Chapter 250: Ghost Marriage Tales (3)
The rustic village feast was a bit rough, but mysteriously fragrant.
The cooking tent was set up outside, and the fragrance of steamed rice wafted from the cave kitchen's stove just to the side.
People around the feast table grabbed food ravenously, and everyone ate with great relish.
But Ji Ning kept thinking about the one or two corpses that must be somewhere around here, so she had no appetite at all.
The wedding day was tomorrow, and she had no idea when the twist would happen. Would she get a chance to see the famous ghost marriage scene?
"Little miss, eat your food. Does our country cooking not suit your palate?"
Ji Ning was deep in thought, not noticing that she'd been poking her chopsticks into her rice several times, and so she was caught not paying attention to her meal.
The one who asked was a local man around thirty, trying his best to speak Mandarin with her.
"Okay, I'm eating," Ji Ning replied politely, hastily grabbing a random bite of vegetable with her chopsticks and putting it in her bowl.
The man asked again, "Little miss, how old are you? Are you seeing anyone?"
Now, the attention of the entire table turned to Ji Ning.
Including Shen Yu.
Actually, the questions themselves didn't matter, but in front of a tableful of NPCs, plus Teacher Shen whom she couldn't bring herself to look straight in the eye, her answer not only had to avoid OOC, but also sound normal.
Given her "virgin" identity, Ji Ning answered quietly, "I'm twenty, I've never had a boyfriend."
That male NPC kept blabbering, "How come a big girl like you still isn't seeing anyone? Around here, plenty of twenty-year-old girls already have kids."
Ji Ning lowered her head to eat, pretending to be shy and not saying anything more.
She felt that this man's words and gaze held hidden meaning, as if he wanted to devour her. Ji Ning felt a bit uncomfortable.
"City girls prioritize school and career; late marriage and childbearing are perfectly normal."
A deep, mellow voice spoke up, shutting down whatever the male NPC was about to say next.
Ji Ning looked up at the person who'd spoken up for her—it was Shen Yu, sitting across from her.
His expression was relaxed, his tone easy, as if he'd just joined in the casual chatter. Yet it left others with nothing to say.
Ji Ning felt like she was a student being picked on, and the teacher had stepped in to protect her.
Because Shen Yu acted as if it was only natural. That was all she could think.
She held her bowl, gazing at Shen Yu, wanting to thank him with her eyes. But when he looked back, he only gave a slight nod with a blank expression.
Even though he himself had told her not to treat him as a teacher, he really still gave off that strict, taciturn science teacher vibe…
……
After dinner, it was nearly dark.
Under the host family's arrangements, Ji Ning was to sleep with many female guests who had come from farther away, in a row of cave dwellings down below.
The clay bed was huge; lying lengthwise, it could fit six or seven people.
Ji Ning, being the youngest, slept on the very edge. The wedding was early the next morning, so after washing up, everyone quickly climbed onto the kang and wrapped themselves in their blankets.
In her drowsy state, Ji Ning heard people chatting in low voices.
"I heard someone drowned in this gully recently, a pretty young one. Don't know which family."
"A drowned person is unlucky…"
"It's strange—all I've heard is that someone drowned, but nobody will say who."
"By the way, have you seen the groom today? Where's the groom? His wedding's coming up, yet he's nowhere to be seen—he's not the bride, after all."
Ji Ning thought to herself that the groom was probably that drowned person; the Yang family had suppressed the news and kept it from outsiders. No wonder she'd thought she smelled the foul stench of rotting flesh.
She also thought that even the people cutting out paper clothes today hadn't bothered to hide it; it seemed that even in this remote mountain valley, ghost marriage wasn't a widely known practice.
After that, Ji Ning mulled over the instance in a jumble, and gradually fell asleep.
She felt like she hadn't slept long, hadn't even settled into a dream, when she heard panicked shouts. Frowning, she opened her eyes, and the cries became even clearer—clearly, they weren't from a dream.
"Something's happened to the bride!"
"The bride is dead!"
Electric lights flared on everywhere, and people threw on clothes and shuffled into shoes as they rushed outside.
Afraid of missing any information, Ji Ning got up and followed as well.
The area in front of the cave dwellings on the upper slope was packed with people, all facing the entrance to the cave kitchen where meals had been prepared that afternoon.
She couldn't see what had happened inside, but Ji Ning heard someone say in a hushed voice, "The bride was stuffed into the stove and burned to death."
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