Chapter 1 That night!

"Empty mountains after fresh rain, the king of underworld weds new wife. The livings shall eye no such scene, as the dead give ways to the parade--!" As unearthly and queer as the tone sang by the performer of opera, the wooden door creaked open.

Cold invaded; I held on to the corner of the quilt and tried to pull it towards my upper body, but only to find my limbs too stiff to even move; sleepiness engulfed me with my throat dry burning; I opened my mouth trying to utter a voice, but the lips were sealed by ice-cold yet soft kiss!

The wet tip of the tongue circled and teased my lips, his teeth bit by bit biting them; Out of such tinglings, I slightly opened my lips; the cunning tongue quickly and sneakily slipped in at the slight opening and entangled with mine; his tease made me yearning for more of him; my hands spontaneously climbed onto his broad shoulders, with head buried tenderly and strengthlessly in his arms.

The white wedding dress covering my body was gently lifted, with a pair of big hands exploring my front, the head gently leaning over my ear, biting my earlobe, heavy breath blowing into my neck; suddenly a shiver ran down my spine as I was enjoying the gentle touches.

Skirt was lifted up to my chest, inviting the coldness to my lower body; I arched my body a bit to coordinate his motiones; that was such a strange yet comfortable feeling. He continued to spread my slender legs gently and slowly; as my brain got a bit alert, I tried my best to open my eyes to make out his appearance but could only see vaguely through the veil covering my head the Jasper Ring on his left thumb. A deep sexy voice in my ear said, "I'll be gentle."

The magic touches of his hands sensitized me everywhere it went and made me moan out of my mouth, "HMMM."

That kind of empty feeling pushed me to clasp the sheet tighter; it hurt.

Suddenly a tearing pain from below woke me up.

...

I turned on the light in my bare feet and was relieved to realize it was only a dream.

I leaned against the wall and sat down on the ground, feeling exhausted. Even I found it hard to tell whether this was a dream or not, because that’s something I experienced when I was fourteen.

My name was Rae Fan. I am eighteen years old, the age of flower blooming.

Outsiders did not know the secret of my family; when a girl was born to our family, gravity was the feeling tone of everyone in place of joy. It had nothing to do with son preference. It was our contract with the underworld many years ago. Women in our family from generation to generation were born to marry 'underworld beings'.
The so-called underworld beings were not human at all; they were the ghosts of the hell.

Remember when I was a child, I lived with my grandparents in a remote mountain village, where people called it Bridge Vill; I didn’t know the special meaning of it; only people there worshiped the ghosts and gods; there were a lot of Taoist priests and monks visiting the village, whether it was wedding or funeral, the religious rite was a necessity.

As a child, I had seen my aunt being forced to put on a white wedding gown at night.
Yes, you heard me, it was white, just same color as the dress I would wear many years later. Ordinarily, ladies would dress in red during the wedding; but we were wedded to the ordinary people, not at all, so we dressed in white, pure white. The makeup she wore would not be called pretty either, but rather eerie, creepy with a thick layer of white powder thoroughly covering the lively redness of the skin.

She had been tied and carried into the bridal chamber, which was more like a mourning hall. White was the theme of the chamber--white curtain, white bedding and white paper-cutting decoration. She fell into her eternal sleep after that night with her corpse covered in scars, bruises and wounds; her lower part of the body was mess...

My family had isolated ourselves from the other villagers and outside world, just to keep this secret from being known to outsiders for generations to come. My grandma warned that if the 'underworld beings' were offended, grave misfortune fell.

After so many years, I could still vaguely remember the tears on grandma’s wrinkled face when my little aunt's body was carried out of the room; and the year of me aged 14 that kinda of sadness crawled onto her eyes again...

And buried together with my little aunt was the a piece of token gifted by the ‘underworld beings’ before her marriage; grandma said every time the token was not the same, because who we were married to were not the same.
Whenever a girl in our family was approaching the age of fourteen, the tokens would appear out of nowhere; and that’s when the nerves of the whole family would be stretched to the breaking point and everyone started preparing the marriage. For this reason, the memory about the token remained fresh to me.

The token little aunt received was an emerald green ring, glimmering faintly, and what I received was a white jade pendant, with a dragon totem upon it. I left the pendant in on e cottage of the village.

I was also the only one who had lived to this day after marrying a 'underworld being'. In the past, women in our family didn't live more than half a year after marrying a 'underworld being', and most of them died on their wedding night.
After that nightmarish night, I was brought to the city by my parents to escape the village's haunting past and destiny.
Four years should have erased my memory, blanked out the experience and wedding with the‘underworld being’ and brought my normal life back...But lately I'd been dreaming about what happened that night for half a month, and it was driving me crazy!

Everything in my dream was so real, as if it was happening over and over again, the cold touch, the tearing pain...

A knock on the door brought me back to earth. My whole body jumped, and the sudden knocking scared me to death.
Outside the door sounded mother’s worried voice: "Rae? Everything okay?"

Feeling relieved to realize that was mother, I rose to my feet and was about to open the door when the exact jade pendant I had left in the village cottage came to my view lying quietly on the floor in front of the door!
I cried out out of the fear, "Ah!"

Mother pushed the door open and came in. Puzzled, she followed my gaze to look at the ground, when she saw my frightened face.
The expression on her face was stiff when she saw that thing.
After a while she said, "This jade pendant...was maybe brought here by me by mistake. It's okay. I'll take it. Don't believe in that crazy old woman. There are no ghost or god."

That "crazy old woman" in my mother's mouth was my grandma. What happened that year in the village was carried out by people in the family behind my mother's back. She had been to college and didn't believe in ghosts and gods, even everyone else in my family believed without a doubt.
Upon receiving the Token, my mother was enticed away by the family while my father, with himself growing up in such background, chose to compromise to the elders.

That night, my mother searched for me everywhere like crazy until she found me in that ghastly wedding chamber and carried me out of it; I was death-like, completely stunned, hopless and extremely frightened.