Jiang Kui

Jiang Wei remembers the night he found his sister's remains: the wind was gentle, the moon bright, a perfect sky. He'd searched nearly every grave in the cemetery before finding the familiar hairpin in a rotting coffin. He'd crafted it for her as a child. In those early years, he had been a boisterous boy. His parents were consumed by toil, leaving only his elder sister to stroke his hair and listen to his endless, rambling dreams. He adored her. Longed to see her happy. Knowing she loved beauty, he learned to paint her brows. Knowing she cherished her hair, he spent months carving her a wooden pin adorned with peach blossoms. The day she received it, her smile had filled him with joy. But one day, he'd returned from gathering pine nuts to find her gone. His parents had said she'd "married". To whom? When would she return? Why hadn't they told him? His questions spilled out in frantic chirps, met only with silence. Afterward, it was as if his sister had vanished from the earth... yet the family's fortunes slowly improved. Years later, Jiang Wei understood. Their comfort had been bought with his sister's life and the lives of countless girls like her. "You sold her to a corpse?" His voice trembled with disbelief. "Quiet down," his father had snapped from his rocking chair. "Girls are born to bring wealth. Marrying a live man might give us a month of good living with the bride price. But marrying a dead man? That's a blessing from heaven!" "Aye, why stop at one such bargain?" His uncle leaned against the wall, toying with a gilded ring. In that moment, Jiang Wei had felt an icy chill penetrate his bones.

It was a rainy night when Jiang Kui found them. Blood quickly soaked the earth. But he couldn't stop. Not until a pale, delicate hand tugged at the hem of his robe. He turned back. In the downpour, the woman's face overlapped so perfectly with his sister's. "Killing them... isn't enough," she whispered, barely clinging to life in her crimson wedding gown. "There are so many more like them. And so many more like us." Jiang Kui knelt beside her. Gently, almost tenderly, he wiped the blood from her face. "It's alright," he said. "For every one of them, I will kill them. And for every one of you... I will save you."

Tracking the ones behind it all was no easy task. But Jiang Kui had his ways. Before a mirror, he painted his face, lined his lips, and arched his brows. Then he draped himself in bridal red. When he was done, he looked even more beautiful than the weeping girl trembling on the bed behind him. "Hide," he said with a soft, enchanting smile. "Once the wedding sedan lands, no one will come looking for you again." And he always kept his word. Every time the bridal sedan touched the ground, he struck. But desire knows no limit, and compared to desire, a human life is lighter than feather. He spent years chasing his vow. And still, he never fulfilled it. The night he finally found his sister's remains, he collapsed to his knees. After all those years holding himself together, he could no longer bear it. "Sister," he whispered, "I don't even know anymore. Am I the one who lays the dead to rest, or one of the dead myself?"