[Completed]
Xie Mingzhu is a restorer of ancient books. After years of being ignored, she is summoned back by the Xie family to Wuyin Mountain. Everyone says her grandmother is gravely ill and longs for her to return, but as soon as she enters the village, she hears the midnight exorcism opera begin. The name being sung onstage is hers.
Once every eighteen years, Wuyin Mountain chooses a new bride for the mountain god. The Xie family prepares a red wedding dress for her, the clan elders mark her forehead with cinnabar, and her younger cousin sobs as she tries to persuade her: "Sister, trading one life for the whole village's safety is worth it."
They think she is the chosen sacrifice.
Until the seventh night, when Xie Mingzhu sits on the divine throne in her wedding dress and smiles at the people below the stage. "Why are all of you kneeling, when you were the ones who asked me to come back?"
A hundred years ago, she was swallowed by old customs. In each of her first six lives, she died in this exorcism opera. In her seventh life, she finally remembers everything.
And Wen Jins heng, the mountain keeper everyone fears, is no lackey of the mountain god.
He is the ghost she personally fed before she died, the blade that watched over her for a hundred years, went mad through six lifetimes, and waited only for her return.
This time, there will be no wedding procession. It will be a funeral procession.
Theme: Break free from superstitious old customs and emotional blackmail. Women should never be sacrificed to uphold any system.
A bitter journey (for readers) and many trials (for Mingzhu).