Yu Huaiting stood like a statue frozen by a spell, staring blankly at Fu Songcheng in the sedan chair.
Fu Songcheng now wore an ornate phoenix crown on his head, golden tassels hanging down on either side of his face, making his already fair skin look even more like frost and snow.
He still held half of the lifted red veil between his fingers, the wariness in his eyes just having faded into a trace of helplessness and relief as he quietly looked at Yu Huaiting.
Yu Huaiting felt a boom in his head, as if ten thousand fireworks had exploded at once.
His gaze slid from Fu Songcheng’s eyes down to his lips, slightly parted in surprise, then to that slender neck wrapped in the red collar.
A strange, extremely intense heat surged up from his chest in an instant, rushing straight to the top of his head.
Visibly, Yu Huaiting’s face, starting from the base of his ears, rapidly spread crimson.
Swish—
A hurried sound of fabric rubbing together.
Yu Huaiting, as if burned on the hand, suddenly released the door curtain.
The heavy red curtain fell instantly, separating the two into two worlds once more.
The sedan’s interior sank into dimness again.
Fu Songcheng held the red veil, stunned for a full three seconds before processing what had just happened.
The corner of Fu Songcheng’s mouth couldn’t help but curve into a smile.
What was this? Shy to this extent already?
Meanwhile, Yu Huaiting, standing outside the sedan, was in a state that could only be described as chaotic panic.
He had his back to the sedan door, both hands clenched dead into fists, his chest heaving violently.
He could clearly hear the drum-like pounding of his own heart, thump-thump, thump-thump, so fast it seemed about to leap out of his throat.
When he’d first entered the instance and found himself in a groom’s outfit, surrounded by NPCs shouting “congratulations” at him, he’d nearly lost the urge to yank out his sword and hack them all to pieces.
Good thing he’d held back.
Good thing he’d listened to Fu Songcheng and hadn’t gone on a killing spree the moment he entered.
What kind of crisis-ridden faction confrontation instance was this?
This was a fairy realm! A heaven!
Yu Huaiting recalled the scene the instant the curtain lifted.
Fu Songcheng in red.
It was a look he’d never seen before.
Not the tactical suit he was used to, not the standoffish coldness—Fu Songcheng had a kind of stunning beauty wrapped in vivid color, the kind that made anyone who saw it want to possess him.
Too beautiful.
If he hadn’t reacted quickly and dropped the curtain just now, the NPCs nearby might have poked their heads in to look.
At that thought, Yu Huaiting’s eyes turned cold in an instant. He whipped his head around and shot a cold glare at the matchmaker beside him, who was just about to step forward to speak.
The matchmaker was startled by that look and still braced herself to say, “Sir, you mustn’t lift the sedan curtain ahead of time. Go back quickly, don’t break the rules.”
“Cough…”
A very faint cough came from inside the sedan.
Hearing Fu Songcheng’s voice, the killing intent radiating from Yu Huaiting was instantly, cleanly reined in. He turned around, pressed close to the sedan door, and tried hard to make his voice sound steady.
Yu Huaiting’s voice came through the heavy curtain. “Put the veil back on properly. Don’t let anyone see.”
Fu Songcheng in the sedan twitched the corner of his mouth and obediently pulled the red veil back over his face, blocking his vision.
The matchmaker outside the sedan put on a fawning smile, but that smile only stretched wider, taking on a hint of eerie, threatening color. “Groom, on such a fine day, don’t miss the auspicious hour.”
Yu Huaiting took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the restlessness in his chest.
Then, gripping the reins, he nimbly swung himself onto the horse.
Astride the tall horse, Yu Huaiting looked down from above at this vast wedding procession. The gongs and drums rose again, deafening, red paper scraps fluttering through the air.
Yu Huaiting sat on horseback, swaying slightly with the horse’s gait, and couldn’t stop his mouth from curving wildly upward.
Fu Songcheng was in his bridal sedan, wearing the wedding dress—and no matter the destination, Yu Huaiting felt thoroughly, utterly elated right now.
He even began replaying that scene in his mind—Fu Songcheng’s slightly astonished eyes, that neck made even fairer by the red…
However, Yu Huaiting’s happiness didn’t last long.
The procession advanced about half a street’s distance when the noise up ahead suddenly cut off, as if severed cleanly by a knife.
The suona player at the very front seemed to have his throat throttled by something, letting out an extremely piercing, distorted off-key note before going completely silent.
Immediately after, panicked footsteps came from the very front of the procession.
Several NPC servants who had been clearing the way came scrambling back, not even bothering to pick up the red hats that had fallen from their heads, merely gesturing frantically ahead with flustered faces.
The smile that hadn’t yet fully faded from Yu Huaiting’s face froze in an instant, then visibly sank cold.
He yanked hard on the reins; the steed beneath him let out an uneasy neigh, its front hooves pawing irritably at the bluestone street.
The surrounding NPCs, previously so joyful, now seemed frozen on pause, the smiles stiff on their faces.
The deafening festive music stopped completely; the whole street fell into dead silence.
“What’s going on?”
Yu Huaiting’s brows knitted tightly, his gaze turning sharp as a blade in an instant. He turned his head, about to demand an explanation from the matchmaker beside him.
But before he could speak, at the end of his vision, at the street corner, a procession slowly emerged.
It was a funeral procession.
In stark contrast to their own dazzling crimson, the opposite side was a desolate, deathly pure white.
A heavy black coffin was borne on the shoulders of eight expressionless burly men, the wood grinding with a tooth-aching creak.
Walking at the very front was a man in coarse pure-white mourning clothes.
The man clutched a black-and-white portrait photo tightly in his arms.
The face in the photo was young and handsome, seemingly a gentle, cheerful youth.
And the man holding the portrait had a sickly pallor that hadn’t seen sunlight for ages, his expression showing not a shred of grief or pain.
The instant the two processions met head-on, the man’s gaze locked with utter precision onto Yu Huaiting on horseback.
What a coincidence—so had Yu Huaiting’s.
Yu Huaiting, who’d been through countless high-difficulty instances, knew almost the instant he met those eyes that this was also a player.
So the opposing factions were a red-white collision of auspicious and funereal?
Great joy’s red, colliding with great sorrow’s white.
The moment that thought flashed through Yu Huaiting’s mind, the street’s atmosphere plummeted to freezing point.
The extreme yang of wedding joy and the extreme yin of funeral resentment collided with a roar in the narrow street. In the air, one could almost hear the violent friction of the two airs biting and twisting at each other.
In midair, the red diamond-shaped paper flowers tossed to celebrate the wedding hadn’t fully landed before the white circular paper money thrown by the funeral procession opposite came drifting over on the wind.
Yu Huaiting sat on horseback, spine straight, eyes proud and disdainful, looking down at the man holding the portrait without flinching.
Meanwhile, inside the red-topped bridal sedan in the middle of the procession.
Fu Songcheng sensed the sedan’s sudden stop.
Inertia tipped him slightly forward; the clamor and music outside had vanished without a trace in an instant.
This was absolutely abnormal.
Fu Songcheng slowed his breathing. He had to figure out what was happening outside—given Yu Huaiting’s impulsive nature, he might recklessly act without knowing the situation.
He leaned forward slightly, extending his left hand, wanting to lift the red gauze window on the side of the sedan.
However, just as Fu Songcheng’s fingertip was about to touch the sedan curtain—
Smack.
A hand pressed down on the window’s frame from outside without warning, pinning the red gauze window cloth dead.
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