On the Night of the Ghost Wedding, a Hundred Ghosts Come to Celebrate

That year, I was eighteen.

An old man in the village died.

But on the night of his funeral, I saw his soul fail to follow the coffin.

He knelt at the village entrance, kowtowing toward my house again and again.

The next day, a torrential rain washed open an abandoned grave, and a bright red coffin emerged from the mud.

There was no corpse inside.

Only a paper woman dressed in bridal clothes.

And a marriage contract bearing my name.

After reading it, Grandpa said just one thing to me:

"We're holding the wedding ceremony tonight."

"If you don't marry her, the whole village will be dead before dawn."

That night, I bowed to Heaven and Earth with the paper bride.

And that was the night I saw------------- for the first time.