After Being Forced into Marriage with My Paranoid Dead Husband - Chapter 5

“You…” Qing Ling finally broke the silence, though he was habitually taciturn, his tone flat. “Do you have a name?”

The evil entity remained silent for a long while before replying, this time carrying a hint of hesitation.

“Chang… Changheng.”

Though Qing Ling could not see him, the manifested spirit behind him was still dressed in inky-black robes, radiating a wild and unrestrained aura. Yet his gaze was fixed upon a distant, hazy void, his brows furrowed as if recalling something, or perhaps feeling vexed at his inability to remember.

“Which characters?” Qing Ling asked.

The entity answered: “As in… long winds span a thousand miles, wearing the jade pendant heng.”

He articulated every single word quite slowly, but at least his speech was no longer coarse, nor were his sounds strained and low-pitched like those of a beast.

Qing Ling had seen his face; this evil entity possessed the appearance of a handsome young man. With his voice now restored, there was no longer any incongruity with that face. Since he was a ghost from beneath an ancient tomb, he likely looked just like this when he died.

He was still very young when he lost his life.

Qing Ling shifted slightly. Naturally well-behaved and delicate in appearance, lowering his gaze only made him look even more gentle and submissive.

“Speak properly,” he said, his opening words cool and detached. “Let go of me first.”

The fierce ghost named Changheng chuckled, his tone retaining its mocking edge. “Why? You are, after all, my legally wedded, properly betrothed wife.”

Those four words, deliberately emphasized with heavy inflection, dripped with thick irony. Qing Ling instantly caught the deep reluctance and complex emotions beneath them—a resentment and hatred accumulated over long years.

Recalling the few times he had been oppressed and humiliated, Qing Ling let out a cold, retaliatory huff of laughter.

He had suffered such a massive loss, yet this ghost spirit was still dissatisfied?

If he was so unhappy with this marriage, why did he keep entangling with him to do that?

Before Qing Ling could speak, the evil entity seemed to read his thoughts and instantly sneered, “If not for me, could you have lived until today?”

Qing Ling paused.

He had never harbored any grand ambitions in this life, otherwise he wouldn’t have been content to live so securely in that small mountain courtyard. Yet even a tiny ant clings to life—who wouldn’t want to live well? If he had to speak of obsessions, Qing Ling had previously wanted to live a safe and steady life, and now wanted to figure out exactly what the Qing clan was scheming to use him for, so that he could continue living a secure life thereafter.

After only a brief moment of hesitation, Qing Ling was already scooped back into the room by the freezing-cold evil entity. With lingering fear, he glanced toward the bronze mirror in the outer room, terrified that some scarlet characters might emerge upon it once more. Yet nothing happened this time; until the bed curtains fell, Changheng did not conjure up any terrifying spectacles.

Still unwilling, the moment he was set down on the couch, Qing Ling retreated into the corner. His resistance had never once amounted to anything, but this time Changheng sat at the edge of the couch without directly resorting to force.

“Was A-Yuan’s matter your doing?” Qing Ling asked in a low voice.

A-Yuan had been implicated by him, forced to eke out a living together in the mountains, only to die a violent death at the foot of the cliff on the mountain path. Qing Ling had always cared deeply about this matter.

Changheng answered candidly, “It was not.”

Qing Ling pressed his lips together. His very life was pinched in the grip of this fierce ghost; presumably, the other had no reason to lie to him.

Changheng abruptly reached out, causing Qing Ling to startle and flinch.

Then, those pale, lifeless fingertips came to rest right between Qing Ling’s brows. As if seeing something, Changheng’s cold gaze turned ferocious once more, instantly reverting into that venomous and resentful fierce ghost.

A jolt of heartache struck Qing Ling as he asked in a dry voice, “Can you…”

“No.” Before he could finish, his words were cut off by Changheng’s icy voice.

The hand resting between his brows clamped down upon his fragile throat, the threatening intent self-evident.

Changheng spoke again: “You have no choice.”

He truly was becoming more and more like a… human.

Qing Ling always felt that aside from the chilling, bone-deep resentment in Changheng’s eyes, there was also an indescribable bewilderment. Yet this handsome face could transform at any second into a skeleton, a fierce ghost with green fangs and tusks, or perhaps a rotting, decaying piece of skin.

He could not help but feel terrified.

“What exact relationship do you have with the Qing clan?” Qing Ling asked hoarsely. “And why me?”

Changheng did not answer. Instead, gripping Qing Ling’s slender neck, he dragged him straight into his embrace. As the modest outer garment was tossed off the couch, he murmured deeply into Qing Ling’s ear:

“Someone will die tonight.”

This time, Changheng exercised considerable restraint, yet the frail Qing Ling still slept until the sun was high in the sky.

No sooner had he woken up than he heard a clamor and commotion echoing from the courtyard. Just as Fu’er rushed into the room in a panicked flurry, too flustered to even offer a greeting, she cried out anxiously, “Young Master! It’s the Madam causing a scene outside! There are no handymen assigned to our courtyard, so we maids won’t be able to hold them off for long. But with such a big commotion, the Master will surely hurry over soon.”

Qing Ling was still somewhat dazed. “W-what?”

Fu’er smacked her own forehead, too panicked to care about formalities any longer as she blurted out, “It’s the Young Miss… the Young Miss is dead!”

The person who died was Qing Yuxiu, the eldest legitimate daughter born to the primary wife of the Qing household. Yet Fu’er herself could not make heads or tails of the cause and sequence of events. Abruptly, Qing Ling recalled the fierce ghost’s curse-like prophecy from the previous night—Someone will die tonight!

Could the person really have been killed by Changheng?

Even if that were true, this debt could not possibly be pinned on him. Qing Ling furrowed his brows deeply.

Bang,

The door was violently kicked open. Several burly, thick-set handymen rushed in first, followed by a bun-coiffed matron stepping across the threshold: Shen Qiuxin, the primary wife of Qing Congnan.

Shen Qiuxin’s eye rims were slightly red as she glared viciously at Qing Ling, her eyes brimming with sheer disgust.

“You wretch,” Shen Qiuxin gritted out, “Tie this wretch up and throw him into the mountain! Make him pay with his life for Xiuer!”

With a pale face, Fu’er blocked the front with a shrill voice, “Stop! Madam, the Master, he—”

Before she could finish her sentence, an elderly maidservant beside Shen Qiuxin lunged forward and slapped her across the face, then turned to bark at the hesitating handymen: “What are you waiting for?! Move! And tie up those two little sluts from this courtyard together! Let them learn who their real masters are!”

Amidst the chaos filling the room, Qing Ling had no time to question why Shen Qiuxin was so dead-set on pinning Qing Yuxiu’s death on him, but he certainly couldn’t just sit back and be slaughtered. Instantly slipping off the bed, he yanked Fu’er behind his back and shouted coldly: “Who dares lay a hand on us?!”

Simultaneously, the temperature inside the room plummeted, turning somewhat frigid.

Unaware of it himself, Qing Ling stared coldly and steadily at Shen Qiuxin.

“Whoever dares touch me, today will be their last day alive.”

Qing Ling spoke with absolute certainty, yet those handymen actually paused in their tracks. He even caught a flicker of fear crossing Shen Qiuxin’s face.

It seemed everyone had been startled by Qing Ling’s seemingly absurd threat.

Remaining outwardly calm, Qing Ling inwardly loathed that fierce ghost Changheng to the core. Regardless of whether Qing Yuxiu’s death had anything to do with him, Changheng must have known the inside story, and for all he knew, he might even have been the one who did it—yet now the bastard was playing dead… well, strictly speaking, he wasn’t alive to begin with.

Yet he was the one unjustly suffering this unprovoked disaster!

The standoff did not last long before Shen Qiuxin raged, “What are you standing around for? Didn’t you hear this wretch’s words? Ever since he came back yesterday, how many people have already lost their lives? Not a single one of the people sent to fetch him came back, and after he spent just one night in the residence, Xiuer met with an untimely death. If you keep him around, every last one of you will die!”

Her words ended in an almost hysterical shriek.

The handymen exchanged glances, but in the end, they surged forward.

Qing Ling’s heart sank as a hand clamped onto his arm.

The handyman only felt as though he had grabbed a freezing corpse, an icy, bone-piercing chill burrowing straight from his palm into the marrow of his bones. Terrified out of his wits and turning deathly pale, he let out a shriek and instantly released his grip, causing everyone else to freeze in their tracks once more.

Qing Ling pressed his lips together thoughtfully, guessing this must be Changheng’s doing.

The creature still had a bit of a conscience left though admittedly not much.

Fear surfaced on Shen Qiuxin’s face as well, though it was overshadowed by lingering resentment and hatred. Yet with the frontrunner still standing aside, deathly pale and trembling in terror, for a moment no one dared to touch the slender youth surrounded in the center.

The atmosphere was, to say the least, somewhat awkward.