Double happiness (XI)

The sky had gradually begun to brighten, but the village remained gloomy, daylight shining weakly through the thick clouds.

A sharp, piercing sound rang out through the silent village.

Inside the house in the courtyard, an old Marriage Certificate lay on a dark red wooden table. Beside it, an oil lamp on the verge of going out gave off a faint red glow. The village chief stood stiffly to one side, his ashen face devoid of life.

By now, Ye Zhen's entire body was rotting, livor mortis covering almost all of it. She was kneeling beside a female corpse dressed in a dark red wedding gown.

As the village chief let out that piercing sound, the previously motionless female corpse suddenly moved, slamming her head hard against the floor with a deep, thunderous crash.

Then the corpse's movements stopped abruptly. She remained motionless in a posture of prostration, as though waiting for something.

Ye Zhen's rotting body trembled violently. His mind remained clear, but ever since that horrifying female corpse had stepped into the room with stiff strides, he had completely lost control of his body. He could only kneel along with her, their movements uncannily identical.

Now, he could only watch helplessly as his head drew closer to the floor, inch by inch.

Smack...

Ye Zhen's forehead lightly touched the floor tiles.

Yet the instant it touched down, a crisp cracking sound came from his skull. Cracks instantly covered it, then kept widening and tearing apart.

But strangely, the instant his skull split, it began to recover at an unbelievable speed. Yet its recovery could not keep pace with its shattering, creating the illusion that it was breaking apart abnormally slowly.

An eerie red line rapidly extended from the distance. Yang Jian had also heard the call to bow to heaven and earth and was now rushing toward the courtyard.

At that very moment, Yang Jian's forehead suddenly split without warning, deep cracks spreading across it.

The wounds kept spreading, and Yang Jian's skull was about to burst apart. The Ghost Shadow instantly covered his entire body, overlapping with him. The spread of the cracks immediately slowed, then stopped completely.

Substituting death?

A flicker of surprise crossed Yang Jian's mind. He had not come into contact with Ye Zhen, yet the Substitute Ghost's supernatural power had selected him.

There was no time to think. Yang Jian rushed into the courtyard. Before him, Ye Zhen and the bride were prostrating themselves on the floor, with the Marriage Certificate directly in front of Ye Zhen.

The next wave of attacks followed on its heels.

The horrifying female corpse slowly raised her upper body, then stiffly kowtowed toward the floor again.

Bang!

This sound was even more horrifying, a dull crash like a dead pig being slammed onto a chopping block. The instant the female corpse's forehead touched the floor, Ye Zhen abruptly straightened up, then slammed his still incompletely recovered head toward the floor again.

With that impact, Ye Zhen's skull burst apart completely. Blood scattered everywhere, spreading across the floor.

Yet something strange happened. The blood flowing across the floor actually began to flow back slowly, gathering together bit by bit and streaming back into his ruined body.

Yang Jian watched Ye Zhen, who lay on the floor as dead as could be, recover through the Substitute Ghost by some unknown method. This manifestation of supernatural power was practically like an alternative form of restart...

The next second, the blood covering the floor contracted in an instant. His skull returned to its original state almost in the blink of an eye, and Ye Zhen abruptly opened his eyes. At that instant, the surrounding space seemed to change. Yang Jian sensed what seemed to be a Ghost Domain suddenly emerging and filling the room.

As a humming sound arose, Ye Zhen slowly raised his head, his cold eyes sweeping over his surroundings.

Ye Zhen first turned to look at the motionless female corpse kneeling beside him, then turned toward Yang Jian and slowly spoke.

"Yang Jian..."

Yang Jian narrowed his eyes as he watched Ye Zhen. At that moment, Ye Zhen gave him an intensely incongruous feeling. Ye Zhen was clearly right before him, yet he was actually somewhat unsure whether the person before him was the same Ye Zhen he had known before.

If he had to put it into words, Yang Jian felt that Ye Zhen had changed.

It was not an outward change, but rather that the air he gave off was completely different from before.

If the previous Ye Zhen had given off a chuunibyou feeling, then the current Ye Zhen seemed restrained and composed, while also giving off an unfathomable feeling.

A translucent Ghost Domain, almost tangible, gathered around his body, emitting waves of humming. His entire body rotted one moment and returned to its original state the next.

These outward changes in Ye Zhen's body seemed to suggest that he had gained a deeper level of use of the Substitute Ghost.

But Yang Jian no longer had any spare time to think about Ye Zhen's changes.

The situation had already reached the limit of what the two could endure. Ye Zhen appeared to still be able to move, but this state definitely could not last much longer. If this eerie wedding continued, the only end awaiting them was death. Yang Jian intended to deal with this female corpse right here.

"I have a theory, but it might not work. If it fails, both of us will die here today."

"There's nothing to hesitate over. In supernatural incidents, neither of us has a choice."

Yang Jian walked over to the horrifying female corpse. She had now gone completely still, kneeling stiffly on the floor, waiting for the next attack to come.

Yang Jian took out a dark red bracelet and was just about to put it on the female corpse.

Ye Zhen spoke up to stop him.

"What are you planning to do?"

"In my current state, touching that Marriage Certificate rashly would be no different from courting death. I need to graft the risk onto this female corpse, and this bracelet happens to meet the condition for that grafting."

Ye Zhen narrowed his eyes slightly, staring at the bracelet.

"The connection between me and this female corpse is very subtle right now. Put it on my wrist."

Yang Jian fell silent for a moment, rapidly analyzing it in his mind. "You're planning to transfer it through the Substitute Ghost..."

Yang Jian roughly understood what Ye Zhen wanted to do. With no time to hesitate, he snapped the bracelet onto Ye Zhen's wrist.

Yang Jian looked at Ye Zhen and said, "I think you should know that as long as a human controls a malicious ghost, there will be a limit. Although I don't know what happened to you, you might truly die next."

Ye Zhen merely nodded. "I know."

Yang Jian did not respond again. Intense red light surged outward, and lake water instantly flooded the entire room. But Ye Zhen and the female corpse were unaffected by the water, still kneeling stiffly in place.

Amid the lake water glowing red.

A thick Marriage Certificate floated directly in front of Yang Jian.

Using the malicious ghost's power so frequently and intensely in such a short time had resulted in the Ghost Lake now undergoing a rapid revival. But there was a slight difference: the target of the reviving Ghost Lake's attacks was not Yang Jian.

Through that blood-red bracelet, the attacks from the Ghost Lake's revival had been grafted into Ye Zhen's body.

And Ye Zhen, using the Substitute Ghost's traits and his identity as the "groom," had transferred the risk of revival onto that horrifying female corpse.

Yang Jian did not know exactly what method Ye Zhen had used to transfer the attacks from the Ghost Lake's revival onto the female corpse. At that moment, all his attention was focused on the Marriage Certificate.

At that moment, cold lake water poured endlessly from within the female corpse's dark red wedding gown, then slowly seeped back into her body, repeating the cycle over and over.