"Are you newly moved here, sir?" Upon hearing the question, the shopkeeper seemed to have his chatterbox opened; once he started talking, he could not stop.
There were no other customers in the shop for the moment, so he was happy to chat with Chen Mo for a while.
"This courtyard used to belong to the Wang Family Tycoon. That Wang Family Tycoon was rich but cruel. He'd just had a son, but the child couldn't even draw a breath after being born.
You'd think he would've quietly buried his son, wouldn't you? But no, he insisted on arranging a ghost marriage for him. Nobody knew where he found the girl, but he forcibly carried her into his home.
To be honest, if nothing had happened afterward, it might not have been so bad for that girl. Even if she had to remain a living widow for the rest of her life, at least she would've had enough to eat, right?" the shopkeeper said with a sigh.
Ghost marriages came in two kinds: marriages between the dead, and marriages between the dead and the living.
A dead match was when two deceased people were married and buried together, so they would have each other's company in the underworld instead of being alone.
A living match, meanwhile, meant marrying a living person to the dead. The living spouse had to remain chaste for the dead. Families able to arrange such ghost marriages might not be grand noble houses, but they were at least fairly well-off.
There would always be poor people unable to make ends meet who were willing to do such a thing. After all, even a ghost marriage was far better than selling oneself into slavery or starving to death.
Only after people had eaten their fill did they