Chapter 58: The Bride Weeps (28)

But there was clearly someone over there.

“Right there—are you sure you didn’t see?” Su Man pointed again; that eerie woman had not left.

Yet Miao Sheng’s answer remained the same: “No.”

Still, he didn’t think Su Man was joking with him, so he said, “Can you describe her to me?”

Su Man took the sketchbook and flipped to the page of the vagrant woman. “It’s her.”

Miao Sheng shook his head again. “Never seen her. Maybe she died after me.”

He thought for a moment, conjured a spell out of thin air, but finally shook his head once more. “This spell lets me see things ordinary people can’t, but I still saw nothing.”

Su Man kept her eyes fixed on that woman, who merely smiled at her and then vanished after a while.

She wasn’t sure what that woman was, but a sudden thought struck her: devouring and shape-shifting. Could she be the one chosen by that woman?

But these things she could not share with Miao Sheng.

“Maybe she’s special.” That was all Su Man could say, then she added, “I’ll find some time to ask about it.”

She withdrew her gaze. “Earlier, you said you needed my help. What do you want me to do?”

She then explained the problem she’d encountered with Chang Gui. “If it’s not urgent, I may need to check on that situation first.”

“Chang Gui…” Miao Sheng clearly remembered his young nephew. “What I need your help with is actually connected to that.”

Then Miao Sheng recounted what he had discovered over the years, including his long-standing feud with the village chief. It all began with Shuyi. He had noticed early on that Shuyi bore all kinds of wicked spells and restraints for reasons unknown, but he knew if someone took advantage of those restrictions, disaster would follow. So he found ways to suppress them. When Shuyi jumped into the river on her wedding night, he hadn’t known the truth; he thought those evil spells killed her, so he really did follow her in death out of love.

It was only after his death that, one day, he suddenly lived again—and by accident discovered the village chief was using the very sorcery he’d seen on Shuyi. Following this lead, he found Shuyi’s body locked away in the ancestral temple, and realized the village chief had been using all manner of tricks to refine those dark arts.

The irony was that he, a villager himself, could not remain in that ancestral hall. Had he not been powerful and barged in by chance, he might never have learned the truth.

When Su Man broke in that time, he happened to be there. He was the one who killed her.

“But honestly, even if I hadn’t done it, you would have died,” Miao Sheng explained. “That room was full of curses and forbidden spells.”

Later, when Su Man recalled their first meeting, it was actually another chance encounter—he saw she was still alive and wanted to kill her again. Even if Shuyi was just an empty shell, he didn’t want her defiled.

But then he overheard her conversation with Da Yuan and realized she wasn’t a bad person, so he let her go.

“So you mean, right now you can’t actually defeat the village chief?” Su Man was surprised; could that simple-minded man really be so powerful?

“No,” Miao Sheng shook his head. “I want to resurrect Shuyi.”

But he couldn’t manage it. The chief’s sorcery, though, gave him hope, so he needed to keep the chief alive. That didn’t mean he let them off easy: the cursed object and the forbidden river were both his revenge schemes. He wanted everyone in this village to live in terror.

“And… the notorious wedding procession, that sedan chair…” Su Man suddenly remembered. “Are you the so-called Vile Heavenly Master they all talk about?”

“They probably mean me by that name, but I had nothing to do with the sedan chair.” Miao Sheng’s answer was surprising. “It was the chief.”

“Him?” It wasn’t impossible, but…

“I heard someone say you ordered them to steal the golden hairpin, and I saw the hairpin in the sedan.”

Miao Sheng didn’t deny it. “I did tell them to steal the hairpin, but it never reached me.”

He’d known the moment Zhao Ming and the others got the hairpin. But he sensed the chief’s sorcery clinging to them, so, to avoid alerting the chief, he didn’t take it.

“Then what was his aim?” Su Man didn’t believe the chief would go to such lengths just to kill a few people.

“He wants the Resurrection Ritual.”

“The Resurrection Ritual?”

“It brings the dead back to life.” Miao Sheng’s expression was deadly serious. “He wants to resurrect the Heavenly Master from fifty years ago, and the ritual requires a massive infusion of blood.”

With that, Su Man understood: all those deaths were just fodder.

“So your plan to revive Shuyi is to use this ritual?” She wasn’t stupid, and Miao Sheng didn’t bother to hide it. He admitted it outright—this was his plan, and he’d been preparing. Many of the chief’s array anchors had quietly been swapped out by him, like that bride, Xiao Huan.

Over the years, many of his acts of vengeance had inadvertently shielded the chief—under the guise of revenge, he’d done plenty of evil himself.

“Have you ever wondered if the revived Shuyi would really be Shuyi?” Su Man asked. She didn’t know the Resurrection Ritual, but she knew the Spirit Summoning Art. Xiao Liang once told her that what you summon might not be what you expect—the more complex the magic, the more unpredictable the outcome.

“She will be. No matter what she becomes, she will always be my Shuyi.” Miao Sheng’s reply was unwavering. “If my Shuyi can walk and move, that’s enough for me.”

“You’re deceiving yourself,” Su Man said bluntly.

A moving, walking being would not necessarily be Shuyi; it might just as well be a monster.

“But I just want to see my Shuyi again. A Shuyi who lives and moves—I owe her too much. My village killed her. No matter the outcome, I have to witness her return.”

There was a touch of madness in him. He could have had a beautiful life—a world with just him and Shuyi. He had planned to move away with her after the wedding, but she died.

All he wanted was to see her again, to stay by her side forever. He had spent nearly twenty years preparing for this, clinging to life for her resurrection, letting his enemies roam free.

It would be cruel for Su Man to shatter his fantasy.

Luckily, Su Man didn’t pursue the topic. She simply asked, “So what exactly do you want me to help with? Has the village chief nearly completed the Resurrection Ritual?”

Miao Sheng nodded. “Yes, it’s almost finished. I’ve finally waited for this moment.”

“The final array anchor is inside the house where Chang Gui lives. Chang Gui and the others are the last ones whose blood will be fed to the ritual. But they can’t die yet—the key figure for the array is still in the chief’s hands.”