Chapter 16
They came here to investigate the clues provided by Fang Xiashen, and to avoid revealing their identities, the three of them disguised themselves as wealthy young men on vacation and rented a courtyard in Jianye Town. For the past two days, the three had been wandering around Jianye Town without noticing anything unusual.
But when I woke up this morning, Jianye Town was shrouded in fog again, the whole town was covered in mist. This fog was just as strange as it was on the first day I came.
Zhou Xuanzhi and Xiao Mu were drinking tea at a teahouse near the courtyard when they heard the owner cursing at the fog outside: "Is God blind? It's already noon, how come it's foggy! It's been a year, are we not allowed to live here anymore!"
The fog grew thicker and thicker, and what was once a view of the opposite side was now completely obscured; the fog even seeped into the room.
As the boss directed the closing of doors and windows, he cursed, "It's foggy in summer, and it's foggy in winter. Now look what's happened, it's foggy in the middle of the day. With such thick fog, we can't see anything, what can we do?" After the doors and windows were closed, candles were lit inside. Looking at the candles, the boss said helplessly, "In broad daylight, are you trying to make us work?"
"Boss, you just said that it's been foggy all year?" Zhou Xuanzhi asked.
"That's right. At first, it was foggy last summer, and no one paid much attention. But it's not right to have fog in winter, is it? Now it's really something else. The fog is there during the day and at night, even in the middle of the day," the boss said, pointing outside.
"With this fog coming so frequently, doesn't anyone think there's anything wrong with it?" Xiao Mu felt a chill run down his spine in the fog.
The shop owner was a little puzzled. He couldn't control what the people did if it rained that day. "There's been a lot of fog, but is that a problem?"
Zhou Xuanzhi then asked, "And before this, were there any instances of fog in winter?"
The boss shook his head and said, "No."
A short while later, there was a knock at the door. The boss told his assistant to open it. The fog outside had thickened, becoming so dense it felt suffocating. It wasn't until the person stepped inside that everyone noticed someone was there.
"With such thick fog, how do you see the road, sir?" The owner was curious that someone would come to his teahouse in such thick fog, since most people would stay at home and not go out.
As soon as Shi Yunzhou entered, he complained to the owner, "What kind of place is this? Why is it foggy as soon as I step outside? If I remember correctly, it's noon! The fog outside is so thick that you can't even see your hand in front of your face when you're right next to someone. I've never seen such thick fog in my life."
Xiao Mu silently gave Shi Yunzhou a thumbs up, realizing that this person's acting skills were so good.
The shopkeeper smiled ingratiatingly and said, "Sir, this situation only started a year ago. A year ago, my reaction would have been exactly the same as yours!"
Shi Yunzhou raised an eyebrow: "What kind of talk is that? Haven't you always been like this?"
The shopkeeper sighed, "Sir, we didn't want this either, but it's a matter of fate, and we ordinary folks can't control it."
Zhou Xuanzhi stepped forward and said, "This situation is truly unheard of. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." As he spoke, he turned his gaze to Shi Yunzhou, "Brother, are you also here for sightseeing? What a coincidence, we are too. Why don't you come and sit here?"
Shi Yunzhou did not refuse and went straight to Zhou Xuanzhi's table, then sat down.
"This is truly a spectacle," Xiao Mu said, looking out the window.
"What's the situation outside?" Zhou Xuanzhi asked in a low voice.
Shi Yunzhou shook his head: "Apart from this strange fog, there is nothing unusual."
Upon hearing this, Zhou Xuanzhi opened the window a crack, and the fog grew increasingly thick. Some of it seeped in through the crack, creating an eerie atmosphere that sent chills down one's spine. He closed the window and, looking at the thin fog inside, said, "Something's wrong now."
Xiao Mu didn't sense anything, so he asked, "What do you mean?"
There was a hint of blood in the fog. "Once the fog clears, everything will be visible."
Xiao Mu didn't detect the faint smell of blood, but judging from Senior Brother Zhou's tone, something might have happened. He asked in surprise, "Aren't we going to stop it?"
Zhou Xuanzhi shook his head and said, "Yunzhou didn't find anything outside just now, so it would be the same if we went out together. This is their home ground. They have been carefully planning here for many years. We can say that we know nothing about this place and can't do anything about it."
"Including you, senior brother?"
"Yes." He had only smelled a faint scent of blood. It would take a long time to find out where it was, and by then he would only be able to collect the body.
After the thick fog dissipated, the strange event Zhou Xuanzhi had mentioned occurred: the body of a middle-aged man appeared on the street.
His limbs were nailed to the outer wall of a house, which appeared to belong to a wealthy family. The man's tongue had been cut off and discarded nearby, his expression grotesque. According to the coroner's examination, the murderer did this while he was still alive. The cause of death was excessive blood loss; there was no blood on the ground, indicating this was not the primary crime scene.
People who saw it reacted in two ways: some cursed the murderer, while others couldn't bear to watch.
Zhou Xuanzhi stood in the crowd and looked at the man's clothes. He didn't seem to be very rich. Those who recognized him at the scene said that the man was quite honest and never argued with anyone.
"Was it those women who did it?" Xiao Mu asked in a low voice.
"No, their coffins have soul-binding formations." What could possibly do such a thing? The ghost marriage we encountered when we first arrived outside Jianye Town—the woman died with great resentment. But her soul was confined to that small plot of land; it was impossible for her to come here and do something like this.
Zhou Xuanzhi wanted to find something in the man, but unfortunately, he didn't have any other aura.
Zhou Xuanzhi looked at the expressions of the people around him. Indeed, a few of them did not look well, but that did not mean anything. "My junior brother and I are going to investigate what those women encountered before they died. I would like you to investigate the identity of this man."
"good."
Ghost marriages vary from place to place. In some places, two corpses with matching birth dates are buried together, while in others, only a small memorial tablet for the bride or groom is placed. But this place is far more cruel, requiring a living person to be buried with the deceased.
The people of Jianye Town also knew that this kind of thing was too cruel, and no one was willing to reveal too much about the ghost marriage to two strangers.
Shi Yunzhou asked a few more questions and was immediately berated. Zhou Xuanzhi fared much better; he was either scolded or his men dispersed.
Shi Yunzhou, who had been scolded, looked extremely pale. His fingers twitched slightly, but Zhou Xuanzhi stopped him. Seeing his senior brother's warning look, he said guiltily, "I didn't mean to harm them."
Zhou Xuanzhi sighed and said, "Do you think that the people of Jianye Town can't stay out of this situation?"
Yes, judging by their skill in arranging ghost marriages, they definitely haven't only been doing it for a few days. With so much time gone by and so many souls trapped here, Heaven won't let them off the hook.
After a whole day, I still don't know anything.
Back in the courtyard, I didn't see He Xiaomu. I wondered if things were going well for him.
"Why don't we find someone to dig up their graves? That way we can break the soul-binding array and send them back to the cycle of reincarnation." Shi Yunzhou looked at the people going home on the street and suddenly remembered when he was a child wandering the streets, those parents who sent their daughters to brothels, those hellholes, did not show any grief on their faces. Instead, they happily counted the money they had just received.
Disciples of Tianyu Mountain are not allowed to dig up graves. After thinking about it, Zhou Xuanzhi did think of a place. "We should be able to get the answer we want from the coffin shop. We'll go there and stake it out tomorrow."
"There must be quite a few coffin shops of all sizes in Jianye Town!" Which one should I stake out to find out? No, those who can afford ghost marriages must be wealthy families. If that's the case, there aren't many.
"So we need to stake out the biggest and most expensive one," Shi Yunzhou said, looking at Zhou Xuanzhi. "But we can't guarantee we'll get an answer right away!" Fang Xiashen said they had the clues he wanted here, but they'd been in Jianye Town for four days and hadn't found anything about his master. And there was also the chaos surrounding ghost marriages here.
Those who can be matched for a ghost marriage are all young people who are not yet married. There probably aren't many wealthy young people who are not yet married!
Zhou Xuanzhi pointed in the direction where the accident happened yesterday and said, "Haven't we already sensed all sorts of strange things in this fog? The people here can't stand this kind of fog."
Yes, once or twice is fine, but it's been a year now. Even if people here don't die, they'll be tormented by illness until they're practically skinned alive.
The two people who had already decided where to go tomorrow finally waited for Xiao Mu.
Seeing Xiao Mu covered in sweat, Zhou Xuanzhi poured him a glass of water. The three of them sat around a round table in the center of the courtyard, listening to Xiao Mu's story.
"This man's surname is Wang, and his given name is Wang Jiuliang. He has three daughters and one son, as well as an elderly mother to support. He and his wife earn a meager living through hard work, and their life is very poor. However, his eldest daughter got married a year ago, saying she married someone from another place and couldn't come back often. So, for the past year, the neighbors haven't seen her," Xiao Mu said.
"What the neighbors found strange was that their eldest daughter didn't send any invitations to her wedding, and they hadn't seen her working for a long time. When they asked the couple, they said their daughter had married someone from another place and couldn't come back often. But even after all this time, they hadn't heard the couple mention anything about their daughter's recent situation."
“A year ago, their son fell seriously ill, but they had no money for treatment. Later, after their eldest daughter ‘got married,’ they were able to hire a doctor to get medicine for their youngest son. The neighbors suspect that they sold their eldest daughter.”
"What was his wife's reaction after Wang Jiuliang's death?" Zhou Xuanzhi asked.
Xiao Mu didn't know what to say, and after organizing her thoughts for a while, she said, "It seems like she's gone mad. She's crying loudly one minute and saying things like 'I'm sorry, my family is poor' the next. In short, it's not good."
"Where are the others?"
"The old lady in the family fainted on the spot, and the two daughters cried their eyes out. The son just stood there blankly, not knowing what he was thinking, but it felt like he knew something." Xiao Mu recalled the child's condition.
"What did you find?" Xiao Mu had been talking for so long, but the two of them hadn't said anything. Wenren Jincheng naturally wanted to ask.
The two exchanged a glance, and then Zhou Xuanzhi said, "The people here are very vigilant. We plan to visit the coffin shop tomorrow."
Xiao Mu nodded: "That's all we can do, but I have a feeling that things here aren't as simple as they seem."
Even with just that strange fog, Zhou Xuanzhi and Shi Yunzhou, both late-stage Golden Core cultivators, couldn't manage it together. There must be a powerful expert behind it. Xiao Mu is now somewhat suspicious of Fang Xiashen's motives, but Shi Yunzhou is now the young master of Huanhai; Huanhai wouldn't let their young master die in Jianye Town, would they?
Seeing Zhou Xuanzhi's furrowed brows, Xiao Mu knew his guess was correct. He didn't know what was so special about this place that made these two so determined to investigate. However, the more dangerous the matter, the more valuable its information.
If this matter is resolved, then my trip won't have been in vain.
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