224: Chapter 224 The Bizarre Wedding Procession

Continuous night rain fell over Phoenix Settlement under a blanket of dense, dark clouds.

Along both sides of the ancient bluestone-paved street,

beneath the eaves of the stilt houses, pale paper lanterns swayed mournfully in the chilly wind.

The dim yellow candlelight inside brought no warmth at all; instead, it cast a light over the entire town that made it resemble the Yellow Springs Road of the Underworld.

In a hidden dark alley at the end of the street, three figures in black raincoats pressed tightly against a moss-covered wall.

"Captain Lao Xing, what the hell are these things... The reading on the psionic detector isn't moving at all, but this fog... smelling this fog makes me want to vomit."

A young agent with a buzz cut and tactical glasses was staring intently at the psionic fluctuation detector in his hands.

The red line on the screen representing malevolent fiendish aura was as calm as still water, without the slightest fluctuation.

Yet his hands holding the device were trembling uncontrollably.

"Shut up, Xiao Liu."

"Turn the filter valve on your gas mask to maximum. This isn't ordinary corpse miasma or demonic fog."

The man called Captain Lao Xing was a tough guy nearly forty years old.

He had a square face, his chin covered in dark stubble.

They were the 7th Special Task Force sent to Western Hunan by the Second Bureau of The Ninth Bureau.

Receiving secret orders from the Yanjing Headquarters, their three-person team had secretly infiltrated Phoenix Settlement on the outer fringes of the Ten Thousand Mountains three days ago.

They originally thought it was just dealing with a few ordinary incidents of mountain spirits and wild monsters causing trouble.

But over these past three days, these three battle-hardened Ninth Bureau agents truly experienced the terror of feeling utterly helpless.

"Captain, I can barely hold on... my sensory defense line is being eroded..."

Standing behind Captain Lao Xing was a female agent with ear-length short hair, codenamed Hongdou.

She was a rare mental-sensory specialist in The Ninth Bureau, responsible for dealing with anomalies skilled in illusions and mental pollution.

But at this moment, Hongdou's pretty face was as pale as paper.

She clutched her temples tightly, her nails digging deeply into her flesh.

"I hear it... every night for the past three days, it's been this tune... wedding music, played on the suona! But the melody is a funeral dirge!"

Hongdou's voice bore a sob of someone on the verge of breaking down.

"That floral scent feels like the stench of a rotting corpse marinated in cheap face powder for hundreds of years!"

Captain Lao Xing spun around abruptly and slapped a hand onto Hongdou's shoulder.

A surge of pure Daoist true qi flowed from his palm into her body, forcibly pulling her back from the brink of a mental breakdown.

"Bite the tip of your tongue! Recite the Heart-Clearing Incantation silently!"

Captain Lao Xing growled softly.

They had been here for three days.

Over these three days, they had watched with their own eyes as three young maidens from the town put on bright red clothes at midnight, wearing eerie smiles, walking on tiptoe in a line straight into the thick fog of the deep mountains.

They had tried to stop them.

They fired guns, used specially made cinnabar nets to trap them, and even used high-explosive flashbangs from The Ninth Bureau to block the path.

But none of it worked.

Those girls seemed to have transformed into a "concept" that completely defied the laws of physics.

Bullets passed through them as if passing through ripples of water.

When high-voltage nets covered them, their bodies softened like noodles, squeezing right through the mesh.

Whenever they attempted to forcefully grab the girls,

countless hideous female ghost faces dressed in bright red wedding gowns would instantly flood into their minds.

That instantaneous mental pollution almost drove Hongdou to draw her gun and take her own life.

"Tonight, it's Cuicui, the daughter of Old Man Li from the east end of town."

Captain Lao Xing poked half his head out, staring intently at a stilt house across the street with tightly shut doors and windows nailed shut with thick wooden boards.

Beneath the eaves hung two freshly glued white lanterns.

In the rainwater on the ground soaked large patches of round white joss paper.

"Yesterday we pasted eighteen 'Celestial Master House-Calming Talismans' on the door and locked Cuicui to a pillar in the inner room with an iron chain as thick as a thumb."

Xiao Liu swallowed hard.

"Captain, can we save her tonight?"

Captain Lao Xing did not answer.

He slowly drew the rune-engraved military triangular bayonet from his waist.

His bloodshot eyes glinted with a fierce, unwilling resolve.

"Do our best and leave the rest to fate. Under the laws of Great Xia, the living cannot become brides to dead ghosts."

...

Meanwhile, at Old Man Li's house across the street.

The main hall was unlit, save for an ever-burning lamp in front of the shrine, lingering weakly in the eerie wind.

Old Man Li and his wife sat back-to-back on the threshold of the main hall, each holding a butcher knife.

The couple had stayed up for two full nights without closing their eyes.

Their eyes were completely bloodshot, their faces paler than the lanterns outside.

"Husband... Cuicui... there's no sound inside anymore."

Auntie Li lowered her voice, her teeth chattering noisily.

Old Man Li shuddered, green veins bulging on the back of his hand holding the knife.

The door to the inner room was nailed shut from the outside with wooden planks.

Inside, they had tightly bound their seventeen-year-old daughter Cuicui to a load-bearing pillar with a thick iron chain meant for tethering cattle.

Just half an hour ago, Cuicui was still struggling frantically inside, crying and begging them to let her out,

saying that her "groom" had come to pick her up.

But now, it was so quiet inside that one could hear a pin drop.

That deathly silence was even more terrifying than the crying.

"I'll go take a look... I'll just peek through the hole..."

Old Man Li gritted his teeth, summoned his courage, got up from the ground holding the butcher knife, and slowly shuffled to the wooden door of the inner room.

He pressed against the gap in the door and peered inside.

It was pitch black inside the inner room.

Guided by a faint red light seeping through the window gaps,

Old Man Li saw a scene that nearly frightened him to death.

The iron chain was still locked to the pillar, intact and undamaged.

But there was no one inside the chain!

Cuicui was gone!

"Cuicui?!"

Old Man Li gasped, his voice cracking.

"Dad, were you calling me?"

Suddenly, a soft, seductive voice echoed right above Old Man Li.

Old Man Li quickly looked up.

His heart seemed to stop beating at that moment.

Cuicui hadn't vanished.

Like a giant human spider with limbs bent backward, her entire body was stuck firmly to the ceiling of the inner room!

Cuicui's neck snapped downward at an angle impossible for a human.

Her originally delicate face hung upside down, staring intently at Old Man Li through the door gap.

"Th-this is impossible! The chain wasn't opened, how did you break free?!"

Terrified, Old Man Li scrambled back three steps and fell hard onto his bottom.

On the ceiling, Cuicui let out a soft giggle.

The giggling echoed in the enclosed room, ear-piercing to the extreme.

"Dad, your daughter has found a good home. The Mountain God Lord bestowed upon me a set of [Boneless Garments]. How could those mortal broken chains hold back your daughter's joy?"

Accompanied by the crunching sound of grinding bones,

Cuicui slid down from the ceiling like a pile of mud, landing steadily on the floor.

She truly had no bones left.

Old Man Li saw with his own eyes as she forcibly crushed her own shoulder bones; her arms hung limply at her sides like two noodles.

Yet this did not hinder her movements at all.

Cuicui walked over to the old vanity mirror in the room and slowly sat down.

She didn't light a lamp, facing the mirror in the dark just like that.

Even though there was clearly no light in the room, the mirror clearly reflected Cuicui's image.

The Cuicui in the mirror wore a gorgeous, bright red ancient bridal gown.

But the real-life Cuicui was still wearing that washed-out old pajama set!

The actions of the person in the mirror and the real person were completely out of sync!

The "Cuicui" in the mirror was elegantly styling her hair.

Meanwhile, the real Cuicui reached out with her limp hand and pulled a rusty wooden comb out of a drawer.

"Tonight is my big day. I must dress up beautifully to meet my sweetheart."

Cuicui softly hummed an ancient, obscure Western Hunan folk song.

She picked up the wooden comb and combed down fiercely against her hair.

Ripppp!

That wasn't the sound of combing hair!

Because she used extreme force, large clumps of long black hair along with flesh and scalp were torn off by the wooden comb.

Dark red blood trickled down her forehead and cheeks, dripping onto her old pajamas.

Yet Cuicui seemed unable to feel any pain at all.

She looked at the "bride" wearing the bright red bridal gown in the mirror.

The smile on her face grew brighter and crazier.

"Oh my, there's no high-quality rouge in my dowry."

Cuicui pouted coyly.

She set down the comb covered in blood and flesh, reached out her right hand, and without hesitation thrust her sharp fingernails into her left cheek!