Chapter 1

A gust of night wind swept through, and Yao Shunyu shivered uncontrollably. He had come to kill tonight, but before him was a festive wedding chamber, which couldn't help but make him feel a bit dazed.

He cautiously walked forward and, without much effort, the decaying wooden door creaked open slowly. By the light of the lantern he carried, Yao Shunyu saw that the main room was arranged for a wedding ceremony. Festive red curtains hung all around, but instead of ancestral tablets or chairs for elders, there was a landscape painting hanging in the front.

The ink painting depicted a mountain forest with a temple in the center. Although the composition was simple, the artist's brushwork was extremely vivid. Yao Shunyu recognized almost immediately that the temple was the same one where his painting teacher had disappeared last night.

The longer he looked at it, the more uneasy Yao Shunyu felt. He stared intently at the painting, or rather, at the temple gate in the painting. He didn't know when, but the temple gate had opened a little, less than a fifth of the way.

In a daze, Yao Shunyu shook his head violently. When he looked at the painting again, he was filled with terror. He couldn't be sure whether the temple gate had been closed when he first looked at it, or if it had been like this all along.

The open part of the door was hastily sketched with a light stroke of ink. Even though Yao Shunyu saw nothing, a voice in his heart screamed at him to run, to run as far as possible.

But there was no way he could run. Yao Shunyu forced himself to calm down. He hadn't completed his mission tonight, and if he left now, he would surely die.

Controlling himself, he averted his gaze and stepped across the threshold of the wedding chamber. He saw another door on the right side of the room. For some reason, it was locked with a copper lock.

Without a key, Yao Shunyu easily broke the rotten bolt of the door. Yes, the bolt was on the outside. Holding the copper lock in his hand, beads of sweat appeared on Yao Shunyu's forehead.

He suddenly understood the purpose of the bolt. It wasn't to keep thieves out, but to prevent something inside from escaping.

But it was too late. The door was already open.

Yao Shunyu raised his lantern and peered into the dim room. It was a bridal chamber, adorned with festive red paper cuttings. An old-fashioned wooden bed stood in the corner, draped with red curtains. Behind the curtains… The moment he saw behind the curtains, Yao Shunyu's heart turned cold. A chill ran from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Behind the curtains was a bloated shadow!

In a hurry, he didn't know how to describe the feeling this shadow gave him. It was as if it wasn't a person, but a large water vat.

But that was impossible, because water vats didn't have heads, and the shadow clearly had a head.

After a few seconds, Yao Shunyu gradually calmed down and had a bold guess. He stepped forward and pulled open the curtain with one hand. The next moment, even though he was prepared, the scene before him still made him gasp.

Behind the curtain, a bloated human figure sat cross-legged on the bed, dressed entirely in red: a red wedding gown, red embroidered shoes, and most importantly, a bright red veil on its head.

It was clearly a bride's attire. The arrangement gave Yao Shunyu the illusion that today was his wedding day, and he was the groom.

Now, Yao Shunyu calmed down. He stared at the "bride" and probably guessed who it was.

No bride could be so burly and abnormally bloated.

Under the red veil was a man, a man imprisoned in Blackwater Village.

Yao Shunyu felt a pang of sorrow. It seemed that this man was the target he had to kill tonight.

Yao Shunyu looked around. He didn't see any knives, only a large stone at his feet.

The edge of the stone wasn't sharp, but it was heavy, and its surface was stained with mottled blood.

Taking a deep breath, Yao Shunyu's disgust for the village reached its peak. Clearly, this wasn't the first time such a killing had happened in the village.

To crush a person to death with such a stone, especially such a pitiful man, Yao Shunyu clenched his fingers. He didn't want to do it, but he had no choice. He told himself that if he had the chance, he would use this stone to crush the village chief of Blackwater Village, smashing her brains out. Such a creature didn't deserve to live.

Since there was still time, Yao Shunyu didn't act immediately. "Can you hear me?"

The "bride" remained motionless. If it weren't for the mission, Yao Shunyu would have suspected that he was already dead.

Removing the "bride's" veil rashly could have unpredictable consequences. Yao Shunyu wasn't that stupid. He tentatively reached out and touched the bride's shoulder. Unexpectedly, the long-silent bride seemed to wake up suddenly, arching her body and moving backward clumsily like a fat worm.

The red veil fell off, revealing a familiar face. Yao Shunyu was stunned. It was the bearded man he had seen this evening. He was here!

But what angered Yao Shunyu was that the man had been tortured beyond recognition. His mouth had been sewn shut with coarse hemp thread, stitch by stitch, and his tendons had been severed. Blood continued to seep out with every movement.

He hadn't noticed it before because a layer of white powder had been sprinkled on top, and the red wedding dress concealed everything.

There were also patches of blood on the man's ears. Feeling the fear in the man's eyes, Yao Shunyu understood. The man's ears had been ruined with bamboo sticks. No wonder the man hadn't reacted to his questions; he couldn't hear anything.

The man was stunned when he saw Yao Shunyu. Then, he immediately looked behind Yao Shunyu, his eyes filled with a fear that Yao Shunyu understood completely. He was afraid of those women, those women whose methods were cruelly appalling.

Without a knife, Yao Shunyu carefully unpicked the stitches on the man's mouth. The man's mouth was full of blood. Because his tongue had been cut off, he couldn't speak a complete sentence.

The man slumped against the bed, but his bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at Yao Shunyu, his mouth opening and closing incessantly. Yao Shunyu understood. The man kept repeating only three words: Kill me!

Suddenly, the man's expression became extremely painful, and blood foam gurgled from his mouth. Something was wriggling violently under the red wedding gown.