It was the first kiss for both of them—neither had any experience to speak of.
Yu Huaiting especially, in his excitement, was clumsy and rash, plundering Fu Songcheng’s breath with no technique at all.
Fu Songcheng was kissed until it hurt a little. He couldn’t help frowning and biting down on Yu Huaiting’s lower lip. Instead of making Yu Huaiting retreat, it only made him kiss deeper, more fiercely.
In the silent bridal chamber, only their gradually thickening breathing and the faint rustle of fabric remained.
Who knew how long passed—until both felt the air in their lungs about to be wrung dry—before Fu Songcheng pushed hard on Yu Huaiting’s shoulder.
Yu Huaiting released him reluctantly, and the two finally parted.
The moment they separated, an indescribable restlessness filled the air.
Fu Songcheng panted slightly. His usually cool eyes were now veiled in a layer of moisture, his lips ravaged and slightly swollen.
He turned his face away, trying to calm his racing heart.
During the time he’d waited for Yu Huaiting to come in, he’d actually made a long list of questions in his head.
He’d been covered by the red veil the whole way, his vision severely limited, missing many key clues. He urgently needed to share information with Yu Huaiting and analyze the instance.
But at this moment, oxygen deprivation plus the lingering burning sensation on his lips left Fu Songcheng’s mind blank.
What was it he’d wanted to ask?
The wedding procession’s disturbance?
The paper money?
He discovered with some irritation that he actually couldn’t remember. He turned his head and shot Yu Huaiting a fierce glare, laced with annoyance and resentment.
But in truth, what annoyed him more was his own loss of composure—he’d become unlike himself.
That glare, landing in Yu Huaiting’s eyes, carried no deterrent at all. Instead, because of the reddened corners of Fu Songcheng’s eyes at this moment, it looked like a coquettish complaint.
Yu Huaiting’s heart beat faster. He unconsciously leaned in again. “I want more.”
“Wait.”
Fu Songcheng took a deep breath, forcing his gaze away from Yu Huaiting’s hormone-laden face, and quickly swept his eyes around this eerie, cramped bridal chamber.
Red candles, the double-happiness character, the cross-cup wine.
His gaze fixed on the two cups on the table, and Fu Songcheng regained his reason.
He suppressed the surging heat in his heart and body, rose, walked to the table, picked up the two cross-cup wine glasses, and turned to hand one to Yu Huaiting.
“Let’s handle business first.” Fu Songcheng didn’t look directly at Yu Huaiting. “Drink the cross-cup wine. That’s the task the matchmaker assigned.”
Though Yu Huaiting still wanted more, he obediently took the cup.
The two linked arms, their gazes meeting again.
As they drank the slightly bitter liquid, Fu Songcheng said quickly in a low voice, “Before the matchmaker left, she said something—that we probably can’t leave this room tonight.”
Hearing this, Yu Huaiting nodded expressionlessly on the surface, but inside he was blooming with joy.
Can’t leave?
Didn’t that mean that for the whole night, the only two people in this room would be him and Fu Songcheng?
How convenient!
After drinking the cross-cup wine, Fu Songcheng set the cup back on the table, fully clear-headed.
“When you were fetching the bride, what exactly happened outside?”
Fu Songcheng asked.
Yu Huaiting briefly recounted to Fu Songcheng the encounter with that eerie player holding the portrait, and the red-white collision of auspicious and funereal.
Fu Songcheng nodded—he roughly knew some of it, after all, the paper money had drifted onto him.
With a flip of his wrist, he took out that eerie paper money from his system space.
“Look at this.” Fu Songcheng handed the paper money to Yu Huaiting. “While I was in the sedan, it drifted in on its own. Do you know what this is?”
Yu Huaiting took the paper money and examined it in his hand, then shook his head. “I don’t know much about this kind of sinister stuff either.”
To see it more clearly, Yu Huaiting unconsciously leaned closer to the paper money.
The instant his breath sprayed onto the paper money, something strange happened!
The originally cold, dry paper money—without touching any source of fire—burst into flame on its own!
An eerie green flame whooshed up, burning out before Yu Huaiting’s eyes in an instant, turning into a small pinch of black-gray ash that drifted into the air.
“Fuck!”
Yu Huaiting yelped, jerking back a step, flinging his hand up to block the drifting ash.
At the same time, an extremely intense dizziness struck Yu Huaiting’s brain without warning.
He felt as if his soul had been violently wrenched by some powerful force. The scene before his eyes began to double, and a sharp ringing filled his ears.
Yu Huaiting dazedly shook his head, his body staggering uncontrollably.
And Fu Songcheng, standing less than half a meter away, also went rigid.
[Damage Synchronization].
The mental damage Yu Huaiting was experiencing right now was naturally split evenly onto Fu Songcheng as well.
Fu Songcheng was taken aback. Enduring the dizziness, he reached out to steady Yu Huaiting.
However, the moment he extended his hand, he discovered in horror that the world before him had changed.
The originally dim bridal chamber began to tilt and twist violently, like a lump of dough being kneaded.
The tables, chairs, and stools dissolved into nothingness amid the distortion. The huge “Double Happiness” character pasted on the wall twisted into a hideous ghost face.
Then—puff, puff, puff—a few soft sounds.
The red candles in the room all extinguished at the same time.
Bone-piercing darkness instantly swallowed them.
The dizziness reached its peak. When Fu Songcheng’s vision focused again, he found that he and Yu Huaiting were no longer in the spacious bridal chamber.
The space had become narrow, cramped.
A thick smell of wood and a stale, decaying earthy stench filled his nostrils.
On all sides were cold, hard wooden boards, wrapping them tightly in the middle.
It was a coffin!
He and Yu Huaiting were both trapped inside this narrow coffin.
The most terrifying part was this: he didn’t know why the sudden change had happened, nor how to respond.
This was the endless terror brought by the unknown.
Inside the narrow coffin, the two were pressed almost tightly together. Yu Huaiting’s arm groped around wildly until it found Fu Songcheng’s cheek, and only then did he let out a long breath.
He immediately shielded Fu Songcheng tightly in his arms, his other hand trying to push against the coffin lid above.
Fu Songcheng pushed together with him, but they couldn’t open it.
Yu Huaiting tried to summon his greatsword—the space was too small, he couldn’t take it out.
“What do we do? Just get buried alive like this, without even knowing why?”
Yu Huaiting gritted his teeth. He’d encountered situations where his movement was restricted before. He had blast bombs in his system backpack, but both of them would get hurt.
He was hesitating over whether to use them—afraid of hurting Fu Songcheng, yet truly unable to think of another solution.
Fu Songcheng patted Yu Huaiting reassuringly, his brain racing.
“We couldn’t have been instantly transported underground. That feeling of weightlessness and distortion just now was more like falling into some kind of illusion.”
“The change happened after you leaned close to that paper money. The paper money burned, we felt dizzy, and then we ended up here.”
Fu Songcheng analyzed calmly. “Paper money is burned for the dead. And the dead’s final resting place is a coffin.”
Yu Huaiting listened, half-understanding. “You mean, we ‘died,’ so they put us in here?”
“More or less.”
Fu Songcheng felt the air in the coffin growing thinner, his breathing starting to become difficult. “We have to break the judgment that ‘we’re already dead.’”
Neither of them understood feng shui or the I Ching, didn’t know how to break the formation, and understood nothing of yin-yang or the eight trigrams.
In a ghost-and-god instance, using physical attacks to fight an empty illusion was undoubtedly futile.
“Fu Songcheng, I’m running out of breath.”
Yu Huaiting’s breathing gradually grew heavy.
“I have a method. It might hurt, but I can protect you…”
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