Ghost Bride 2

Chapter 6

"That's strange. I've been here for half a year and I've never seen anyone like you before."

"I am a supernatural being born with ghost eyes. It must be fate that we met!" I tried my best to figure out where the voice came from, but it all dissipated with a gust of wind. I had no clue.

"Are you... a member of the Lan family?"

"I am." That's for sure. My entire being is inherited from the Lan family, and even my supernatural abilities are probably innate.

"Then you deserve to die too!" A boy's voice, sharp as a sword, suddenly rang out.

My head exploded—how many ghosts are hiding in this backyard?

In a flash, the jujube tree in the corner seemed to sprout sharp claws, lunging at me horizontally. I narrowly escaped a catastrophe, but then a gust of wind swept up yellow sand that lashed at my eyes. I was about to be slammed against the wall by the wind, and no matter how hard I tried to dodge, I couldn't move my feet.

"Stop!" the woman shouted urgently, and the wind stopped instantly.

I opened my eyes, still shaken, and stared at the twisted jujube tree. Had the ghost and the tree become one? Such power was truly astonishing.

The woman's voice continued, "I have a daughter who needs to be rescued... You don't seem like a bad person."

"Mother! Who believes her?" the boy's voice rang out. "There's not a single good person in the Lan family!"

"But we need her. There must still be reasonable people in this world!" the woman argued with a child.

I was a little confused: "If you want me to help you, you should at least tell me what happened! How can I possibly help you if you keep throwing tantrums for no reason?"

"You Lan family are shameless!" the man's voice roared. "How dare you accuse me of acting recklessly! One day I will slaughter your entire Lan family! To avenge my loved ones!"

What does that mean? Was this vengeful ghost killed by the Lan family?

I was stunned for a moment and couldn't say a word.

Suddenly, two white figures, one large and one small, emerged from the jujube tree, hand in hand, and walked towards me, but passed straight through me like bubbles. I was terrified and turned around, but there was nothing behind me.

...

Emerging from the backyard, I was still distraught, the words of those two devils echoing in my mind, causing me unbearable pain. I knew that my home was no longer a home, and disaster was not far off.

With a loud "bang!"

Someone kicked the bowl of cat food at the entrance of the yard.

"Who?" I asked in surprise.

"Me! Who are you?" the man asked me.

The moonlight illuminated the man clearly. I recognized him without guessing; he was the same thin man I had seen on the mountain. He had a peculiar appearance: his eyebrows were straight and connected in a single line; his eyes were so small they were almost invisible; his nose was flat; his lips were wide; and his face resembled a block of tofu.

"Who are you?" I asked back.

"Oh!" The skinny man smiled, revealing a gap in his teeth, looking just like a bulldozer harvesting wheat. "You must be Uncle Lan's niece? I'm a guest, staying in the west room, and I'll be leaving in a couple of days."

I sneered, ignored him, and walked straight to the threshing ground.

The man spread his arms and blocked my way at the doorway.

The wind blew past my sleeves, the light blue silk clinging to the curves of my body, appearing and disappearing in the breeze. The skinny man swallowed hard, making a clicking sound at the corner of his mouth.

I hate those eyes, like a wolf's, with a sinister, gloomy green light.

"Get out of my way!" I shouted.

"Where are you going? I've never seen such a beautiful girl in all the villages I've been to."

It seems he didn't see me clearly in the darkness when we met in Xishan last night, but now that the moon is bright and the stars are few, he can see me clearly. I raised my left hand and whistled at my bent little finger, and Dahei immediately shot out like an arrow.

"Ugh! It's that dog again?" He stepped back.

I walked confidently out the door, with Big Black following me closely the whole way.

When the rooster crows, the sun has not yet risen in the east.

Big Black rubbed against the dirt, his wound scabbed over with dirt. I rolled off the haystack and called to Big Black, "Be gentle! Come with me up the mountain."

I didn't wake Apple and the others; I wanted to investigate alone whether what those two ghosts said last night was true or false. If it was true, I fear this trip home would mean the loss of my family.

The entrance to the cave dwelling.

I saw a short woman wearing a bright yellow dress, her hair pulled back into a bun, looking quite elegant, not like someone from the village. She had phoenix eyes with upturned corners, thin, light eyebrows, a hooked nose, a round mouth, and a chin that looked like a weight. She held a cigarette in her hand and sat on a stone at the entrance of the cave dwelling, looking around.

Section 16: The Uninvited Guest (3)

She seemed to be waiting for someone, looking around restlessly.

We need to get her away from us.

The woman was taking off her shoes and sitting cross-legged. I patted Big Black's head, and it immediately understood, leaping out, grabbing the woman's shoe, and running away.

"Oh no! Oh no! My shoe!" She hurriedly jumped off the rock, shuffling off on one foot as she chased after it.

I crawled out from behind the tall grass and crouched down to enter the cave.

The cave dwelling appeared to be newly dug; the soil was soft, and there were few facilities inside, making it seem like a place for people to live. There were also several bundles of straw, making it look more like a grain storage warehouse. Neatly stacked straw was piled in the corner, making it appear no different from an ordinary cave dwelling.

Suddenly, a sobbing sound was heard, revealing a hidden world inside. Upon turning over the straw, they were shocked to see four living people, their hands and feet bound and their mouths gagged, all of whom were young girls.

I quickly removed the gag from one of her mouths and asked her, "Who is Mei Xue?"

The girl cried out, "I am Shui Xiu, the third daughter of the Shang family in the east of the village. I recognize you. You are the older sister of the Lan family." She urgently asked me to untie her hands and feet.

"Is Mei Xue in here?" I asked again.

"Waaah—" A pretty girl with delicate features struggled to whimper from the corner, her mouth gagged. She lay on her side in the nook and cranny, and looked to be about ten years old.

Hey, isn't this the girl I saw in the kitchen the day before, the one who was carrying her little brother and putting him on the stove? Is she Mei Xue? She was tied up tighter than the other children, with obvious marks on her neck, and she looked very weak.

“Meixue?” I called her. “You have two younger brothers, one is eight years old and named Dongzi, and the other is three years old and named Liangdi, right?”

She stared in surprise, her eyes wide, and nodded vigorously.

I understand: "Were you all abducted?"

Shuixiu is younger than me, only thirteen after the New Year. She is the third daughter of the Shang family. I heard that the Shang family desperately wanted a boy, but they had three daughters. The third daughter was almost drowned after being held in the water at birth.

“I’m going to be sold, sold by my own parents. We’re the second batch. Last month, my two older sisters, Daxiu and Shuangxiu, were already sent away. I don’t know where they were sent. I heard they were sold like livestock…”

A thunderous roar echoed in my head.

Shui Xiu sobbed softly, "My mom gave birth to a boy this spring. My dad said he'd finally got a son after all these years, and there was no point in asking us, these money-losing girls, for anything. He'd been thinking about it for a while now. At the beginning of the year, some outsiders came here, saying they were buying fruit, but they stayed at your house for almost half a year and didn't take a single fruit out. Instead, they noticed a lot fewer young women in the village. Later, my dad heard rumors that a girl could be sold for several thousand, and he got really tempted..."

I was seething with anger: "Selling people is illegal, doesn't your dad know that? It's not like you're selling lambs! And your mom doesn't care?"

“She was afraid of my dad and didn’t dare to say a word.”

I was filled with dread: "Do you know where you are right now?"

"I don't know." The bound girls shook their heads in unison. "Our guards said we're already in the outside world, a hundred and eight thousand miles away from our hometown."

Nonsense! A bunch of heartless traffickers!

I have to save them!

The howling of dogs outside the cave grew closer and closer; I knew the woman guarding the cave would be returning soon.

I put the cloth I had removed back into the girls' mouths and said, "Bear with it for now. Pretend to be obedient and compliant. Protect yourselves and don't get hurt. We're still in Shebupo, we haven't gone anywhere. I'll try to get someone to come."

Before running out of the cave, I glanced at Meixue one last time. The girl looked at me with understanding eyes, her bright gaze heartbreaking. How could I bear to tell her that her mother and younger brother had become vengeful ghosts?

It was already broad daylight when I returned to my grandmother's house.

The door to the small kitchen was open, and my uncle was packing breakfast into a basket.

"Uncle, are you going out?" I greeted him.

He acted as if he hadn't heard me, ignored me, and went out with his basket.

I walked along the wall to the window of the west room, where two people were talking.

“I said, I got up in the middle of the night and saw your niece.” It was the skinny man’s voice.

"What's up?" came the old lady's voice. "What's on your mind now?" she asked, cracking sunflower seeds and spitting out the shells.

"That girl is so beautiful, she'd be worth a lot of money if she were sold outside!"

"You've got your eye on me?"

"Who said that? It's not like you gave birth to it!"

"I wish I could give birth. If I had known that girls could be sold for money, I would have given birth to ten or eight of them. I would have been laughing in my dreams."

"Old man, you're never serious."

"You think you're so righteous? Go give birth yourself, and then sell your babies!"

Section 17: The Uninvited Guest (4)

"Seriously, are you selling your thing?"

"You wish! Even if my dog is a money-loser, it's still a high-class one."

"Pah! What's so high-class about it? Don't try to make your old donkey look good."

"That's right, there's something inside."

"What? This young girl is already pregnant?"

"Bullshit! You castrated donkey with a foul mouth, your daughter is pregnant."

"Hehe, I wish I could, but I'm not lucky enough to have children, and my wife won't have any either."

"When I said she's got knowledge, I meant Lan girl is really learned. This village hasn't produced a college student like her in years. Your little farts could make her stink."

"Wow! This one's a fat one!"

"That's right!"

Are you selling it?

How much?

"If you want to sell, I'll find you a high-class buyer. Unlike selling ordinary flowers and plants, you can get a good price for them."

"How much? You think you can sell it to a brothel?"

"Pah! Look how unsophisticated you are, there aren't any brothels around these days."

"What do you mean, 'no'? Don't think I don't know about the outside world just because I don't leave the mountains. What's with all that bright lights and bustling nightlife... what do you mean by 'nightlife'?"

"nightclub."