Chapter 4: It’s Over

Xueci slept fitfully, his illness causing him to lose consciousness completely. When he finally opened his eyes, a thin rain was drizzling outside, and damp, gray clouds hung heavily over the old He estate.

He could tell, however, that it was daytime.

He was in an unfamiliar bedroom filled mostly with old-fashioned lobular red sandalwood furniture. The rain brought out a cold, woody fragrance, but the room was so desolate it felt devoid of any human presence.

His gaze remained blank for several seconds before he clutched the quilt and cautiously sat up. Then, without warning, he came face-to-face with the funeral portrait on the altar directly in front of the bed. It felt like a bolt from the blue; his face turned deathly pale in an instant.

The man in the portrait had narrow “peach blossom” eyes. Perhaps because the photograph was so starkly black and white, his pupils appeared exceptionally dark, like a deep night shrouded by torrential rain. Yet, his lips still held that faint smile from the night before, giving off an inexplicable, lingering sense of a gentle gaze.

It was as if he had been staring at Xueci like this for the entire night.

Xueci’s heart skipped a beat. His cold, pale toes dug into the sheets as he scrambled backward several steps, pressing himself tightly against the headboard, his hands shaking.

He had thought he was having a nightmare last night. Was he still not awake? But he had never had a nightmare that lasted this long.

Xueci rubbed his eyes. When he looked up again, the man in the funeral portrait was still smiling at him. His long, raven-wing lashes fluttered incessantly, and the last traces of color vanished from his small face.

It was over.

His husband really seemed to be dead.

The bedroom door wasn’t fully closed, leaving a gap about a hand’s width wide. At that moment, the hallway was filled with the sound of panicked, scurrying footsteps.

Xueci turned his head and saw many servants running back and forth in terror, muttering something about a mistake and the Head of the Family being angry.

He gathered up his overly long wedding dress. Before he could decide what to do, the bedroom door was suddenly pushed open. The man leading the way wore a black shirt and had graying hair, looking like a butler.

Xueci’s breath hitched. The man was thin and appeared to be at least sixty years old. The age spots on his face looked like foul liver spots, reminding Xueci of the old man he had seen the previous night.

The butler held He Xunye’s memorial tablet with great reverence. He handed it to Xueci, signaling for him to hold it in his arms. He then looked at Xueci with his old, cloudy eyes and said, “According to the wedding rules, the bride must not leave the bed for three days. You cannot eat or drink. Unless absolutely necessary, you must not put down this memorial tablet. If you need to relieve yourself, you can ask a servant for a commode, but you still must not leave the bed.”

“The bride must keep his body clean. After the bathing ceremony in three days, I will take you to pay respects to the Eldest Young Master.”

“…”

Xueci took the tablet. It was so heavy he nearly dropped it. He opened his mouth, his small face a mask of confusion. He didn’t understand much, only that he couldn’t eat and couldn’t leave the bed.

None of it sounded like human words.

The butler didn’t wait for an answer. After speaking, he waved his hand toward the door. Two young male servants entered, both looking to be in their early twenties.

“Young Master Tan,” a smile appeared on the butler’s aged face, but it was extremely rigid, like one painted onto a paper figure. He introduced them, “These are Zhang Chunping and Jiang Heng. They will look after you for the next few days. You can tell them if you need anything.”

Xueci’s lips trembled slightly. His small philtrum pressed into a bright red, but he made no sound. His face only grew a shade paler than before.

These two men looked familiar to him as well. They looked very much like the pair of paper figures from the night before—the ones who had carried red palace lanterns and forced him to perform the wedding bows.

After the butler finished speaking, he led the rest of the people away like ghosts, leaving only Xueci and the two men.

Xueci sat kneeling on the bed, clutching the memorial tablet. He didn’t know what kind of wood it was made of, but it felt as heavy as dozens of kilograms. After only a few minutes of holding it, bruises began to form on his fingertips.

After greeting him alongside the butler, the two male servants didn’t speak to him again. They sat down in chairs near the door, with a small wooden table placed between them.

The butler hadn’t allowed them to bring phones, but he hadn’t forbidden other things. They had brought a deck of cards; otherwise, they would die of boredom over these three days.

They whispered to each other as they played cards.

Actually, according to the rules, women should have been sent to accompany the bride, but since the He family had taken a male bride, these two were chosen instead.

They weren’t regular servants of the He household. They were temporary workers hired a few days before the wedding after the Head of the Family had calculated their birth charts.

Jiang Heng was a distant nephew of one of the He family’s nannies, and Zhang Chunping was a temporary laborer from a village who usually worked at a car wash.

Xueci’s arms grew increasingly sore, and thin beads of sweat appeared on the tip of his nose. His black hair stuck to his fair cheeks. The wedding dress was already heavy and stifling; he felt as if he had been pulled straight out of water.

He had been too scared last night to notice, but the He family had actually put three pairs of dragon-and-phoenix gold bangles on his wrists. Each was made of over a hundred grams of pure gold, making his already slender wrists look even more frail—they didn’t even look as thick as the bangles.

Xueci gave a low gasp. He wanted to secretly put the tablet down for a moment to rest, but the two male servants were very sharp-eyed. They noticed the moment he moved and immediately told him to pick it back up.

Zhang Chunping said with his arms crossed, “Second Young Master Tan, don’t make things difficult for us. If you don’t listen, we’ll be scolded by the butler. Just hang in there for three days. It’ll all be over in three days.”

Xueci’s fingers trembled as he gripped the memorial tablet. Outside, the wind and rain raged. In the intensifying downpour, his red wedding dress took on a dark, somber hue, making him look like a bride buried alongside his dead husband.

Zhang Chunping felt inexplicably spooked. He rubbed his arms and sat back down, unable to stop himself from chatting with Jiang Heng.

He pointed a finger at his own head and said, “Hey, brother, I heard this Second Young Master of the Tan family… has something wrong up here?”

“You bet,” Jiang Heng said, shuffling the cards with a cigarette in his mouth. “He’s pretty enough, but he’s a fool. What a waste.”

Smoking wasn’t allowed in the He house, so he didn’t dare light it; he could only keep it in his mouth to satisfy the craving. There was no helping it—the He family paid too much, so they would naturally follow the rules and do everything perfectly.

Otherwise, that Head of the Family wouldn’t let them off.

Thirty thousand dollars each.

This money was certainly not easy to earn.

He had originally wanted to say that Xueci was a fool, so it was no wonder he was brought here for a ghost marriage, but he changed his mind mid-sentence. “Being able to marry the Eldest Young Master is his good fortune. The He family can support him for the rest of his life.”

A family of Feng Shui masters like the He family wasn’t someone ordinary people could come into contact with. Although he had a relative working as a nanny there, he only knew that she worked for them.

She was tight-lipped and never mentioned the employer’s business. He only knew the He family dealt in Feng Shui—gods and ghosts. It sounded intimidating, but to be honest, he didn’t really believe in such things.

How could there be ghosts in this world?

Then again, someone had just died in the He family and they were holding a ghost marriage. It was quite eerie. This family was clearly very superstitious. Since he wanted to make money, he naturally had to be a bit careful with his words.

“I’m not a little fool…”

A weak voice of protest rang out. Xueci’s face was pale and his lips moved slightly. He wanted to say he wasn’t a little fool, and that maybe his parents didn’t know how scary the He family was before they sent him here. Maybe they were very worried right now, waiting for him to come home. He wasn’t a little fool that nobody wanted.

But before he could finish, he lost his voice. He had been sent here precisely because no one wanted him and no one cared for him.

Tears began to fall from Xueci’s eyes. Zhang Chunping noticed the commotion. He turned his head and, seeing the tears, scratched his face awkwardly. He whispered to Jiang Heng, “He can understand us?”

They knew Xueci was a fool, so they hadn’t avoided him while speaking, nor had they even bothered to lower their voices.

Even if Xueci heard them, they weren’t afraid. There was definitely something wrong with his head.

A normal person would have been unable to hold back their anger after being talked about like that, but Xueci only hung his head, tears dripping from the tip of his pale chin. Aside from crying, he had no other reaction.

Zhang Chunping sat back down with a clear conscience. On his dark-skinned face, his small eyes were still peeking at Xueci.

He had only just gotten a clear look at Xueci’s face. If the bride were a girl, he would definitely be curious about her looks, but what was there to see in a man? Besides, Xueci was wearing such terrifying clothes. When he had checked the memorial tablet earlier, he hadn’t dared to look Xueci in the face.

But as Xueci cried just now, he had glanced in their direction with teary eyes. The youth’s skin was very white, with only his lips and thin eyelids showing a flush of red. His face was covered in wet tear tracks. He looked like a peeled white lychee, or a jade beauty molded from porcelain.

It almost turned him on.

Jiang Heng licked his dry lips, his gaze also becoming a bit fixed.

Two young men in their early twenties, relying on their “strong yang energy” and bold nature, dared to take on a dead person’s business. But no matter how bold they were, they didn’t dare lust after a dead man’s bride.

So they only shared a lewd, knowing smile.

Zhang Chunping walked over and picked up Xueci’s red wedding veil with the “Double Happiness” character. He draped it over him again. Out of sight, out of mind—it would save Xueci from using that face to seduce them.

Let him cry.

He was even crying while looking at them on purpose.

Who was he trying to seduce?

There were many customs in the villages. Zhang Chunping had heard of “starving the bride” in some places—where the bride was made to fast for three days before the wedding to keep her body clean and prevent her from bringing the bad luck of her birth family to the groom’s.

Also, in many places, the sedan bearers would intentionally sway the chair. This was also a way of “teasing the bride.” The sedan was already bumpy, and with that extra swaying, it was easy to vomit if one had eaten.

But usually, the bride could eat a little on the second day of the wedding. This was the first time he had seen a fast start only after the bows were completed.

It was eerie enough. Their only son was dead, and the He family line was cut off. The old couple must have gone mad.

“My hometown is Yanxia Village,” Zhang Chunping said, throwing down a pair of threes and resting his ankle on his other knee. “There was a fool in our village, too. His head was bad from the moment he was born. He was in his teens and still couldn’t understand human speech. He would go crazy and bite people at home every day. His parents raised him until he was seventeen. They finally couldn’t take it anymore, so they took him up into the mountains to play. When they came back down, it was just the two of them.”

Jiang Heng could guess what happened, but hearing such a thing made his expression a bit strange. He whispered, “They pushed him off?”

“You know it, why ask?” Zhang Chunping glanced at him and sneered. “Anyway, that woman was pregnant again. When the two of them came down, they were both beaming with joy.”

Jiang Heng played a “bomb” of cards, biting his cigarette and saying nothing.

Zhang Chunping leaned in closer, looking mysterious. “Do you know what happened afterward?”

“…What happened?” Jiang Heng asked hesitantly.

“I had already come here to work at the time,” Zhang Chunping lowered his voice. “During the New Year, I heard my dad say that on the third night after the baby was born, it died in the middle of the night without making a sound. Its eyes were bulging, and on its neck—there were finger marks so deep they were bruised purple. It was almost throttled to death, with only a single tendon still connected. The village elders all said the family’s eldest son had come back and was throwing a tantrum.”

A thunderclap roared through the thick dark clouds.

Jiang Heng originally wasn’t afraid of these things, but it was raining outside, and a bride clutching a memorial tablet was sitting nearby. No one would feel comfortable. He quickly frowned and said, “Alright, alright, stop talking nonsense.”

Zhang Chunping wasn’t very satisfied; how was he talking nonsense? He pursed his lips and wanted to argue, but when he looked up, he suddenly froze. His whole body shuddered, and he cursed under his breath, “Holy shit!”

“What’s wrong?” Jiang Heng was startled by him, cold sweat pouring down his body. “What are you shouting for?!”

Zhang Chunping’s lips trembled. He rubbed his eyes hard and looked up again. There was nothing.

He thought he had just seen a deathly pale face appear outside the window. It had slender eyes and curved brows, with two circles of gloomy red on its face. It had met his eyes through the glass for a split second before vanishing. It looked a bit like the paper figures he had seen at the He estate.

To speak of bad luck, when they first arrived at the He house, the Head of the Family had made two paper figures in their likeness.

Those paper figures all had the same paper-mache faces with long, upward-curving mouths, but inexplicably, they looked exactly like them.

He didn’t know what Jiang Heng was thinking, but his own face had turned blue and black with suppressed anger. In the end, for the sake of the thirty thousand dollars, he had said nothing.

Zhang Chunping rubbed his arms vigorously and cursed several times. He had heard the village elders say that these “dirty things” were most afraid of filth and living people with explosive tempers and strong yang energy. It was fine even if you ran into them on a night walk; just keep cursing as you walk. Don’t look back and don’t look at them.

Once he finally calmed down a little, he said to Jiang Heng with a shiver, “There was a ghost face outside just now.”

Jiang Heng was annoyed by this series of events, and his expression turned grim. “Are you ever going to stop?!”

Realizing he was in the wrong, Zhang Chunping sheepishly closed his mouth. The two of them fell silent, and neither mentioned it again.

Xueci couldn’t eat, but they had to. Soon it was noon, and the He family servants came to bring them food.

Zhang Chunping got up to get it. The servant handed him the meal boxes, not even daring to look into the bedroom. He turned and fled as if a ghost were chasing him.

Zhang Chunping scratched his head, puzzled. Normally he wouldn’t think much of it, but after what had just happened, he felt a bit spooked. Handing the food to Jiang Heng, he said, “Brother, you go ahead and eat. I need to use the bathroom.”

He was scared enough that he felt like he needed to go.

In the rainy weather, the butler had sent them a few stir-fried dishes, along with rice and maocai. Red oil coated the duck meat and tripe, and the ham had been simmered in advance. The spicy aroma was pungent. A large portion of maocai was still steaming in a black-glazed earthenware pot. It made one’s mouth water and their whole body feel warm.

“Hurry up,” Jiang Heng took it. “I need to go, too.”

This room had a bathroom. Like Xueci, although the two of them could eat, they weren’t allowed to leave the room for these few days.

Zhang Chunping dashed to the bathroom. Jiang Heng waited for a long time, but Zhang Chunping didn’t come out. He felt a bit irritable and couldn’t help but look up at Xueci again.

Xueci heard them shouting and yelling; it was very noisy. He was a bit scared and instinctively clutched the object in his arms tighter, forgetting that he was holding a memorial tablet.

He tried to push against the headboard to shrink into the corner. Tears fell straight down, landing on He Xunye’s memorial tablet.

The pitch-black tablet seemed to frost over as several water tracks slid down it.

Jiang Heng swallowed. He was gay, and he had never seen a boy as beautiful as Xueci in his life. Probably because the boy was a bit “slow,” his eyes appeared particularly pure. His long, ink-black lashes lowered, casting a shadow over his eyelids like fluttering snow. There wasn’t a single flaw to be found.

Xueci was still wearing the veil and couldn’t see anything, but he felt as if someone was staring at him. He curled his fingertips helplessly, the slender, fair tips turning red from the grip. The memorial tablet began to tilt bit by bit, its heavy weight almost causing him to fall over.

Jiang Heng stared at the weak fingers peeking out from the red embroidered sleeves and involuntarily swallowed his saliva again.

Anyway… anyway, no one would come to this place besides him and Zhang Chunping. It didn’t look like Zhang Chunping would be back anytime soon. Xueci was just a little fool who didn’t understand anything.

The He family was holding a ghost marriage. Perhaps when the wedding was completely over, they would bury Xueci along with the dead man. How pitiful.

He wouldn’t do anything else; surely just touching his hand would be fine.

He just wanted to comfort Xueci. This little fool’s hand was shaking; he must be very afraid.

Jiang Heng unknowingly walked up to Xueci. But before he could even reach out, his pupils dilated instantly and his lips began to tremble, as if he had seen something exceptionally terrifying.

A pale, slender hand reached out. It had no fingernails, as if they had been violently pulled out, carrying a bloody, ghostly aura. The palm covered the back of Xueci’s hand. The difference in size was vast; it covered Xueci’s entire hand and slowly gripped it.

Then, bit by bit, it straightened the memorial tablet.