Ghost Immortal

This tiger was more than three times the size of an ordinary tiger, and its fur was jet black without a single blemish.

There is a deep scar on the tiger's head that extends from the center of its brow to the corner of its mouth. After it heals, it leaves a hideous indentation.

This makes its already ferocious appearance even more terrifying.

Black Tiger's eyes were dark red with vertical pupils.

Its footsteps trod on the thickest part of the fallen leaves, making almost no sound.

Tiger Demon!

In the woods outside the wooden house, more than a dozen ghouls surrounded it from all directions.

Their movements were stiff and strange, like puppets being held on strings.

The low, groaning sounds emanating from his throat rose and fell, gradually coalescing into a strange melody.

"Mortals are unaware of the tigers in the mountains; after drinking three bowls of wine, they venture into the mountains, only to become tiger's accomplices, their lives cut off from the cycle of reincarnation—a truly tragic fate!"

Li Feng pressed down on Qiu Sheng's shoulder and looked out through the cracks in the wooden house wall, his expression grave.

The ghost's feet stomped on the fallen leaves, making a damp, sticky "splat" sound.

He stared intently and noticed that dark yellow corpse fluid was seeping from the soles of each of the ghosts' feet.

The footprints left wet marks where they were stepped on, and the grass around the footprints withered and turned black at a visible speed.

"Something's not right," Li Feng said gravely.

"Of course something's wrong! With a dozen or so ghosts surrounding us, how could anything be right?" Qiu Sheng gripped his iron whisk tightly, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.

Li Feng's gaze was fixed on the positions of the cougars.

"It's not a matter of quantity. Look at their footsteps. They all step in the same fixed position, perfectly aligned, without the slightest deviation. Even living people don't walk this neatly."

Qiulan also noticed something amiss, her face turning pale as she said, "They're not just wandering around randomly, they're setting up a formation!"

The movement of the dozen or so ghosts, seemingly chaotic, actually corresponded to the positions of some kind of formation.

They crisscrossed each other, each step landing precisely on a specific point.

The positions of seven in front, eight in back, five on the left, and six on the right actually correspond to the "Yin Eight Gates" positions in Qimen Dunjia.

Even more bizarrely, the corpse-water footprints beneath their feet formed dark yellow lines that intersected and outlined a huge pattern on the ground, covering an area of ​​ten feet around the wooden house.

The design resembles a tiger's head with its mouth wide open, as if it's holding everyone inside.

Qiu Sheng followed Li Feng's gaze to the ground and couldn't help but gasp: "These wretches are actually using corpse water to draw an array!"

Li Feng's five senses were far more acute than Qiu Sheng's; he could sense a chilling demonic power flowing within those lines of corpse fluid.

Each line is a channel of demonic power.

"The formation is almost complete. Once the corpse fluid is fully formed, the formation will close, and this wooden house will become the coffin, and the three of us will be the dead inside!"

As soon as he finished speaking, all the ghouls stopped in their tracks.

The sound of the wind in the entire mountain forest instantly fell silent.

The sounds of the wind in the forest, the chirping of insects, the rustling of leaves—all the sounds vanished in the same instant.

Then, the ghosts suddenly started screaming.

"Quack quack!"

A female ghost started screaming.

She was wearing a tattered wedding dress.

The wedding dress was originally supposed to be bright red, but after being soaked in corpse water and mud for decades, it has turned into a filthy dark brown.

Two rotting calves were visible beneath the skirt, with patches of skin and flesh missing, resembling cured meat gnawed by some wild beast.

Its face was even more horrific, with half of its skin and flesh torn off.

It revealed its stark white cheekbones and two rows of complete teeth. Its remaining eye stared blankly in the direction of the wooden house, its eyelid long since rotted away, leaving only a dark hole.

It howled and even opened its mouth to sing:

"The first month of the lunar year is here! Yo!!"

The sound was shrill and piercing, like an awl stabbing into the eardrum, and the tone was drawn out for a long time.

The final "yo" sound is so convoluted, it's definitely tone-deaf.

This is not a tone that a living person can sing. A living person's throat is supported by breath, and no matter how melodious the singing is, there is a limit.

But there was no breath in the throat of this ghost; its vocal cords sounded like a cold wind blowing from the forest, making people's scalps tingle.

Qiu Sheng shivered, his teeth chattering: "What the hell is this singing? It's even worse than Master's!"

"Don't make a sound." Li Feng pressed down on his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the movements of the ghosts.

Then an old ghost also screamed.

It was hunched over, with a large bulge on its back, making it look like a hunchbacked old man.

But it was not bent over because of a hunchback; its spine pierced through its back, white bone spurs with rotting flesh hanging from them.

At the lumbar spine, there was a rusty iron chain wrapped around it, with the other end dragging on the ground, making a grating "clattering" sound with every step.

It continued singing, following the female ghost's voice: "Every household hangs red lanterns... Oh!!"

The old man's voice was completely different from that of the female ghost.

The female ghost's singing was shrill and piercing, while the old man's voice was deep and resonant, like a drumbeat, making people's heads feel heavy.

When he sang the word "red light," his mouth stretched to his ears.

The third child, the ghost, then began to sing.

It looked only seven or eight years old, wearing a bib of indistinct color.

She was barefoot, with a red string tied around each ankle, from which hung two rusty bells.

Its face is the most complete of all the changgui (a type of ghost), and it even retains some of its appearance from when it was alive.

With a round face and a slightly upturned nose, if it weren't for the empty eye sockets and the dried bloodstains at the corners of her mouth, she would almost look like an ordinary child.

It sang in a childish voice: "The red lantern shines on the bride... Oh!!!"

The children's voices were clear and bright, and the tune was cheerful, like singing a nursery rhyme for the New Year.

The fourth old woman ghost continued singing: "The bride has boarded the bridal sedan chair... Oh!!"

The fifth pipe-wielding ghost: "The bridal sedan chair is being carried to the mountain god temple... Oh!!"

The sixth cook, a ghostly servant, had the loudest voice: "Grandpa Mountain God is laughing... Yo!!!"

The ghosts sang one after another, each singing a line with a different tune.

The singing was off-key, the recitation was unclear, the crying was heart-wrenching, and the laughter was sinister.

These sounds blended together and surprisingly formed a complete opera!

It's like an old play that's been performed countless times in a makeshift theater in the countryside.

Qiu Lan grabbed Li Feng's arm in horror, exclaiming, "Junior Brother, they're chanting about a ghost marriage!"

Li Feng also noticed it.

The lyrics, when pieced together, tell the story of a ghost marriage.

Red lanterns are hung in the first month of the lunar calendar. The bride gets into the bridal sedan chair. The sedan chair is carried to the mountain god temple. The mountain god grandfather laughs and says that the bride is pretty and should stay in the temple to be my wife.

The mountain god appeared, the groom turned into a tiger, the bridal sedan chair turned into a coffin, and the bride, wearing a red wedding dress, lay down in the coffin and never came out again.

Li Feng's face was gloomy and he said solemnly, "This isn't a play; it's about the tiger demon's wedding back then."

"A tiger demon actually got married?" Qiu Sheng stared wide-eyed, looking incredulous.

He himself is still a virgin, yet this tiger lives a more comfortable life than a human?

"It's not a wedding, it's a kidnapping." Li Feng stared at the female ghost in her wedding dress with pity in his eyes.

"This woman must have been a bride from a nearby village. She was abducted to the mountains by a tiger demon on her wedding day. She was still wearing her wedding dress, which means that the day she died was her wedding day. The tiger demon killed the groom, kidnapped her to the mountains, locked her in its lair, and tortured her to death. After her death, her soul was refined into a vengeful ghost!"