Chapter 78 Death and Suicide "I'm looking for Yin Sui, not to deal with you..."
At the last moment, Zhou Yaren lost her footing, feeling dizzy and disoriented, as if the world had turned upside down.
He stumbled and spun around, bumping and bruising himself from head to toe, each bump causing him pain. Then, with a deafening crash, he landed on the ground. After the initial shock, he finally felt grounded, but he sat swaying precariously, utterly dizzy.
The bridal sedan chair tumbled wildly down the cliff edge, but Bai Yuan, who had arrived just in time, caught it and pulled it down to the ground.
Then, with a loud "boom," the sedan chair's beams numbed her hands.
Bai Yuan remained calm and waited quietly for a moment, then took two steps to the bridal sedan chair and lifted the curtain.
At the same time, incredibly sharp wind blades shot out from inside the sedan chair.
Bai Yuan dodged aside, a hint of ferocity creeping into his brow. When he turned to look into the sedan chair, he suddenly froze.
Zhou Yaren, dressed in a bright red wedding gown, leaned against the side of the sedan chair. Her face, still bearing signs of illness, carried a hint of sternness, but she immediately composed herself upon recognizing the person who had arrived.
"A false accusation?"
The bright red wedding dress dispelled the sickly look from Zhou Yaren's face, subtly highlighting her complexion, making her look like a handsome groom whose face was so striking that even the bride would feel ashamed of her appearance.
Bai Yuan was brought back to his senses by the sound of someone falling down, and the weeds trembled strangely.
Zhou Yaren listened intently: "Who?"
Just as he was about to unleash a wind blade, Bai Yuan stopped him, saying, "Carriers."
Zhou Yaren even took a moment to realize that the sedan chair carriers she was referring to were actually villagers from Fengkou Village.
Bai Yuan stared at his groom's attire, finding it very offensive, and sarcastically remarked, "Why are you dressed like this? Are you going to have a wedding ceremony?!"
She delivered the doctor, Ding, whom she had finally found, to Fengkou Village, intending to hand him over to Zhou Yaren and Xiao Dinggua before personally going to the county government to examine Liang Taohua's body. However, only a short while after she left, something strange happened in the village. Fortunately, there was a sane person in the village who knew the truth. Xiao Dinggua recognized the two of them, jumped out from a pile of firewood, buried his face in his grandfather's arms, and burst into tears. He then sobbed as he recounted the strange events of the night—Zhou Yaren had been carried away in a wedding sedan chair.
Just moments before, Bai Yuan had heard a strange tale from Doctor Ding: a group of shadowy figures, indistinguishable from ghosts, were carrying a sedan chair in the fog. This terrified him and the coachman, who scattered and became separated. Doctor Ding, by chance, was tied up by Liang Youyi and taken to a cliff cave. Where did the coachman go? Was he also carried away by that sedan chair like Zhou Yaren?
Logically, the living are more important than the dead, so Bai Yuan turned to the mass grave and ran into a group of "night wanderers" who were wandering around with their eyes closed.
Didn't Xiao Dinggua say that Zhou Yaren was carried away by this group of sleepwalking villagers in the middle of the night? But where is the sedan chair? Where was it taken to?
It's not wise to search blindly in the desolate wilderness, so Bai Yuan appointed one of the "Night Wanderers" to wander around again without anyone knowing, and led Bai Yuan to this place.
The strange movement in the weeds earlier was caused by the villager whom Bai Yuan had personally chosen to lead the way. After being forced to separate from the crowd and walk against the flow of traffic, he suddenly opened his eyes and "realized" his mistake, shuddering violently. His mind was filled with questions like, "Where am I? Where is this? How did I get here? When did I get here?"
The villager, who had just witnessed a ghost, found himself in the middle of nowhere, in a graveyard. Before he could recover from his shock, suddenly, with a "whoosh," some unidentified object was impaled on the tree trunk in front of him by a weapon as sharp as an arrow. Upon closer inspection, the villager's eyes rolled back and he fainted on the spot.
...
Zhou Yaren was unjustly mocked and leaned out of the bridal sedan chair: "Little Dinggua picked up a copper coin wrapped in red cloth yesterday. There is a deceased woman in the mass grave looking for a husband."
Given the prevalent custom of ghost marriages in this area, and the villagers' frequent visits to the mass graves to dig up bones, Bai Yuan had already guessed most of it on his way here: "So you're planning to marry into the mass grave in his place?"
Local villagers believe that the deceased's lifespan was not yet over, and he did not enjoy human relationships, which is an imbalance of yin and yang. The lonely grave is unlucky, and he will surely turn into a wandering ghost and come back to haunt them.
Zhou Yaren said, "They had already entered the room..."
"It's probably not a mortal's dwelling that's being entered, but a tomb," Bai Yuan glanced at him and said indifferently. "When a woman seeking a husband, isn't it to share the same fate with him?"
People don't always say "to share the same bed in life and the same grave in death." Couples are buried together in the same coffin, and people with deep affection believe in staying together until death.
Bai Yuan raised his hand and pointed into the distance.
Zhou Yaren turned her head and looked over, and was suddenly stunned. She saw a woman dressed in a wedding dress with a wooden branch piercing her body and nailing her firmly to the tree trunk.
Bai Yuan gestured to him with a forced smile: "Go and see your bride."
Zhou Yaren: "..."
After Bai Yuan finished speaking, he ignored the man's reaction and walked straight towards that spot, where a villager who had fainted from fright was lying under the tree stump.
From a distance, it's not very clear what's going on, but once you get closer, you can see some clues. For example, how can such a thin little tree branch hold a body in place? Can it even hold a body?
Bai Yuan gestured to him again: "Lift the veil and take a look."
Zhou Yaren: "..."
Although these words sounded a bit off, business was of the essence, so Zhou Yaren didn't argue with her. As she reached out to pull off the veil, she heard Bai Yuan say in a sarcastic tone, "Look what kind of jerk you married."
Zhou Yaren paused for a long time, and when she saw the true face under the veil, she couldn't hide her surprise and blurted out: "...Chuling".
Chuling were human-horse figures made of straw, used for burial.
A person made of straw is naturally very light; they can be lifted by a small tree branch.
Zhou Yaren: "The spirits of the sacrificial animals actually transformed into a widowed woman in the mass grave and are causing trouble."
Bai Yuan said, "It was possessed by the malevolent spirit of the deceased woman."
When she arrived, the straw spirit was clinging to the front of the bridal sedan chair like a gecko, pulling it down the cliff, intending to drag Zhou Yaren inside down with it. Even if he didn't want to, it wouldn't matter. This was a forced marriage, and killing him would be the end of it.
If Bai Yuan hadn't rescued the bridal sedan chair in time and dispelled the ominous aura clinging to the straw spirit, Zhou Yaren would probably be someone's dead husband by now.
“Fengkou Village is just ten miles away from the mass grave. When I came here, I encountered the group of villagers who were helping the deceased woman with her wedding. They were all wandering around with their eyes closed, as if in a nightmare. They were also affected by the ominous aura of the mass grave.” These villagers had no independent consciousness. When they woke up the next day, they wouldn’t remember that they had wandered around the graveyard in the middle of the night. Of course, the one who fainted under the tree stump was an exception. Bai Yuan said thoughtfully, “Since they could send you to the mass grave without you even realizing it, is it possible that the dozen or twenty villagers who disappeared from Fengkou Village were also chosen as husbands by this deceased woman?”
Zhou Yaren was stunned, because the suspicion of being innocent was not unfounded.
Bai Yuan stared at the straw figure adorned with red and colorful decorations, and couldn't help but recall the few straw stalks tangled in the carriage wheels, and the deaf old man during the day carrying a bamboo basket of straw rope. After the basket was overturned, the old man knelt and bowed in fear. Could it be that he was asking the straw spirit to atone for his sins?
Did that deaf old woman know something? Or was it that the spirit was created by her?
Bai Yuan had no choice but to tell Zhou Yaren his suspicions, and briefly recounted the story of finding Doctor Ding: "It's hard not to suspect that the group of people carrying the sedan chair that the coachman and Doctor Ding saw in the middle of the night were villagers from Fengkou Village who carried the men of their village into the mass grave to be buried with the deceased woman. They disappeared without a trace, and in the end, I could only suspect that Liang Youyi had taken these men from the village to avenge Xiao Hua."
As each case was investigated, a reasonable explanation was found for everything.
Zhou Yaren frowned deeply. If Bai Yuan's prediction was true, these missing people were probably in grave danger.
“You’ve just stepped into the coffin with one foot in it,” Bai Yuan said, surveying the graves around him, wondering which one had dared to cause such a disturbance. “Do you know which family’s daughter died here? Did they even have a wedding ceremony?”
"Well, to my shame." Zhou Yaren, who had offered himself up, refused to give in, so he got into a fight with the grieving woman and they parted on bad terms. As for which family she was from, or what her name was, Zhou Yaren didn't know. He roughly recounted what had happened and, based on his intuition, concluded, "That girl seemed to recognize me, and she must have died in a fire."
Bai Yuan suddenly turned to look at him, remaining silent for a long time. Only then did she notice a dusty handprint on Zhou Ya's chest: "Why is there a handprint on your chest? Are you injured?"
Zhou Yaren pressed his chest; it didn't hurt much, just a slight tightness in his chest. He said nonchalantly, "It's alright, I was just hit by some calamity."
In addition, there was another very important event, which was when he "stepped into the coffin with one foot in it." Whether he was entering a house or a grave, when he was in the cemetery, it was as if he had squeezed into a gap between life and death.
Bai Yuan had never heard such an abstract and ambiguous description before: "What does it mean?"
"That place seems to be a gateway between life and death."
Bai Yuan's heart skipped a beat, as if Zhou Yaren's words had struck a nerve, and his expression changed drastically.
She was trapped in the Taiyin Dao Body and could not escape. She longed to squeeze out even if there was only a tiny crack. The Dao Body was a place where the living and the dead were buried. Twelve years ago, she was fortunate enough to let out a wisp of her divine consciousness from the gap between life and death. Instead of bringing reinforcements, she was placed under a restriction by the Taihang Dao.
Zhou Yaren had entered the Taiyin Dao Body once, so he could sense that the mass grave held hidden secrets.
"Don't tell me there's a Taiyin Dao Body in this godforsaken place?" Bai Yuan found it hard to believe. How could that be? "Do you think this thing is like free weeds, growing everywhere?" He could run into one every few steps.
Zhou Yaren pondered for a moment: "I'm talking about Yin Sui."
The innocent man stared in disbelief.
Zhou Yaren stared at her: "It's the Yin Sui that forms the Taiyin Dao Body."
Yes, the Yin Sui of Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, carries the Tao. The accumulated coldness of Yin becomes water, and the essence of water becomes the moon. Therefore, it can construct a Taiyin/Tao body in Beiqu.
The Yin Sui is a vessel of the Dao itself. If it is lost somewhere or hidden somewhere by someone with ulterior motives, ordinary people will not be able to find it easily. The Dao it carries will protect it. Perhaps one must pass through the so-called gate of life and death to find the Yin Sui.
Bai Yuan understood this point, and his gaze toward Zhou Yaren narrowed to almost the tip of a pin.
Zhou Yaren felt pierced by her sharp gaze and had no choice but to explain, "If I had any ill intentions, I could have simply gone to find her under the guise of dealing with the wounded woman, without telling you."
"Who knows what you're up to or what evil intentions you're harboring? For example, now that you're deaf and blind, you can only rely on my help," Bai Yuan said coldly. "You know better than anyone how to deal with me."
All he could say was, "I'm not looking for Yin Sui to use against you."
Clearly, Bai Yuan didn't believe a single word of it.
This is not a suitable time or place to have disagreements. Besides, he was only guessing. Whether it was Yin Sui or not is another matter. What if it wasn't?
As the bridal sedan chair plunged off the cliff, he seemed to hear a gust of wind in a split second when the world was spinning.
The wind seemed to be blocked in another universe, only leaking out a wisp the moment his feet missed their mark.
Zhou Yaren wondered: Is it possible that if the woman who was dying was dragged to be buried with him, he could pass through that gate between life and death?
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