The Taoist priest took a talisman and stuck it on her forehead, chanting some incantation. The talisman on her forehead flashed with golden light, and she fainted and fell back into darkness.
When I regained consciousness, I was overwhelmed by that boundless despair and suffocation, which involuntarily surged from my chest.
That wasn't her sadness, but at that moment it seemed to be hers.
Su Deng couldn't stop crying, her mouth constantly emitting shrill cries, and her body was constantly radiating pain as if her bones and flesh were being crushed.
This time, she felt as if she were trapped in a small, cramped box with no air at all. She couldn't even sit up, let alone breathe properly.
She could reach the top of the box with one hand, and she touched the marks around the inside of the box. Soon, she knew that she was in a coffin.
She tried with all her might to push open the coffin lid above her head, but the lid seemed to be nailed shut and she couldn't open it at all.
She frantically pounded on the ground, screaming and crying with all her might, trying to attract attention outside and hoping someone would hear her and come to her rescue.
She pounded her hands until they were raw, screamed until her throat was hoarse, and blood dripped from the top of the coffin onto her face, but the coffin couldn't be opened even a crack, and no one came.
Despair and suffocation filled the entire coffin. Her bloodied and mangled hands hung limply, no longer able to struggle or cry for help.
The excruciating pain of death enveloped my entire being once again.
She gradually died in this boundless despair.
*
After an unknown amount of time, Su Deng woke up again with a start.
Beneath her swaying figure was the bright red wedding sedan chair, while outside, the suona horns played the stirring melody of "Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix."
And so it goes again.
The third time.
Su Deng remained unable to move, controlled by the plot.
Next, the wedding ceremony and entering the bridal chamber proceeded in the same manner as last time, except that this time, before midnight, when the matchmaker called for the bridal chamber, the rooster started moving.
Instead of lifting the veil first, it lay on the bed, its rooster-like skin splitting open from the back of its neck down its spine to its tail, splitting open to both sides.
A blood-red lump of flesh emerged from the skin, its back bulging, and gradually grew taller. It was as if a person had grown limbs. At first, it crawled off the bed on all fours, but as it crawled, it straightened up like a person, making hoarse sounds.
Under the veil, its upper body could not be seen, but its lower body could be seen. The fleshy red humanoid body gradually turned black, and finally, it looked like it was covered with a layer of withered skin, dark and bluish-black.
It walked over to the table and seemed to be drinking; you could hear the clinking of glasses and wine jugs, and the sound of running water.
After drinking, it walked step by step closer, to within a meter. Its paws even reached under the cap, its dark purple claws almost like a chicken's, with only four fingers.
Su Deng, who could no longer feel her own breathing, suffocated again.
Even if the Taoist priest's arrival would lead to her being buried as a ghost, she still hoped that the Taoist priest would come again.
But obviously not.
Just when Su Deng thought that the monster was about to lift the veil and do something to the [bride], the long, forked hand with claw-like fingers stretched out and pierced her body!
With a rapid thrust and withdrawal, her heart was ripped out alive. Su Deng immediately lost consciousness from the pain and fell backward.
This time, when I regained consciousness, it wasn't in any suffocating environment; on the contrary, my breathing was very smooth, though it was very cold.
Su Deng stared blankly around. To her left was a dilapidated village, to her right a dense forest shrouded in white mist, and at her feet seemed to be a pond, with rotting silt covered with broken lotus branches and leaves, and crooked, withered lotus flowers, emitting a fishy stench.
Su Deng tried to move and found that she could move again, but her bright red wedding dress was still covered in mud and was tattered.
My feet sank deeper and deeper into the rotting mud, my shoes seemed to have fallen off, and I was barefoot.
The pond wasn't deep, only reaching up to the calves. With each step, besides the sound of mud underfoot, there seemed to be a "crackling" sound of breaking things. The soles of my feet felt as hard and painful as if they were being pressed against wooden sticks.
In the pitch-black mud, white things occasionally flashed by.
Su Deng paused slightly, looked down, and saw a large hole in her chest, as if it had been ripped out before, now filled with mud from the pond.
She... is dead?
That rooster monster killed her, and she became a ghost?
After a moment of stunned silence, Su Deng bent down again and picked up a white object floating on the surface of the silt in the pond.
It's bones!
Startled, she threw herself out and stared at the entire pond.
Everything floating on the surface of the silt, and everything buried underneath that's uncomfortable to walk on, is a skeleton!
As if remembering something, Su Deng suddenly turned her head and saw a complete human skeleton in the place where she had just walked!
There were tattered strips of cloth lying across its body, and it was clear that it was a wedding dress before it rotted. There were also rotten headdresses in the mud above the skull.
Su Deng stumbled backward and fell into the mud. She pressed her hands down and found herself lying on a pile of bones.
A pond full of bones, all of them human bones!
Su Deng got up and ran with all her might towards the shore, heading towards the dilapidated village.
The village was the same as before, even the tables and chairs in the square were still there, the platform for the wedding ceremony was exactly the same, and even the red silk was still there, only now it had changed from gorgeous and festive to very dilapidated, and the red silk had turned black, tattered and fluttering in the cold wind.
On those dining tables were various bowls and plates, filled with chopped bones and even what appeared to be internal organs, all rotten.
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