Chapter Ninety: Taking a Bride

Autumn night.

In the direction from Greenfish Town to the county seat of Peace County.

At the mouth of the road stood a stone stele, carved with four huge characters warning travelers that the road ahead was closed, a notice meant to keep the unwary from straying this way.

Far from the stele, on a rise by the roadside, there stood a makeshift thatched hut.

Two men sat outside it, chatting idly. From their perch they could see the stone marker at the road entrance far below.

They were members of the patrol from Fishhead Town, posted here to guard the crossing.

What they were guarding against, of course, were the spirits and monsters that might come from that direction.

Beside them crouched two black dogs.

It was said that black dogs were tainted with yin and the uncanny, and could see things hidden from ordinary eyes.

In truth, Greenfish Town was still separated from the county seat by three other towns and several broad stretches of barren hills and wild country.

This place and Fishhead Town were both remote to begin with, so far out that they nearly lay beyond Peace County’s jurisdiction, only assigned to it because they belonged to no one else.

Even so, Fang Yue remained uneasy. In the county seat of Peace County, and in every township nearby except Fishhead Town and Greenfish Town, far too many people had died.

Greenfish Town itself had lost more than half its inhabitants.

With so many dead, the resentment in the land was sky-high, and what might gestate within it was impossible to imagine.

Although Fishhead Town was far away, even the neighboring counties of Peace County had some townships whose straight-line distance to the county seat was shorter than the distance between Fishhead Town and Peace County’s center.

But since they were still nearby, there was always the possibility of being troubled by ghosts and monsters.

Fang Yue had patrolmen stationed here precisely as a precaution, as an early warning.

If a great number of uncontrollable creatures truly surged this way, then they would abandon Fishhead Town’s foundations and let everyone in town flee to other prefectures and counties.

The imperial court had the power to suppress ghosts and monsters. One Peace County was already enough; Fang Yue did not believe the court would stand by and let the other prefectures and counties be overrun as well, collapsing into ruin beside it.

Chen Damin yawned, shrank his shoulders, and pulled his coat tighter around him.

He was a bachelor, too poor at home to have found a wife even at his age.

Because of that, he had been able to win this post.

Though dangerous, the patrol’s pay was high.

Guarding this road entrance paid five times what an ordinary patrolman earned each month.

By Chen Damin’s reckoning, if he worked a year, he would have enough to build a house and take a wife.

Several patrolmen had competed for the two positions, and in the end he, an unmarried man with no burdens, and the perpetually worried-looking Wang Quanyou beside him were the ones chosen.

Wang Quanyou had many children. For one laboring man to feed so many mouths was no easy thing.

Originally Wang Quanyou had not met the selection requirements, because Fang Yue had specifically ordered that the task was dangerous and that it was best to choose those with few ties.

Wang Quanyou had too many children and too many burdens, but he had some distant relation to the current patrol captain in town.

Seeing that the man was truly on the verge of being unable to keep his family alive, the captain gave him a slot, letting him have a chance at the fivefold pay. After all, having few entanglements was not a hard rule.

After chatting with Wang Quanyou for a while, Chen Damin grew sleepy, so he greeted Wang Quanyou and went into the thatched hut to sleep.

They had divided the watch between them: Wang Quanyou would stand the first half of the night, and Chen Damin the second.

In autumn it was easy to grow drowsy.

Once Chen Damin fell asleep, he slept hard.

In his dream, however, he was roused by the sharp, blaring sound of horns and suonas.

"Who is it, making such a racket in the middle of the night?" Chen Damin muttered, turning over without getting up. In his dream, he was building a house and marrying a wife. How could he bear to wake from such a beautiful dream?

But the horns and suonas grew louder and louder, nearer and nearer, until it seemed they were sounding right beside his ear.

Chen Damin could not sleep any longer. He opened his eyes in a daze and saw a wedding procession in bright red festive robes, carrying a red bridal sedan chair and making music as it came toward him from the road entrance.

"Who gets married in the middle of the night? Making such a commotion that no one can sleep," he grumbled indignantly. Poor bachelor that he was, even sleeping at night was not spared from the noise of someone else’s wedding.

Standing on the rise, Chen Damin looked down at the wedding procession and wanted to see just what kind of marriage they were holding at this hour.

Before long, the procession reached the base of the rise.

"Is there a fellow countryman above? Today is the joyous day of my daughter’s wedding. Since we have met, it must be fate. Why not come over and drink a cup of wedding wine?"

An old man in the procession, his face indistinct, called up to Chen Damin.

At the mention of wedding wine, Chen Damin’s gluttony was stirred.

He swallowed and said, "Old sir, if I come drink the wedding wine, must I bring a gift? As you can see, I have nothing on me."

"No need, no need. What gift would be necessary? We are all fellow countrymen. Just come."

The old man below waved to him.

Chen Damin could not restrain himself any longer, so he ran down and mingled with the procession.

The group continued on, still playing music and beating drums.

Chen Damin felt muddle-headed and did not know how far he had walked before they arrived at a compound hung with lanterns and festooned with ribbons.

Several banquet tables had been set in the courtyard, with a sparse scattering of guests seated there; most likely the rest had not yet arrived.

Chen Damin wanted to find a seat and wait for the wedding feast.

But someone gave him a shove.

Turning back, he saw two beautiful maids holding a bridegroom’s festive robe.

"Son-in-law, the auspicious hour is near. Where are you going? Hurry and change into the wedding clothes. The young lady is waiting inside."

The two maids looked exactly alike, and their movements and expressions were exactly the same, like two identical paper figures cut from the same sheet.

"Wait—I'm here to drink wedding wine. How did I become the son-in-law?"

Chen Damin felt utterly baffled, but the two maids were already helping him into the bridegroom’s robe they carried.

Once he had put on the wedding garments, the faint doubts in Chen Damin’s mind vanished.

In their place came overwhelming delight, especially when he saw the bride being supported out of the house by the maids.

Though her face was hidden beneath a red veil and could not be seen, the bride’s figure was graceful and slender, and the hands visible beneath the sleeves were pale and delicate as jade. Her looks, one imagined, could not be poor either.

"Well now, I never expected I’d be getting married today too," Chen Damin thought.

Outside, firecrackers crackled and popped.

"The first bow: to heaven and earth."

In a haze, Chen Damin followed the bride and bowed.

...

A burst of urgent barking jolted Wang Quanyou awake from his drowsiness.

"Bad! I nearly slept through it. Why has the fire on the ground gone out?"

Wang Quanyou was instantly alert and looked around warily.

The two dogs were barking wildly into the thatched hut.

Wang Quanyou’s heart tightened. He called toward the interior, "Damin! Damin!"

No reply.

Too frightened to go in and look, Wang Quanyou tremblingly took out his fire striker and tried to relight the ground fire.

The two black dogs kept barking, their voices frantic and uneasy.

After a great deal of effort, Wang Quanyou finally managed to get the fire going again with dry thatch.

By then, the two black dogs had turned around and were no longer barking toward the hut, but at the road below the rise.

It was only after a long while that they finally fell silent.

Wang Quanyou did not know whether whatever filth had come had already left, so he crouched beside the fire, too afraid to move.

Only when daylight had fully broken outside did Wang Quanyou rise tremblingly and go into the thatched hut to see what had happened.

Inside, on the wooden bed, Chen Damin looked to be sleeping soundly, his face wearing an unmistakable expression of joy, as though he were caught in a beautiful dream.

Only his complexion was pale as paper, without the slightest trace of color.

Wang Quanyou stepped forward and felt for a pulse at his chest, only to discover that it had long since gone cold.