Chapter 48: The Village of Martyred Women
Kuang Shu was just about to lead the performers onstage to give their thanks when he suddenly noticed unrelated individuals climbing up. Looking bewildered, he turned to the village chief, who had followed the group up with his men, and asked, “Chief, what’s going on here?”
Seven or eight strong young men had formed a perimeter around the stage, blocking not only the audience but also the opera troupe members, forcing them to stay behind. On the brightly lit stage, only Zhenzhen stood alone in the center, isolated and exposed.
The village chief wore a smile on his face. “Thank you all for tonight’s performance. What happens next has nothing to do with you.”
He walked up to the front of the stage with his cane. The firelight cast eerie shadows across the deep wrinkles on his face, giving him an almost grotesquely excited appearance.
He raised a hand to signal for the villagers below to quiet down. In the stillness of the night, his aged but solemn voice rang out: “Tonight, in Martyred Women Village, Lin, the wife of Pan Mingzhi, aged twenty, lost her husband seven days ago. Lin is a woman of great virtue and has chosen to die in mourning to uphold the honor of our village’s martyred women. Her purity and resolve are moving beyond words. Tonight, she will ascend the sacrificial platform to end her life. Let us all bear witness to this moment. After her death, her spirit tablet shall be enshrined in the Martyred Women Shrine, and her body laid to rest in the Grave of the Virtuous Woman, ensuring her name lives on for generations to come!”
The crowd erupted into thunderous applause, with shouts of praise and approval filling the air.
The village chief nodded in satisfaction, tapping his cane against the ground before turning to Zhenzhen, who had been keeping her head down with eyes cast low. “Lin, begin.”
After hearing the village chief’s flowery yet menacing speech, Kuang Shu finally snapped out of his daze. He pointed incredulously at the girl standing on the stage. “Are you seriously forcing that girl to kill herself?”
One of the young guards beside him barked irritably, shoving Kuang Shu’s finger down. “No one’s forcing her. She’s doing it voluntarily. This is the tradition of our Martyred Women Village. What you just witnessed is the celebration of a sacrificial death!”
Kuang Shu’s eyes widened in disbelief. The opera performers around him, having heard those words, paled instantly.
So all their performances tonight were just to celebrate a living person’s suicide?!
Tao Yu had already known the truth, but Li Zhi had instructed her to stay quiet. Now, unable to hold it in any longer, she spat furiously on the ground. “You’re all despicable!”
The young man’s face darkened. “Who are you calling despicable? Show some respect!”
“I’m calling you and your whole damn bunch of subhuman scum exactly what you are!” Tao Yu’s fiery temper flared, and no one could stop her. Her sharp tongue spat out words like hailstones. “What era do you think this is, still playing these martyr games? The Chairman himself said women hold up half the sky. Who the hell do you think you are, forcing a young girl to kill herself? Were women put on this earth just to be your playthings? Didn’t you crawl out of a woman’s womb too? If you hate women so much, why don’t you kill yourselves first and see how that feels!”
The guards were left speechless, their expressions twisted in anger. “This is none of your business, outsider. Besides, she’s doing it voluntarily. No one’s forcing her!”
The moment he finished speaking, Zhenzhen, who had been silently bowing her head on the stage, suddenly lifted her head. Her clear, firm voice rang out into the night: “I don’t want to!”
Everyone froze. The satisfied look in the village chief’s eyes darkened instantly.
Zhenzhen raised her voice, shouting, “I refuse to kill myself over a man who died just three days after our wedding. My life was given to me by my parents, not Pan Mingzhi. He has no right to decide whether I live or die!”
Tao Yu burst into mocking laughter, her shrill, sarcastic cackles tearing through the hypocritical facade these people had so carefully constructed.
The village chief slowly raised his cane and pointed it at Zhenzhen. “Say that again.”
Zhenzhen stood tall, unafraid, her voice even louder than before, each word deliberate and cutting: “No matter how many times you ask, I’ll say the same thing—I refuse. Why should a woman have to die in mourning just because her husband died? Why should men be allowed to remarry after their wives die? This is unfair. This whole thing is wrong from start to finish. It’s your oppression of women!”
Tao Yu immediately started clapping and cheering. “Well said. Where there’s oppression, there’s resistance!”
The other members of the opera troupe joined in, applauding and shouting, “Exactly!”
The sound of their applause and cheers stood in stark contrast to the earlier round of clapping from the villagers. The village chief’s face turned ashen, while the rest of the villagers glared at them with venomous hatred, shouting, “These outsiders have brainwashed her. Drive them out!”
The members of the opera troupe looked furious. Even Kuang Shu couldn’t help but mutter, “They’re nothing but bloodthirsty devils!”
The tension was about to erupt into violence when a sudden gust of wind surged up from the ground. The stage curtain billowed wildly in the wind, and the torches around the stage were instantly extinguished by the bone-chilling breeze. Only the large red lanterns remained, casting an eerie, hazy glow across the night.
A heavy silence fell over the crowd. Below the stage, Zhenzhen’s grandmother trembled violently, her face twisted in terror.
The village chief let out a strange, unsettling laugh. He looked at Zhenzhen and whispered softly, “You’ll come around.”
A flicker of fear crossed Zhenzhen’s eyes, but she quickly steadied herself, remembering Li Zhi’s words. Her gaze hardened once more.
Li Zhi had promised—she would save her.
She wouldn’t be afraid. She wouldn’t surrender.
The cold wind swept across the ground like a crawling venomous snake, slithering toward Zhenzhen’s feet. Her upright posture wavered for just a moment before her previously resolute expression twisted into a ghostly, unnatural smile. She turned and walked slowly toward the table and chair set up behind her, her steps delicate and deliberate.
On the tray atop the table lay the white silk cord the villagers had prepared in advance. She picked it up, stepped onto the chair, and climbed onto the table.
The members of the opera troupe watched in horror, unable to suppress a collective shudder. “What is she doing?! Didn’t she just say she didn’t want to?!”
Just then, the players, who had been hiding behind the curtain, launched a surprise attack. The guards, caught off guard, were knocked down by the sudden assault.
Li Zhi dashed straight to Zhenzhen’s side, grabbing her legs and yanking her off the table. Zhenzhen spun around, her eyes filled with venomous hatred, and lunged at Li Zhi, attempting to strangle her.
Li Zhi was prepared. After pulling Zhenzhen down, she immediately took two steps back and shouted, “Fang Lin!”
Another gust of cold wind swept across the stage. Clad in her opera costume and adorned with colorful shoes, Fang Lin’s ghostly figure materialized on the platform. The red glow of the lanterns illuminated her heavily made-up face, revealing a face twisted with deep resentment. She pounced on Zhenzhen, her hands wrapping tightly around the girl’s throat.
Kuang Shu let out a terrified scream at the sight. “—Fang Lin?! A ghost!!”
The spirit of Zhen Niang, trapped within Zhenzhen’s body, was instantly ensnared by the overwhelming malevolent energy radiating from Fang Lin. Unable to break free, Li Zhi seized the opportunity to slap a Ghost Attraction Talisman onto Fang Lin’s back.
The Ghost Attraction Talisman had the power to draw in all ghosts within a hundred-mile radius, trapping them in place for ten minutes.
Although the players had only encountered Fang Lin and Zhen Niang so far, that didn’t mean those were the only spirits in the instance. There were surely other wandering ghosts lurking nearby. In an instant, the wind howled violently, and the villagers looked around in panic, feeling as though something was surging toward them from all directions in the darkness.
Zhen Niang, pulled by the Ghost Attraction Talisman affixed to Fang Lin, was forced to leave Zhenzhen’s body. A red, amorphous shadow appeared on the stage, no longer resembling a human form—only the overwhelming force of her rage could be felt.
Fang Lin, seeing the man who had killed her standing before her, was consumed by fury. Ignoring everything else, she lunged at him. One by one, the other wandering ghosts drawn by the talisman arrived, their spectral forms flickering wildly across the stage as they clashed in a chaotic melee. Even Zhen Niang, now a minor deity of vengeance, found herself entangled in the fray.
The village chief was completely caught off guard by this sudden turn of events. When he finally snapped out of his daze, he screamed in rage and terror, “Seize these troublemaking outsiders!”
But before he could finish, a shadow flashed past him. A cold object pressed against the back of his neck. Li Zhi’s voice, calm and laced with amusement, rang out behind him: “Chief, if you don’t want your head to roll like a stalk of wheat, I suggest you don’t move.”
In her hand, Li Zhi held a sickle that had been polished to a razor-sharp edge by the players earlier that day. The curved blade was pressed snugly against the village chief’s throat, as if just a slight push would send his head tumbling to the ground.
The village chief’s face turned deathly pale, his voice trembling worse than leaves on a tree branch. “Don’t move. Nobody move!”
The rampaging villagers froze in panic. Li Zhi, holding the village chief hostage, took a few steps forward and shouted, “Zhen Niang!”
The twisted red shadow on the stage snapped its head toward her. Though she tried to move closer, the Ghost Attraction Talisman binding Fang Lin kept her rooted in place. She could only glare at Li Zhi with hatred.
But Li Zhi didn’t even look at her. She addressed the village chief instead. “Tell her.”
The village chief trembled violently. “Tell her what?”
Li Zhi pulled a book from her robes and tossed it at his feet. The village chief looked down—and his eyes widened in shock. It was the village chronicle, a record not only of Martyred Women Village’s hundred-year history but also of some family secrets that were never meant to be shared with outsiders.
Li Zhi increased the pressure on the sickle, drawing a thin line of blood across the village chief’s neck. “Tell her.”
“I—I’ll tell, I’ll tell!” The village chief, seeing his own blood dripping onto the blade, screamed at the top of his lungs, his face as white as a sheet. “Zhen Niang. After Zhou Shaoyuan died, the Zhou family urged you to die in mourning. They pretended it was for honor and reputation, but the truth is, they wanted to divide up Zhou Shaoyuan’s property after your death. As long as you were alive, all the rewards and honors bestowed by the court would belong to you. That’s why they pushed you to kill yourself. It had nothing to do with honor or justice!”
His ancient, withered voice trembled as it echoed through the night, reaching every ear present.
“The Martyred Women Plaque can be exchanged for imperial rewards—tax exemptions, reduced labor duties—all to make the family’s life easier,” the village chief continued, quickly adding with a fawning tone, “Of course, that includes your family too.”
Li Zhi pressed the sickle harder. “One more unnecessary word, and I’ll cut you.”
The village chief could feel his skin splitting open beneath the blade. This ruthless woman really meant to kill him.
He had no choice but to abandon all pretense. Closing his eyes, he screamed, “We pushed women to stay chaste and die in mourning because it served our own selfish desires. We had no power to climb higher, so we asserted our authority downward—using your lives to gain honor, rewards, and profit!”
“We held women to the standards of saints while measuring ourselves by the morals of villains,” Li Zhi remarked coldly before turning her gaze back to the red shadow on the stage. “Zhen Niang, did you hear that? Over a hundred years have passed. Are you still going to lie to yourself?”
Still lying to herself?
After seeing the villagers praise her with empty words while none stood up for her injustice, after witnessing her husband weep over her grave only to remarry half a year later, after realizing they used the Martyred Women Plaque she died for to secure their own rewards—how could she not see the truth?
She did see it.
But like a silkworm trapped in its cocoon, she had never managed to break free in life. How could she transform into a butterfly in death?
It wasn’t until this moment, when the most authoritative man in this place tore away the veil of chastity that had shrouded her for so long, that the truth finally shattered her illusions.
The night was thick and heavy. The red shadow on the stage let out a mournful, resentful wail that echoed through the darkness.