Chapter 15
"You think you're so capable? If you're so tough, go and grab Fang Xiashen." A familiar voice suddenly came from his ear. Shi Yunzhou turned around and looked at the figure. The person was handsome and well-dressed. He was wearing the finest clothes, holding a folding fan in his hand, and had a jade pendant hanging from his waist. He was the epitome of a spoiled rich young master.
The two exchanged a glance without speaking, silently watching the man who had just been talking so eloquently suddenly change his expression. The man rolled his eyes at Xiao Mu, then revealed a contemptuous look, "Look at you, you pretty boy, what's that about your mother?"
Shi Yunzhou symbolically dusted off the long bench, and Xiao Mu sat down, nodding to the two as a greeting. He then turned his gaze to the man, opened his folding fan, and said, "Someone like me could kill ten of you with one punch! Those women from Tianyu Mountain are even more powerful than me; they could make you die without a burial place with a flick of their fingers."
Upon hearing Xiao Mu's words, Shi Yunzhou's expression instantly became quite interesting. He thought that Lin Jichen, whom he had seen before, was arrogant enough, but he didn't expect that compared to Xiao Mu, Lin Jichen was nothing. There was no comparison between the two of them.
He gave Xiao Mu a thumbs-up and gave the man a defiant look. Then he asked, "Is he really that arrogant?"
Although Tianyu Mountain's rules weren't as strict as Qingxu Sect's, it didn't allow its disciples to be so arrogant. Zhou Xuanzhi was quite helpless about this; Xiao Mu's arrogance was justified. He also came from a prestigious immortal family, and although he had cultivated a polite demeanor on Tianyu Mountain, he would become like this when he encountered people without manners.
The man saw two other people beside Xiao Mu, who were carrying flutes. Judging from their demeanor, he knew they were not people he could afford to offend. He snorted coldly, "I won't stoop to your level."
Having said that, he got up and left the teahouse. The remaining group of people who had just echoed the man now lowered their heads, trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible.
Seeing this, the three didn't say anything more. Xiao Mu, however, acted as if nothing had happened and said to the two, "Senior brothers, it's been a long time! How is it? Have you dealt with Fang Xiashen's matter?"
After Xiao Mu chased the man away, the teahouse fell silent. Since Xiao Mu hadn't bothered to lower his voice, those remaining in the teahouse now realized they were from Tianyu Mountain, and that the men they had just mocked were likely their senior and junior sisters. Some, fearing trouble, quietly left.
“We… have a new lead,” Zhou Xuanzhi said.
Ming Shijie's letter also mentioned that she would be accompanying the two of them to Jianye Town in Pingxi City. Xiao Mu nodded and asked, "Okay, when are we going?"
"Aren't you going to rest for a bit?" Shi Yunzhou asked, looking at the person in front of him with great energy.
Xiao Mu waved his hand: "How could that be? Everyone is going to the capital today, and I came here by fairy boat."
The three traveled for most of the day and finally arrived at Pingxi City before sunset. The city seemed to be celebrating some kind of festival today, and it was very lively, with young women strolling around everywhere.
Xiao Mu was very handsome, and his tall and straight figure attracted the attention of many girls. Some girls would even throw flowers or handkerchiefs at him when they saw him. Xiao Mu would smile and accept the gifts, and would also give the girls who threw things to him a polite smile.
Zhou Xuanzhi and Shi Yunzhou, however, were quite different, especially Shi Yunzhou, who maintained a dark expression almost the entire way. When the flower handkerchiefs hit him, his face darkened further, and the veins on his forehead throbbed. Seeing Shi Yunzhou's dark expression, the girls were not only unafraid but became even bolder.
Zhou Xuanzhi was utterly embarrassed. The things the girls had thrown at him made him blush, and he didn't dare touch them. Even so, he was still trying to calm Shi Yunzhou down, telling him it was just a local custom and the girls meant no harm.
Seeing Zhou Xuanzhi's flushed face, the girls' desire to tease him intensified, and they showered him with even more gifts. Finally, unable to resist their teasing any longer, Zhou Xuanzhi asked, "What day is this?"
Seeing Zhou Xuanzhi blush, Xiao Mu waved his fan and said, "Today is the seventh day of the sixth lunar month, the Daughters' Festival, a unique festival of Pingxi City. Legend has it that thousands of years ago, this place suffered a calamity, with demons running rampant and the people living in misery. One day, a female immortal couldn't bear to see the people suffer, so she descended to earth to help them and drive away the demons. The female immortal unfortunately died in the battle, and the local people, in order to commemorate her, designated the day of her sacrifice as the Daughters' Festival."
"This festival has been around for over a thousand years. It gradually evolved from commemorating female immortals to what it is today. It's a festival where all unmarried women can go out into the street and throw flowers, handkerchiefs, or other personal items at the person they like," Xiao Mu said, fanning himself with a fan.
The two looked at what they held in their hands and suddenly felt a chill run down their spines. Tianyu Mountain had its own rules, and they didn't want to be expelled from the sect because of this, especially Zhou Xuanzhi.
But Shi Yunzhou noticed that Xiao Mu not only enjoyed the attention of those around him, but he even accepted gifts. "Aren't you afraid of being discovered by your sect if you act like this?"
Xiao Mu looked at the things in his hands, wondering why the two of them had such deathly expressions. He recalled what he had just said and suddenly laughed out loud: "You two don't actually think that accepting gifts means you have to get married, do you? That's no longer the case. This is just a formality now. You can think of it as them praising your good looks."
Shi Yunzhou felt like he'd been tricked, and asked in an icy voice, "So you were just playing me?"
That look was enough to kill a person. Xiao Mu avoided Shi Yunzhou's gaze and stammered, "Um, let's... find a place to stay first!"
"No need, let's go directly to Jianye Town." Shi Yunzhou's gloomy tone was unsettling.
It was already dark when they left Pingxi City. The three walked along the overgrown road, and no one spoke a word. Xiao Mu felt somewhat guilty. He had finally managed to meet Shi Yunzhou, but it had turned out like this. He regretted it.
Just as I was thinking of what to say to ease the tense atmosphere, I heard faint sounds of suona horns and gongs coming from afar.
The sun has already set, and this is on a mountain with no houses around. I don't quite understand what's going on here.
"Is that the sound of a wedding procession?" Xiao Mu, who had grown up in the mountains, was a little slow to recognize the sound, but he quickly realized what it meant. "There don't seem to be any other houses around here."
He didn't sense anyone's presence around him, which could be because his husband's family lived far away, and there was nothing wrong with that.
"Let's go take a look." Shi Yunzhou walked towards the direction of the voice.
Zhou Xuanzhi had no objections and followed in Shi Yunzhou's footsteps.
Xiao Mu came from a family of immortals and later went to Tianyu Mountain to learn martial arts. He had seen many weddings and funerals in the mortal world. "What's wrong with this?"
“If the husband’s family is really far away, the bride’s family might find a house near the groom’s family for the wedding.” Zhou Xuanzhi, who was not far away, heard the two talking.
Xiao Mu followed the two, sensing something amiss: "So, the teams appearing in the wild..."
The sound grew louder and louder, and they got closer and closer to the wedding procession. When they could finally see the procession, Zhou Xuanzhi, unusually, punched a tree next to him.
It was rare to see Zhou Xuanzhi so emotionally expressive. Xiao Mu glanced at the group and swallowed the teasing words he was about to say. This must be a family cemetery; two coffins were buried underground.
What wedding procession? That was clearly a ceremony for a ghost marriage. Xiao Mu sensed that the woman had just died.
"This..." He didn't know what to say, his lips trembling. After a long while, he said, "Aren't they afraid that the woman will complain to them in the underworld?"
Zhou Xuanzhi tried his best to calm himself down, saying, "In this situation, the woman may not be able to enter the cycle of reincarnation."
The soul-binding array on the coffin is arguably the most despicable method in the world. Originally, it was meant to save lives, placing a formation around the dying person to await the arrival of a doctor or elixirs. But somehow, this array has been misused; it was originally intended to save lives.
"Shouldn't this kind of thing be under the jurisdiction of the local government?" Xiao Mu looked at the buried coffin with a helpless expression.
Zhou Xuanzhi recalled that the closest town to here should be Jianye Town. He looked in the direction of the town and said, "There is indeed something strange about Jianye Town!"
The procession performing the ghost marriage looked quite skilled; this was probably not the first instance. With so many wronged souls coming from the same place, this area is indeed dangerous.
Shi Yunzhou agreed with Zhou Xuanzhi, "Let's go into the city."
Jianye Town isn't a big town, and there aren't any famous tourist attractions nearby, so it's quite difficult to knock on the door of an inn in the middle of the night.
The group could only find a place outside to make do, and they checked into the inn when it opened early in the morning.
Last night, a thick fog descended upon this town for some unknown reason, and it didn't dissipate until sunrise. The people here seem to be used to it.
But Zhou Xuanzhi found the fog very strange. It was clearly filled with demonic energy and resentment. They were hiding very well.
The town wasn't bustling yet in the early morning, but vendors had already set up stalls on the streets, and some people were out buying groceries. A little while later, students in their school uniforms were on their way to the academy. This town didn't seem like the place for ghost marriages at all.
Three unfamiliar men sat in the hall by the window, making it difficult for the innkeepers not to notice them, especially the innkeeper, who stood at the counter observing them.
The group of people, traveling light, carried nothing that would reveal their identities to avoid attracting attention. This allowed them to easily blend into the crowd and investigate what they wanted to know.
"The only thing that's off is the fog from last night." After looking for a long time without seeing anything unusual, Xiao Mu stretched and said, "Could it be..." that strange fog is very peculiar.
"What?" Zhou Xuanzhi asked.
Xiao Mu waved his hand, "It's nothing, just a guess."
Thinking about what happened last night, all three of them felt that something was very wrong.
Although Zhou Xuanzhi grew up in the capital, he could not let a child know about such things, and in all his years of traveling around the world, he had indeed never seen anything like it.
I had read about this kind of thing in books before, and I thought that with so many immortal sects and such strict laws, it shouldn't be possible for such a thing to happen. Now that I've seen it, I realize how little I knew before, and I hate myself for not being able to stop it.
“They must have been betrayed by their families.” Shi Yunzhou, having grown up at the bottom of society, seemed accustomed to such situations and explained calmly, “Some people sell their children’s corpses to arrange ghost marriages. But some people also sell their daughters alive.”
"Alive?" Xiao Mu was very confused. This living person...
Shi Yunzhou looked at Xiao Mu for a long time before saying, "Yes, they think their daughter is useless."
"This..." How could there be such parents?
Yesterday evening, everyone was marveling at the openness of the women in the city; but when they arrived in the town that night, they witnessed girls being murdered and forced into ghost marriages. Why such a stark contrast in such a short distance?
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
