The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 28

“What script?”

Lin Zhu sat between Huang Li and Daoist Xuanxu. Huang Li had not heard clearly, so he asked again.

“Nether Script.” Daoist Xuanxu looked at Zhao Li with an extraordinarily solemn expression. “It is also known as Death Script or Water Script.”

Lin Zhu froze. “Death Script? The legendary lost writing said to bridge yin and yang?”

“Yes. The script that only supernatural anomalies can read.”

Daoist Xuanxu craned his neck, trying to see more clearly.

“Such writing truly exists?”

And it had reappeared beneath his granddaughter’s hand.

Lin Zhu had only just begun to feel pleased when he remembered that they had already severed ties. The child no longer had anything to do with them.

Zhao Li had no idea what was happening among the spectators.

After carving the Nether Script into the stone slab, she looked toward Shen Yan.

Shen Yan understood and nodded.

Lu Zhao personally led several prison guards over, dragging two people whose bodies had gone completely limp.

They were Lin Lan and Provincial Graduate Wang.

Knowing there would be a fine spectacle tonight, the guards had even washed them and changed them into clean prison clothes.

No injuries were visible from the outside, but Zhao Li knew both people had been thoroughly ruined.

They were hauled into the circle of red cord and dropped like dead dogs.

Beneath Lin Lan’s prison clothes, scarcely a patch of flesh remained intact. Only her face had been preserved on Zhao Li’s instructions.

The fall woke her.

“H-Husband.”

Every fingernail had been torn from Lin Lan’s hands.

The slightest movement of her blood-crusted fingers sent agony piercing straight into her heart. Yet her first instinct was still to crawl toward Provincial Graduate Wang beside her.

His response was a curse.

“W-Wretched woman.”

The wretched woman who had brought ruin and extermination upon the Wang family!

Provincial Graduate Wang mumbled through his stupor, “It had nothing to do with me. It was all that wretched woman. Kill only her… Kill only her…”

The words struck Lin Lan like a bolt of lightning.

After a long time, her head snapped up.

Behind her tangled hair, a pair of venomous eyes fixed on Zhao Li.

“I will become a vengeful ghost and haunt you through every lifetime!”

Her shrill voice echoed through the night. The vicious malice in her words made everyone who heard them shudder.

Shen Yan’s brow abruptly furrowed in the distance.

Zhao Li merely curled her lips and walked to the edge of the circle.

“You should worry first about what you are going to say when you meet an old acquaintance.”

Become a vengeful ghost? What a joke.

Once she fell into Zhao Li’s hands, did Lin Lan truly imagine she would have the chance?

Zhao Li had originally planned to wait until her wounds healed before dealing with Lin Yu inside the courtyard.

But now there was a shortcut that would allow Lin Yu to vent her resentment and resolve her lingering obsession. Why confront the ghost head-on if she did not need to?

White candles and sticks of white incense stood on the altar beside an offering of white pork fat pierced with chopsticks.

Incense ash covered the stone slab carved with Nether Script.

The clear note of a gong rang in the distance.

Everyone fell silent.

Zhao Li lit a white paper lantern.

Its dim yellow flame illuminated her bloodless face, lending her a ghostly air.

Amid the deathly silence, she carried the spirit-guiding lantern to the gate of Fragrant Orchid Courtyard.

She stood beside the stone statue before the entrance and raised one hand to knock.

Knock, knock. Knock, knock.

The living knocked three times. Ghosts knocked four.

The muffled sound carried with unnatural clarity through the quiet night.

“Lin Yu of the Lin family.”

The young woman’s voice was crisp and bright, as though she had come to visit a close friend.

Yet the name she called belonged to the dead, turning the scene unspeakably eerie.

Everyone watching from the side, Daoist Xuanxu included, felt deeply unsettled.

Then Zhao Li knocked four more times.

“Lin Yu.”

At her call, the tightly shut courtyard gate opened a crack.

The hinges were dry. Their long creak echoed through the darkness.

At some point, a thin mist had risen once more.

Zhao Li did not go inside. She took one step back, leaving the entrance clear.

Turning, she hung the white paper lantern over the incense-ash road she had prepared.

The chopsticks planted along the path trembled. Tiny bells chimed on the red cord.

The taut cord bent into a shallow curve.

A red wedding robe emerged from the mist behind the gate.

The toes of crimson embroidered shoes pointed toward the ground, hovering three inches above the red cord.

“Come,” Zhao Li said. “I brought the people you wanted to see… and new clothes.”

Chime. Chime. Chime.

With each step, a bell on the red cord rang, producing an ethereal note.

Inside the white mist, a young woman wrapped in a white wolf-fur cloak walked slowly forward, lantern raised to light the way.

Beside her floated the red wedding robe.

The sight was profoundly uncanny.

Huang Li’s fingers spasmed around Lin Zhu’s arm.

At that moment, old rivalry and the need to win were both forgotten.

Lin Zhu’s beard trembled, but he had no mind to complain.

They had fallen into humanity’s most primal fear: the terror of death and the unknown.

Zhao Li led Lin Yu to the circle. Without showing it, she adjusted her grip on the lantern. Her palm was slick with cold sweat.

“Every cause and consequence has been written in the Death Script.”

She placed the lantern at her feet and pointed toward Provincial Graduate Wang and Lin Lan, who lay limp on the ground.

“Go. Your new clothes are there.”

Then Zhao Li slowly retreated.

Lin Lan lay on her back, a clicking sound emerging from her throat.

Her bloodshot eyes opened wide as she watched the red wedding robe drift closer.

“You chose it yourself. I did not harm you. Go away!”

She spoke while writhing backward across the ground.

The dragon-and-phoenix bridal veil swayed. The sleeves of the wedding robe rose and cupped Lin Lan’s face.

“Miss, spare me!”

“You were always so forgiving. No matter what mistakes I made, you pardoned me. Forgive me one last time.”

Tears streamed down Lin Lan’s cheeks.

Her only answer was the red bridal veil drawing closer.

Provincial Graduate Wang woke from his daze just in time to see the two figures merge.

The next instant, Lin Lan released a scream no human throat should have been capable of making.

Threads of embroidery pushed out through every pore of her body, writhing like living worms.

The strands, dyed red with Lin Lan’s blood, twisted together into a dress and crimson shoes.

Wet tissue from inside her eyes clung to the embroidery threads bursting from her eyeballs.

Those threads wove themselves into a red bridal veil and drifted lightly down.

Several dozen breaths later, Lin Lan had vanished.

The scarlet wedding robe floated silently in her place.

Once dressed in new clothes, a bride naturally needed to find her husband.

The wedding robe swayed and silently turned toward Provincial Graduate Wang, who had just regained consciousness.

“Aah—!”

His scream of absolute terror rang beneath the night sky.

Hemp ropes rustled across the ground. Like snakes, they climbed his body.

Eight shadows surrounded him, giggling.

The nooses around their necks caught every part of his body that could be pulled.

His limbs. His head. His waist. His tongue. His genitals…

Like a marionette, Provincial Graduate Wang was hauled upright by the ropes and dragged before the red wedding robe.

The ropes tightened.

One wound around his tongue, pulling it out as saliva streamed from the corner of his mouth.

Provincial Graduate Wang’s eyes stretched impossibly wide with despair.

Riiip—

The sound resembled tearing cloth.

Chunks of his body scattered in every direction. A long tongue, ripped out by the root, slapped onto the ground.

Blood flowed freely, soaking the earth dark red.

When it was done, the red wedding robe remained where it was, as though lost in thought.

Only after a long while did it turn toward Zhao Li outside the circle.

The white paper lantern on the ground dimmed, then brightened again.

The wedding robe bent its knees and curtsied to her.

Then the robe and hemp ropes dissolved into smoke.

[Quest complete! She is deeply grateful that you brought her new clothes and a husband.]

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