"But when I returned, I found that everything had changed."
A deathly chill seeped into White Bone's voice.
"My family's vermilion gates lay shattered on the ground, cobwebs covered the threshold, and weeds half a person's height filled the courtyard."
"The neighbors looked at me as though they were avoiding a plague. From their whispers, I learned what had happened after I fled."
"On the night I ran away from my wedding, anguish overwhelmed my aged father, and he vomited several pints of blood. My mother was consumed by grief. Within seven days, both had departed this world."
"And she... my relatives pointed in her face and cursed her, saying her fate brought ruin to those around her, that she was a star of calamity. Her parents threw her out!"
"She endured every curse and scornful look the villagers could give her, until they finally drove her from the village. She went mad, staying alone in the deep mountains and secluded valleys of White Tiger Ridge, left to live or die on her own."
The skeleton's jaw no longer made the slightest clattering sound. There was no madness to be heard in that flat voice.
A skeleton could shed no tears. Only bone-deep despair remained.
"As for my family's deeds to the fields and land, the grain and silver in our storerooms..."
"Those uncles who had always called us brothers, those villagers I had opened our granaries to help countless times-they carried everything away, under the pretense of arranging the funerals and collecting old debts."
"Even the coffins my parents had prepared beforehand were replaced with the poorest ones. In the end, no one buried them; they were left in the hall. Later, people even pried the copper nails from those coffins."
The night wind turned abruptly cold, scraping their