes could see that this ghost wedding was a death trap. A group of them rushed forward to intervene, but the villagers were completely oblivious to their presence.
They grabbed the paper figures and shoved them toward the fire basin. One player panicked and reached out to block them, only to be caught in the momentum of a villager’s movement and sent flying in this game, if an NPC wasn’t meant to be stopped, they possessed the strength of an ox, capable of swatting a player away with a flick of a finger.
“Stop burning them!” someone cried out from the ground, not even bothering to get up. “You can’t burn them! Please, just listen to the monk!”
The villagers did not stop, nor did they acknowledge the pleas.
“Why is there no reaction at all, Monk!” someone yelled toward Monk Du Heng. “Monk, say something!”
Monk Du Heng also remained motionless. He simply fingered his prayer beads, tears streaming down his face as he closed his eyes and murmured to his Buddha.
“Hey! You there!”
In the midst of the frantic chaos, Yellow Hair spotted the Man in the Suit. The man was standing perfectly still, watching the scene with a faint, pleasant smile.
Yellow Hair rushed over and grabbed him by the shoulder. “What are you doing? Hurry up and help us stop them!”
The Man in the Suit smiled. “Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’?! Why else!?” Yellow Hair’s temper flared. “If we let them finish this wedding, we’re all finished!”
“How so?”
“What do you mean ‘how so’? Are you insane!?” Yellow Hair roared at him.
The feet of the paper figures were dipped into the fire basin. The flames instantly surged, swallowing the paper.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling shriek erupted from among the players.
The crowd jumped in shock and turned around. A black-haired youth wearing glasses was screaming in agony, his face contorted. He collapsed to the ground, thrashing and rolling uncontrollably.
The others looked down and gasped, his feet were on fire!
The youth screamed incessantly as he struggled to kick off his shoes, trying to pat out the flames on his legs with his bare hands. But it was futile; the fire consumed him rapidly, and his entire body began to convulse and twitch within the blaze.
While he was still screaming, another young man on the other side also shrieked.
“Help!!”
He cried out before also collapsing. The crowd turned to see that his feet were also ablaze, and he was instantly engulfed in fire. The flames roared, causing the two men to roll across the ground as their joints twisted into bizarre, inverted angles.
The remaining players instinctively huddled together. Just as their minds went blank with confusion, the girl in the black leather jacket looked over and realized the truth.
“Hey,” she tapped the person next to him. “It couldn’t be that, could it?”
The group followed her finger and saw Auntie Zhao feeding a paper figure into the flames bit by bit. Meanwhile, Xiao Fang was using the second fire basin to burn another. The two paper figures were being consumed at both ends, nearly burnt to ash.
Someone suddenly remembered: “Come to think of it, those two players were the ones who went to find the paper figures!”
The faces of many players turned ghostly pale. The realization hit them all at once.
The “paper figures” Auntie Zhao was burning weren’t paper figures at all.
They were the players.
“Stop burning!” Yellow Hair screamed. “Stop! God dammit, you bastards!”
“I TOLD YOU TO STOP BURNING!!”
Auntie Zhao remained deaf to his shouts. She suddenly began to laugh. As she watched the tongues of fire swallow the paper figures, a sickly green light flickered in her eyes. As if possessed, she jammed the paper figures into the basin with frantic force, seemingly unaware that her own hands were being scorched by the heat.
As the burning players shrieked hysterically, Yellow Hair charged at Auntie Zhao. He threw caution to the wind and grabbed her hands. This time, it worked Auntie Zhao was shoved to the ground, falling head over heels.
Yellow Hair had used too much force; his own foot slipped, and with a pained yelp, he tumbled to the side.
Seeing this, the girl in the leather jacket lunged forward. She stepped right over Yellow Hair—nearly making him cough up blood in the process and leaped past him. She grabbed Auntie Zhao’s fire basin and swung it, splashing the contents toward the wedding sedan.
The villagers screamed in outrage, “What are you doing!?”
“You little brat! What do you think you’re doing!?”
The girl emptied the basin completely and stomped out the remaining members of the paper figure fragments. There were two fire basins in total; she tossed the empty one aside and turned to grab the second.
Clap.
She froze. Someone had caught her. She turned her head to find the Man in the Suit gripping her wrist with a pleasant smile.
The man’s strength was terrifying; her wrist began to tremble under his hold. The girl narrowed her eyes, her tone turning cold.
“Let go. That hurts, old man.”
“I can’t,” the Man in the Suit said, still smiling. “Why help them?”
“What?”
“Why… help them?” he asked. “They… they…”
The man couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. He was like a broken radio, repeating that single word over and over. Slowly, the girl realized something was wrong.
The man’s smile was like a mask; when the corners of his mouth turned up, the wrinkles on his face looked like they had been forced into place. It was as if something was wearing a human face as a disguise, and it was glitching.
The Man in the Suit continued to mutter incessantly, stuck on that one word: “They…”
They what?!
The girl felt goosebumps break out over her entire body. She cursed “To hell with this,” and tried to wrench her wrist free, but she couldn’t break his grip.
“They…” the man let out a cackle. “All must, be buried with them…”
The man’s head suddenly tilted. With a sickening crack of bone, his head fell straight off his neck.
The head rolled away across the ground like a ball, and a massive spray of blood erupted from his severed neck.
The girl in the leather jacket was stunned. It wasn’t until the blood sprayed across her face that she snapped out of it. She let out a scream and shoved the Man in the Suit away; the headless corpse collapsed limply to the ground.
The group of “Sinner” players also screamed in terror, huddling closer together. The girl was paralyzed with fear, instinctively backing away several steps.
Suddenly, the ground beneath her felt soft. It was a bizarre sensation, as if she had stepped on a piece of raw meat.
She froze, looked down, and lifted her foot.
The ground was covered in flesh and blood. It looked as if someone had exploded right there; the earth was littered with mangled remains.
She screamed again and turned to run, diving into the center of the huddling crowd.
A cackling laugh echoed from the side. The terrified girl turned her head, her face pale.
Inside the bright red wedding sedan, the curtain embroidered with the “Double Happiness” character was quietly pulled aside.
The deceased groom and bride slid out, tumbling limply into the rain. Their eyes were wide open—they had died with their eyes unclosed, bearing none of the peaceful expressions they had possessed when the players first fetched them.
A blood-red figure drifted silently out of the sedan.
His fingers were pale and slender, his red sleeves fluttered in the wind, and his silhouette seemed ethereal. He hovered in the air, swaying gently.
Seeing him, the players froze.
It was the Ghost Groom.
When she saw who it was, Auntie Zhao’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head, and she let out a soul-shattering shriek.
“Lin Wu!!” She turned and began crawling toward the inner yard. “It’s Lin Wu! Lin Wu is here!”
Auntie Zhao tried to stand and run, but she was so weak with terror that she couldn’t get up despite her struggles. She scrambled over the threshold, screaming, “Village Chief! Chief!”
“Help! Chie—”
Auntie Zhao suddenly went silent.
A cold chill descended from above. Sensing something, she fell into a mute stupor. After a long moment, she stiffened her neck and looked up.
The Ghost Groom was hovering directly over her head.
Auntie Zhao’s pupils shrank to pinpricks.