Chapter 61
red.
Red everywhere.
Like a grand, never-ending fire that burned for miles along the street.
Cui Yunshu sat right in the center of the fire.
On her head was a nine-tailed phoenix crown so heavy it could break her neck. Each pearl and gemstone on it was like a small, cold tombstone, weighing heavily on her skull.
She wore an outrageously elaborate crimson wedding gown embroidered with dragons and phoenixes in gold thread. Every single thread on it was like a thin, strong rope, soaked in her own blood, binding her tightly, making her unable to move.
She felt like she wasn't getting married.
She was at a funeral.
And she herself was that carefully dressed-up corpse, being paraded through the streets in public.
Outside, it was noisy.
The deafening sound of gongs and drums.
The sound of firecrackers continued incessantly.
And then there was the surging tide of excitement, envy, chatter, and cheers from the crowd.
"My God! This...this is the Cui family's dowry? It stretches as far as the eye can see!"
"A ten-mile-long red bridal procession! This is the real ten-mile-long red bridal procession! I've lived for sixty years and I've never seen such a grand spectacle!"
"It's not just money! Did you see those fine iron and wooden chests being carried over? I heard that the Prince of An's betrothal gifts consisted of chests full of swords, spears, and halberds! The gifts the Cui family is giving back are probably... even more frightening!"
Cui Yunshu sat in the swaying, ornate, coffin-like bridal sedan chair, listening to the sounds outside, her face expressionless.
She wanted to laugh.
dowry?
That was her "escape fund".
It was her final Noah's Ark, built with three years of hard work, countless sleepless nights, and astronomical sums of money earned from "Yun Jian Ge," "Jing Hua Yuan," and "Jin Xiu Ge."
Now, this ship is being used by her as part of her dowry, and is being sent in a grand procession into the military prison she designed herself, named "Prince An's Mansion".
How ridiculous!
I'm too lazy to think about it.
The bridal sedan chair came to a stop.
A long, cheerful greeting came from outside.
"The bride is getting out of the sedan chair—!"
Supported by the matchmaker, Cui Yunshu walked step by step down the red carpet embroidered with mandarin ducks in gold thread toward her future home.
Her grave.
She felt a gaze, like a ball of fire, pierce through the thick red veil that obscured all her vision, and brand it firmly onto her body.
It was Tang Pu.
Her nominal fiancé, her practically hopeless "revolutionary comrade," her... husband whom she now wants to die whenever she sees.
A hand reached out and grasped her hand.
That hand was very hot.
Like a red-hot branding iron. The palms are covered with thin calluses, worn down from years of holding knives.
He held on very tightly.
It was so tight, like an iron clamp, that it was going to crush her bones.
He led Cui Yunshu, like a soulless puppet, across the fire basin and bowed to heaven and earth.
In my ears was the emcee's melodious and joyful voice.
"First bow to Heaven and Earth—"
"Second bow to the parents—"
"Husband and wife bow to each other—"
At the moment of "husband and wife bowing to each other," at the instant when they bow down and are closest to each other.
Cui Yunshu heard a suppressed, excited, and agitated breathy voice, like a small snake, burrow into her ear.
The voice wasn't some nonsense like, "My lady, you look so beautiful today."
The voice said:
"Master strategist, did you see that?!"
"The entire city is filled with people! The public sentiment is boiling! And the ten-mile-long red bridal procession you sent!"
"Our...our military budget is so abundant!!"
"Great things are in store for us!!!"
Cui Yunshu's body suddenly froze.
She almost fell straight to the ground.
She was not worshipping heaven and earth.
What she was worshipping was clearly her own damned, absurd, and eternally unending nightmare.
...
The bridal chamber.
It's red.
Dragon and phoenix wedding candles, red.
The bed was covered with a red quilt embroidered with a hundred sons and a thousand grandsons.
Even the air was filled with a festive, cloying, suffocating red scent.
Cui Yunshu sat in this red area.
Like a drop of cold water falling into a pool of blood.
The noise outside—the toasting, the drinking games—finally faded away.
The door creaked shut.
The whole world fell silent.
Only she and... him remained.
She could hear his footsteps.
He walked towards her step by step.
The footsteps were steady and heavy, carrying an irrepressible, excited aura of a victor.
She felt the red veil that was obscuring her vision being gently lifted by a hand.
Light poured in.
A face appeared in her blurry, swaying vision.
A handsome, young face, slightly flushed from drinking, radiating ecstatic joy—"We succeeded!"
It was Tang Pu.
He was dressed in a bright red wedding gown, but the clothes he wore made him look less like a groom and more like a glorious, revolutionary about to be executed.
He looked at her, and in those eyes that always shone like stars, now burned two raging flames, enough to incinerate her entirely.
He picked up the two cups of nuptial wine tied together with a red string on the table.
He handed one of the cups to her.
His hands were very steady.
His voice was also very steady. So steady, in a way, that it carried an almost sacred, solemn, ritualistic quality.
"Yun Shu".
For the first time, he called her name. He called it so solemnly.
As Cui Yunshu looked at him, at his eyes burning with flames, a sense of foreboding suddenly arose in her heart.
She felt that what he was about to say next was definitely not something nice.
really.
“Drink this glass of wine,” Tang Pu’s eyes were fixed on her intently, his voice filled with an unprecedented, passionate, surging, revolutionary fervor, “and you and I will be true 'accomplices'!”
Cui Yunshu's hand trembled slightly.
The wine almost spilled.
"From this day forward," Tang Pu's voice continued, like an endless, stirring battle song, "What's mine is yours! What's yours is still yours!"
"All the troops, provisions, and funds of my Prince An's mansion; the Cui family's wealth that rivals that of a nation; our invincible fleet; and..."
He paused, then announced loudly in an almost lamenting tone, filled with boundless longing:
"Everything! Will be for our shared ideal!!"
ideal.
Cui Yunshu looked at him, at the handsome, tall, passionate, foolish, and hopelessly good-for-nothing husband in front of her.
She looked at his face, which was etched with the fanaticism of "Cheers to the revolution!"
She looked again at the bridal chamber, which she had personally designed as a "military fortress" and "revolutionary headquarters."
She suddenly felt very tired.
A profound, absurd, suffocating exhaustion emanating from the depths of the soul.
She slowly raised the wine glass in her hand.
I touched him lightly.
Then, he drank it all in one gulp.
The wine is cold.
It carried a hint of bitterness, a hint of astringency, and a hint of something she couldn't quite explain—a bittersweet feeling born of resignation and self-abandonment.
She knew.
From the moment she drank that glass of wine.
She, Cui Yunshu, was completely locked onto this absurd and damned "pirate ship" that she could never have imagined.
Outside the door, the faint murmur of the guests could be heard.
Inside the door were her and her "like-minded" husband.
And a future filled with unknowns, absurdity, and things she herself didn't know how to end.
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