Pu Sang: "So when did the Ghost Bride incident happen?"
A villager behind Wang Simazi said, "Yes... it was more than ten years ago."
Wang Simazi: "The massacre was real. These surviving villagers were the ones we did our best to protect back then; they're hidden in that secret door of the ancestral hall."
Jiang Nuo recalled the group of corpses inside the hidden door of the Illusionary Shrine.
Like them, the souls that escaped the illusion left their corpses inside.
Si Yan looked at the dozens of villagers who were still alive, "What exactly happened back then?"
"Come here, I'll talk to you properly."
The oldest villager, an old man with a white beard, hunched over and invited them to sit down.
"This story begins more than thirty years ago..."
The old man's voice was frail and his cloudy eyes stared at the sky as he reminisced about the past.
Jiang Nuo's lips twitched slightly as she played with Si Yan's fingers. More than thirty years must be a very long story.
"Our Fragrant Tree Village is surrounded by mountains, teeming with all sorts of insects. The village has witches and corpse-drivers; witches... are people skilled in using Gu Poison."
"Although there are gu that can cure diseases, and gu that can enhance relationships, witches are still unpopular in our village. If any child encounters one, they'll spit at her twice."
This is completely opposite to the illusion, where witches are very popular, Jiang Nuo thought.
"Witches' appearances are also extreme, either extremely ugly or extremely beautiful. Coincidentally, there are two such extreme witches in our village. They are ostracized by the entire village, and each of them has given birth to a child."
Pu Sang exclaimed, " He Jiu is this, and Ghost Bride is it?"
The old man nodded slowly. "Yes, the Ghost Bride's name is Meijuan. She is the child of a beautiful witch. The two witches arranged a marriage between their children from infancy, and they were betrothed and grew up together."
"Life went on like this until the two witches both caused the death of their husbands. After that, people in the village began to be poisoned inexplicably. All those poisoned would have festering sores on their necks that oozed pus, and their bodies would become stiff and unable to move."
Wang Simazi then chimed in, "Actually, zombies did appear, but at that time our entire corpse-driving team happened to be out of town collecting corpses, so we just missed it."
The old man suddenly wiped away his tears, also feeling regretful. "Back then, we didn't know anything. Everyone said it was done by a witch. We were already prejudiced against her, and after several people were poisoned, she became universally hated."
"So... we chose a lucky almanac and killed both witches..."
Holy crap! What did the witch do wrong?!
This is an unexpected disaster...
"Who knew that no sooner had we buried the witch than a zombie appeared a few days later? That's when we realized we'd misunderstood!"
The old man sighed repeatedly.
Wang Simazi: "When we brought the body back to the village, it was already more than half a month after the witch's death. We found that the zombies were running rampant, and it took the entire corpse-driving team working together to suppress them and barely manage to seal them away."
"Later, when I learned that the witch had died because of this, I felt both angry and helpless, not to mention what happened afterward!"
The old man shook his head and continued, "The witch is dead, and the two children, still minors, are ostracized by everyone at their teenage years, leaving them to depend on each other for survival."
"They've finally come of age and are in their early twenties, ready to get married, but the villagers think it's an ominous sign and won't let them. So... they came up with a plan: unless He Jiu goes to the mortuary and kills the sealed zombie, thus eliminating the threat to the villagers, they can't get married."
Si Yan: "He's sick."
[It's easy to get yelled at!]
I think I already know what happened next...
The old man said, " He Jiu couldn't persuade so many people in the village, so he went alone with an axe. In the end, he didn't come back... and because the zombie drank human blood, it came back to life from the seal."
Wang Simazi: "After hearing about it, we rushed over from halfway up the mountain. Before the zombies left the mortuary, we sacrificed the lives of two brothers to seal them off."
"I already thought this was outrageous enough, but I never expected that the villagers who instigated He Jiu to kill the zombies would, in order to cover their tracks, actually propose that Meijuan, who was already pregnant, should still marry He Jiu!"
Marrying a deceased person is called a ghost marriage.
Jiang Nuo sighed, "Your village was truly not unjustly slaughtered."
The old man gave a wry smile. "Yes! It's truly no injustice!"
"Who would have thought... fate would play such a cruel trick! Meijuan, was trapped in a coffin and buried in the grave meant for He Jiu. As a result He Jiu might have... witnessed his mother's death firsthand, and then been slowly devoured by a zombie while powerless, filled with deep resentment, turning from a corpse into a ghost."
" Meijuan... died while pregnant and trapped in a coffin, becoming an extremely vicious mother-child demon, which created the double illusion."
"After that... came the massacre of the village."
Wang Simazi pointed to the surviving villagers, "These people were either those who helped the two of them out of kindness when the Ghost King massacred the village, or those who were too young to understand and were saved by me."
"The poor souls who are still alive are affected by the illusion, entering it at specific times and reliving the past over and over again."
Jiang Nuo: "So, when I saw you being chased in the illusion before, it was because reality and the illusion overlapped, and you were being haunted by ghosts that had escaped from the illusion."
Wang Simazi sighed, showing his scarred arms. "Yes, we all grew up in this village. No matter how much we resent it, we can't just watch it really disappear."
"By the way, you've all seen the people who encouraged He Jiu to kill the zombies. They were the first few Guiding Souls; they either lost a leg or were covered in insects and looked neither human nor ghost. It's kind of karma."
Okay, okay, suddenly I don't Ghost Bride anymore... How tragic!!
[Huh? When I saw the guest team investigating the Guiding Souls in the illusion, I actually felt kind of sorry for them??]
Was it really a good thing that Jiang Nuo killed those two ghosts...? It's so hard to finally reunite and get married in this illusion.
Why are they judging him again? The Ghost King won't let humans go unpunished. What if he escapes from Fragrant Tree Village and harms others?
"Yeah, what did Shuishui and Qianqian do wrong this time that they're going to be killed by zombies controlled by the Ghost King?"
Jiang Nuo whispered in Si Yan's ear, "If I hadn't killed those three ghosts, could they have been reincarnated?"
Si Yan shook his head, "Covered in resentment, having killed countless people, he cannot be reincarnated."
The slight pang of guilt that had inexplicably arisen in my heart vanished instantly.
After hearing the story, Jiang Nuo and his group left Fragrant Tree Village amidst the villagers' gratitude.
The guests' phones immediately buzzed with text message notifications.
"Congratulations to our guest on completing the adventure mission. The return bus is waiting outside the woods. Please leave immediately."