An Rugu couldn’t bear to see the old woman kneeling down, so she raised her hand to help the old woman up. She asked curiously, “Your grandson wants to marry her. He should love her very much. Why did he seal her inside the urn?”

The old woman stood up and sighed, “You ask why…

“Let me tell you,” the woman in the urn answered with gritted teeth: “The reason why I died so young is because he killed me!”

An Rugu: “!”

“What happened?”

The woman’s trembling voice reached her ears: “Bai Wei, his name is Bai Wei. My legs are disabled, and my body is so weak that I would not have lived to be thirty years old.

“My family sent me to see many doctors, and he was the one who treated my legs. He was tall, handsome, and had a good temperament. He was a popular doctor in the hospital.

“I also grew to have some affection for him. But I knew that I am physically disabled and not worthy of him, so I have never fantasized about anything else.

“But not long after, he expressed his feelings for me. I felt like I was in a dream at the time. Only after repeated confirmations did I dare to believe that he really liked me.

“I told him about my feelings, my disability and shortened life span, and he accepted it all.

“My family checked his background for me. He had a clean background, a well-off family; he was young and promising, and had a bright future.

“I actually didn’t care much about these external conditions, I just liked him as a person. Almost everyone in my family agreed that we should be together—except my sister, who was very close to me.

“I liked him so much that I married him despite my sister’s objections.

“Our relationship after marriage was very good. He didn’t mind that I was disabled or that my life was short. He would personally massage my shrinking legs every day and look at me with eyes full of love. I have limited mobility, so he and the housekeeper took over all the housework and never let me do any work.

“He also smiled and told me that he married me just to make me be a pampered princess.

“I felt that I was living a really happy life, until that day, I accidentally discovered his secret….

“He was a murderer.”

When the woman said this, her voice trembled, and she started crying: “I hate myself for not listening to my sister. She would’ve been so sad that I died!”

When An Rugu heard this, she had a guess in her heart and asked, “Then why is he dead? And he turned into a ghost king and wants to marry you again?”

The woman sobbed twice and said, “I discovered his secret, and he learned that I called the police, so he killed me.

“He hid very well, and his skills in destroying corpses and any traces were nigh miraculous, leaving no evidence behind. Then he told my family that I was missing.

“My family immediately called the police after learning about it. When the police came, they couldn’t find any clues and could only declare me a missing person.

“Everyone thought that I ran away from home suddenly. Only my sister felt something was wrong and did not believe his lies. She knew that I was in danger, so she repeatedly confronted Bai Wei and asked him to hand me over.

“Bai Wei was very perverted and gave my sister a fake urn, saying that I was in it.

“The contents in the urn are not my ashes, so they are not considered evidence. I suspect he gave my sister the urn with the fake ashes in order to trick her into calling the police, and then, when the ruse is revealed, she would go from hope to disappointment, and finally make my sister collapse.

“The real me was actually sealed in the urn behind you.

“I wish I could kill this man so that he would stop bullying my sister. “

When the woman said this, she cried and laughed like crazy: “Whatever he intended, my sister did not call the police or use the urn as evidence to prove that I was not missing. Instead she killed Bai Wei.

“She snuck into Bai Wei’s house and placed an ancient painting of a female ghost with disheveled hair in the house.

“That night, Bai Wei was repeatedly tortured by the female ghost in his dream, unable to escape, unable to die. In the morning, he was no longer breathing.

“Now that Bai Wei and I are both dead, if I don’t agree to marry him, I will never be able to get out, not even for reincarnation.”

What she didn’t say was that Bai Wei also placed his grandma’s ashes urn next to her, probably hoping that her grandma would persuade her to agree.

… … translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

After An Rugu listened to her words, her hand movements paused and a glimmer of light flashed in her eyes.

What the woman said about her marriage sounded so familiar.

Wasn’t this Fang Ruoshui’s case record that Lin Weiyu once told her?

She was told that Fang Ruoshui put a female ghost’s painting in her brother-in-law’s house, causing her brother-in-law to die suddenly that night, and she has been on the wanted list ever since. In order to evade pursuit, she even entered Youdu. She was now a Class-A wanted criminal of the Special Cases Management Bureau.

An Rugu was about to ask this woman if she was Fang Ruoshui’s sister.

However, at this time, the sound of suona¹ playing came from outside the door. The impassioned sound of the suonapenetrated the eardrums directly into the human brain.

The ghosts in the room heard the sound of the suona, picked up their wedding baskets nervously, and stood up quickly, as if waiting for some distinguished guest.

As the sound of suona approached, they knew the ghost king was coming to fetch his bride.

… …

An Rugu walked out of the front door and looked into the distance. At some point, a red and white wedding party appeared at the door. Some people were beating gongs and drums, others were playing the suona, and there was a big red sedan chair in the center.

These people’s faces were pale, but their lips were extremely red, as if they had been painted with lipstick, and their cheeks seemed to be rouged. They did not walk with their feet on the ground but rather floated in the air.

They were neither humans nor ghosts; they were paper figures, and their speed was very slow.

The ghosts inside the house became very frightened when they heard the sound.

“We originally came out of the Underworld during the Hungry Ghost Festival to visit our hometown and eat some offerings, but the ghost king caught us and brought us here. He said we must join the celebration when he fetches his bride.”

“He also said that his bride liked things to be lively. If it’s not lively enough, he will make us suffer.”

“But the bride doesn’t want to get married, what should we do?”

“If the wedding doesn’t happen, the ghost king will definitely kill us. What if you marry him first, endure a little, and then take advantage of the chaos to escape.”

The woman inside the urn gritted her teeth, but the balance in her heart had gradually shifted: “Bai Wei!”

These people were not only here to join the celebration for fetching the bride but also as hostages.

She couldn’t stand by and watch these ghosts die.

The woman cried piteously and whispered: “Ruoshui, when will you come to save me? I don’t want to stay here anymore. I miss you.”

She cried softly, but she didn’t realize that her sister wouldn’t come. It wasn’t that her sister didn’t want to come—but that she couldn’t.

The woman’s soul was sealed in an urn, cut off from any breath, and even the twin sisters’ deep connection was completely blocked, not to mention spells. Bai Wei also knew this, and it was for this reason that he dared to be so bold and presumptuous.

The hope in her heart was gradually extinguished like a candle in the wind.

The old woman squatted on the ground, holding her head, looking sorely distressed, not knowing what to do.

There was a suffocating sense of despair in the air.

I Livestream Divination to the World translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

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T/N: Here’s a suona

FOOTNOTE:

1. Suona is a traditional double-reed instrument that has a distinctive loud and high-pitched sound. It is often used in funerals. ↩︎