Chapter 197 - 11: Puppet, Bride, Joy God Makeup

Chapter 197: Chapter 11: Puppet, Bride, Joy God Makeup

"Damn it..."

Cong Bo’s face was grim as he stared at the village full of corpses.

Chen Ye swung himself off his horse and walked into the village, his expression calm.

His gaze swept over the stiff bodies of the villagers, over the rotting food and wine, and finally settled on the sky above.

"Bloody Vision!"

’Bloody Vision!’ Chen Ye thought.

In the next moment, the world before him was instantly dyed a bloody red.

And in this blood-red world, the sight of Wang Family Village became even more terrifying.

A gray-black curtain, invisible to the naked eye and formed from a confluence of boundless resentment and deathly energy, hung over the village like a giant lid.

From every corpse in the village emanated wisps of resentment, each thread finer than a strand of hair.

These threads did not dissipate into the air as they normally would. Instead, they twisted and struggled, bound by an invisible force, circling and weaving together in the sky above the village.

They converged, forming a dense, inescapable web of resentment.

The center of this web seemed to point toward the village head’s home.

Chen Ye took a deep breath and asked, "What about Li Xiuwen’s bride?"

"We just checked at the stone bridge. The sedan chair is empty. We don’t know where she went," one of the men from the Demon Slayer Department reported.

’Just as I thought.’

Chen Ye strode deeper into the village. "Follow me. I know where the bride is." ℴℴ𝘮

Not daring to delay, Cong Bo waved for his men to follow. The group carefully crossed the threshing ground, which was littered with corpses, and arrived at the gate of the village head’s large courtyard.

The courtyard was also in disarray, with several bodies lying on the ground—likely members of the village head’s household.

The main house’s doors were wide open, and a stench of rot, even thicker than the one outside, wafted out.

Without the slightest hesitation, Chen Ye stepped inside.

The light inside was dim. The furnishings were simple, yet everything was adorned with bright red wedding decorations.

And there, sitting perfectly upright on a chair, was a female corpse dressed in a bright red wedding gown and covered by a red bridal veil.

It was the bride Li Xiuwen had discovered in the sedan chair.

Even from a distance, they could see that her exposed feet were swollen and purple, covered in dark corpse spots.

Everyone gasped at the sight.

Li Xiuwen hadn’t been lying. They must have truly carried the bride to the stone bridge outside the village. They never expected that after they had fled in terror, the bride would somehow return and sit quietly in the wedding hall. The scene couldn’t have been more bizarre.

Cong Bo’s expression turned grim. He waved a hand, signaling his men to stand guard outside.

"Be careful. Something’s not right with this thing," Cong Bo warned in a low voice.

He could feel a sinister, evil aura from the corpse—one stronger than all the bodies outside combined.

Chen Ye nodded. His Bloody Vision allowed him to see it even more clearly.

Innumerable threads of resentment were spreading out from the corpse, connecting to every other body in the village and supporting the vast web of resentment in the sky.

The focal point of all these threads was the corpse’s head.

Chen Ye walked up to the corpse, drew his saber, and used its tip to lift the veil.

Beneath the veil was a rotting face.

The corpse’s eyes were tightly shut, its skin sallow and waxy, its lips purplish-blue. A bizarre smile was frozen on its face.

However, the most eye-catching feature was an extremely complex and intricate mark drawn on her forehead in cinnabar.

The mark resembled both a blooming, blood-red lotus and a strange eye, and it emitted a faint, ghostly red glow.

All the threads of resentment in the village extended from this very mark.

It was the core of the entire evil ritual!

"What... what kind of Ghost Talisman is this?" Cong Bo stared at the mark, his heart pounding as his expression grew even more grave.

Chen Ye didn’t answer. He simply reached out a finger, intending to touch the mark and carefully sense the power it contained.

But in the instant his fingertip was about to touch the corpse’s forehead, something suddenly changed!

The corpse’s tightly shut eyes snapped open!

They were a pair of pitch-black, pupil-less eyes, filled with endless venom and chilling cold.

At the same time, the entirety of Wang Family Village seemed to come alive!

CRACK... CRACK...

Outside—on the threshing ground, in the courtyard—the corpses of the villagers, who had been sitting stiffly or lying on the ground, simultaneously made a sickening sound of cracking and dislocating bones.

Stiffly, inch by inch, they twisted their necks, turning their rotting faces in unison toward the village head’s house.

Then, two specks of ghostly green fire seemed to ignite within their hollow eye sockets.

"They... They’re moving!"

A Demon-slaying Captain guarding the door cried out in alarm.

"ROAR—!"

In the next instant, all the corpses rose to their feet in unison, moving like wind-up puppets.

They opened their rotting mouths to let out inhuman roars, then charged with stiff gaits toward Chen Ye and Cong Bo, completely unafraid of death.

The Demon-slaying Captains outside, though startled, did not panic. They immediately formed a Battle Array, brandishing their standard-issue long sabers to meet the onrushing tide of corpses.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Yet, when their sabers struck the bodies, the impact rang out like the clash of metal on metal.

Though the corpses’ movements were stiff, their bodies were as hard as steel and possessed immense strength.

Ordinary Swords and Sabers could only leave shallow white marks on their bodies.