"Then kiss me," Wang Qian said abruptly.
At her words, I furrowed my brows and glanced at her. The urge to vomit I'd suppressed surged back with a vengeance. I bit down so hard my gums ached, barely holding it together.
"What? You refuse? Didn't you say you'd marry me?" Wang Qian twitched her rotting cheeks, sending a cascade of maggots raining down. Some tried crawling up my pant leg, prompting me to shake my feet violently to dislodge the disgusting pests.
I swallowed hard, speechless. How could I kiss her? Her face was a pulpy mess, crawling with stinking maggots. Just watching them squirm made my skin crawl.
"Can't bring yourself to do it?" Wang Qian sneered. "You're the first person in years to say you'd marry me. I almost believed you. Hahaha."
Screw it! I made a promise, and I'll keep it! If I said I'd marry her, I will!
As Wang Qian laughed, I lunged forward and pressed my lips to hers, silencing her.
Suddenly, a flash of light enveloped me. When I opened my eyes, I stood in an unfamiliar place.
In the distance, gongs and drums sounded. A groom on horseback led a wedding procession with a red sedan chair toward me.
What the hell was happening? I was kissing a ghost in an abandoned graveyard—how did I end up here? The scene felt familiar, but I couldn't place it.
The scene shifted. A horde of bandits charged in, pillaging and killing wildly. They dragged the bride from the sedan, tore her wedding clothes, baring her snow-white skin and long legs. The bandits drooled like ravenous wolves.
The bride yanked out her hairpin, slashing a bandit's arm and pressing the pin to her neck to commit suicide. But the bandits pinned the groom to the ground, threatening to dismember him and send his organs to his family if she died.
Her momentary compassion sealed her fate. The dozen bandits took turns violating her while the groom watched helplessly.
Then, their faces sharpened into focus. First the leering bandits, then the bride—who I recognized instantly as Wang Qian. Her eyes were empty, cheeks streaked with hopeless tears, her body bruised from their assaults.
Finally, the groom's face came into view. I trembled uncontrollably. I knew that face all too well.
It was He Wei.
He Wei was the groom? Did he abandon Wang Qian?
Oh my god! So it's truly a case of past-life causes and present-life effects. The cycle of heaven's principles ensures that retribution never fails. I never expected He Wei to die at Wang Qian's hands in this life—this must have paid off the debts he owed. I had no idea they were bound by such karmic ties.
In my daze, a flash of light transported me back to the abandoned graveyard, still locked in a kiss with the female ghost.
Did I just enter her memories? Highly likely. The resentment of a fierce ghost inherently carries traumatic memories. Kissing Wang Qian must have pulled me into her past.
After a moment, I pushed her away and wiped my mouth. "Is that enough?"
I was almost impressed with myself for kissing such a horrifying ghost without vomiting.
But as I pulled back, I regretted it instantly. The hideous, terrifying ghost before me had transformed into a stunning Republic of China beauty.
Wang Qian wore an elegant red bridal gown, her delicate oval face exuding the grace of a noblewoman. Her demeanor screamed "wealthy debutante."
Damn! I should have kissed her longer! When did she turn back into a beauty? Even as a ghost, she's a peerless spirit. She resembles Lin Xue, but her beauty far surpasses hers.
Wang Qian gave me a heart-fluttering smile. "After all these years, I've finally waited for you. You're the first to marry me. Come, let's hold our wedding ceremony."
She took my hand and waved the other, summoning a bone-chilling wind that forced my eyes shut.
When I opened them, I was dressed in a Republic of China groom's outfit. Four little ghosts carried a red sedan chair toward me. Their faces were caked in white powder, dotted with scarlet circles, lips painted an eerie red and puckered like paper effigies.
Ahead of the sedan, white-faced elders beat gongs and drums, hunched over with sinister smiles fixed on me. The scene screamed two words: Ghost Marriage.
Ghost Marriage originally aimed to find spouses for the deceased. If a betrothed couple died before their wedding, elders believed their spirits would haunt the family unless they were posthumously married. The ceremony concluded with burying them together as "husband and wife" to avoid "lonely graves" in the family cemetery.
Ancient people superstitiously believed that a lonely grave would curse the family's prosperity. "Feng shui masters" often encouraged ghost marriages for profit. Such practices were prevalent among nobles and the wealthy, rarely among the poor.
But later, ghost marriages evolved. They no longer stayed between the dead, but extended to unions between the dead and the living—and this trend even surpassed the former, becoming a ritual among nobles. There's no denying it: the wedding between Wang Qian and me is the eerie ghost marriage of legend.
My situation is stranger still: marrying a ghost, a female spirit who died during the Republic of China era. Just the thought of this ghost marriage makes my scalp tingle.
As the red sedan chair reached me, Wang Qian took my hand. A gust of cold wind swept us inside.
"Wait, isn't the groom supposed to fetch the bride? Why are we both in the sedan? That's not proper etiquette. Was marriage really like this in the Republic of China?" I muttered, mostly because the sinister paper-mache sedan made me uneasy. And I'd just realized a worrying fact: this sedan was made of paper.
Paper sedans can only bear a ghost's weight. How could they hold a living person? Would it collapse under me mid-procession?
Wang Qian blushed and leaned her head on my chest, acting like a bashful maiden—nothing like the debauched image described in the files.
"Living weddings differ from ghost marriages. In living weddings, the groom fetches the bride, but in ghost marriages, the dead fetch the living." As she spoke, her finger traced circles on my chest, making my heart race. I suddenly longed for the bridal chamber.
Wait a second! The bridal chamber? If ghost marriages involve the dead fetching the living, where do we perform the wedding rituals?
The coffin! A dead person's coffin! The thought made me shiver. I'd assumed we'd just bow at her gravesite, but now I realized I'd have to enter a coffin. For the living, seeing a coffin symbolizes promotion and wealth, but entering one is downright ominous. Yet I couldn't back out now—I had to tough it out.
After the procession marched for a while, the sedan jolted to a stop. The hubbub outside vanished, replaced by dead silence.
I swallowed hard. "W-what's happening? Why'd it go quiet?"
Wang Qian replied demurely, "We're here."
Here? Where? Peeking out, I felt my heart sink. As I'd feared, we were inside a coffin.
In an instant, the sedan vanished. We stood fully inside the coffin, yet surprisingly, there was ample space to sit, stand, or lie down—a surreal experience.
"Fwoosh"—two red candles lit up. Wang Qian produced two small wine cups and handed me one.
"It's tight in here, so we'll skip the rituals. Let's drink to our union and... consummate the marriage. Then we'll truly be husband and wife." Her face glowed with happiness, all traces of resentment gone, as she downed her wine in one gulp.
"Consummate the marriage? With a ghost? I'm a descendant of the Maoshan Sect!" I raged internally. But looking at Wang Qian's blissful expression, I couldn't bear to reject her. Her fate had been so tragic—I couldn't hurt her, ghost or not.