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

Miao Han tried hard to recall, but couldn't remember how he ended up lying next to his father's body. Years later, he couldn't even remember what his father looked like, only the smell.

Accompanied by that familiar scent, the bridal sedan chair arrived. At a glance, Miao Han recognized one of the sedan chair bearers as his father.

They had the same eyes, and even the father had white foam at the corner of his mouth, a result of poisoning.

He was afraid to see that face and tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids wouldn't obey. The wind lifted the sedan curtain, and he saw the bride inside; his pupils dilated.

Lu Zhiyuan: "Who is the bride?"

Miao Han closed his eyes: "Yes, it's Madam Ye!"

Lu Zhiyuan: "And then? What happened next?"

Miao Han shook his head: "I don't know, I don't dare to go with them."

After the sedan chair passed, Miao Han discovered that he could move his legs again. He was terrified and rushed home, locking the doors and windows tightly. The loud noise didn't even wake his mother.

Just like when he was a child, he climbed into his mother's bed, hid in her arms, and spent the most trembling night.

He wasn't sure if it was a hallucination, but he heard sounds coming from the yard, all sorts of sounds.

Just as dawn was breaking, the village chief knocked on his door, asking if he had heard or seen anything strange the night before. Remembering the look in his father's eyes and the eerie smile of the bride in the sedan chair, he instinctively shook his head.

His flaws were obvious, but the village chief didn't notice them and left in a hurry.

Only later did he learn that the village chief's son had died—a butcher dressed in a woman's red wedding gown had jumped into the well in front of the village chief.

On the day of the village chief's son's burial, he found the village chief accompanied by his mother and told him about the strange events of that night. He said they would all die, and that Madam Ye had returned to seek revenge.

The village chief, overwhelmed by grief, neglected everything else and even blamed Miao Han for his son's death. An argument ensued, which was broken up by the villagers, making the entire funeral chaotic.

The village chief's ancestral graves are on the back mountain, and you have to cross that bridge to get there.

In Miao villages, there's a rule that you can't go back the way you came, whether it's a wedding or a funeral. For convenience, you take the path that crosses the bridge to go up the mountain, and the main road that faces the village entrance to go down the mountain.

As luck would have it, the day of the village chief's son's funeral was overcast, and a chilling wind blew as the coffin was carried up the mountain, making everyone's hearts pound. The young people who usually loved to gossip were all silent, keeping their heads down and just wanting to bury him as soon as possible.

The burial went smoothly without any problems. Nothing unusual happened on the way down the mountain, until a little boy in the procession pointed to the bridge across the river and shouted, "Daddy, the bridal sedan chair, the bride!"

That bridal sedan chair has appeared again!

No one knows where it came from or how it got there; it just appeared abruptly on the bridge.

The village chief was also in the funeral procession. When he saw the bridal sedan chair, he looked at it as if it were his enemy. He went straight down into the dried-up river and walked towards the sedan chair. He smashed the sedan chair with the shovel in his hand, muttering, "So what if it's revenge? So what if it's taking a life? Come at me! I'm an old man waiting for you at home. If you're so capable, don't hurt my son!"

Lu Zhiyuan: "How did you know these things? Did the village chief tell you?"

Miao Han's eyes darted around, and he said timidly, "My mother and I went to the village chief's son's funeral. The village chief sent someone to call us. I was scared and didn't want to go, but I had no choice. It was like there were hands pushing me from behind. I was standing under the bridge when the village chief smashed the sedan chair. The wind was blowing in my direction and the noise was loud, so it was hard not to hear."

"And then what happened?" Liu Ying asked curiously.

Miao Han: "After smashing the sedan chair, the village chief was still not satisfied, so he took out a tinderbox and burned the sedan chair. The fire spread with the wind and burned the village chief as well."

Miao Han began to tremble, curling up like a child.

That night, the sound of the suona horn appeared again. Miao Han didn't go out; he only dared to look out the window. The bridal sedan chair passed by the door. He saw the lanterns floating in mid-air, the hats of the sedan chair bearers, and most of the sedan chair itself.

As before, the sedan curtain was lifted by the wind, and he saw the bride sitting inside. Unlike last time, the bride was no longer alone, but holding a child.

Lu Zhiyuan: "How did you see it through the window and the courtyard wall?"

Miao Han pointed to his window, "There's a hole in the window, and that's what I saw through it. The lanterns are floating in mid-air, and the sedan chair is also floating in mid-air; I can see most of it. The sedan chair bearers are looking down, so I can only see the black hats they're wearing."

Fearing that Lu Zhiyuan might not believe him, Miao Han raised his hand and swore, "Everything I said is true. If I lied even once, may I die without a burial place."

Miao Han was so frightened that he fainted, and when he woke up it was noon the next day. Strangely, his mother didn't wake him, and he was lying in his own bed. When he asked his mother, she said that he had been lying in bed all along. She didn't wake him because he had a fever, and his forehead was covered in sweat. The reason he woke up was because his mother fed him some herbal medicine to reduce the fever.

The medicine was decocted in the yard, and the dregs had not yet been washed off; the pot used for decocting the medicine was still warm.

The village chief is fine, but one of his relatives has died.

He lived alone. On the night of the incident, he was at the village chief's house taking care of the village chief, who had been burned in the fire. Apart from the village chief, no one knew how he died. The series of murders instilled fear throughout the village, with everyone dreading the day a bridal sedan chair would arrive at their doorstep.

The villagers, fearing for their lives, began to criticize the village chief, complaining that he shouldn't have done such a thing as murder for money. The village chief slowly uttered a single sentence, and they all fell silent.

The village chief said, "If you're afraid of death, return the spoils you've been given! It's just a bridal sedan chair and a ghost, right? We've already killed people, so what's there to be afraid of? We can just kill again."

Poverty is more terrifying than ghosts; once you've got white flour buns to eat, who would want to go hungry?

The villagers spontaneously began exorcising the ghost, and the village chief hired a Taoist priest to perform three rituals inside and outside the village. Whether the priest's magic was too powerful or for some other reason, the bridal sedan chair never appeared again after that. The Miao village remained peaceful for more than half a year. Just when everyone had forgotten about the incident and was preparing to start a new life, Miao Han's wife, dressed in her wedding gown, threw herself into a well and died.

The story was over, and it was almost dawn. The wind rustled the pomegranate tree in the yard.

The half-open courtyard gate was pushed open, and Miao Han looked up as a dark figure bumped into him. Upon closer inspection, it was the village chief. His face had been burned, making it look like a fleshy centipede crawling on his face, and coupled with that silly, eerie smile, it was even more frightening.

Liu Ying shrank closer to Lu Yun and looked at the village chief, saying, "When did you leave? And where did you bring him back from? He's so bad, you should have just killed him."

Lu Zhiyuan: "The bad guy isn't the village chief, it's the Miao man!"

Miao Han lowered his head and repeated Lu Zhiyuan's words: "The bad one isn't the village chief, it's Miao Han! Miao Han deserves to die! Every wrong has its perpetrator, every debt its debtor. Miao Han deserves to die, Miao Han deserves to die the most!"

Lu Zhiyuan leaned down and looked at the top of his head: "Pretending to be crazy must be tiring, right? It must be tiring to go to such lengths to make up such a story, right?"