Lu Jiuling stopped in front of the little wedding attendant.
The little girl before him was dressed very festively, and very adorably too. It was just that the powder on her face was too thick, so white it was rather frightening.
“I have an invitation!”
Lu Jiuling pinched the copper coin between his fingers and waved it in front of the wedding attendant’s face.
The little attendant opened her eyes. First she stared at the copper coin, and after confirming it was an invitation, she lifted her head and sized Lu Jiuling up for a few seconds.
Then, holding the incense burner in both hands, she offered it forward.
Lu Jiuling raised an eyebrow and dropped the copper coin into the apple-sized little incense burner.
Seeing this, the little wedding attendant on the right immediately walked to the main gate and pushed it open. Then she crouched and offered a greeting of “May you be blessed.”
“Thanks!”
Lu Jiuling nodded in thanks to the two wedding attendants, then turned back and gave Tang Lei a look that said, “Hurry up and follow.” After that, he stepped over the threshold and entered the great residence.
“That actually worked?”
Jia Mingqiao was dumbfounded.
Not just him—no one in the class had expected the copper coin Lu Jiuling took from the red envelope to actually be usable as an invitation.
The next second, everyone hurriedly dug out their own red envelopes.
Because after eating at Zhuangyuan Tower, they had not returned to the guesthouse but come straight to the Fan family estate, all of them still had their red envelopes on them.
When Li Yinuo poured the copper coin into her palm, she failed to catch it. With a clang, the coin fell to the ground and rolled away.
“Fuck!”
Li Yinuo quickly bent down to pick it up.
That nearly scared her to death.
“Does everyone have a copper coin?”
Xu Shuo saw that there was a copper coin in his red envelope and let out a breath of relief. Then he pulled out the letter paper and unfolded it.
A blank sheet.
Not a single word!
What did that mean?
Xu Shuo did not understand and craned his neck to look at Jiang Shan’s letter.
“With your looks and talent, you should have been able to live a happy, fulfilling life. I’m sorry. I hope that in your next life, you won’t meet a homeroom teacher like me!”
“What does this mean?”
Xu Shuo had a bad feeling.
“…”
Jiang Shan gripped the copper coin and looked toward the gate of the estate, a foreboding rising in her heart.
All of this should have been orchestrated by their homeroom teacher, but what was his purpose in doing this?
“Xiuxiu, let’s go!”
Once Xu Shaowei got the copper coin, she did not pay any attention to what was written on the letter paper. The important thing was to catch up to Lu Jiuling as quickly as possible.
“Will it be dangerous inside?”
Feng Xiu was worried.
“We’ll take it one step at a time!”
Xu Shaowei glanced at the incense stick burning in the burner. If they went in, they might still live. If they stayed here, they would definitely die.
“Yaoyao, let’s go too!”
Jiang Shan followed.
“Mm!”
The baby-faced girl had always listened to her best friend.
“Why is the copper coin the key item for getting inside?”
Zhang Shuai rubbed the copper coin between his fingers.
“You’re asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?”
Seeing that both Jiang Shan and Xu Shaowei had left, Xu Shuo hurriedly caught up as well.
As for whether some of their classmates had not gotten copper coins?
What did that have to do with him?
“Why is there nothing written on my letter paper?”
Zeng Hong’s scalp tingled. Compared to everyone else, she felt as though she was missing something.
“Do you have a copper coin?”
Li Dongxuan asked with concern. He liked Zeng Hong.
“Yes!”
Zeng Hong clutched the copper coin tightly.
“Then that’s fine.”
Li Dongxuan strode briskly up the steps. “Everyone, stop dawdling. Hurry up and hand over the copper coins and get through the gate!”
Everyone ran over and gathered in front of the wedding attendants, placing their copper coins into the incense burner one by one.
When the tourists saw this scene, they panicked as well and followed them over. Some even reached out to stop people.
“Handsome, where did you get those copper coins?”
The woman in jeans blocked Tang Lei’s way.
“Our homeroom teacher gave them to us!”
Tang Lei was an honest person and did not hide it.
“Can you let me have a look?”
The woman in jeans thrust out her chest. Her camisole clung tightly to her large breasts, outlining a full, rounded curve that made one want to give it a squeeze.
Tang Lei’s heart began to race, and he hesitated.
After Lu Jiuling entered the gate, he had not left. When Xu Shaowei opened the door and came in, he was peering through the crack in the gate looking for Tang Lei, and saw this scene.
“Leizi, what are you standing there for?”
Lu Jiuling roared, “Waiting to die?”
Tang Lei heard his friend’s shout, and especially that word “die,” and shuddered all over. He did not dare delay any longer and tried to go around the woman in jeans to run forward.
The woman in jeans was very scheming. She grabbed Tang Lei and said in a sweet, cloying voice, “Let me see it, won’t you?”
As she spoke, she even tried to pry open Tang Lei’s hand, wanting to snatch the copper coin away.
Tang Lei struggled, but since the other party was a woman, he did not move too roughly.
If everyone had been trapped in this courtyard together, the tourists might still have been able to keep calm. But now that they saw these students actually had a way to leave, they could no longer stay composed.
Some of the more impatient tourists had already begun stopping people, asking where the copper coins had come from. There were even selfish people who directly started grabbing for them.
The scene instantly descended into chaos.
“Leizi, stop dragging your feet!”
Lu Jiuling could not take it anymore. That woman in jeans was neither friend nor family, and she was obviously trying to steal his copper coin. Why hadn’t he shaken her off already?
Why was he still tussling with her?
When the woman in jeans realized she could not trick the coin out of him, she lost patience and directly called for her boyfriend’s help. “Zhang Chenfan, are you dead? Get over here and take the copper coin!”
Zhang Chenfan was no kind soul. He immediately lunged at Tang Lei.
The two of them instantly began fighting.
Seeing the courtyard fall into chaos, the two lantern-carrying wedding attendants finally spoke up.
“Stop!”
Today was the young miss’s great day of joy. If these people kept causing trouble, would they not make the guests laugh?
The two wedding attendants were not old, but their voices were loud and stern, instantly quieting the scene.
The attendant on the left set the incense burner she was holding on the ground, walked down the steps, and came before the woman in jeans, who had been the first to demand someone else’s copper coin.
“H-Hello!”
The woman in jeans looked nervous. She tugged at her boyfriend, trying to hide behind him.
“Do you have an invitation?”
The wedding attendant asked.
“…”
The woman in jeans was silent. She did not have one, but she did not want to admit it.
The wedding attendant did not ask a second time. Her tender white little hand slipped into her clothes, and when she pulled it out again, there was a silver sewing needle in her hand.
The woman in jeans did not know what this wedding attendant with the powdered white face intended to do, so she shrank completely behind Zhang Chenfan.
“We…”
Zhang Chenfan wanted to argue a couple of words, but just as he opened his mouth, the wedding attendant had already taken the sewing needle and stabbed it into his thigh.
“Ah!”
Zhang Chenfan screamed. The sharp pain was like being stung by a hornet, making him instinctively step back. Then he felt his thigh go numb. It was also swelling, painfully uncomfortable.
Li Yinuo was hiding at the gate, watching the scene outside, when she suddenly cried out in alarm.
“Fuck, look at his leg!”
The thigh Zhang Chenfan had been stabbed in was swelling visibly, like a balloon being inflated by an air pump.
Riiip!
Even the pants he was wearing were stretched apart.
And it did not stop there. Zhang Chenfan’s entire body was like a human-skin balloon, rapidly expanding.
When the woman in jeans saw her boyfriend like this, she was so frightened she quickly moved away from him.
“Help!”
Zhang Chenfan panicked. He felt his body growing light and airy, as though he were about to float up. “I don’t want to die!”
“Spare me, please?”
Zhang Chenfan begged for mercy, but he no longer had a chance.
About twenty-some seconds later, the young man burst through all his clothes and completely swelled into a round ball, slowly drifting into the air.
At the sight of this horrifying scene, everyone fell silent as cicadas in winter.
The little wedding attendant looked at the woman in jeans.
The woman in jeans turned and ran.
The wedding attendant flicked her finger.
Whoosh!
The sewing needle flew from her hand and struck the woman in jeans in the buttocks.
“Ah!”
The woman in jeans clutched her rear with one hand, her whole body trembling nonstop. Then her buttocks began to swell, followed by her thighs and calves.
Riiip! Riiip!
The woman’s jeans were stretched apart, exposing both her thighs, but no one found it sexy. Instead, a thick sense of horror washed over them.
Because her hands and feet were swelling too.
Very soon, the woman in jeans also turned into a round, plump human-skin balloon, slowly drifting into the air.
Everyone raised their heads and looked at the two unlucky souls.
“Leizi, stop looking. Get over here!”
Lu Jiuling was speechless. What time was it, and he was still watching the show?
“Oh!”
Tang Lei quickly rushed up the steps, put the copper coin into the incense burner, and slipped through the gate.
The other classmates also hurried as fast as they could.
“Where did you get those copper coins?”
“I’ll pay! Will you sell me one?”
“I’m a big Douyin streamer! I definitely won’t let you lose out!”
The tourists anxiously tried to strike up conversations, wanting to obtain a copper coin.
Because the woman in jeans and her boyfriend had turned into human-skin balloons, it had intimidated the tourists with ill intentions, and so no further commotion of snatching copper coins broke out.
The students all paid their copper coins and entered the gate, but no one left. Instead, they looked up at the sky through the crack in the door.
After Zhang Chenfan floated to a height of about fifteen or sixteen stories, he hovered for a few seconds. Then his entire body suddenly exploded like a hydrogen balloon being squeezed until it burst.
Bang!
Dark red blood, organs, and bone fragments scattered down in a flurry, like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
The woman in jeans seemed to shout something, but no one heard it. They only saw her round body explode right after.
Bang!
Splash! Splash! Splash!
The bluestone floor was coated in a layer of blood and flesh.
Bang!
Half a head fell to the ground and smashed into a pulp.
“Urgh!”
Many people, seeing this horrifying and disgusting scene, vomited.
“Ah!”
Li Jiayao sucked in a cold breath. So frightened that she hugged her chest with both hands, she shrank behind the gate.
She did not dare look anymore.
One of the lantern-carrying wedding attendants came over and shut the gate.
“What do you think will happen to those people outside?”
Jiang Shan’s expression was grave.
“They’ll die, right?” Xu Shuo analyzed. “They don’t have copper coins. Once that incense stick in the burner burns out, I’d guess that will be their time of death!”
“Why bother worrying about them?” Xu Shaowei looked at the inner courtyard before them, decorated with lanterns and colored banners. “We don’t even know whether we can survive!”
Great red lanterns hung beneath the eaves, illuminating the courtyard down to the smallest detail. On the surrounding walls, doors, and windows were pasted red wedding papers bearing the character “囍,” mandarin ducks, and dragons and phoenixes bringing auspiciousness.
The courtyard was also filled with Eight Immortals tables.
On top were melons and fruits, seasonal vegetables, snacks and pastries, while the rich fragrance of tea wafted toward them.
Past the courtyard was a hall with its central doors thrown wide open. Above the lintel hung a plaque bearing three large gilded characters: Linglong Courtyard.
“So there really is going to be a wedding here!”
Ke Xinyi stood on tiptoe and peered into the hall. “I just don’t know who the bride and groom are?”
“No matter who they are, this definitely has something to do with that son of a bitch Tang Weimin!”
Zhang Shuai no longer called him their homeroom teacher. Every word was filled with anger.
The scene just now of the human-skin balloons exploding had badly frightened even him, bold as he usually was.