Top Horror Novelist

Note: Jingcha’s name will be changed into Jing Cha. Apparently, Jing is his family name, when I thought it was part of his given name. I should’ve known tbh what not with Li Li and Tong Yao as examples. But their given name still sounded okay compared to “Cha” with tea as the meaning too…

Chi Yiyin had a strange dream that felt incomparably real.

The Ma family mansion was decorated with lanterns and festivities everywhere, red silk covered the entirety of the white walls, and the Chinese character “囍” was hung high everywhere.

The servants wore red clothes and walked through the courtyard, holding trays in their hands and wooden boxes on their heads. The sound of suona and flute echoed with no end, and the guests seated were beaming with joy.

The red dragon and phoenix candles lit in the main hall, its wax oil piled up on the gold candlesticks, and the incense burner was brimming with light smoke.

Everywhere you looked, there was nothing but extravagance and wealth. The firecrackers outside and the sound of talking and laughing spread into the bright room, making Chi Yiyin vaguely float up from the water in the depth of his consciousness.

He slender eyelashes trembled slowly, he didn’t immediately realize where he was. The noisy voice in his ears gave him a splitting headache, cold air came from the side of his arms so much that he almost lost consciousness.

Chi Yiyin lowered his head subconsciously, and found someone holding his arms.

—No, not his arms.

He was wearing a bright red wedding dress, which was embellished with luxuriously beautiful pearls and emeralds. The red color was shocking, and in front of his eyes was a bright red that was like blood, just like a red veil.

Servant girls’ dressed arms supported him on the left and right, and he could feel something hard behind him, as if a wooden stick was tied behind him.

What’s the matter, a wedding dress?

Chi Yiyin’s first guess was that the female ghost in wedding dress he saw before was playing tricks, but he soon discovered that he had lost all control of his limbs except his eyes. And judging from the palms that were vaguely protruding from his sleeves, these hands were white and slender, but they were not calloused hands that had been grinding with pens all year round.

This is a pair of woman’s hands.

But his soul seemed to be encapsulated in this woman’s body, and the restriction of his movements also greatly reduced his observation of his surroundings, making it impossible for him to immediately confirm the current situation and the identity of the woman.

There were many guests standing in the hall, and continuous laughter filled the place.

Chi Yiyin looked vaguely through the gap of the red veil that was sewn with pearls and emeralds. The surrounding guests had no eyes and noses, and only grinning mouths placed on their faces.

They were wearing old-fashioned mandarin jackets and long gowns, adorned with braids. All of them were looking at Chi Yiyin with pale faces.

They clapped their hands and kept nodding, as if this was an enviable marriage.

Chi Yiyin soon discovered that he couldn’t walk by himself at all, but the two servant girls on the left and right were holding his arms, almost dragging him towards the high hall.

At this time, he finally saw clearly the figures sitting on the main seat.

——Surprisingly, it was Master Ma and the aunt!

Madam Ma had disappeared, the aunt was overjoyed, and Master Ma was laughing heatedly under the flattery of all the guests.

Chi Yiyin was startled for a moment, and then completely understood that the owner of this body was Ma Yuze. And what he saw now… was what happened when Ma Yuze got married.

Xi Po, who had a red and chubby face, came over with great strength. She pressed Chi Yiyin’s head to bent down, making him bow to Master Ma and the aunt.

T/N: Xi Po = the woman who took care of the bride during wedding

Wanting to break free, but couldn’t. Couldn’t cry nor shout, despair and helplessness filled the heart.

The moment he bent down, Chi Yiyin looked at the exquisite embroidered shoes under the wedding dress, and felt as if he was submerged into the deep sea, falling continuously and unable to escape, and was almost suffocated with despair.

It felt that at this moment, he was Ma Yuze, who was forced by her parents and elders to marry someone whom she didn’t want to marry. He wanted to escape, but couldn’t break free from the shackles. His screams muffled in his throat.

Couldn’t break free and speak, all one could do was watch all these tragedies happening.

But when the scenary changed, the red wedding dress and embroidered shoes in front of him disappeared, and the richly decorated mansion with bright candles disappeared, replaced by a desolate and dilapidated mansion.

And Chi Yiyin also regained control over his body.

However, it was not Ma Yuze’s body in the wedding gown, but his own original body.

He froze for a moment, and immediately looked down at himself, still wearing the familiar three-piece suit. No, the swift bird brooch disappeared… this was not him, this is a dream, or something the ghost wanted him to see.

The biggest change was the overgrown land under his feet.

Yellow and black dead bones scattered among the weeds, furniture and items were dumped in the courtyard and the hall, red candles overturned, the silk and satin had rot, and the exquisite food thrown to the ground and rot into a puddle of stinky water.

It was still the mansion in Hui style, but the lively scene just now was gone, but Chi Yiyin’s memory was immediately aroused.

He remembered that this was the haunted mansion he was investigating by taking advantage of the night, Now he was walking along the route in his memory, doing what he had done before.

It was as if he was Ma Yuze just now, and in the blink of an eye became his past self again.

Horror and novelists often needed more intense stimulation than other writers. The deeper the fear to the soul, the closer to the danger of death, the more powerful the creativity would be.

In it, there were more intense emotions, which magnify all human emotions, so that Chi Yiyin could observe the formation of personality and further explore the power he had awakened to.

For this reason, Chi Yiyin had conducted in-depth investigations into many famous and evil places.

It was a pity that most of were just fabricated rumors, and no ghosts could be seen.

But this was not the case in the old house of the Ma family.

When Chi Yiyin first walked into this famous haunted mansion, he could clearly feel the temperature drop, and his brain instinctively issued a warning of danger.

Weeds and vines are intertwined in the deserted house, hiding in the darkness like a ghostly figure, silently watching the visitor took step by step into the dangerous place of death.

Chi Yiyin saw a familiar mirror.

The mirror had been smashed, and the surface of the mirror was covered with crisscrossing cracks, which were divided into hundreds of pieces. After repeated reflections, the light and shadow became strange and permeating, and the old blown cloth on the beams of the house looked like floating ghosts.

His last memory before entering the game field stayed here.

He only remembered that he saw the female ghost’s cold gaze in the mirror, and when he recalled it, he had a splitting headache. There was a force preventing him from knowing what happened next.

And now, Chi Yiyin also discovered that this mirror was facing the door in the instance’s boudoir.

It was there that he had an intersection with the female ghost.

Did reality and instance overlap?

Chi Yiyin frowned, and in the broken mirror, thousands of “him” also frowned back, but they were all fierce like evil ghosts.

But one of the fragments was not Chi Yiyin’s appearance, but a touch of red.

He immediately looked at the broken mirror.

“Wait, Ma Yuze!”

This time, Chi Yiyin made a decision different from what he remembered. He called out the female ghost’s real name and wanted her to stay.

That touch of red actually stopped in place.

Chi Yiyin breathed a sigh of relief, and said to the mirror with a sincere look: “When I guessed the truth about you wrong, you wanted to kill me. I really don’t know many things, but Miss Ma, I really want to help you.”

“Tell me the truth that I don’t know, and tell me your unwillingness and anger.”

Chi Yiyin paused, and softly said: “I want to take you out of here. The Ma family is a prison for you. You have killed so many of your enemies, so there is no need to stay here any longer. This ground is a prison.”

The appearance of the female ghost gradually appeared in the mirror.

This was also the first time Chi Yiyin saw Ma Yuze clearly.

In the mansion, the female ghost did not want him to see her face, but in this false dream, the rules became invalid.

The female ghost’s beautiful face was pale and bloodless, there was no jewelry adorned in her hair, and she was not wearing a gorgeous wedding dress. Her black hair was winding down the red dress, and continued to spread to a distance after her feet, covering the entire ground, with no end in sight.

She stared at Chi Yiyin coldly, not hiding her murderous intent at all.

But Chi Yiyin didn’t show a trace of fear, and instead looked at her with a smile and waited patiently.

After a long time, the female ghost finally let go.

She looked at Chi Yiyin with complicated eyes, and instead of answering his question, she asked instead: “Why don’t you fulfill my father’s wish?”

Because fulfilling your father’s wish is not fair to you!

Chi Yiyin was just about to answer the female ghost, but a red color spread rapidly in his field of vision, covering the entire deserted old mansion like blood.

Before he could react, a feeling of dizziness, and then he realized that he was no longer in the haunted mansion.

Instead, he had returned to the wedding hall for the marriage. He was put back on the body of the bride, and bid farewell to Master Ma and the aunt amidst the cheers and laughter of the guests.

The Xi Po forced the new bride to salute, and instead of a servant girl, she lifted Chi Yiyin and turned around to go out.

The wedding sedan chair had already stopped at the gate of the mansion, and amidst someone was shouting and singing, the curtain of the wedding sedan chair was lifted.

“First, let’s welcome the beauty in gold and silver!”

“Second, let the God of Happiness tie their heart forever!”

“Third, invite the jade white horse, have a happy life in the high hall with endless families, children, and grandchildren—”

“The auspicious time has come. The bride, please get on the sedan chair!”

The present sedan bearers and guests repeated the lyrics one after another with a loud voice, the echoing sound of suona almost piercing the night sky.

….Wait! Night?!

Chi Yiyin was taken aback for a moment, and then realized where the initial sense of disobedience came from.

Gushu Town is located on the outskirts of Shanghai, and the custom in this area was to not get married at night! The bride is coming out now, but he saw that the western clock in the main hall was pointing to 11 o’clock.

Zi shi! The time of ghosts.

How can anyone marry off a bride at zi shi period?

But before Chi Yiyin could figure it out, Xi Po forced her into the wedding sedan chair.

Xi Po’s hands were very strong, she was not like the old woman usually used by wealthy families when they get married, but more like a long-term laborer.

With Chi Yiyin’s unmovable bride’s body now, he couldn’t resist at all and could  only watch the curtain of the wedding sedan chair approaching him bit by bit, the dim blood-red seemed like a ghost opening its bloody mouth about to swallow him up.

But just when Chi Yiyin saw what was inside the sedan chair, he was stunned.

…The newlywed bride was clearly sitting in the sedan chair.

The woman in the wedding dress sat quietly, as if she had completely lost consciousness of her surroundings, and the hustle and bustle of her wedding had nothing to do with her.

She sat quietly in a sea of blood-red, her red veil drooped, and when wind blew past, her lips were as red as if she had been drinking blood.

This was the wedding dress of the female ghost he had seen in Ma’s mansion before.

Or in other words… Ma Yuze, the eldest miss of the Ma family.

But it didn’t look like the female ghost he had just seen in the haunted mansion.

The moment Chi Yiyin recognized the woman’s identity, the statue-like and silent woman in wedding dress finally slowly raised her head and looked at him through the red veil.

She raised her hands crossed in front of her abdomen in an instant, pointing directly at Chi Yiyin, and her red sleeves fluttered in the air, as if she was fanning a butterfly.

Before Chi Yiyin could react, he felt that he was retreating rapidly. All the surrounding scenery were mixed with large patches of red, all of which became abstract fast-moving lines. The roaring wind covered all noises, and only the sound of suona pierced the night sky.

The feeling of weightlessness came, and Chi Yiyin’s consciousness drifted toward the sea. Even if he wanted to stay and find out. To ask the woman in wedding dress, he could only catch the wind when he stretched out his hand.

“!”

Chi Yiyin opened his eyes suddenly, his heart beating wildly.

He looked around quickly, and found himself in dead darkness, and the vague outlines of room and furniture made him realize that he was back in the boudoir.

The words he wanted to ask the bride in wedding dress was still stuck in his throat, but everything had disappeared into nothingness before his eyes.

He woke up.

A soft piano sound came intermittently from a distance, like the western music box that was once popular. The beautiful music became eerie and frightening in such a nightmarish night.

Chi Yiyin’s heartbeat gradually returned to calm, maybe it was the sound of music that woke him up, or maybe it was the female ghost driving him away…

He hooked his fingers subconsciously, but found something in his palm.

He looked down suspiciously, and his pupils constricted instantly.

What he held in his hand… turned out to be a paper ingot used to gift to the dead.