After Ghost Marriage with My Arch-Rival - Chapter 18

The Liu Group was situated in the bustling heart of Liucheng; looking out from the entrance, a seafood restaurant was visible just a short distance away.

Xia Qing stopped and turned to Liu Xiangyi. “Is seafood alright?”

Liu Xiangyi joked, “You picked well. Seafood happens to be my favorite.”

A faint, almost imperceptible smile finally touched Xia Qing’s cold eyes.

They entered the private room one after the other. A server arrived immediately to assist. The room felt a bit stifling, so Liu Xiangyi began to take off his coat. As the server reached out to take it, she suddenly let out a startled cry.

Liu Xiangyi froze. He looked down to see the server’s hand recoiling as if she’d touched a live wire. Her fingers were trembling violently.

The restaurant manager, seeing the commotion, immediately reprimanded the server before rushing over to apologize profusely to Liu Xiangyi. The terrified server followed suit, bowing and stammering her apologies.

The scene turned chaotic. Liu Xiangyi, his head beginning to throb from the noise, cursed Zhong Qinhuai again in his mind.

Maintaining his smile, he said, “It’s quite alright. I can manage.” He draped his coat over the back of his chair and turned to Xia Qing. “I need to step out for a moment. Please, excuse me.”

The moment he exited the room, Liu Xiangyi’s expression shifted. His eyes grew dark and cold.

He found a secluded, empty lounge. After checking that he was alone, he addressed the air in a frigid tone: “Zhong Qinhuai, I know you’re here. What’s the matter? You have the guts to pull these stunts but not the guts to show yourself?”

As soon as he finished speaking, a potted peace lily in the corner of the room suddenly shuddered. In the blink of an eye, its leaves stretched and surged until the plant stood two meters tall.

One pointed leaf arched slightly, looking down at Liu Xiangyi from its new height. It swayed gently, and a soft chuckle echoed through the room. “Addressing me by my full name with such a poor attitude, isn’t that a bit impolite, President Liu?”

Liu Xiangyi glared at the plant.

Preventing people from getting close to him was one thing, but now the ghost wouldn’t even let people touch his clothes. Aside from the massive inconvenience this caused his professional and personal life, the most infuriating part was that it was affecting innocent bystanders.

He knew of a guest from the gala last night who had tried to shake his hand. After the first failure, the man had tried twice more, only for his hand to shake so uncontrollably each time that he feared he had developed Parkinson’s and rushed to the hospital. When the doctors told him he was perfectly healthy, the guest refused to believe them, insisting on his “symptoms.” He had reportedly visited three different hospitals in a single day, becoming a laughingstock among the city’s elite circles.

Thinking of this, a mystery that had plagued Liu Xiangyi for years—one Zhong Qinhuai had never answered even until his death surfaced again.

“So, President Zhong, how exactly have I offended you? Why are you targeting me like this?”

The tip of the peace lily leaf tilted to the side, mimicking a human head cocked in thought. Then, it teased, “President Liu, I told you before I died: you have to win against me to earn the right to that answer.”

Liu Xiangyi took a deep breath. “Then show some mercy. Take your hand off me and let me be, alright?”

“You’re asking for mercy?” The plant chuckled playfully. “Then you’ll just have to win against me first.”

Liu Xiangyi felt a sudden, visceral urge to kick the peace lily. But his upbringing prevented him from doing anything so undignified. He settled for slamming the door as he left.

Outside, he ran into the server who had tried to take his coat earlier. His face, which had been contorted with rage a second ago, smoothed instantly back into a smile.

The server’s eyes lit up. She had heard that the heir to the Liu Group was not only young and handsome but exceptionally graceful—a man who maintained a smile regardless of the situation and held the best reputation among the city’s elite. Seeing him now, she realized the rumors were true.

“About what happened in the room, thank you, President Liu,” she said, blushing slightly.

Before he could respond, a sudden commotion erupted nearby. Screams, wails, and the sound of frantic footsteps echoed through the hallway.

“Someone help!”

“There’s a madman!”

“Murder! He’s killing people!”

Liu Xiangyi’s brow twitched. He looked toward the noise. Five or six diners were sprinting toward him as if a terrifying monster were at their heels. When they reached the end of the hallway and realized it was a dead end, they looked truly desperate.

Liu Xiangyi glanced at them, then turned his gaze back to the source of the chaos. His eyes turned cold.

A middle-aged man wielding a kitchen cleaver was charging down the corridor. His face and clothes were splattered with blood, and the blade was still dripping. His eyes were wild and murderous. Within seconds, he was right in front of Liu Xiangyi.

The cleaver swung downward.

It was inches away from Liu Xiangyi’s shoulder. But just as the blade was about to bite into his clothes, the man’s hand suddenly jerked as if he’d been electrocuted. His grip began to shake violently.

A split second later, the cleaver fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

Liu Xiangyi reacted instantly. He seized the man’s shoulder and executed a perfect over-the-shoulder throw, pinning him firmly to the ground. The man struggled, staring blankly at the fallen weapon as if he were in a dream.

“Impossible,” he muttered, dazed and bewildered. “How? How did this happen?” He had been so sure he was going to hit him!

The diners hiding behind Liu Xiangyi stared in wide-eyed disbelief. Even when the police arrived to take statements, they were still reeling.

“I saw it! That cleaver was about to hit the handsome guy’s shoulder.”

“Yes, yes! I was so scared I covered my eyes! When I heard the blade hit the floor, I peeked through my fingers. I couldn’t believe he’d taken the guy down!”

“It’s incredible! I still don’t understand how the knife just fell out of his hand.”

Finally, the police reviewed the surveillance footage. All it showed was the attacker’s hand suddenly trembling at the critical moment.

One officer joked, “You must have some incredible ancestors watching over you, kid. If that man’s hand hadn’t cramped, that blade would have hit your carotid artery. You’d be done for!”

The officer reached out to pat Liu Xiangyi on the shoulder. Before his fingers could make contact, his own hand gave a sudden, sharp twitch. The officer froze, looking at his hand in confusion. He laughed it off. “Is this hand-cramping thing contagious?”

Liu Xiangyi’s heart felt heavy. His ancestors hadn’t left him any blessings; they’d left him a massive spiritual debt—otherwise, he wouldn’t be stuck in a ghost marriage.

The police wrapped the case up quickly. It was a vicious but straightforward incident: a middle-aged man who had lost everything in the stock market had gotten drunk and decided to vent his rage on society with a random, indiscriminate attack.

Liu Xiangyi left the station to find Xia Qing still waiting outside. Xia Qing stepped forward, his eyes full of concern. “President Liu.”

Liu Xiangyi exhaled and smiled. “I’m fine.”

Xia Qing felt terrible that a simple lunch had turned into such a disaster. He promised to make it up to him with another meal soon.

After bidding Xia Qing farewell, Liu Xiangyi drove straight to Qingfeng Temple to find his second brother, Liu Yanchi.

Yanchi started by extending a single finger, attempting to poke Liu Xiangyi’s shoulder. As his fingertip neared the fabric, he hissed and pulled back immediately. Then, he walked a slow circle around Liu Xiangyi, swatting at him with his fly-whisk. He swiped from the top of his head down to his heels.

Finally, he thrust the whisk in front of Liu Xiangyi’s face. “Look!”

Liu Xiangyi peered at it. The once-snow-white horsehair of the whisk was now stained a deep, murky black, as if it had been dragged through a cloud of soot.

“This is ‘Ghost Qi’,” Yanchi explained, twirling the blackened whisk. “You’ve been completely enveloped by that ghost’s energy. That’s why no one else can get near you.”

Liu Xiangyi pressed for an answer: “Is there any way to break it?”

Liu Yanchi gave a dry cough. “Well, third brother, as you know, my primary discipline is Alchemy. I’m a Pill Cultivator.”

He quickly added a reassuring note: “But don’t worry. Qingfeng Temple is the premier metaphysical sanctuary in Liucheng. Plenty of masters here specialize in the Ghost Path. I’ll go fetch them right away.”

Ten minutes later, Liu Xiangyi found himself the center of an audience.

A crowd of men in Taoist robes surrounded him, studying him like a prized laboratory specimen.

“So this is Ghost Qi?” one Taoist remarked, his eyes lighting up. “This stuff is a godsend! Why on earth would you want to get rid of it? It’s basically a Golden Bell Shield. Forget kitchen cleavers—even if you were hit by a bullet, you wouldn’t die!”

Another Taoist, sporting a gold watch, squinted at the space between Liu Xiangyi’s eyebrows. He made a phantom poking motion toward the center of Xiangyi’s forehead. “Layman Liu, I see a darkness upon your brow; you are destined for a ‘calamity of blood’ within these few days. You absolutely cannot remove this Ghost Qi. If you do, something terrible will happen!”

Liu Xiangyi: “?”

Upon hearing what had happened at the seafood restaurant, the Taoist clapped his hands together excitedly. “Exactly! That was it! That was the ‘calamity of blood’! If not for this Ghost Qi protecting you, you’d be a goner by now!”

He leaned in closer, scrutinizing Xiangyi’s forehead. “You’re twenty-four this year, aren’t you? The great threshold of twenty-five is approaching, and your fortune is ill-favored this year. Though the black mist on your brow has faded slightly, it’s still there. This means the danger hasn’t passed; you still have a bloody disaster waiting for you in the coming days. You must keep this Ghost Qi to stay safe!”

Liu Xiangyi: “??”

The gold-watch Taoist rubbed his palms together and asked with a grin, “I’m just curious—where exactly did you get this Ghost Qi from, Layman Liu?”

The other Taoists chimed in all at once:

“You probably don’t know, Layman Liu, but Ghost Qi is more expensive than gold! There are billionaires out there who scheme and plot just to have us Taoists catch a ghost so they can be coated in its energy. That way, no one can touch them.”

“Exactly. Whether you’re hit by a car or slashed with a knife, you’re invulnerable. You could even jump off a building for a test—fall from twenty stories and this energy would ensure not a single hair on your head is harmed.”

“Say, why don’t you take us to catch that ghost? Since it gave so much of its energy to you, it must be at its weakest right now. If we bag it, we’ll all be rich!”

Liu Xiangyi felt a jolt of shock.

A bold, startling thought surfaced in his mind, though it felt utterly preposterous.

Would Zhong Qinhuai really be this good to me?

Weren’t we arch-rivals?

Lost in suspicious thought, Liu Xiangyi ignored the Taoists’ banter, left the temple, and hurried back home.