I Renewed the Pact for My Thirty-Ninth Husband

I’m an ill-fated woman who performs wedding rites for the dead. These rites use the blessings of the living to ferry the spirits of the dead, in hopes of helping them enter the cycle of reincarnation sooner and sparing them the torments of hell. Since I came of age, I’ve taken on thirty-eight such contracts. Each time, I had to worship heaven and earth and drink the nuptial wine with a cold corpse, then perform the rites of yin and yang. Each contract paid a hundred gold coins. Though the work cost me blessings and years of my life, it was enough to keep me alive in these troubled times. That day, I was leaning against a paulownia coffin and munching on a baked flatbread when a sudden clatter of hurried hooves came from the alley entrance. A blackwood carriage stopped outside my door. When the curtain was lifted, a pale-faced Madam Ning appeared. She wore a veil, and her eye sockets were as hollow as dry wells. Her voice trembled as she asked, “Are you Lady Jiang? I’m Ning, the Ning family’s matriarch. My son, Ning Ziyuan, died suddenly last night. I need you to perform the rites for him tonight.” I slowly swallowed my last bite and glanced at the gold-carved nanmu coffin behind her. Smiling, I said, “Madam, you know the rules, don’t you? A hundred gold coins per contract, and the deposit comes first.” Madam Ning tossed me a heavy bag of gold ingots. It landed in my palm with enough force to make it go numb. “I’ll add another fifty gold. I want you to perform the rites twice: once in the ancestral hall, beside the coffin, and once... at his grave.”