Chapter 60: Double Happiness

"She laughed while crying, you guess how she laughed while crying, crying... look at how she cried while laughing."

When the suona sounds, it heralds either extreme joy or extreme sorrow.

Clearly, it was a wedding, yet the bride was crying and laughing at the same time. Although she didn't fully understand it, Wen Jiaqi could still hear the profound desolation woven into the song.

While both songs about weddings carried a sorrowful undertone, "The Legend of the Purple Hairpin" was entirely different from this song, "囍" (Double Happiness).

Listening to "The Legend of the Purple Hairpin" made her simply want to weep. It evoked sympathy, admiration, and a touch of envy.

However, listening to "囍", she felt an inexplicable chill creeping through her body.

At last, the wedding bowing ceremony came to an end.

The scene shifted abruptly. The bride in the music video was hanging from a white silk ribbon; she was already dead, and her unclosed eyes were filled with resentment.

The embroidered shoes beneath her feet were given a close-up shot...

Along with the dead tree outside the window, its branches twisted into a strange shape.

!!!

Assaulted by this visual, Wen Jiaqi felt as though her heartbeat stopped for a full second.

When she finally regained her wits, she wanted to scream, but her throat felt so parched and tight that no sound came out.

Her spiritual entity had also manifested, currently trembling as it cowered beside her, its little eyes darting nervously from side to side in deep suspicion.

The floor-to-ceiling window, which usually possessed such a poetic ambiance, now looked menacing enough to make one wonder if some terrifying entity might suddenly materialize in the darkness outside.

Perhaps that very face of the hanged bride...

Wen Jiaqi, finally snapping back to reality, burst into loud, frightened tears, wailing miserably.

In the next room, Wen Jiahui heard this familiar kettle-like wailing and was filled with utter helplessness.

He had no choice but to knock on the adjacent door and call out loudly, "Wen Jiaqi, what is it this time? Did you stumble upon another tragedy?"

Bang—the door swung open.

The familiar figure lunged forward once more, exactly as she had done the last time she was moved to tears by a song.

"Did you cry yourself into a mess over another song?"

Wen Jiaqi paused her wailing, her face streaming with tears as she asked, "How did you know?"

"Hah, I guessed it right away. Tell me, what kind of tragedy is it this time?"

"Wuwah~ It's not a tragedy this time, I was scared! Jiang Bao's new music video is terrifying, it scared me to death!!"

As if to prove just how terrified she was, Wen Jiaqi's spiritual entity cowered and edged even closer.

Seeing the white peacock's cowardly display, Wen Jiahui was completely and utterly speechless.

***

Goodness, how could anyone listen to a song and get so scared that their spiritual entity manifested in panic?

And honestly, what was wrong with her spiritual entity anyway? Its legs couldn't even support it steadily...

If word of this got out, would the males pursuing Wen Jiaqi be entirely certain they wouldn't regret it?

He had never witnessed such a cowardly spiritual entity in his life!

***

Meanwhile, countless other people were clicking on the music video.

The most absurd part was that the impatient ones had clicked straight through without reading the warning, while the cautious ones had indeed noticed it, only to become all the more curious as a result.

Consequently, one after another, they unhesitatingly clicked to play the music video.

Ning Feiyu was a review blogger who regularly posted critiques of songs, movies, and television series on his Starnet account.

Because he accepted no sponsorships and delivered his commentary with a sharp, scathing tongue, he commanded a considerable following.

After all, in this day and age, anyone daring to speak the truth on Starnet was a warrior.

Without some background, such a person would have been silenced and banned long ago.

Yet, after every scathing critique he published, he remained completely unharmed on Starnet. Over time, people deduced that his background must be quite formidable.

At the very least, being able to offend so many people with absolute impunity and avoid assassination was a skill in its own right.

Ning Feiyu frequently suffered from insomnia, so every night he would scour music platforms for songs to listen to.

Music was supposed to aid sleep after all, though it had proven entirely useless in his case. Still, having no other alternatives, he simply resolved to fight a losing battle to the bitter end.

Listening every day, failing to sleep every day.

The suppressed fury in his heart continued to mount, and his irritability index kept climbing.

Finally, one day, his patience snapped entirely, and he published a post viciously denouncing those songs as absolute garbage discarded by the imperial music industry!

Who could have anticipated that a single post would skyrocket him to viral fame.

From then on, a vicious cycle began: unable to sleep, he sought out entertainment, but every film, television show, and song possessed its own unique brand of eye-sore awfulness. The more he watched, the angrier he grew; the more he listened, the more enraged he became.

Which meant he slept even less, grew even angrier, began cursing publicly, and subsequently went viral all over again...

He had ridden this wave of notoriety all the way, accumulating more and more followers who hounded him daily for new content.

Unable to sleep once more tonight, he decided to turn to the music industry to dredge up some fresh material for a tirade.

After all, he had spent two months berating the film and television sector; it was only fair that the music industry took its turn in the pillory. He played no favorites.

The moment he opened the music platform, the homepage recommended a music video to him.

What irritated him most was that the cover of this music video bore two pretentious and cryptic warning labels, clearly designed to trick people into spending Star-coins to download it!

"Viewers of a timid disposition, enter at your own peril"—what a joke. Putting aside whether the music video was genuinely frightening, even if it contained actual footage of corpses, how terrifying could it possibly be?

Could it possibly be more terrifying than the monsters of the cosmic abyss?

Or could it compare in repulsiveness to the Zerg?

If such grotesque imagery were truly included in a music video, censorship would never have permitted its release.

Therefore, the conclusion was obvious: this was nothing more than a scam music video!

It relied on pretension and manufactured mystery to exploit people's curiosity and swindle them into downloading it.

Today, he was going to expose this fraud and nail this shameless, bottom-feeding scoundrel to the pillar of public censure, ensuring they would never swindle another penny.

Without a moment's hesitation, Ning Feiyu spent 5 Star-coins to download the music video.

...

Five minutes later, with a complex expression and slightly trembling hands, he clicked onto Jiang Qin's profile page.

Ten minutes prior, she had published a new update.

First, she provided a brief introduction explaining the Zhongyuan Festival (Ghost Festival).

Next, she detailed the ancient instruments used in the song—specifically the suona—along with ancient wedding customs and the significance of the auspicious date of the eighteenth day of the first lunar month.

Only then did Ning Feiyu realize that weddings in ancient times were actually this complicated?

At the very end of the post, the story behind the song "囍" was revealed.

[I've always known that females held low status in ancient times, but I never imagined it could be this low.]

[Every era is different.]

[Indeed, humans have existed for countless years, and during that time, the relative status of males and females has shifted back and forth several times, all merely in the struggle for survival.]

[In the past, our female forebears were also subjected to oppression; it was only later that we attained our present status.]

[It's all for survival. Since the males ruled for such a long time, they have now willingly accepted the reforms of this era.]

[What I find rather strange is, why did the music video feature only a single dead person, yet I felt it was far more terrifying than exotic beasts...]

[I felt the same way...]

[I can no longer look directly at shoes, windows, or the space beneath beds...]

Having finished reading Jiang Qin's explanatory post, Ning Feiyu felt his hammering heart settle down somewhat.

Right until he turned around and discovered a face plastered against his own window...

His eyes rolled back, and he fainted on the spot.

The person outside the window: ...

"Hey, Ning Feiyu, what on earth are you doing? I told you to open the door, ahhhh!!

You're inside and you won't open the door, you aren't replying to messages either, and now you're pretending to be asleep when you see me—what is the meaning of this??

Open the door, hurry up and open the door, I didn't bring my key!!!"

"囍" (Double Happiness) by Ge Dongqi