Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor- Koneko, Proofreader-Ghostie
Watching the middle-aged Taoist priest in front of the altar gesticulating and reciting a mantra, Jiang Nan’an felt agitated and huffed silently to himself, annoyed that he couldn’t perform these rituals himself.
It was a shame that Brother Jiang learned external style kung fu whilst being an amateur in the area of carrying out rituals, not being too familiar with the various scriptures needed to perform the various and diverse ceremonies.
More importantly, it was not the time to reveal their true identities to the couple, since the creature that’s haunting Su Lan had not been discovered or found yet.
“You two.”
The door to the master bedroom suddenly opened. Appearing in the doorway stood the couple, Cai Mingjian and Su Lan, who were hand in hand, “The following rituals will take a little while… Let’s have a cup of tea in the study first.”
The four people made their way to study.
Su Lan’s parents gifted her the three-story Western-style building as part of the dowry, but she remained in Fèng Xīngchéng to work after her graduation, not intending to return to her hometown to settle down. Naturally, she was not very interested in this small building.
Therefore, the property did not have a homely feel to it, and had a sense of emptiness with no particular sense of belonging. The building had colored walls, with the floors paved. Even with the renovation being complete, only the master bedroom was fully furnished with brand new furniture, with the other rooms remaining incomplete. The furniture for the remainder of the property were sent by relatives and neighbors within the village, which explained the variety of different styles present.
The study on the second floor was more like a guest room than a study.
Two bookcases, a tea table, and a set of sofas sat comfortably in the room, with no decorative items in sight, lacking the personal touch most rooms would normally have.
Since Su Lan was frightened by the shadows following her, and was continuously in a state of heightened anxiety, she didn’t even feel safe inside her own home.
As soon as she entered the study, she subconsciously picked the furthest corner seat and sunk herself deeply into the seat.
Jiang Nan’an looked at the girl’s hunched back, she was obviously timid and frightened. This made him feel extremely upset inside, with his eyes turning slightly red with sadness. He was remembering the past, and reminisced the lively, laughing, cheerful, and generous first love that was ingrained into his memory.
Seeing Jiang Nan’an’s expression, Wei Fuyuan knew that his associate was probably deep in thought about his lost love again, and he harshly stomped on his foot underneath the tea table.
Jiang Nan’an’s eyes opened widely in shock, and he quickly returned to his senses.
As the four took their seats,Su Lan’s relatives were all helping to set up the ritual downstairs. Cai Mingjian planned to make the guests tea by himself, but Su Lan kept grabbing his arm and wouldn’t let him leave her side. In the end, he provided the visitors with a few bottles of mineral water, hoping it would suffice for the time being.
Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an had more important questions to ask the couple, and were not concerned at all about the traditional custom of having tea or a beverage.
Xiao Wei recalled the way Bei Quan manipulated people, and adjusted his expression into a more serious state, to make himself look more reliable and confident, then asked.
“Miss Su, do you remember when you started to see that ghostly shadow?”
Su Lan’s eyes were still darting across the room in a panic, venturing left and right as if she wanted to use her peripheral vision to see if there was a shadow around her.
“I …… I think …… it was after the wedding ……”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
She murmured in a low voice.
“P gfwfwyfg nfgs mifjgis atja atf olgra alwf P rjk ‘la’ …… la kjr bc atf olgra vjs joafg beg kfvvlcu ……”
Qfl Mesejc’r fsfr oijrtfv, “Cgf sbe regf?”
Ve Ojc cbvvfv qjlcoeiis.
Olxf j qjalfca klat byrfrrlnf-mbwqeirlnf vlrbgvfg, rtf ecmbcrmlberis qlcmtfv tfg gluta kglra klat tfg ifoa tjcv, jr lo rtf kjcafv ab gfilfnf tfg lccfg ofjg jcv qjclm klat qjlc.
“The Taoist Master said that Ah Jian and I were not compatible with each other, and that our marriage palaces were incompatible too……”
Su Lan raised her head as she glanced at her husband who had white hair on his temples. She felt guilty and full of internal pain, and almost burst into tears again, “It’s all my fault …… I dragged Ah Jian ……”
Cai Mingjian immediately hugged his wife, whispered softly, and comforted her, without blaming her at all.
——Tsk, isn’t it amazing to give out dog food!
Wei Fuyuan snorted, secretly grinding his teeth.
—— It’s a shame that my darling is not here, otherwise I could blind you all right now…
“Ahem.”
Wei Fuyuan heard Jiang Nan’an beside him suspiciously clear his throat.
“I heard that you both moved into a new house? Did you move in after the wedding?”
“Do you think that there’s something wrong with the new house in Fèng Xīngchéng?”
Cai Mingjian heard Jiang Nanan’s words but shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s the house.”
Cai Mingjian told them that he had asked someone to investigate when the accident had just occurred. The house they had bought was second-hand, with the previous owners being a young white-collar husband and wife. The two wanted to move since their children had to move to another district for their schooling.
There was neither death nor accident in that house. Instead, there was the joy of potentially adding a child into their lives, anything was possible with such an auspicious house.
“What about the developer?”
Jiang Nan’an had dealt with messy situations with his master before now, and he had rich experience with such matters. He asked one more question, “And have the neighbors mentioned anything wrong with the neighborhood?”
Cai Mingjian continued to shake his head.
“I haven’t heard of any trouble with the developer. Plus, the property is quite reliable. The security in the community is good, and according to reports, there is no trouble with thieves.”
He thought for a moment and added.
“In fact, we moved into the new house after we registered at the Civil Affairs Bureau, and lived there for more than two months, and it had all been fine ……”
The man’s throat rolled with difficulty.
“Somehow …… last month, surprisingly on …… on ……”
Wei Fuyuan rubbed his chin.
“In that case, could the problem be at the wedding?”
He thought for a moment.
“Do you have any videos or photographs of the wedding day? Show me, please.”
Cai Mingjian was stunned at first. He wanted to say that this time they hurried back to his wife’s hometown, leaving everything behind in their new house. But, then he remembered that the photography team who were at the wedding, had sent them an edited softcopy version, which was still in his email account.
He hurriedly went back to the master bedroom to retrieve his Ipad, logged into the mailbox to download the attachment, and then squarely placed it in front of Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an.
The edited version was not long at all, only lasting around ten minutes. The photos showcased the essence of the wedding, plus the use of a soft filter made it look like a short romantic blockbuster, with the main couple being hopelessly in love.
Unlike the present Su Lan who was thin and pale, with only a frail skeleton frame, in the camera, it genuinely showed her in the happiest moment of her life.
She was wearing delicate makeup and was smiling like a flower. She wore a white veil that trailed along the ground, and held a blue flower bouquet, full of jewels. Even Wei Fuyuan, a gay man with completely different preferences, had to admit that the bride really was a beautiful woman.
Although Cai Mingjian who stood beside her was not a particularly handsome man, he also dressed up very formally, looking neat and handsome– the two looked very compatible with each other.
However, the edited version was only an essence after all. Even the guests attending the wedding were not photographed completely, and it was impossible to record anything unusual or suspicious with a generic optical lens.
Wei Fuyuan and Jiang Nan’an watched the footage carefully, scanning through multiple times, but could not find anything wrong at all.
“Sorry.”
Wei Fuyuan failed to pretend this time, and could only regretfully return the Ipad to Cai Mingjian, “I don’t see anything in here.”
Su Lan immediately showed a disappointed expression on her face when she heard these words.
In the past month, she had gone from hope to disappointment many times, and was now falling back into despair. Her nerves and emotions were at the extremes, and she was about to collapse.
“Woo ……”
The girl’s eyes were red again, tears slid down from the corners of her eyes.
“It’s all my fault ……”
She whimpered.
“At that time, my Aunt said not to have a Western-style wedding …… I refused to listen …… if, if we followed the old family rules ……we would not ……”
Wei Fuyuan blinked, “You had an English wedding, right?”
He remembered seeing the church and the priest in the clip that he had just watched, which clarified to him that the event was held at the Catholic Cathedral in Yangxing Street. The girl’s outfit too, the veil, bouquet, gloves and wedding ring, also were signs of a classic British wedding style.
“Well.”
Su Lan wiped the tears that seeped out of the corners of her eyes.
“I really like the show ‘Friends’, so I really wanted a classic western style wedding when I got married ……”
Jiang Nan’an let out a low “Ah”, with a stunned expression on his face.
He remembered that when he was still pursuing Su Lan, he watched “Friends” with her, and the girl once whispered in his ear “, and said that it really made her feel romantic when she thought about it.
He never thought she would actually have this arrangement for her own wedding.
“‘So, something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue; put a silver coin of sixpence in a shoe…”
Jiang Nan’an murmured in a nostalgic tone, “it’s really beautiful…”
However, this sentence just poked Su Lan’s pain.
Her romantic thoughts and carefully planned wedding turned out to be the beginning of the despair that was driving her to her own death and madness. How could things suddenly take a turn for the worse and make life so miserable?
Seeing Su Lan’s tears fall from her eyes like beads again, Jiang Nan’an quickly apologized for his blunder, while Cai Mingjian comforted his wife sympathetically.
Wei Fuyuan frowned and pondered, trying to find some clues with his very limited knowledge of metaphysics.
Logically speaking, whether something is dead or alive, the possessed objects of ghosts are people with various negative emotions.
The couple have a very good and strong relationship, still being newlyweds. It should be the happiest time for any couple in love, and was indeed unlikely that they would attract any ghosts.
Whilst Su Lan was explaining about the Western wedding, Wei Fuyuan had secretly let Guan Hu Su Ying out to see if any scent could be tracked or for any sense of a lead, but the little white fox didn’t find any traces of the ghost in the house– proving that his speculation was correct, and that the ghost was not on either of them.
The shadow that haunted her indeed adorned her after the wedding. With this being the case, the biggest possibility is that there were guests who were possessed by ghosts at the wedding too, and for some reason, Su Lan was regarded as the main target of revenge.
Wei Fuyuan’s thoughts unknowingly shifted from the mindset of thriller, suspense, and reasoning, to urban melodramatic. This was certainly not what they had originally considered before arriving to talk to the couple.
Su Lan was a beautiful woman with a likeable temperament. Naturally, there would be many suitors. For example, the bumbling weak mess beside him, even if he knew that the other party was married, he would still be torn by love and emotional connection, meaning that nothing would be out of bounds to rekindle the old flame of love again.
Cai Mingjian has a good family background, graduated from a prestigious school, has a promising future, and aesthetically not completely unattractive, he certainly would have caught the attention of many ladies.
In addition, in this day and age dramas without a couple of gay characters weren’t worth mentioning, so same gender people were also within the scope of suspicion.
——Fuck, if open and secret love could be considered, we’d be here all year! Isn’t the workload a little too heavy already?!
Wei Fuyuan immediately dismissed the idea and decided to use a much simpler method.
——Can’t two against one still win?
——Isn’t it better to wait for the “thing” to appear and kill it directly?
Wei Fuyuan : trying to think
5 minutes later : I should just beat it to pulp
Ahahahahahah
Thank you for the chapter !
Thanks for the chapter ❤️❤️
Rather than the wedding, I find the temple mentioned before much more suspicious. Neither of them have heard of the god being worshipped there, and with what has already been established regarding unknown gods… It’s possible that someone else prayed for a happy married life with the husband, so Su Lan is being forced out of the picture, and the person who prayed has the hui-gui, or they prayed there, and now that they’ve had a happy wedding, there are consequences for the prayer.
I’m more inclined to option 1, but either way, the temple is sus.
oh ho! i like this theory. it would be interesting if the author went there.