Chapter 108: Joyful Wedding, Mourning Cry 39
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The once bustling village had now fallen into a deafening silence.
All the music from the suona and drums had vanished, replaced only by the chilling wind blowing over the bodies littering the ground, carrying with it the sickening stench of blood.
Tears welled up in Zhang Wubing’s eyes as he was nearly paralyzed with fear, pressed against the brick wall behind him, desperately wishing he could disappear. Yang Tu wasn’t faring any better; if it weren’t for the fact that Yan Shixun had scared him into submission earlier, he would have tried to flee by now.
Only Yan Shixun stood tall and composed in the middle of the village road, facing off against Yang Duo at the far end.
As blood spread to his feet, Yan Shixun made no attempt to dodge, simply glaring at Yang Duo and asking, “You said you were going to kill me, so why haven’t you made a move?”
Yan Shixun raised his hand gently, spreading his arms as if to disarm himself completely, allowing himself to be vulnerable. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re the so-called Yin God, aren’t you? Because you resent the gods for their inaction, you want to change this world you despise on your own? But to me, your actions don’t match your identity — you’re just the same powerless girl from all those years ago.”
A grimace briefly crossed Yang Duo’s hauntingly beautiful face, her sharp crimson nails dangling at her side.
Zhang Wubing trembled with fear, not understanding why Yan Shixun would say something that could enrage Yang Duo.
But Yan Shixun simply chuckled nonchalantly, his unprotected chest wide open, as if anyone could just take his life.
“Now what, Yang Duo?” he asked in a deep voice. “What are you hesitating for? Why don’t you come and kill me? Or…”
Yan Shixun tilted his head, his gaze icy but with a hint of probing. “Because the seven-day mourning period hasn’t truly arrived yet, so you haven’t fully become the Yin God? Yang Duo is holding you back. Her memories as a human are still pulling you, preventing you from truly becoming the Yin God, right?”
He sneered, his eyes contemptuous. “That’s all it is.”
Yang Duo’s face instantly contorted, her once beautiful features twisted into a terrifying grimace, almost unrecognizable.
Her ten sharp nails were like the sharpest blades, aiming straight for Yan Shixun’s chest, intending to personally tear out the heart of this arrogant offender.
“Brother Yan!” Zhang Wubing exclaimed, his eyes wide with horror.
As Yang Duo rushed forward, the wind whipped up the strands of hair on Yan Shixun’s forehead. He lowered his gaze, looking at Yang Duo who appeared almost instantaneously in front of him, a hint of a smile playing on his lips, his handsome face calm.
Just as Yang Duo’s fingertips were about to touch Yan Shixun’s chest, he finally made his move.
His outstretched arm instantly exerted force, the stone piece held in his palm sharply and accurately swiped towards Yang Duo’s neck. Yan Shixun’s eyes were sharp, but his body moved with the agility of flowing wind and snow, turning and releasing the force, causing Yang Duo to miss her target.
At the same time, he circled behind Yang Duo, and the scratch on her neck from the stone formed a perfectly closed circle.
It was like a Tai Chi diagram.
In the moment when the starting point and the end point overlapped, the faint golden halo flickered and disappeared.
And the next moment, Yang Duo’s piercing wail rang out.
The lament of the vengeful spirit echoed, making the mountains tremble.
Zhang Wubing and Yang Tu huddled together, trembling.
But Yan Shixun took a breath, and a smile appeared on his previously stern face. “Thanks to the colleague who built the Ghost-Dispelling Well earlier—though he also forced Yang Duo to this point. But luckily, the well still has some residual value.”
He, who had been extremely close to Yang Duo, stepped back slightly, creating some distance between them.
Yang Duo continuously reached for her neck, as if trying to grasp hold of something invisible, attempting to break it from her neck. But after several attempts, she was unsuccessful.
With blood-red eyes, she glared at Yan Shixun with resentment. “What have you done!”
Yan Shixun shrugged, spreading his palms to reveal the remaining piece of the broken stone, faintly marked with traces of charms and scorched edges.
It was the fragment from the well in Yang Duo’s courtyard.
While inspecting the well, although Yan Shixun lamented the ambiguity of his colleague’s actions decades ago, he also clearly understood that the use of such charms and formations indicated that Yang Duo from decades ago was already so viciously fearsome.
The burn marks on the Ghost-Dispelling Well were caused by lightning strikes. It was feared that Yang Duo had escaped from suppression and obtained even greater power, possibly able to leave the burial ground and traverse the natural barrier of the Moon Mountains, heading towards Binhai City to possess Yang Hua.
Such actions made Yan Shixun wary.
Therefore, when he realized that his time was frozen and he couldn’t use his talismans with full force as usual, he had the foresight to take the main fragment from the broken well.
Although the powerful talismans on it were almost useless due to being incomplete and damaged, they still had some utility.
As long as he could get close to Yang Duo when she least expected it and injure her with the stone fragment, without the barrier of Yin energy, the charms on the stone could still take effect.
However, trapped in Yang Duo’s world, where everything was under her control and facing a situation of unequal strength, Yan Shixun feared that he would be killed by her before he could even reach her.
So he provoked Yang Duo—since he couldn’t approach her, he would make her come to him.
“With all the funeral parlors scattered around the village, why do you think I would just sit back and do nothing?”
Yan Shixun taunted. “Do you think those Yin energy not only swallowed up your reason and memories but also ate away your brain? Or are you too arrogant, believing that becoming a Yin God makes you unbeatable? Let me remind you, the time hasn’t come yet.”
Before the dusk of the seventh day, the coffin wasn’t nailed shut yet. There was still a chance for things to be changed.
Yes, Yan Shixun had figured out the meaning of “Yin God.”
The geographical location of Family Tomb Village was peculiar, surrounded by mountains on all sides, with the Moon Creek splitting it into two halves like a curved knife cutting into the heart of the village.
A place of extreme yin and great danger.
Such terrain was most prone to gathering Yin energy but was not easily dispersed. In other words, all the resentment and anger of everyone who died in Family Tomb Village over the centuries would stay here, accumulating over time until it became impossible to ignore.
However, under normal circumstances, even with this, there wouldn’t be any problems in Family Tomb Village in the short term.
Until the deep-seated resentment of Yang Duo and Jiang Yanran appeared, those Yin energy had a carrier. They seemed to be standing above a spring, and all the water flowed towards them.
Yan Shixun was originally unclear whether it was Jiang Yanran or Yang Duo. Because in his view, although they both harbored resentment, the evil spirits were already sufficient. Going further up to an evil god born from pure, massive Yin energy, they were still not enough.
Even though an evil god was not a deity in the traditional sense, it was more appropriate to describe it as a ghost rather than a god. It was still a divine position, not something ordinary evil spirits could touch. Even in a place where Yin energy was highly concentrated, it might not necessarily nurture one over thousands of years.
Unless there had been a large number of deaths there, and the corpses could generate the required amount of Yin energy.
Unless, as a carrier of Yin energy itself, she had completely abandoned any hope and goodwill towards the mortal realm, allowing herself to fall into endless darkness, never to be reincarnated.
Now it seemed that Yang Duo was in such a situation.
And the Yin energy engulfed her memories of being human, stripping away all her human emotions, making her extremely fierce and evil.
When the dusk of the seventh day arrived, with Yin energy rising and Yang energy declining, Yang Duo would truly become an evil god.
And the Family Tomb Village would also become a land of extreme Yin, becoming a haunt of the underworld.
By then, all living beings near this place would die. And this place would be like a vortex, drawing in all nearby spirits and Yin energy without them realizing it.
Like a snowball rolling downhill, there was no longer any possibility of being stopped.
When Yan Shixun saw Yang Duo approaching him on her own initiative, he felt almost relieved, feeling a rare sense of luck.
Thank goodness, there was still time.
However, he still hadn’t figured out why the Family Tomb Village had accumulated such a large amount of Yin energy in just a few decades. And among Jiang Yanran and Yang Duo, why was it Yang Duo who became the evil god?
Though weakened, the talisman was still able to trap her, unable to kill Yang Duo.
Facing Yang Duo’s hateful gaze, Yan Shixun smiled calmly and said, “Do you know, I used to think that if I encountered danger in Family Tomb Village, it would come from Jiang Yanran. But I never expected it to be you.”
“I mean no offense, but forgive me for being blunt. Based on what I know of your experiences so far, they don’t seem to support you becoming an evil god. Unless…”
His voice trailed off, his smile fading. “You’ve undergone something else, something I’m not aware of yet.”
“Let me guess.”
Yan Shixun stared directly into Yang Duo’s blood-red eyes, his expression devoid of fear or disgust, only a pure and earnest curiosity.
“Although Yang Guang didn’t reveal everything to me, he had no reason to lie to me about things that would benefit him.”
Yan Shixun calmly continued, “Yang Guang came back once, and he dug up the floor of the ancestral hall trying to save you. According to him, he saw you with your eyes wide open, but had to flee in haste when he was discovered. Although he didn’t know what happened afterwards, at that time, your features were still intact.”
But Zhang Wubing claimed he saw Yang Duo’s body decomposed, with her ears and eyeballs gouged out, and her mouth crudely stitched and then torn open again.
The only explanation Yan Shixun could think of was that the villagers became fearful.
This wasn’t the first time he had heard of live sacrifices. Usually, to prevent the deceased from harboring resentment and seeking revenge, they would either bury them face down or secure the coffin with nine-inch nails and pour molten iron over it.
Since the villagers of Family Tomb Village had engaged in such practices before, the people back then wouldn’t have overlooked such an important matter. The coffins of Yang Duo and her mother and grandmother, who were buried alive, must have undergone this treatment.
However, it was ruined by Yang Guang.
When the suffocated body of Yang Duo appeared before the villagers, driven by fear, they gouged out her eyes, cut off her ears, and sewed up her mouth.
They aimed to prevent her from seeing the faces of her enemies, hearing their voices, and even if she became a vengeful spirit, she wouldn’t know who to seek revenge against. And by the time she reached the Underworld, even if she wanted to complain, she wouldn’t be able to speak up.
The villagers’ plan seemed foolproof, but they overlooked another crucial detail.
—— Something that could surpass Jiang Yanran and secure Yang Duo the position of Yin God.
“Although you resent Yang Guang, he opened your coffin, allowing your soul to escape from the burial ground. And the frequent deaths in Family Tomb Village in the years following your death were also because of this.”
Yan Shixun’s voice was grave. “Yang Guang opened Pandora’s box, releasing the demons, but he didn’t take your remains and fulfill his promise to take you away from Family Tomb Village. As a result, you sought revenge for yourself, killing all those who decided your and Yang Hua’s doomed marriage.”
“Of course, please don’t misunderstand.”
Yan Shixun raised his hand innocently, smiling. “If Family Tomb Village had invited me to change its name or build a well back then, I wouldn’t have intervened, and I might even have praised the killings. This is your own karma, and those outside of karma have no right to interfere.”
Yang Duo’s voice was as cold as a snake. “Smooth-talking deceivers, no different from Yang Guang. Since you agreed, why are you now trapping me?”
“Because…” Yan Shixun sighed softly. “You killed innocent people.”
“People who were not part of your karma were killed by you, so the consequences that should have been repaid turned into your karma.”
In those spirit halls, Yan Shixun saw layers of elegiac couplets and memorial portraits, not just one person dead in each family, but consecutive deaths until extinction. Among them, there were even many children and young people who had recently come of age.
These people died long after Yang Duo’s time, and their karma had nothing to do with her, yet they had still died.
At that time, Yan Shixun didn’t know the reason for their deaths, but now he understands that he’s trapped in Yang Duo’s world, so he realizes—
All the villagers, it’s likely they’ve all died, even the young children couldn’t escape. And among those young people, there were many friends of Yang Tu’s. He was certain that those young people had gradually become estranged from the village’s customs and started to integrate with the outside world.
But even so, they couldn’t escape death at the hands of Yang Duo.
“You’ve gone too far, Yang Duo.”
Yan Shixun’s voice was indifferent. “You killed everyone. The resentment on their bodies has bred an evil spirit, but it’s also consuming you—do you still remember who you are? Do you still remember your original purpose?”
“I don’t care,” Yang Duo sneered, blood tears streaming down her cold, pale face. “No one loved me, so I don’t need to love them. Their life or death is none of my concern!”
“Except for my child, everyone else is just fit to become my sustenance.”
The vengeful ghost howled, its cries sharp and piercing, almost making one want to cover their ears. “Everyone deserves to die, everyone should experience the despair I’ve endured!”
A child…?
Yan Shixun blinked slowly, waves of confusion surging within him.
Yang Duo was only sixteen when she died, married off to the Land God without the chance to have a child. And he had never heard of such a thing before?
He couldn’t help but turn his head, looking at the only person on the scene who might know about this, Yang Tu.
Yang Tu, already trembling with fear, was so frightened by Yan Shixun’s gaze that he spilled everything out like pouring beans from a bamboo tube, without waiting to be asked.
“It has nothing to do with me! Yang Yun, Yang Yun’s father, and some others seem to have done something back then, and then they all died overnight, their lower bodies turning into a bloody mess. The village chief and the whole village knew about it. It seemed like Yang Yun’s father and those people offended the village’s rituals, so after Yang Yun’s father died, the Yang Yun family was looked down upon by the village too.”
“I only heard about it when I was a kid, and I really don’t know the details!”
Yang Tu didn’t know, but Yan Shixun could already make a guess.
He suddenly looked at Yang Duo, staring straight into her eyes, and asked slowly, word by word, “Were you pregnant before your burial?”
A ghost child.
A woman who dies while pregnant is the most ferocious among all ghosts. Not only does the mother bear resentment, but the unborn fetus will also harbor hatred towards the culprit. Between life and death, the ferocity reaches its extreme.
No wonder, no wonder Yang Duo became an Yin God!
A woman pregnant with a child, betrayed by all those she trusted, wearing her red bridal gown, buried alive and suffocated to death as the yin and yang shift during the Ghost Month. The soul of the fetus is imprisoned in the coffin, unable to depart, brewing the deepest resentment over time…
With all the accumulated resentment, Yang Duo has become the most formidable and troublesome existence among the malevolent spirits.
The continuous deaths in the Family Tomb Village gave Yang Duo enough power.
The fingers hanging by Yan Shixun’s side trembled slightly.
He feared that the Family Tomb Village had become a land of perpetual death.
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