After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

The people of Miao Village, seeing the money, first cut off Master Ye's head with a sickle and threw him into the dry well in the backyard. Then they killed Master Ye's child and threw her and her quilt into the well. To avoid being discovered, they covered the well opening with a large stone.

Then, they forced Madam Ye to marry the village chief's son. Madam Ye outwardly complied, but on her wedding night, dressed in her wedding gown, she resolutely threw herself into a well.

However, the water was poured into the village chief's well.

After the incident, the village chief ordered people to fill in his own well and also had Miao Han seal up the dry well in his backyard.

Liu Ying interrupted Miao Han: "If you're going to make up a story, at least make it more elaborate. The well in your backyard is perfectly fine."

Miao Han said urgently, "It's sealed off, it's really sealed off. My mother and I watched them bring in the soil and fill the well completely. There's a ghost, a curse, it must be because it's cursed."

Seeing that Miao Han was about to succumb to madness again, Lu Zhiyuan intervened in time, using silver needles to bring him back to his senses. His eyes brightened, but his words were still incoherent.

"On the seventh day, the seventh day after Madam Ye threw herself into the well, the villagers saw a carriage on their way to the land... no, not a carriage, but a bridal sedan chair." Miao Han gestured with his hands. "When they first saw it, there were no sedan chair bearers, just a sedan chair, parked on the abandoned bridge at the entrance of the village."

Abandoned bridge?

I think I saw it when I entered the village; it's not far from the main road.

The Miao village is built against the mountain, with a small river at its entrance. Across the river are the village's farmland. To facilitate farming, the ancestors of the Miao village built a stone bridge over the river. The river has dried up, but the stone bridge remains, though it is only used during the busy farming season.

Working at sunrise and resting at sunset, the villagers of Miao Village saw the bridal sedan chair when they went to work in the fields at dawn. It was parked in the middle of the stone bridge, with the curtains hanging down, and no sedan chair bearers. The villagers who first saw it did not suspect anything, assuming that some family in the village was having a wedding and had rented a sedan chair that had not yet been carried back to the village.

It wasn't until the early morning villagers finished their farm work and returned from the fields that they saw the sedan chair still on the bridge and couldn't help but peek inside.

There was no one in the sedan chair, only a red wedding dress.

The wedding dress wasn't placed in the sedan chair, but... Miao Han struggled to find the right words.

Lu Zhiyuan: "And what?"

Miao Han: "Instead, you sit in the sedan chair like a person! Do you know that feeling? Even though there's no one in the sedan chair, only a red wedding dress, it feels like someone is wearing it."

The villagers were terrified and rushed back to the village to tell the village chief what had happened. The village chief, feeling uneasy, gathered several strong young men to help him investigate. They felt a chill run down their spines and broke out in goosebumps as soon as they reached the village entrance.

The village chief felt uneasy and dared not look, and the young people also dared not go forward. Fortunately, the sedan chair was only stopped on the bridge and nothing strange happened.

Day passed and night fell. Perhaps because of the red sedan chair, the villagers went to bed exceptionally early that night, and not a single household lit a lamp. Miao Han didn't sleep, nor did his mother; the two of them sat in the dark room talking.

Miao Han's mother was a kind, yet somewhat timid, woman. She knew her son's thoughts, knew he had made a mistake, but was powerless to change anything. Through that impenetrable wall, she cast her gaze towards the backyard and murmured, "Do you regret it? They were living, breathing people who had been kind to us."

Miao Han regretted it, but what good was regret? The person was already dead, so he could only grit his teeth and look forward.

He didn't answer his mother's question, only saying that it was getting late and that she should rest early, and that he would steam white flour buns for her first thing tomorrow morning. The money for the white flour came from the proceeds of selling Master He's carriage.

The village was quiet at night, but not as quiet as that night; even his mother's snoring had disappeared. He couldn't sleep, tossing and turning in bed until he heard the suona horns of a wedding procession.

Firefly: "What? A suona horn? In the middle of the night?"

Miao Han nodded absently, lost in his memories.

The sound of suona horns, a traditional Chinese wind instrument, pierced through the courtyard gate and windows, drilling into his ears like a demonic chant. As if possessed, he uncontrollably stepped outside. The pale moonlight illuminated the deathly silent Miao village.

A wedding procession came from the other side of the village.

Miao Han rubbed his eyes and saw two rows of lanterns hanging beside the bridal sedan chair. They weren't the round lanterns commonly seen in the village, but long, red ones with characters on them. The characters were white, and one of them was the character "囍" (double happiness).

The sedan chair was carried by four men dressed in black. The style of their clothes and their faces were not clearly visible; only the words on their clothes were discernible.

Miao Han gestured.

On the chests of the sedan bearers was a conspicuous white, round piece of cloth with the character "奠" (meaning "offering sacrifice") written in red ink. Miao Han had never seen such a strange scene or such bizarre attire before.

Reason told him to escape. But his body felt nailed to the spot, unable to move an inch.

The sedan chair drew closer and closer, until he could see the fluttering curtains, hear the cackling laughter of the sedan chair bearers, and smell the mingled scent of the dead, incense, and paper scraps on them.

Cold sweat beaded on Miao Han's forehead.

Miao Han's father died because of his mistake.

When he was eight years old, his father caught a severe cold and was bedridden. His mother was in a hurry to go out to work and asked him to take his father's medicine over. He was busy playing with the chickens in the yard and only reluctantly took the medicine in when he heard his father scolding him.

Anyone who has taken Chinese medicine knows that the colder the medicine is, the more bitter it tastes.

My father is ill and in a bad mood, so I asked him to bring some sugar.

Sugarcane was a rare commodity; even the wealthiest village chief in their village had never tasted it. It was given to her by the lady of the house where her mother worked. The sugarcane had fallen on the ground and gotten dirty, so the lady thought it was inedible. Her mother didn't mind, so the lady gave it to her.

There was soil mixed in with the sugar, so my mother sifted out the soil with a fine sieve, wrapped the sugar in a paper bag, and placed it on the windowsill of the kitchen.

He was preoccupied with playing and got scolded by his father. Feeling angry, he didn't look closely and poured the arsenic his mother had bought for rat poison into his father's medicine, mistaking it for sugar.

His father died, foaming at the mouth. Terrified, he wiped the foam from his father's mouth, smashed the medicine bowl, and buried it. Fearing his mother would find out, he burned the sugar cane along with the packet of arsenic.

When his mother returned, he nervously told her that his father was no longer moving.

His mother thought his father had fainted until she touched his cold body and smelled arsenic in his mouth, realizing what had happened. She neither questioned nor blamed him; he assumed she knew the truth.

They deliberately left their father's body lying around overnight before hastily notifying relatives and neighbors the next day.

My father died of illness, and no one in the village doubted my mother's words, because she had treated him extremely well, and because he had indeed contracted a severe cold. Colds can be fatal, and it wasn't uncommon in the village. Many poor families died because they couldn't afford medicine.

The body was kept for three days, and the filial son kept vigil. He was fine for the first two days, but on the day before his father's burial, he was found lying next to his father's body. When he woke up, all he could smell was that stench.