The crack in the door slowly widened.
But the dim yellow light spilling from inside gradually vanished. What appeared before the Double Happiness Bride was a house that had been abandoned for many years.
The wall plaster had peeled away, revealing moldy rammed earth.
The beams were crooked and covered in spiderwebs.
The window paper had long since rotted away, but what filtered in through the windows was not the imagined glow of countless household lanterns.
Instead, it was a dead-gray gloom.
The crack in the door widened further.
A cold, sinister aura surged from within, carrying the rotten stench of moldy wood.
"Come, come, eat some food..."
"This year's harvest was truly good. It was all thanks to our ancestors' blessing..."
"Heehee, Mommy, I want meat..."
"Hahaha..."
"Crackle, crackle—"
The cheerful laughter of men, women, and children, the crisp clatter of bowls and chopsticks, and the popping of firecrackers outside blended together into one cacophony. It sounded extraordinarily joyful and blissful.
However...
What the Double Happiness Bride saw was a dilapidated room with an Eight Immortals Table on the verge of collapse. On it sat shabby bowls and plates filled with leftovers that had grown thick with green mold and reeked of rot.
A mutilated man sat at the head of the table.
His body was covered in wounds of all sizes. One arm twisted at a teeth-aching angle, while his face was covered in centipede-like sutured scars, as though he had been smashed to pieces and barely stitched back together.
It was laughing now:
"Good, good, this year is wonderful..."
"The harvest is good..."
"The year is good too..."
Its voice was full of delight and anticipation for the coming year. As it spoke, it picked up its chopsticks with its right hand, which was missing two fingers,