Chapter 132 The Infinite Player's Ghost Wife
Living sacrifice.
This is the most common and most unforgivable of all superstitious and ignorant offering rituals.
The sound of waves echoed in her ears. Lin Zhi lowered her eyes and watched the kneeling people stand up.
This is a unified action that can be achieved without words, an absurd belief that glorifies cruelty as a matter of course.
Lin Zhi looked towards the ancestral hall. Compared with other houses in the village, this building was quite spacious, enough to accommodate the entire population of the small fishing village to worship in it.
Only the outline of the white statue on the high platform can be seen through the gap. The woman is sitting cross-legged, surrounded by waves and fish.
The ground of the ancestral hall was covered with dark blue marks, so dense that one would think the ground was that color.
There was no joy at all in this wedding ceremony. Sister Liu, wearing a crimson gown and a bun, stood up and walked towards the ancestral hall. The women followed her footsteps and walked inside together.
Liu Yue, who was standing at the back of the team, was a little hesitant, not knowing whether he should follow in.
The situation soon told her the answer. After the woman walking in front of her stepped over the threshold, the door was closed.
Obviously she was turned away, and Liu Yue was very happy about it. She took Tongtong by the hand and walked towards Lin Zhi and the others.
Zhang San muttered quietly: "It seems that this Queen Hai really hates men. She doesn't even let them enter the ancestral hall."
"Let's find a place to sit down first. I'll go to where you live. I found out some things."
Liu Yue was a little impatient, not just for sharing information, but mainly because the way the men on the street looked at her made her feel uncomfortable.
Amid a group of weird gazes with indescribable intentions, mixed with a few obscene and disgusting looks, Liu Yue couldn't find who it was when he looked over.
Xie Qing: "Go to Uncle Guo's house."
Uncle Guo took off the cigarette that was stuck on his ear and didn't say anything when he saw the girl following them back. After all, it was daytime and there was nothing taboo about it.
"Aren't you going out to sea?"
The sudden question made Uncle Guo pause slightly. He rubbed the filter with his fingers, looked at the handsome young man next to him, and sighed.
"We can't get out. The waves in the sea are too big. All the fish have been scared away. We haven't had any catch for several days."
Lin Zhi: "So you hope to make sacrifices to dispel the gods' anger and allow you to continue working?"
Lin Zhi's tone was calm and his words were particularly tactful.
"right."
Uncle Guo nodded, because the boy's black eyes seemed to show an understanding of everything, which made him unable to deny.
"What did you do to make her angry? Since she hates men, then men must have done something to make her unhappy. What did you do?"
There was almost no space between Lin Zhi's words, and he directly pointed out the most important point.
As a former dungeon boss, Lin Zhi knew that some NPCs had the ability to think, and they could even be clearer than the core boss.
Uncle Guo was a little dazed by the question. He lit up the cigarette in his hand that was a little deformed by his pinching, took a deep breath, and said the answer almost with a sigh.
"Nothing was done. Nothing was done."
He repeated this sentence twice and walked forward with a lonely back.
Xie Qing called out, but he didn't look back.
Zhang San wanted to ask other people, but all failed.
When they returned to Uncle Guo's residence, they found that he had not come back.
The door was closed, Liu Yue looked at the marks on the ground and looked at his teammates.
"Did anything happen to you last night?"
Xie Qing replied briskly: "It's okay."
Last night was a very enjoyable evening.
Xie Qing: "Did you see those traces too? In the ancestral hall too?"
Liu Yue nodded: "When I was waiting at the door, I saw that the ground inside the ancestral hall was all blue-black, and there were many such marks on the road, but the villagers could not see them."
Tongtong: "In that big temple, the back of the statue is also this color."
Everyone looked at Tongtong, and Zhang San asked, "Did you run in?"
Liu Yue shook her head: "Impossible, I was holding her hand the whole time, and they wouldn't let us into the ancestral hall."
"My animal friend helped me see it. It doesn't lie. I fed the fish to it and it was very happy."
Tong Tong explained, and she also opened her small bag to show the empty outer layer inside.
Everyone understood that this might be Tongtong's innate ability.
No one asked in detail about the child's means of saving his life. After all, in this situation, they had more important things to discuss.
"I stayed at Sister Liu's place last night. After the village came to the rule that men and women cannot live together, the women all lived together. Tongtong, I and a girl about 15 or 16 years old lived together. I got some information from her."
As for how she exchanged outside information with the girl, she did not elaborate.
"Hai Niangniang is a local deity, but this belief has only been around for a short time."
"It is said that sixty years ago, a fisherman was swept to a distant place by the wind and waves. When he thought he was going to die, a woman surrounded by fish appeared in the sea, saved his life, and generously gave him a boatload of fish."
"The fisherman asked him how he should repay the gods, and the sea woman replied that water is yin, she likes women, and has no wife yet."
"After the fisherman returned safely, he immediately told the villagers about the incident. The priest said that the promise to the gods must not be violated, otherwise his life would be taken away."
"His unmarried daughter volunteered to be the bride of the Haenyeo. The Haenyeo said that marrying her does not require any special ceremony. All she needs to do is recite her name, take a small boat with tribute, and the Haenyeo will bring her a wife."
"Since then, this man has been able to obtain relatively rich products every time he goes out to sea."
"As a result, more and more people began to believe in this female divers and respectfully called her the Sea Goddess, hoping that she would bless them to have safe trips to sea and never come back empty-handed."
"About three years later, another fisherman said he was saved by the Sea Goddess, and the Sea Goddess made the same request. So the village began to have the tradition of offering brides, which happened about once every three years. But in recent years, the frequency has increased, gradually becoming once a year."
Zhang Yunzhao: "Isn't this too weird? What kind of improper gods are these? Aren't they curious about where the last bride went?"
"Of course they wouldn't be curious. Since they were offering sacrifices to the gods of the sea, the moment those women went out to sea, their death was certain. Just like some coastal and lakeside areas that sacrifice brides to the Dragon King, they would even sink the brides directly."
There was some mockery in Xie Qing's tone, and it was obvious that he did not like these things.
Lin Zhi knew the reason. After all, Xie Qing was also a person who was criticized for being superstitious.
Lin Zhi looked at Liu Yue: "Have you found out why they changed the frequency?"
Liu Yue nodded. "The reason why they believed in the Sea Goddess so much and built a temple for her was because after they believed in the Sea Goddess, the harvest of their fishing boats did increase. According to them, they rarely encountered storms. So when the catch obviously decreased to the point that something was wrong, they thought it was a signal."
"After offering the bride, the production returned to normal, so they believed in the existence of the gods even more firmly, and even said that it was a great honor to be chosen as the bride of the gods, because it was a reward to the gods."
Liu Yue still remembered the pride and piety on the face of the fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl when she told her about this incident, which made her scalp tingle.
"Axia, the girl who lives with me, told me that she should be the candidate to become Queen Hai's wife next year, but she may not be able to wait until next year because Queen Hai is angry."
"This year's wedding ceremony started a few days earlier because the sea was abnormally rough and the fish were frightened and would not go into the nets. All the fleets caught nothing. When everyone was discussing moving it up, people started dying in the village."
"Those who died were men who lived with women. When they died, they were barely human-looking. Axia didn't see the tragic state of the bodies, she just heard others describe it this way."
"At first, no one knew it was a punishment from the Sea Goddess. They thought they were possessed by water ghosts. But as more people died, everyone realized that any man who was with a woman at night would die."
"There are many widows in the village. Everyone thinks that Queen Hai is angry because she thinks that all women in the village should be her wives. Any man who stays with them will be punished."
"So there is a rule in the village that men and women cannot live together. All women have to live together and go to the ancestral hall every day to express their sincerity to the Queen Mother of the Sea. At the same time, the village is stepping up the wedding ceremony."
Lin Zhi: "The ritual failed?"
This is obvious, if it was successful, why would they do it again today.
Liu Yue nodded: "Yes, after the bride was sent over, the boats that went out to sea still had no harvest. Even if they caught a few pitiful fish, those fish would soon die in the water and then stink."
"This priest, Sister Liu, soon offered up another bride, but it also yielded no results."
"They think that these brides may not meet the wishes of Queen Hai, so today's incident happened. The candidate was the answer Sister Liu got when she drew the divination sticks in front of the ancestral hall."
Zhang San: "Isn't this nonsense? They're just going to start drawing lots. Are they going to keep sending people into the sea?"
Xie Qing: "This is the answer we are looking for."
This absurd and bizarre mass death incident, where did it start and where did it end?
Zhang Yunzhao envied: "You got a lot of clues."
Liu Yue sighed: "Because I am the woman that Queen Hai likes, I have a bad feeling. If I fail again, will they target me?"
Lin Zhi: “Very likely.”
This is indeed foreseeable.
Xie Qing: “99.9%.”
Liu Yue tried to keep smiling: "You don't need to mention the decimal point, thank you."
Zhang Yunzhao's envy immediately turned into sympathy, and he consoled her: "Let's speed up our search for clues."
Xie Qing: "There must be something behind this. We can tell from Uncle Guo's words that what they did was nothing, which means they had witnessed some disaster. The only disaster that happened in this village, and even took it for granted, was sacrifice."
Zhang Yunzhao: "Are you saying that the boss of this instance is not Queen Hai at all, but the dead brides?"
Xie Qing: "The chances are very high, but there are still some points that don't make sense. If the vengeful spirits are the dead brides, then they should hate everyone in the village indiscriminately, not based on gender."
"And from what Liu Yue found out, we can infer the attitude of the girl named Axia. These brides are most likely willing to sacrifice themselves. Of course, this cannot be said to be all the case. There must be some exceptions. Maybe there is an incident where a bride was unwilling but was forced to do so."
This is why Xie Qing did not jump to conclusions just now. He glanced at Zhang Yunzhao and thought that the boy was still too young.
"The contradictions in this information are what we want to explore, and the key points we want to ask. Have similar incidents occurred before? What are the villagers' attitudes towards Hai Niangniang and the brides? What are the identities of the dead men? We will start the investigation from these aspects to see if we can connect them together as quickly as possible and integrate the information as quickly as possible."
He looked at Lin Zhi beside him, stretched out his hand and hooked his little finger implicitly.
Wife, look, he is not as smart as me.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com