Chapter Fifty-Five: The Bride's Lament (25)
“What’s going on?” Changgui was startled. He ran to the window, only to see that at some unknown moment, the villagers had gathered in a dense crowd outside the courtyard wall.
At the same time, Huang Mei gasped in alarm, covering her mouth. “Lin Qi!”
Su Man looked over to see that Lin Qi’s body had turned translucent, as if he might disappear at any moment.
Huang Mei instinctively reached out to grab him, but her hand closed on empty air.
“He’s about to be summoned away by that Soul-Calling Technique! The talisman, the Soul-Fixing Talisman, I have...” Changgui answered in a panic, but when he reached for his pocket, it was empty. Frustrated, he slapped his thigh repeatedly. “It’s over, I forgot—I used up all my talismans...”
His eyes darted furtively to Su Man, regret gnawing at him. He’d stuck all the talismans on her before. “Ah! This... this... ah!”
Su Man said nothing. She rummaged in her backpack, then shoved a pile of talisman papers in front of Changgui. “Which one?”
Yet it was already too late. Before they could do anything, Lin Qi had fully vanished from where he stood.
“What on earth does the village chief intend?” Changgui slumped to the floor, a mix of helplessness and fury rising in his heart. The more he tried to understand the chief, the less sense he made. A sense of foreboding grew ever stronger within him; perhaps their village really was doomed.
“It’s too soon to give up. Worse may be yet to come—what are those villagers doing outside?” Things had already happened; Su Man had no time to indulge his lamentations. The villagers’ actions outside had caught her attention.
“What?” Changgui immediately shook off his gloom, scrambling to his feet in alarm. He’d forgotten about the villagers entirely.
At that moment, the villagers outside were busily at work with grave and focused expressions.
“A formation... a Soul-Locking Formation...” Amid the din from outside, Huang Mei managed to catch a few key words. The moment she spoke, Changgui’s face changed dramatically.
“The Soul-Locking Formation? This is bad! We have to leave—if we wait any longer, we’ll never get out!” He didn’t waste time explaining. He simply tried to push everyone toward the exit.
“It’s already too late.” Su Man, however, remained calm, folding her arms as she stood by the window, as if discussing someone else’s fate. “The formation is complete.”
Right before her eyes, slender beams of light began to emanate from the villagers, weaving together like the bars of a cage to trap their little house at the center.
“Have they lost their minds? What are they trying to do? Even if they wanted me dead...” Changgui fell silent for a moment, then suddenly erupted in anger. “What did I do to deserve this? Does the whole village want me dead? They’re even using the Soul-Locking Formation!”
Su Man shot him a sidelong glance. “If someone truly wishes you dead, do they need a reason? Any event, any excuse can be twisted into a reason to kill you.”
The blow hit Changgui hard. “But I grew up in this village...”
“Enough with the pointless sentiment,” Su Man interrupted coldly. “Family can turn on each other for all sorts of reasons—let alone strangers. There’s nothing to be shocked about. Now, tell me about this Soul-Locking Formation.”
Changgui let out a sigh, forcing himself to pull together.
In truth, the Soul-Locking Formation wasn’t as domineering as its name suggested. At its core, it was a trapping formation. But one mustn’t underestimate it simply because it was only a trap. Its true malice lay in the fact that there was no way to break it from within; it could only be dismantled from outside, step by step, formation by formation.
But now, all of them were trapped inside. In other words, they were caught in a deadlock: they could only wait inside for death or hope the villagers outside would negotiate and let them go.
From the look of things, however, the villagers had no intention of bargaining. Changgui hadn’t the faintest idea what they hoped to achieve by trapping them inside.