Supernatural and Paranormal Research Society

"Red silk ties bones to inquire about yin and yang, paper horses trample over rice from a hundred households..."

His voice, like sandpaper rubbing against withered bones, trailed off in a half-sounding tone, seeping out from under the old locust tree at the village entrance.

When the song reached the line "Five-colored threads are needed to close the coffin," the last note abruptly stopped.

The village elder, Mu Lao, lifted his cloudy eyelids and stared intently at the man who staggered towards him through the fog.

His chapped lips moved twice, uttering a word as soft as a sigh:

"The yin-yang rice is cold... Don't look back."

The man stopped abruptly, and the lingering redness in his eyes visibly dimmed.

He spat out a mouthful of phlegm and yelled, "You old bastard, what kind of shit are you spewing from your mouth?"

The man, his face dark, took a half-step forward, his leather shoes crushing the dry branches on the ground. His voice was weak and feeble: "If it weren't for the old man's repeated instructions before he passed away to leave you a bite to eat, with your madness, you would have been buried in the mass grave behind the village long ago!"

Old Mu didn't dodge.

Her withered, bark-like cheeks twitched slightly, but her gaze went past the man's shoulder and landed in the deeper fog.

You shouldn't have gone.

He said in a hoarse voice, each word as if forced out from his chest, "That place, once a living person steps in, they have no intention of leaving a whole corpse."

The man's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

He opened his mouth, and a curse was about to come out, but he swallowed it back as if possessed.

An almost morbid intoxication suddenly appeared on his face.

He licked his chapped lips, the sound of him swallowing particularly clear in the deathly silence of the village entrance:

"You don't know anything..."

He murmured softly, his eyes fixed on the spot: "That feeling... it's a tingling sensation that seeps into your very bones, I wouldn't trade it for anything, not even a god."

Old Mu lowered his eyes, his gaze sweeping over the lingering, deathly aura emanating from the man's forehead.

After a long silence, he uttered only two words:

"What a terrible thing to do."

The man chuckled, turned, and plunged into the thick fog. The off-key tune he hummed gradually drifted away with his footsteps, like a banner summoning a soul.

Old Mu sat back down at the base of the tree, his knuckles unconsciously digging into the soil.

Nobody in the village believes in these things anymore.

Young people find him unlucky and are too lazy to even send him offerings during festivals.

His skills in "guarding the village" are almost gone, rotting away with his old bones.

But this time... it's different.

He stared in the direction the man had disappeared, and true fear finally crept into his cloudy eyes.

It was an instinctive shudder at the sight of some kind of "old thing" that was awakening.

"Soon..."

He let out a gurgling sound from his throat, "The creditors... have come to the door."

……

The man didn't hear the prophecy.

He pulled out his phone, the cold light of the screen illuminating his face, contorted with excitement, as his fingers flew across the keyboard:

"Damn it, you'll regret not coming with me today for the rest of your life."

You have no idea... how fucking awesome it is.

The reply came quickly, but there was hesitation in the words:

Is it really that eerie? But the old folks in the village all say that the western cemetery... the living shouldn't go there.

The man sneered, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips, his knuckles tapping loudly on the screen.

[Take it or leave it. I'm telling you, next time you won't get a turn, so don't cry.]

The dialog box went dark.

The man spat, put his phone back in his pocket, and strode home.

He didn't notice that the streetlights stretched his shadow extremely long and thin, like a crack on the bluestone slab.

……

The night breeze swept through the hall, but it couldn't dispel the stuffy heat inside.

No, it's not stuffy.

It's trendy.

A chilling aura, carrying the scent of aged grave soil and rotten red silk, was seeping from the corners of the walls, under the bed, and even from his own pores.

The man convulsed violently on the hard bed.

Cold sweat had already soaked through my undershirt, sticking stickily to my back like another layer of skin that I couldn't peel off.

He closed his eyes tightly, but the image of the rich man's cemetery did not fade; instead, it seeped into his brain through his veins.

At first, he was just craving it.

But when those who had been there returned, the image of that deep-set eyes yet grinning mouth was magnified and distorted in his mind.

He didn't believe in superstitions, but today he saw it with his own eyes... no, he was "tainted" by them.

The smell of ashes from paper money mixed with cheap incense seemed to be blocking my nostrils again.

The "bride" sat on the stone offering table in front of the grave, her red veil partially lifted, her face as white as a newly made paper effigy, but her lips as red as if dripping blood.

She didn't speak, only her eyes flickered—

"Buzz".

The man's temple throbbed!

It felt as if a cold, thread was tightly binding my heart, with the other end sinking into endless darkness, pulling me in inch by inch.

He sat up abruptly, gasping for breath, his throat parched, his reason screaming wildly!

"Drink some water! Go to the kitchen!"

But his legs felt like they were filled with lead, or as if they had their own will, hanging straight down over the edge of the bed.

The moment my feet touched the cold ground, a tingling, itchy sensation shot from the soles of my feet straight to the top of my head.

Don't go!

He gritted his teeth, his nails digging into his palms.

"But...she's waiting for me."

The man had no idea what she had to do with the kitchen; he seemed to have lost the ability to think at that moment.

A voice is murmuring in my head, but I can't tell if it's my own or someone else's.

It sounded just like the soft rustling of red silk against stone steps—sticky, lingering, and irresistibly alluring.

He staggered to his feet.

It wasn't that he wanted to leave, but the chilling feeling that spread from his heart dragged him toward the door.

With each step he took, the temperature in the room dropped a degree, and the shadow on the wall was stretched and distorted, gradually becoming out of sync with his silhouette.

The moment his hand touched the door latch, he heard a very soft sigh brush against his ear: "Husband...why are you so late?"

The man's pupils constricted, and the hairs on his body stood on end.

He tried to escape, but his hand had already uncontrollably pushed the door open.

The night fog was so thick it couldn't be dispersed.

The moment he stepped out the door, a chilling current of air, as if alive, wrapped around his ankles and meandered up his calves, its intimacy nauseating.

Behind him, the shadow elongated by the streetlights silently... detached from the ground.

It stands upright, taller than a normal person, slender, hunched, with what appears to be half a tattered red silk draped over its shoulder.

In the thatched hut separated by a wall, Old Mu had opened his eyes at some point.

His withered hands gripped the edge of the bed tightly, his knuckles turning white.

Two streams of tears silently slid down her deeply lined cheeks, landing on the coarse cloth sheet and leaving dark stains.

"What a terrible thing to do..."

His teeth chattered, and he spoke in a very low voice, as if afraid of disturbing something, "The Yin Line Entwines the Soul... The door is open."

……

Three days.

Five lives.

They all died on their own kang (heated brick bed).

The manner of their deaths was exactly the same.

The dead had their limbs bent at bizarre angles, their eye sockets sunken, but their mouths were stretched wide, frozen in an extremely satisfied smile.

Before they breathed their last, everyone frantically shouted the same word: "Married...married..."

The dogs in Yinshan Village all went mute overnight.

When the old village chief scrambled into the thatched hut, his trouser legs were still covered in mud.

The old man, who was the undisputed authority in the village, suddenly knelt down on the muddy ground with a thud, his forehead hitting the ground repeatedly.

"Old Mu! Please save the village! Save those young people!"

His voice cracked, and his hands, which were supporting him on the ground, trembled like leaves in the autumn wind.

Old Mu didn't help him up.

He slowly raised his head, his chapped lips bleeding, his voice hoarse like a broken bellows:

"It's too late."

The wind outside suddenly stopped.

A stench of aged grave soil and decaying red silk, mixed with a cold and damp atmosphere, seeped in through the cracks in the door.

The old village chief's face drained of all color instantly. He staggered backward, his pupils contracting violently.

"Escape...we must escape..."

He muttered to himself, tumbling and crawling out of the house, his hunched back instantly swallowed by the thick fog.

Old Mu gazed at the empty threshold and sighed very softly.

"escape?"

He murmured to the mist, "Having been tainted by the curse of a ghost marriage... when the King of Hell comes to his post, none of them will escape."

The fog grew thicker and thicker, like a pot of overcooked white porridge, completely enveloping Yinshan Village.

Even the sunlight seeping in had a deathly coldness to it.