Lu Yaqi moved with great care, setting the paper bride beside the incense burner. Then she began thrusting black talismans into it one after another until the fragile figure was bristling with them. In the dim light, the talismans seemed to breathe out a faint, icy aura. The paper bride had already looked uncanny; now it appeared even more grotesque, as if some sinister force had been awakened within it.

　　“Where… is this place?” I finally blurted out, unable to contain the mix of shock and fear welling up inside me. The strange atmosphere hanging in the air made my voice tremble despite myself.

　　“A place for offerings,” Lu Yaqi replied, her expression grave. Her eyes never left the paper bride, as though everything around us were perfectly ordinary. “Tonight I’ll perform a ritual here—draw the corpse poison out of your left arm, and make sure that comb-bound ghost can never track you again.”

　　“Here?” I stared at her, puzzled, searching her face for some explanation. The crumbling temple, steeped in a dank, sinister air, hardly looked like a place capable of curing anything.

　　“Don’t worry about it. Just watch.” Lu Yaqi remained as enigmatic as ever, her tone brief and final.

　　She turned toward the incense burner and, with practiced ease, took a small bottle from inside her robe. A thick black liquid sloshed inside—dark as ink, giving off an unsettling presence in the gloom.

　　Tilting the bottle slightly, she let the liquid drip onto the paper bride. It ran down the paper body in thin streams, writhing like countless little black snakes.

　　Next she drew out a yellow talisman. With a quick strike of a match—snap—the paper ignited. The talisman flared instantly, crackling sharply as flames flickered and leapt through the shadowy temple.

　　As the talisman burned, something strange began to happen.

　　The black charms stuck into the paper bride started to glow. From them seeped strands of inky vapor, like ghosts drifting out of some deeper darkness. They slowly gathered around the paper bride, forming a swirling black aura that made the scene feel even more eerie and otherworldly.

　　“All right… let’s begin,” Lu Yaqi murmured.

　　She took out a small yin-yang ritual bell and shook it gently three times in the air. The clear chime echoed through the temple, thin and distant, as if ringing across time itself.

　　Then she closed her eyes and began to chant under her breath. The incantation was low and ancient, each syllable heavy with a sense of something long forgotten—like voices rising from the depths of ages past. In the stillness of the temple, the words struck my ears one by one, and the fear in my chest slowly spread.

　　From somewhere unseen, a gust of cold wind rose with a hollow whooo. It swept through the temple with bone-chilling chill, as if the whole place had sunk into a frozen darkness.

　　Lu Yaqi stepped in strange, deliberate patterns—moving in the measured rhythm of nuo-ritual pacing, the ceremonial footwork of old exorcistic rites. In her hand, the yin-yang bell tapped against the ground again and again.

　　With every strike, faint lights began to appear on the floor.

　　Gradually, they arranged themselves into the pattern of the Big Dipper, seven dim points glowing with an eerie, ghostlike light.

　　Just then, the incense burner exploded with a sudden whoomph, sending up a plume of bluish flames nearly a meter high. The fire thrashed wildly in the wind, casting harsh heat and a strange, flickering glow across the temple.

　　At the same moment, the crumbling statues around us began to change. The masks hanging on their faces seemed tugged by some unseen force. One by one they slipped loose, falling to the ground with a dry clatter.

　　Through the drifting smoke I looked closer—then nearly cried out.

　　The statue standing at the very center… had the exact same face as the paper bride.

　　“Open your eyes!” Lu Yaqi suddenly barked.

　　Her shout rang through the temple, shattering the suffocating silence.

　　At once the paper bride’s locust-wood tongue split open with a crack. The stiff paper figure began to move.

　　First it lifted its head—slow, mechanical. Its eyes were lifeless, yet they stared straight at me, as if trying to see through my very soul.

　　A surge of cold shot up from the soles of my feet to the top of my skull like a rising tide. Every hair on my body stood on end; my scalp prickled.

　　My voice came out thin and shaky. I stammered to the paper bride, “L-let’s just swear kinship, okay? Nothing else…”

　　The paper bride gave no sign it had heard me.

　　It kept walking toward me, step by stiff step, like a puppet dragged by invisible strings. With every movement the paper on its body rustled softly—shaa, shaa—a dry, unsettling sound.

　　“W-what… what do you want?” I backed away instinctively, my voice trembling on the edge of tears.

　　The paper bride said nothing. It simply stared at me. Meanwhile the curve of its mouth stretched wider and wider, forming an increasingly grotesque smile.

　　That smile made my very soul shudder, as if an invisible hand had clenched around it.

　　Instinctively I glanced down—and suddenly noticed something lying at my feet.

　　A red ceremonial paper flower.

　　My heart dropped.

　　“This thing… it’s trying to marry me!”

　　Before I could react, the paper bride lunged like a starving wolf.

　　I spun around and ran. But I had barely taken a few steps when a bolt of agony tore through my left arm—so violent it felt as though countless fangs were ripping into my flesh.

　　I couldn’t help lowering my head to look.

　　The skin on my left arm had already turned a deep, bruised purple—and the color was spreading rapidly before my eyes.

　　“AH—!”

　　The scream burst out of me before I could stop it. My legs gave way, and I collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud.

　　The paper bride soon reached me.

　　It stretched out a pale, rigid hand and clamped down on my left arm.

　　In an instant, a bone-chilling cold poured from its grip, racing up my arm and flooding through my entire body. I began to tremble uncontrollably. The cold kept spreading, gnawing deeper and deeper, while my vision dimmed and my mind slowly slipped into haze.

　　Dazed and drifting, I thought I saw the paper bride’s face.

　　It no longer looked like paper. The skin had turned a ghastly white—pale as blank parchment—and horribly swollen, as though it had been soaked in water for days. In its eyes there was something that looked almost like concern, as if a living being were staring back at me.

　　“Young master… let me take care of you—”

　　The paper bride actually spoke.

　　Its voice was low and strange, hoarse and slurred, like something rising from the depths of the underworld. At the same time its joints creaked with a dreadful groan, the sound of old wood grinding against itself in the wind.

　　On the locust-wood tongue, the eight characters of birth—name, date, and hour—began to stir as if alive. They slowly twisted and rearranged themselves. The shapes they formed looked eerily like a date… my date of death.

　　It felt as though fate itself were being rewritten by some unseen darkness.

　　The mulberry paper wrapped around its joints suddenly split apart with a sharp crackle. Beneath it, dark-red bamboo splints were exposed. I leaned closer—and nearly fainted.

　　Those splints weren’t bamboo at all.

　　They had been pieced together from coffin nails, soaked in corpse oil.

　　“No—!”

　　The cry tore out of my throat. Terror and pain twisted together inside me until I felt ready to break.

　　Then, in the next instant, a new wave of agony ripped through my left arm—like a wild beast tearing into flesh. It was as if thousands of steel needles had plunged straight into the bone.

　　I looked down.

　　From beneath the paper bride’s red wedding robe, hundreds of blood-stained bamboo skewers suddenly shot out. Like a swarm of starving black snakes, they lunged toward the wound on my arm and began stabbing into it again and again—drawing out the thick black pus inside.

　　Each puncture made a wet thuk… thuk… sound, like dull drumbeats hammering against my heart.

　　Mixed in with it was another noise—soft, rhythmic, almost like a baby suckling.

　　That sound alone was enough to make my blood run cold, as if something from the depths of hell were feeding on my life.

　　Worse still, as the black pus kept draining from the wound, faint whispers began to fill my ears. Countless voices murmured all at once—near and far, indistinct yet steeped in malice and bitterness.

　　The foul blood dripping from my arm splattered onto the paper body of the bride. Slowly it gathered and spread, forming strange sigils I had never seen before—twisted, ominous marks that seemed to promise endless calamity.

　　At that most desperate moment, hurried footsteps suddenly broke the chaos.

　　Lu Yaqi burst in like a bolt of lightning.

　　With a sharp motion she hurled a vermilion ritual brush toward me.

　　“Bite your tongue—spit your blood!” she shouted urgently.

　　In panic I clenched my teeth and bit down hard on the tip of my tongue. A rush of hot, metallic blood filled my mouth. Gathering the last of my strength, I spat the blood toward the flying brush.

　　The instant the brush tip struck the paper bride’s right eye, a flash of light burst forth—as if some hidden force had been awakened in that single moment.

　　In that instant, the corpse poison in my entire left arm seemed seized by an overwhelming pull. It rushed out like a nest of startled vipers, hissing as it surged backward along the bamboo skewers and poured straight into the paper body.

　　The paper bride let out a shrill wail—high and piercing, like a bride sobbing on her wedding night. The sound ripped through the heavy silence of the temple, sharp enough to make my ears ache.

　　Then the gold threads stitched into the wedding robe began to snap. Pop—pop—pop. One after another they broke under the strain. The severed strands drifted down through the air, and the moment they touched the ground they crumbled into ash, as if they had never existed.

　　Under the fierce corruption of the black blood drawn from my arm, the paper bride quickly began to fail. Before long, the figure collapsed, leaving only a shattered frame sprawled across the floor—so fragile it looked as though a breath of wind might scatter it completely.

　　Seeing this, Lu Yaqi stepped forward quickly. She bent down and picked up the locust-wood tongue. New eight characters of fate had appeared carved into it, giving off an ancient, inscrutable air.

　　“Remember this,” she said, lifting her eyes to me. Her gaze was stern. “For the next six months, you’re not to make another paper groom.”

　　I was still shaken to the core, but I managed to ask, uneasily, “Why?”

　　Lu Yaqi frowned, her expression grave.

　　“Why do you think? We just killed its lover. What do you suppose it’ll do?”

　　Her tone carried a warning—and beneath it, something darker, secrets left unsaid.

　　I fell silent at once. The terror of what had just happened still clung to me, and the unknown lurking behind her words only deepened my unease. I no longer had the courage to press her further.

　　Lu Yaqi swiftly gathered the broken remains of the paper figure, wrapping the fragile frame carefully and holding it tight in both hands. Then she began picking up the bamboo skewers one by one—the ones stained with my poisoned blood—and placed them into an exquisite jade casket.

　　On the lid were three characters carved in ancient seal script: “Soul-Pinning Nails.”

　　The strokes looked old and austere, carrying an air of quiet authority that seemed almost untouchable.

　　Though I was full of questions—unable to understand why she was collecting these things—her focused movements and the keen interest in her eyes made it clear that, to her, they were far from worthless.

　　Then she suddenly said, almost offhandedly:

　　“Your idiot left hand’s cured now. From this moment on—welcome to working life.”