The Yin Bride Marries

I was born at the third quarter of the Zi hour on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, carrying an ominous yin fate. When I was twelve, my maternal grandmother, father, and mother all died violent deaths on the same day. The villagers said I was a cursed loner sent by heaven, and that I had killed my own flesh and blood. Only my yin-seeing eyes could tell the truth: the ones who killed them were things that were not human!

On the seventh night after her death, my grandmother's spirit returned. She pressed her fingers between my brows, leaving this mole, and told me to take my husband after I married and dig up the thing beneath the thousand-year-old locust tree at the village entrance, so our family could have its revenge.

Twelve years later, that man appeared.

He looked like a refined university professor, yet was the spitting image of the ancient husband who had been entangled with me in my dreams. As soon as he entered the village, he settled my troubles, left behind a thick stack of betrothal money, and threatened the family of my uncle, who had been forcing me to marry a widower from the neighboring village. "I will marry her. From now on, she has nothing to do with any of you."

On our wedding night, he bent down and brushed the cinnabar mole between my brows with his warm fingertip. His deep voice fell beside my ear:

"How could anyone else be blessed enough to enjoy the company of this lord's wife?"