When the sword light dissipated, the ghostly energy in the forest seemed to have been swept away. Liang Mu, drained of strength, coughed up several mouthfuls of blood. Supporting himself with his sword, he slowly made his way back to Shen Zhi.
Song Xiaozhou stood frozen in place.
Lu Heng was gone, Lu Xuan was gone, and the menacing ghosts had all vanished without a trace. Only the strong smell of blood told Song Xiaozhou what had really happened.
As if roused from a dream, he glanced around before suddenly sprinting to Lu Heng’s grave, crying out, “Jinzhi, Jinzhi, where are you!”
There was no answer for a long time.
Song Xiaozhou’s mind went completely blank. Like a man gone mad, he screamed Lu Heng’s name, tears pouring down his face. But no matter how much he called, no one came to say, “Xiaozhou, I’m here.”
Liar, liar. What about his promise that if Song Xiaozhou wanted to see him, he would come from the underworld to do so? Song Xiaozhou raised his red-rimmed eyes hatefully, staring intently at the unnamed tombstone. Blood was splattered on the stone, it was Lu Xuan’s blood. He clenched his teeth, as if confronted with something revolting, and tried to scrub the bloodstains from the stone, rubbing so fiercely that his fingers became raw and bled.
“…Xiaozhou.” Shen Zhi called to him softly.
Song Xiaozhou ignored him. Shen Zhi reached out to grab his arm but was pushed away with force by Song Xiaozhou, who stared at the two of them with hatred. “Get lost!”
His heart was filled with anger and despair, like a raging fire scorching his heart, robbing him of his sanity and his breath.
Song Xiaozhou turned his head to look at the short grave, and as if possessed, he began to claw at the soil with his fingers, one handful at a time, determined to dig out the coffin beneath.
“Lu Heng, Lu Jinzhi,” Song Xiaozhou said through gritted teeth, his voice filled with a sob. “Come out now! You promised you wouldn’t scare me. You’re a ghost, and a fierce, wicked one at that as well. You can’t die so easily… ugh, Lu Heng, please come out. I beg you, Jinzhi…”
He knelt on the ground, weeping uncontrollably.
Shen Zhi stared blankly at Song Xiaozhou. He pulled his hand away from Liang Mu’s support, stumbled, and then knelt down. Taking his sword, he began to help Song Xiaozhou dig for the coffin.
Song Xiaozhou shielded the grave with his hands, like a protective parent, and glared fiercely at him. “Don’t touch him!”
“We’re not on the same side as you.”
If Shen Zhi hadn’t pulled his sword back quickly, he might have pierced a hole in Song Xiaozhou’s hand already. He hesitated for a moment and said, “Perhaps Lu Heng is still here.”
Song Xiaozhou froze, and hope ignited in his eyes. “Rea-really?”
Shen Zhi said, “My Shige’s sword wasn’t aimed at Lu Heng, but since he’s a ghost, being wounded by the sword light was inevitable. There’s a Soul-Sealing Array here, and Lu Xuan just activated it. Maybe Lu Heng’s soul was trapped back inside.”
Song Xiaozhou was stunned for a long time, biting his lip as he looked at the lonely grave before him. “That must be it. Jinzhi will be fine, he has to be.” He said, like a man possessed, digging at the hard soil with his hands, repeating those same few phrases over and over.
Suddenly, his hand hit something hard. Ignoring his torn and bleeding fingers, Song Xiaozhou wiped the dirt away, and tears immediately fell. “It’s the coffin, Jinzhi…”
A thick, pitch-black coffin gradually revealed its true form before the three of them. It was sealed shut with three-inch-long iron nails at the corners. They were dark, reddish-brown, soaked with dried blood, and looked eerie and sinister.
Song Xiaozhou was about to open the coffin, but Shen Zhi stopped him. He looked at Song Xiaozhou and said, “Have you thought this through?”
Song Xiaozhou asked, “Thought what through?”
“Do you know what you might see?” Shen Zhi took a breath. His tone was slow but serious. “What you see might not be the Lu Heng you know, nor an ethereal ghost. It could be a rotting corpse, or maybe just a pile of bones. Can you accept that if you see it?”
Song Xiaozhou looked at Shen Zhi and said, “All I know is that he is Lu Heng, he is my Jinzhi. No matter what I see, he is my Jinzhi.”
Shen Zhi stared at him, then stepped back. Liang Mu offered to help, but Song Xiaozhou shook his head. He buried his head and began prying at the nailed-down iron spikes, saying softly, “Jinzhi is actually very concerned with his dignity. He doesn’t like others seeing him in a pathetic state. Please don’t look yet.”
Song Xiaozhou didn’t know what was happening, but his heart felt like it was being twisted, his nose was stinging terribly, and tears fell one by one. “When I was getting married to him in the ghost wedding, I thought about running away. But the first time I saw him in the mountains, I stopped wanting to run.”
“I want to be with him, even if our paths as a human and a ghost are separate. I want to be with him,” Song Xiaozhou said. “If I can’t be with him while living, I’ll go be a ghost with him. I don’t care about my life.”
“In this world, I only have one Jinzhi.”
At the coffin, Song Xiaozhou stared at it for a while, wiped the tears from his face, straightened his clothes, and then pushed a corner of the coffin lid open with all his might.
The moon was out tonight, hanging from the treetops, and its silvery light shone in.
Song Xiaozhou took just one look, and his sore eyes became wet again. He held back, biting his hand until it bled. But when he fully saw the pile of bones, he finally couldn’t hold it in any longer and broke down, wailing uncontrollably.
Dang… shouldn’t this have a ‘tragedy’ tag?! 😭😭😭😭😭