"I'll tell you about something my senior told me. It's a ghost story that's been passed around in Shaozhuang. She heard it from the owner of the inn there," Wu Xue said, sitting up straight with a secretive look on her face.
Tong Ranran let go of her and leaned over to grab Hong Xiaoai instead.
Hong Xiaoai grinned as if she were watching a good show.
"Shaozhuang's an ancient town, right? It still has a lot of its old buildings. The river and many of the stone bridges are still there, too. That arch bridge we visited yesterday, the one with the lotus carvings, is hundreds of years old. The innkeeper told my senior that a couple once lived there. Their families didn't approve of them getting married, so they jumped off the stone bridge. The man drowned in the river, and the woman was carried downstream, out of town. Everyone thought they were both dead. Their families were heartbroken, so they decided to bury them together and recognize them as married. They couldn't find the woman's body, so they made a burial mound for her clothes instead. After everything was ready, some kind people brought the woman back. She knelt in front of the grave and wept, wanting to mourn her lover as his widow. Her family had agreed to let her marry him only because they thought she was dead. Now that she was alive, they changed their minds and wouldn't let her mourn him. They took her home and locked her in a room. They even tore down the grave. The man's family couldn't do anything about it. Someone in the woman's family held a high government post, while the man's family was poor."
"What happened next?" Hong Xiaoai pressed.
Tong Ranran relaxed too, watching Wu