Chapter 49: Daiyu’s Motive

Daiyu probably thinks the two of us are still down in the cellar, still convinced that everyone who knew her secret is already dead. With that in mind, she has no reason to run—in fact, running would only draw suspicion. When we found her, she was standing in the courtyard dressed in a striking red dress.

She twirled around the courtyard in that vivid red gown, like it was her own stage.

Our eyes met, and when she saw I was still alive, Daiyu froze for a moment. Still, she didn’t stop. She kept whirling and leaping, moving around the yard as if lost in her own world. With every movement, the red dress rippled like a streak of fire trailing across the night sky—an entrancing sight if you didn’t look at her face.

“Swan Lake?” Guan Zengbin asked, eyeing Daiyu.

Gu Chen clearly had no patience for any of this. “Ballet, modern dance, whatever it is—just bring her back already.”

I grabbed Gu Chen’s arm. He looked at me, confused.

“Let her finish,” I said quietly.

It only took the time to smoke two cigarettes before Daiyu’s dance ended—more accurately, it ended when she tripped over her skirt and fell. This kind of dance isn’t made for long, flowing dresses, let alone one that drapes to the ground. Lying sideways on the dirt, Daiyu looked up at us and said, “Shall we go?”

“Let’s go,” I replied.

Daiyu was brought back for questioning.

We searched every inch of the shabby house where Daiyu lived. In the earthen bed where she slept, they found several sets of white bones. The coroner confirmed all the remains belonged to women, their times of death spread over several years—each victim stolen during ghost marriages over the past five years.

Daiyu made a full confession. She killed Chu Mei. She killed everyone involved in the ghost marriages and stole the bodies. Before Lao Liu committed murder, it was also Daiyu who, pretending to be Chu Mei, gave him that tape with ghostly voices. Every part of it was her doing.

“But why did you do all this?” I asked.

This is Daiyu’s story.

Daiyu’s surname was never Lin. Her real name isn’t Lin Daiyu—it should have been Chu Daiyu.

Back then, when Lord Chu divorced his first wife, she had just given birth to a child. That child was Daiyu. But even the arrival of a daughter couldn’t change Lord Chu’s mind—he still left, taking with him a child he’d found by the roadside, one with six toes on her foot.

For twenty-seven years, Daiyu never once met her real father.

When she started elementary school, her mother remarried a man named Lin. Her stepfather changed her surname, and she became Lin Daiyu.

In elementary school, she met her lifelong best friend—Chu Mei. Both shared the surname Chu, and for some reason, Daiyu always felt drawn to anyone with the name Chu. The two became inseparable.

Chu Mei told Daiyu that her so-called parents weren’t really her parents—she was just living with them temporarily. She never knew her mother and only had a father, whom everyone called Lord Chu, though she had no idea what his real name was.

Chu Mei said her father was a mysterious man. Sometimes he’d disappear on business trips for months and always returned with gold and silver. He had a disciple close to Chu Mei’s age who never went to school, always learning something mysterious from her father.

Sometimes Chu Mei would see this boy digging holes in the dirt.

She used to tease him—what kind of kid still plays with dirt? But the disciple always insisted it wasn’t mere play.

Daiyu once asked her mother what her real father did for a living.

Coincidentally, Chu Mei’s father did the very same thing.

Daiyu wondered—was it possible that Chu Mei’s father was her own father?

Her mother explained it was actually because of Daiyu’s birth that her father divorced her. It wasn’t that he stopped loving them, it was to protect them. There were many enemies in his line of work, and Lord Chu feared they’d take revenge on mother and daughter.

She also told Daiyu her father once picked up a child by the roadside, a girl with six toes on her right foot. He took the child with him, raising her as his daughter.

The only reason was, if someone came seeking vengeance, the grudge would fall on that child.

So, her father raised another as his daughter to keep his real family safe.

Daiyu once asked Chu Mei if she had six toes, and Chu Mei always shook her head. Maybe she’d had surgery as a child and couldn’t talk about it.

They stayed the best of friends. Daiyu could always learn about her father’s life from Chu Mei and felt comforted knowing he was still quietly protecting her. They went through elementary school, high school, and even university together.

One day, Chu Mei told Daiyu her father had died.

Chu Mei wept bitterly, and Daiyu broke down with her. Everyone thought their friendship was enviable, but Daiyu knew—their shared tears meant her real father was also gone.

They rushed back together as soon as they could.

By the time they reached the small lane, it was well past midnight.

Then, the Six Brothers dragged them into the cornfield.

Chu Mei was so shattered she couldn’t even cry anymore. She murmured, “Just kill me. I don’t want to live anymore. Kill me.”

Night fell silent and cold.

Lin Daiyu collapsed on the ground, watching her best friend beg for death.

In one day, Chu Mei lost everything—luck had abandoned her completely. She was smart, kind, and beautiful, regarded as a goddess by many. In twenty-two years, she’d never really known misfortune or sadness.

But on this day, fortune turned her back on Chu Mei.

Daiyu lifted a heavy stone.

She looked at Chu Mei, and Chu Mei looked right back.

Afterward, Daiyu called the police—and lied.

Since then, Daiyu lived every day with the guilt of killing her best friend. Still, everything she did was at Chu Mei’s pleading. She never wanted her friend to die, but she couldn’t bear to see her live in torment, either. From then on, Daiyu became unstable, stopped caring what others thought.

Lord Chu had died. Chu Mei was dead, too. Lord Chu’s student handled his funeral, but who would see to Chu Mei’s?

The responsibility fell to the family Chu Mei was living with.

According to Jiazi County customs, they had to host a ghost marriage for Chu Mei. Simple as that—they just wanted the gifts that came with the wedding, and Old Huang’s family delivered three hundred thousand yuan. That money went straight to their pockets, and in truth, they weren’t even named Chu, much less Chu Mei’s real parents.

But who really cared?

Someone did—Daiyu.

Daiyu knew those people weren’t Chu Mei’s parents and saw right through their ugly greed. She abhorred ghost marriages, resenting how two corpses were forced together like strangers condemned to share eternity. She vowed that Jiazi County would never hold a ghost marriage again, that no one would dare pair corpses for profit.

This ghost marriage ran with plenty of fanfare, and Daiyu heard about it early on. They even invited her to attend.

Daiyu rigged the support beams inside the mourning tent. There was a taut fishing line stretched behind Old Huang’s neck—just one snip, and it would whip forward faster than a dagger.

The line was so thin, Old Huang never noticed.

Once the ghost marriage began, all eyes were on Chu Mei’s body.

Old Huang’s head tumbled from his shoulders.

The fishing line snapped across before anyone noticed a thing.

The rest of the guests burst out of the tent, the rush of wind snuffing out every candle along the way. That worked in Daiyu’s favor; darkness became her shield. She stepped into the tent and shouldered Chu Mei’s corpse, just like the times she’d helped her limp along with a twisted ankle.

Chu Mei wore a bright red dress. She looked beautiful.

“Let’s go,” Daiyu said softly.

A kid hiding under a table watched as the body seemed to move all by itself. Chu Mei’s billowing skirt hid Daiyu’s steps and blocked the child’s view—he never saw Daiyu at all. And from that day, Chu Mei’s curse began.

Every time there was a ghost marriage, Daiyu appeared. Every host ended up dead. No one guessed the truth—a supposedly mad woman was the culprit. She wasn’t insane at all. People only trust their eyes, but eyes are the easiest things to fool.

Five years passed.

All that time, no one realized Daiyu was living inside the tomb.

For five long years, Daiyu poured her longing for her father into those lonely tombs. No one knew the place better than she did. And no one realized how Lao Liu’s solitary remorse inside the tomb was heard by Daiyu, every word clear as day.

She discovered Lord Chu hadn’t died of illness at all—the Six Brothers had killed him.

What’s more, those six didn’t even know Chu Mei had died five years ago. They still thought she was alive. Daiyu took advantage of that, turning their plans to her own ends. She used Chu Mei’s identity to help Lao Liu, steering him into killing the others and making them think Chu Mei had come back.

She set the Six Brothers against each other, stoking suspicion and causing them to fight amongst themselves.

A mystery that spanned five years finally closed, wrapped in Daiyu’s soft-spoken confession.

A birth daughter, an adopted daughter, a weeping disciple in a noodle shop, five scheming students, and a thousand-year-old tradition of ghost marriages—all tangled together.

“Why do I feel so sorry for Daiyu?” Guan Zengbin muttered as he left the interrogation room.

I nodded, then shook my head.

“Ever wonder if there’s another side to the story?” I said.