The voice spoke as if it were a joke.
The man with the blurred face retorted angrily, "What are you saying! This is my lover!"
"Oh dear, my old man is dying, anyone will do for the wedding. Name your price, whatever it is. Your family hasn't been doing well lately, you must be short of money, right?"
"Don't talk about that. If I take your money, how can I face people in the village?"
"What's wrong with that? You always say your wife isn't as pretty as before, and you're unhappy at home. This is a good opportunity to get someone younger and prettier, isn't it?"
The man, who should have retorted angrily again, remained silent this time.
The bride, off-screen, chuckled, "How fragile, such a fragile promise. We clearly promised that even if we gave up everything, we wouldn't abandon each other."
"You see... human promises are hard to keep, human feelings dissipate so quickly."
The bride mocked, while in the background, she was being broken into her home in the dead of night, tied up, and taken away.
She cried and screamed for help, but no one answered.
The person who should have helped her stood outside the door and listened to everything.
Enraged and resentful, on her wedding night, she stabbed the old man, half-buried in the earth, to death and fled home.
But instead of her lover's help to escape this abyss, she was met with the very person she trusted most who pushed her back into it.
"Bind her limbs to prevent struggle... sew her mouth shut to prevent her from telling on us in the afterlife."
Then her lover suggested, "Why not... gouge out her eyes too... to prevent her from coming back?"
Those eyes that had once gazed at him with affection now held deep malice and resentment, like knives piercing him; he dared not look at them.
Even with his eyes gouged out, hatred had already solidified in his sockets.
"See, I told you... human affection will eventually dissipate... marriage... the red thread, in the end, only leads to hanging."
The scene faded, and the bride's vibrant red figure appeared in the darkness, filled with deep sorrow.
She pulled a pair of golden scissors from her sleeve, her empty eyes staring at Li Mo. "Now you know how shallow human emotions are, right? This emotion will only kill you. Cut the red thread now, it's not too late."
Li Mo stared thoughtfully at the scissors in the bride's hand, his hands, which had been hanging at his sides, slowly moved behind his back.
"My boyfriend and I are different."
"How are we different?"
Li Mo answered seriously, "Human emotions are shallow because human lifespans are short."
"From birth to waking up, and then finding a suitable person, most of a person's life is already spent. When fate connects, the time spent together is very short, and the connection is deepened in the mundane aspects of life. It's normal for such a thread to break."
The bride was silent, then asked, "What about you and your boyfriend?"
"Human connections are shallow because there isn't enough time, and the connection isn't strong enough. Living takes up most of a person's experience, leaving no energy to make the other person their everything. But monsters are different from humans. I have a lot of time. I can make my boyfriend my everything. As long as my feelings are deep enough, it doesn't matter if my boyfriend's are shallow."
The bride was silent again.
"Then...why is he worth spending so much time on, making him your everything? No one in this world is worth such a sacrifice; you can't expect an equal return."
Li Mo's smile remained unchanged, but at this moment, that cold smile subtly warmed, taking on a human touch.
"My boyfriend is very important to me; he's worth so much from me."
"Someone gave me life, the people of Hai Village gave me consciousness, and the one who shaped my soul is my beloved boyfriend.
"I originally had many paths I could have taken: to become the world's most wicked monster, to become the darkness sealed within, to become a god feared by all. In the end, because of my boyfriend, I became human.
"So, isn't my boyfriend enough to be my everything?"
The bride was speechless. "I feel like you don't really understand human emotions. What's in your emotions?"
"Love, protection, possession, trust," Li Mo answered as if reciting a memorized text, as if trying to cram every good word in the dictionary into this expression of emotion.
The bride sighed softly and put away the scissors.
"Your feelings are too pure, without any loopholes. You don't understand the drawbacks of human emotions at all. I can't communicate with you."
"I don't really understand that much." Li Mo's gaze fixed on the bride. "But my boyfriend loves me very much. I feel love from him, so I'm not afraid of what you're saying."
"What if your boyfriend betrays you one day?"
"My boyfriend won't betray me."
"I mean, what if."
"No." Li Mo firmly denied it. "There are no ifs."
The bride slowly slumped her shoulders. This must be trust.
Li Mo stared at her without blinking and asked, "You're disappointed in love and marriage because your boyfriend doesn't love you. Is it possible that you haven't found that truly important person to you?"
The bride was silent, but her stiffness was a sign of wavering.
Li Mo was certain that everyone has someone who is most compatible with them, someone they would be willing to give everything for. It's just that she hadn't found that person yet.
Even if a player helped her find her way back to that empty house and kill her betraying husband, what would she gain?
The bride slowly raised her other hand, her palm revealing a broken red thread.
Besides, that person was already dead.
It was always her who became a ghost and wandered the village.
"Perhaps... just as you said..."
The darkness around them slowly receded, returning them to the windswept cemetery.
But this time, the cemetery wasn't so deserted; Zhong Mu, Zuo Meng, and Ye Tianxuan were already there.
Zuo Meng hugged Ye Tianxuan's leg and cried, "Waaah, Boss Ye, she's so pitiful... so pitiful..."
Zhong Mu tugged at Zuo Meng, "Alright, stop hugging Boss Ye's leg, get up. That's all in the past."
Ye Tianxuan sighed, glancing up at Li Mo who had emerged, then smiled at the bride, "How about that? I told you this is someone you absolutely can't sway, seemingly human yet not human, whose emotions are stronger than any human's." The
bride remained silent, her figure slowly dissipating into the air, leaving them in the cemetery.
The thick darkness gradually faded, and a faint light began to appear on the horizon.
Li Mo stared at the horizon for two seconds, then immediately turned and ran away. "We should go back! My boyfriend might already be awake!"
"Ah! You're right, it's almost dawn!" Zhong Mu jumped up immediately and hurriedly followed her back.
Zuo Meng wiped away her tears, looking at the two who had turned and left quickly, confused. "Why are they in such a hurry to go back?"
"Never mind them, turn around." Ye Tianxuan pointed to the ditch behind Zuo Meng that had been dug out. "Go pick that up."
Zuo Meng turned around and saw a piece of red thread, stained black with mud, in the ditch he had been digging all night. He got up to pick it up and held it in his palm, looking confused.
"Brother Ye, what's this?"
"This is her red thread." Brother Ye bent down and patted the muddy marks on his legs. "She's trapped in Yin Village because of this red thread. You have to protect this thread and tie it back to the tree in Yin Village by noon tomorrow night."
"In the meantime... be careful, absolutely do not let the people of Yin Village get their hands on this thread, understand?"
Zuo Meng nodded seriously.
Ye Tianxuan lit a cigarette with satisfaction.
The bride was trapped in Yin Village because of fate. To release her fate back to the tree, he needed someone truly without fate, someone with no emotional ties.
Zhong Mu wasn't, Yin Xiu wasn't, Li Mo wasn't, Ya Ya was still young, and of course, he wasn't either.
In the end, it was Zuo Meng, who unexpectedly entered the scene, who helped Ye Tianxuan complete the final task of this instance.
The rest was up to Yin Xiu.