As the wedding sedan rolled over firecracker scraps scattered across the ground, Gu Wanwan dug her bloodstained nails into her palm. The car radio ripped through the festive façade: “Young painter Zhou Yu critically injured in a car crash.” Beside her, the groom smiled and stroked her trembling back, then leaned close to whisper over the Buddhist chants of the wedding march: “Do you like this wrecked blue sports car?”
Three days earlier, the real heiress of the Gu family had eloped for love, leaving behind a bloodstained dagger and her father, kneeling and begging: “Shen Yuan wants a Gu family daughter. You are a Gu family daughter!” The moment the red veil fell, Gu Wanwan became her older sister’s replacement and entered the wealthy household, where the Buddhist shrine served as her prison.
The gilded Buddha cast a shadow over the wedding dais. Shen Yuan took her hand and pressed it against the words of the Great Compassion Mantra. The guests saw only a devoted groom slipping an ancestral blood-jade bracelet onto his bride’s wrist. No one saw the name “Shanshan” engraved on its inner surface, and no one knew that Zhou Yu’s critical-condition notice was hidden in a compartment in the Buddhist altar.
That night, the bloodstained wedding dress, white as the moonlight, was tossed before the Buddha. The man gripped the back of her neck and forced her to meet his gaze beneath the lotus pedestal. “Your good sister bought her freedom with her elopement...” As he bit open her shoulder strap, the butler’s urgent report came from outside the hall: “Zhou Yu is awake!” The bronze incense burner suddenly toppled, and scalding ash branded her collarbone.
Shen Yuan licked the burn and chuckled. “Look, even the Buddha has stamped you with his mark.”
On the night blood spread across the scripture, she finally understood the truth of this wedding:
The Buddha saves all living beings, but she was to be imprisoned for all eternity in the purgatory called Shen Yuan.
