Double Happiness (5)

Just as Yang Jian and Ye Zhen were leafing through the "Marriage Certificate," a series of stiff, dull footsteps came from the doorway. The footsteps were extremely regular, approaching the room at a particular frequency.

"Tap, tap... tap... tap, tap..."

Both men whipped their heads around. The village chief stood stiffly in the doorway, his face covered in livor mortis and devoid of expression, his unfocused eyes staring straight at them.

"The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave."

Dragging his heavy legs forward, the village chief repeated as he approached, "The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave."

Yang Jian observed the village chief, trying to analyze the connection between him and that Marriage Certificate through his behavior.

Yet at that moment, Ye Zhen abruptly drew the longsword at his waist.

"I'll cut you down."

An icy gleam of sword light flashed past, followed by a muffled tearing sound. Ye Zhen cleaved the village chief in half at the waist. Strangely, however, no blood flowed from the wound. Through the cut, they could see a mass of cold, dead, rigid flesh giving off waves of corpse stench.

Before either man could make another move, those dull footsteps sounded outside the door again.

"Tap, tap... tap, tap..."

Looking up, they saw the village chief's stiff figure appear in the doorway once more.

Immediately afterward, suffocating whispers rose from all around them.

"The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave."

"The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave..."

The "guests" who had been sitting at the tables now all slowly stood up. The heads on their necks had turned a full circle, and they walked numbly toward the room with stiff steps.

Their voices grew louder and louder, repeating in hoarse unison, "The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave..."

Yang Jian looked at the corpse on the floor, then at the village chief who had appeared again. The corpse Ye Zhen had cut in half had not disappeared. This state was unlike a restart; it was more like a medium that could be transferred at any time.

"It's not a restart. Get out of here."

The two immediately headed outside. Ye Zhen picked up the Marriage Certificate as he went, and Yang Jian did not stop him. Although he could not be sure what consequences taking the Marriage Certificate away at will would bring, with Ye Zhen there to test things out, he had no need to expend anything pointlessly.

Yang Jian charged out the door first. The courtyard was packed with people, their numbers excessive. Who knew where these people had emerged from? There were several times more than when the two had first entered.

These people were still opening their mouths woodenly, speaking in unison. "The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave."

"A supernatural attack..." Yang Jian coldly regarded the densely packed crowd before him. Their steadily rising volume was becoming grating even to him.

Just as Yang Jian was about to act, Ye Zhen emerged behind him with the Marriage Certificate. The instant he crossed the threshold, a deathly pale hand shot out of the darkness and clamped down on his shoulder from behind!

The way this hand appeared was far too bizarre, as though it had reached out from a Ghost Domain neither of them could detect, leaving them no time to react.

After only an instant of contact, an abnormal dark red rapidly began spreading across Ye Zhen's body.

His skin rotted and cracked at a visible rate, and livor mortis spread rapidly. But the phenomenon vanished as quickly as it had come. The bizarre decay swiftly receded, and Ye Zhen's body immediately returned to normal.

Ye Zhen's gaze sharpened. He turned and slashed with his sword. At the same time, Yang Jian's Ghost Hand shot out, trying to seize that sinister hand.

Yang Jian stared coldly at the empty shoulder. "A Ghost Domain?"

Before his words had faded, another icy, rigid hand landed on Ye Zhen's shoulder without warning...

With a clatter, the Marriage Certificate fell from his hand, and Ye Zhen toppled over stiffly.

Rotting livor mortis rapidly covered his entire body, which then kept restoring itself. The Substitute Ghost inside Ye Zhen was clashing with the hand's supernatural power. This cycle of decay and recovery continued more than a dozen times before slowly subsiding.

Looking at the Marriage Certificate lying outside the door, Yang Jian suddenly realized something and reached for it. But the instant his Ghost Hand touched the Marriage Certificate, a pale, icy hand silently settled on his shoulder.

In an instant, Yang Jian's consciousness blurred as though it were being drawn out of him. He immediately lost control of his body and pitched stiffly forward.

The third time. The certain-death effect is stacking...

It was an entirely instinctive response. Dense scarlet surged from within Yang Jian and covered his whole body. The next moment, restored to normal, he snatched up the Marriage Certificate and hurled it back inside.

The instant the Marriage Certificate left his hand, Yang Jian clearly saw vivid red Ghost Blood emerge on its pages like embroidery, forming the words "fetch the bride."

Neither man had the slightest room to catch his breath. Behind them, the tide of "guests" had already surged forward like a flood, packed so densely that they blocked the entire doorway.

Every "guest" stared straight at the two of them, still repeating hoarsely, "The wedding banquet has not begun yet. Please leave."

"Drip..."

A drop of foul-smelling lake water fell from the eaves. Then an endless stream of lake water seeped from the ground. The air grew damp, and the ground gradually began to flood.

Immediately afterward, a swath of scarlet enveloped the entire courtyard.

Splash!

The "guests" standing on the lake's surface rapidly began sinking into it. Yet the crowd pouring in from every direction far outpaced the rate at which the lake swallowed them, their numbers suffocatingly vast.

Just then, a sinister, bizarre streak of sword light shot out from Ye Zhen's direction, slashing straight toward the crowd.

The center of the surging crowd abruptly halted, then twisted wildly in a bizarre fashion, rolling and stretching as though being wrung into hemp rope, forming a spinning vortex.

Immediately afterward, the vortex abruptly collapsed. An enormous hollow gap was forcibly torn open in the center of the distorted crowd.

Yang Jian also vaguely heard Ye Zhen shout something about "Divine Might"...

Yang Jian looked at the enormous gap torn open by that sinister sword light. This attack seemed more like an unconventional application of Ye Zhen's own supernatural power.

With no time to think further, Yang Jian and Ye Zhen rushed through the gap and out of the crowd.

In the sinister night, a streak of red light plunged into a low house. Zhang Wei lay on the bed, fast asleep. Yang Jian went up and slapped him. "A Wei! Wake up!"

Zhang Wei sat up groggily.

"Ask our homeroom teacher for leave for me. My stomach hurts a little..."

With that, Zhang Wei flopped back down and fell asleep again, only to immediately jump up. "Holy shit, who hit me?!"

Seeing that Zhang Wei was fine, Yang Jian turned and walked toward the window.

Through the dim light inside the house, he could vaguely make out the surging crowd outside the door. The "guests" seemed endless, filling the streets of the entire village.

Ye Zhen rubbed his shoulder and, unusually, said nothing. There was no telling what he was thinking.

Yang Jian stared coldly outside.

After Yang Jian and Ye Zhen returned indoors, the crowd that had been so densely packed moments earlier slowly dispersed, their movements stiff and uniform, gradually disappearing into the shadows of the night. The entire village returned to deathly silence.

"This entire village is practically an amalgamation of malicious ghosts. There are multiple certain-death killing rules here. Only the lodging arranged by the village chief is safe."

"Fetch the bride..."

Yang Jian considered the words that had appeared on the Marriage Certificate at the end. His judgment of the Marriage Certificate had been correct. It could only make minor changes according to the events taking place at the time, so it could not directly bring Zhang Wei and the bride together. It could only complete the entire wedding process step by step.

Sure enough, while Yang Jian was thinking, the village chief appeared at the door.

"Knock, knock, knock..." The village chief knocked on the door.

Bang! Yang Jian kicked the door open and stared coldly at the village chief, waiting for him to speak. What he hated most in his life was someone knocking on his door.

"It is time for the groom to fetch the bride..."

The village chief's gaze passed over Yang Jian and Ye Zhen and fixed directly on Zhang Wei, as though he had already decided that Zhang Wei was the groom.

Raising his stiff arm, the village chief pointed in a direction on the mountain behind the village.

Yang Jian looked in the direction the village chief pointed. He could faintly make out a stretch of unmarked graves, which looked particularly eerie in the darkness.