After Being Forced into Marriage with My Paranoid Dead Husband - Chapter 9

A completely flustered Shen Qiuxin walked through the familiar residential courtyard. Having lived here for over twenty years, tonight she felt as though every blade of grass and tree was utterly foreign, and the path leading to the study appeared exceptionally long.

The further Shen Qiuxin walked, the more terrified she became. She should have reached the study long ago, but this path seemed so distant that it felt as though it had no end.

The Qing family was not an ordinary merchant household engaged in commerce; Shen Qiuxin had only learned of this after that little bastard was born. Qing Congnan rarely spoke of such matters, so Shen Qiuxin’s understanding of ghosts and deities was patchy at best. She had heard that ghosts and monsters harmed people using a trick known as a “ghost wall” (getting trapped in a loop), but this was different from the ghost walls she knew, she had been walking straight down this path all along and had never looped back to the starting point.

The dim, eerie path ahead felt like some terrifying maw waiting to swallow people whole, exuding a chilling aura.

The light from the lantern Cuijin carried was also dim. Even with Cuijin offering words of comfort from time to time, Shen Qiuxin finally stopped walking amidst her escalating panic.

“Why aren’t you walking anymore?” Cuijin asked, her voice turning cold.

The tone was icy, making it feel thoroughly abnormal at this moment.

Shen Qiuxin’s face turned instantly pale as she suddenly recalled that it seemed like a very long time since she last heard Cuijin speak. The hand supporting her felt as cold as a block of ice, the road that never seemed to reach an end, and the person beside her who had somehow been replaced without her noticing, all of these little by little eroded Shen Qiuxin’s sanity.

“Madam,” Cuijin’s flat-toned voice sounded again, repeating the question: “Why aren’t you walking anymore?”

Shen Qiuxin stiffly replied, “The light is a bit dim.”

“Oh,” Cuijin said, “where is there a light?”

Shen Qiuxin’s previously blurred memories suddenly sharpened. When she and Cuijin went out, they had left in a flurry of haste and hadn’t brought a lantern at all!

Although she didn’t dare to look, Shen Qiuxin couldn’t help but slowly lower her head. Entering her field of vision was a grayish-blue palm grasping a lantern pole, and hanging further down was none other than Shen Qiuxin’s own head, bleeding from all seven orifices, staring blankly with unclosed eyes in death.

“Ah!!”

A miserable scream suddenly pierced the air.

Qing Ling, standing inside the room, witnessed firsthand how Shen Qiuxin and Cuijin talked at cross-purposes, after which Shen Qiuxin suddenly let out a shrill scream. Following that, her whole body seemed as though its skin and flesh were being stripped away by an invisible force, her limbs violently twisted. After collapsing to the floor drenched in blood, she used her already contorted hands to pick up a teapot, pouring water directly onto her face. At the same time, her abdomen was ripped open, and in a most horrifying and unbelievable manner, she choked herself to death with a pot of tea.

From beginning to end, the puddle of ghosts on the ground did nothing at all. But after Shen Qiuxin died, Qing Ling acutely sensed that the female ghost’s chilling, gloomy aura had grown even more intense.

She had not vanished.

Qing Ling heard Zhang Heng let out a low laugh, not the usual sarcastic, mocking tone he often used, but an extremely delighted chuckle.

“Two people will die tonight,” Zhang Heng said. “Once she is killed, she cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation.”

Qing Ling didn’t know who Zhang Heng was talking to, but since the other person who was going to die certainly wasn’t himself, it had to be that maid named Cuijin.

“What are you talking about?” Qing Ling asked.

Zhang Heng reached out and patted Qing Ling’s shoulder, asking, “Did you see it?”

Qing Ling saw it.

Shen Qiuxin, who had collapsed onto the ground, had her face covered in un-dried tea water, dying with her eyes open in eternal resentment. Between her brows was a pitch-black, obscure pattern resembling the character for “Order” (令), though with more complex and intricate strokes, outlined by a square border, it looked as though a seal had been stamped right between her eyebrows. However, no such mark was present on Cuijin, who was already struggling on the ground.

“That is karma,” Zhang Heng said. “Plant a cause, and you must reap the fruit. Once the debt is cleared, that is the end of it.”

Within the span of just a few breaths, Cuijin on the ground also drew her last breath, drowning herself with half a cup of tea.

Qing Ling wasn’t very keen on watching that scene, so he turned his head away. However, he hadn’t expected ghosts to abide by rules either, and asked in a low voice, “Cuijin didn’t owe her a debt, so why did she resort to killing her?”

Zhang Heng didn’t reply, but another voice sounded right at that moment.

“Because ghosts do not reason.”

The voice was exceptionally familiar. Qing Ling turned his head and, sure enough, saw the monk Miaoyuan, whom he had crossed paths with once before, standing outside the open door.

The moment Miaoyuan spoke, that female ghost silently crawled a few steps, and her figure dissipated into nothingness.

Meanwhile, Miaoyuan was staring fixedly at Zhang Heng, his face tense like he was facing a formidable enemy.

Zhang Heng sneered.

“A lingering ghost that won’t disperse.”

You’re a ghost yourself, calling someone else a lingering ghost that won’t disperse—isn’t that a bit inappropriate? Qing Ling thought to himself. But he didn’t dare to speak aloud, merely glancing at Miaoyuan. As a result, he noticed Miaoyuan’s face was full of shock, as if the phrase “Incredible” was written all over it.

“How are you?.”

Before Miaoyuan could finish his sentence, Zhang Heng said casually, “This matter is beyond what you can handle. Within three breaths, get lost or die.”

Miaoyuan had originally come to investigate because he sensed the Qing residence surrounded by vicious intent and monstrous ghost Qi, but he hadn’t expected to run into the baleful star he had previously seen in Dragon-Slaying Mountain. Even more unexpectedly, the other party’s behavior and actions were so similar to a living person that he was stunned in place. Now, upon hearing this threat, he paused for a single breath before turning around and leaving with crisp, decisive steps.

All sentient beings needed to be delivered, but one had to stay alive to do it.

Qing Ling, who was equally stunned, was snapped back to his senses by Zhang Heng’s “Let’s go.” On the way back to the courtyard, Qing Ling asked in a low voice, “What kind of karma do you have with the Qing family?”

“I don’t remember,” Zhang Heng replied calmly. Pausing for a moment, he added, “It’s a big one.”

This sounded completely unreasonable, but when Qing Ling thought of the mark on Shen Qiuxin’s forehead earlier, he understood that ghosts had their own ways of determining karma.

Qing Ling recalled the two people who had died so miserably just moments ago, they had both died in the exact same manner as the female ghost’s death. That day on the mountain path, A-yuan had also tried every possible means to lure him off a cliff, which showed that ghosts killing people seemed to mimic their own deaths. He looked at Zhang Heng, who looked no different from an ordinary person, unable to tell what manner of death the other had suffered.

“What about you?” Qing Ling asked softly behind him. “When do you plan to make your move?”

Zhang Heng’s footsteps paused. He turned around to look at his wife, whose face was filled with fear yet trying hard to maintain a facade of calm, and smiled wickedly and coldly.

“Once I figure out the karma.” His soft ending notes carried a sinister edge. “Before that, you can beg me to let you go; perhaps I’ll soften my heart.”

This was blatant mockery and play.

Qing Ling lowered his eyes and walked past Zhang Heng on his own.

From first meeting Zhang Heng until now, the latter was rapidly recovering his living appearance; presumably, it wouldn’t take long for him to recall his grievances with the Qing family. When that time came, he would make his move to settle this piece of karma, and he, as a member of the Qing family, wouldn’t be able to escape either!

Qing Ling felt wronged.

He had lived a poor and difficult life all these years; for eighteen years, guarding that small courtyard felt like drawing a prison for himself. He hadn’t gotten a shred of the Qing family’s wealth and fine living, yet he had to bear the karmic consequences together with them.

Why should I?

After returning to the courtyard, Qing Ling ignored the two maidservants and went straight to his room; Zhang Heng’s whereabouts were unknown once again.

Fuer and An’er exchanged glances, both reading the sheer terror in each other’s eyes.

They had been doing chores in the courtyard the whole time and hadn’t seen Qing Ling go out at all, so how could he have come back from the outside?