A guttural roar from Patriarch Gong Mo echoed through the Phantom Banquet hall, rattling the spectral candelabras. The paper figures, their painted eyes vacant, moved with renewed, jerky intent, fanning out towards each trembling groom.
Xie Wanjin, slumped beside Zhiqiu, let out a choked sound, a desperate whimper lost beneath the dirge. His pupils dilated against the red silk shrouding his designated bride, a skeletal figure whose chilling aura congealed the surrounding air into frost. He tried to straighten, but a violent shudder seized his wrists, setting the silk of his ceremonial sleeves rattling.
“The rules… they’re changing them to kill us faster,” he rasped, his voice thin with dread. “First, the eye contact. Now, this! How are we supposed to keep our hands steady when… when *that* is staring back at us?” He gestured vaguely at the terrifying array of brides. “It’s impossible!”
Zhiqiu merely smiled, a slight, almost imperceptible curve of his lips. His gaze remained locked on Bai Muyan, whose own red veil shimmered with an unsettling internal light. The freezing aura radiating from her intensified, prickling Zhiqiu’s skin, not with fear, but with a strange, exhilarating cold. To him, this wasn't an impossible trial, but a grand, tragic climax, the moment the hero finally unmasks his fated love. The stage was set, the audience (even if it was a ghostly, murderous one) awaited.
He watched the paper figures approach, their rustling movements like dry leaves skittering across a tombstone. They stopped before each groom, their elongated paper hands pointing expectantly at the veils. A new set of blood-red characters materialized above the bridegroom’s heads, stark against the shadowy ceiling:
[ **Veil Lifting Protocol: The groom must lift the bride’s wedding veil.** ]
[ **Mandatory Condition: Hands must remain perfectly steady. The slightest tremor will result in immediate dismemberment.** ]
[ **Failure to comply: Soul-Shredding by Dirge-Weaver System.** ]
A low moan rippled through the other grooms. Some already had their arms outstretched, only for their palms to snap into involuntary fists against the freezing emanations from their spectral partners. Before those shaking palms could even touch the fabric, the funeral bells tolled once, a bronze clang that set teeth humming in bone. One groom, whose knuckles had twitched uncontrollably inches from his bride’s veil, let out a choked gasp as invisible talons sheared him apart, limb from limb, dissolving his flesh into dark mist.
Xie Wanjin flinched so violently his chair scraped the floor. “Dear gods…” he whispered, pressing himself back against the wall, utterly convinced of his impending doom. His own bride's veil seemed to pulse, her frozen glare visible even through the silk, demanding action, promising death.
Zhiqiu, however, moved with a grace that belied the oppressive atmosphere. He rose from his seat, not with the hurried, desperate movements of a man facing death, but with the measured poise of an actor stepping into the spotlight. His blood-red robes flowed around him, a vibrant splash of color against the funereal décor. His eyes, dark and unwavering, never left Bai Muyan’s veiled form.
He stopped directly before her, close enough to feel the true, bone-deep chill radiating from her. Other grooms had recoiled, their faces contorted in revulsion. Zhiqiu merely breathed in the icy scent of her, a faint aroma of ancient dust and wilting night-blooming jasmine. His right hand, steady as carved jade, reached out without the slightest hesitation or quiver.
His skin, warm despite the pervasive cold, brushed against the hem of scarlet silk. He didn’t snatch it away, didn’t flick it up in a desperate haste to fulfill the rule. Instead, he took hold of the delicate fabric with exquisite slowness, his movements deliberate, almost agonizingly prolonged. Each millimeter of ascent was a calculated beat, a dramatic pause in a meticulously choreographed performance.
The veil lifted, inch by agonizing inch, revealing first her chin, then the curve of her jaw, the faint, chilling blue veins beneath translucent skin. The cold intensified, a silent draft biting through silk, yet Zhiqiu remained motionless. He drew the pad of his thumb along the line of her cheekbone, tracing skin as slick and dense as polished jade.
His voice, a low, resonant murmur, filled the silence that had fallen across their immediate vicinity. It was a voice honed by years of projecting emotion to the back rows of a grand theatre, yet now it was intimate, meant for her ears alone. “My heart, I have waited a lifetime for this night.”
The last fold of scarlet silk drifted upward, exposing Bai Muyan’s full face. For an instant, her visage matched the folktales: a desiccated beauty, sockets hollowed, lips the shade of bruised plums, skin mottled like frost-bitten plaster. But as Zhiqiu's words settled, as his palm rested against her cheek, a transformation rippled through her. The decay softened, receded, like a nightmare fading at dawn. Her skin smoothed, regaining the pearlescent glow of health, her lips bloomed to a soft, inviting crimson. Her eyes, carrying centuries of stagnant grief, parted in surprise as color surfaced along her cheekbones, staining the deathly pale with faint vermilion.
She was stunning, pristine, and utterly flustered.
[ **Dirge-Weaver System Error: Kill-Command (Groom: Jian Zhiqiu) Overridden.** ]
[ **Reason: Instance Boss (Bai Muyan) Active Shielding.** ]
A sharp, metallic clang like a broken bell reverberated. Xie Wanjin, watching from the corner, saw a ripple of black calligraphy surge towards Zhiqiu, a lethal stroke of the instance's will. Before the strokes struck home, a torrent of pure, shimmering white silk erupted from Bai Muyan’s form, intercepting the attack. The black script shattered against the pristine barrier, dissolving into harmless motes of light.
Patriarch Gong Mo let out a roar of pure, unadulterated rage, a sound that threatened to tear the fabric of reality. “Bai Muyan! What is the meaning of this insubordination?!”
Bai Muyan, her face now a picture of ethereal beauty, her eyes still holding that faint, lingering blush, did not answer her father. Instead, her gaze, now free of the veil, met Zhiqiu’s with an intensity that promised both danger and an intoxicating, forbidden thrill. She raised an arm, her slender hand, no longer icy, reaching slowly toward his face. Her touch, when it came, was as soft as a falling snowflake, brushing the corner of his eye, then tracing the curve of his brow. Her thumb lingered for a moment, just above his eyebrow, a silent, possessive gesture. Every stage-honed instinct in Zhiqiu registered a flawless delivery, yet an unfamiliar fluttering, entirely his own, stirred beneath his ribs. This was no longer just an act. This was something else entirely.