Ghost Heart's panic reached its absolute limit on the night of January 14.
Before Ji Li stood that terrifying wedding chamber again: the wedding bed set inside a coffin, the slowly burning dragon-and-phoenix candles, the dim room, and the Time Ghost sitting rigidly within the coffin.
She was still so lifelike, so vivid, so crimson. If not for the faces on her bridal gown being far too deathly pale, one might have thought she was a living person.
The first second he entered, Ji Li only sensed a heartbeat. Then, without any warning, tonight abruptly began.
His body felt as though molten lead had been poured into it, while the time drifting through the air became pairs of invisible hands.
They gripped his wrists, ankles, and spine, dragging him inch by inch into the coffin covered with a scarlet wedding quilt.
The dragon-and-phoenix candlelight flickered unstably. The flames stretched at times, then suddenly shrank, as if the process of extinguishing and reigniting had long been disrupted by time.
The sound of the wicks burning was utterly chaotic. In the silent wedding chamber, those disordered sounds were especially piercing, like time itself was letting out agonized groans.
Ji Li did not move at all. He could sense that time in the air had left the slightest gap, yet he did not resist. He merely obeyed.
Tonight had begun. In a mere three seconds, with no resistance from him, he had already come into contact with that thing that could not be called either a coffin or a bed.
Cold, rigid wooden boards. A satin wedding quilt...
From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the blurred carvings on the coffin's inner walls—auspicious patterns of dragons and phoenixes in harmony, of a union lasting a hundred years.
Under the distortion