The Ghost Insists on Giving Me a Beautiful and Powerful Wife! - Chapter 52.2

It seemed they had successfully secured their roles in the “Old Scene” reenactment. There were no more malicious ghosts blocking their path. They followed the other “victorious” ghosts out of the village and toward the back mountain. Occasionally, lines that weren’t part of the script escaped their lips as they conversed with others on the road.

“Auntie Zhang, how do we kill the demon?”

“Uncle Lin, you’re the village head’s cousin, you must know more than us. Is Ruolian really a demon?”

“Fourth Uncle, I’m a bit scared.”

“…”

They eventually reached the foot of the back mountain, which was already crowded with people. Yu Ruoyin suddenly heard someone call her: “Little Fish!”

Yu Ruoyin looked toward the sound. There stood Zhuang Ciyue, whom she hadn’t seen for a long time. Beside her were Zhuang Huaishu and Nan He, along with three young Taoists in bluish-grey robes and four young nuns. They seemed to have been assigned roles in a large family.

Zhuang Huaishu and Nan He appeared to have the roles of grandparents. One of Zhuang Huaishu’s arms was linked with Nan He, while her other hand held their “granddaughter,” Zhuang Ciyue. Their situation was quite similar to Yu Ruoyin’s.

“Grandma Zhuang, Sister Yue, Nan He!”

Yu Ruoyin tried to move toward them, but her feet refused to obey. She could only follow the script, passively moving with Kang Miaoxian and the others to a spot opposite Zhuang Ciyue.

Though they could see each other, the distance between them remained great.

The crowd naturally formed a circular perimeter around a pile of haystacks. In the center of the haystacks stood a tall wooden frame, likely intended for binding a prisoner.

Zhuang Ciyue shouted to her across the stacks: “Little Fish! That Kang brat hasn’t been bullying you, has she?”

She’s calling Kang Miaoxian a ‘brat’?

Kang Miaoxian was clearly older than her; Yu Ruoyin worried that Zhuang Ciyue might end up on her bad side. She instinctively wanted to defend her friend, but when she turned to look at Kang Miaoxian, she realized the woman wasn’t angry at all. Kang Miaoxian was looking toward Zhuang Ciyue’s group, but her focus was on Zhuang Huaishu. Her brow twitched slightly, and a playful, mocking voice escaped her lips: “Little Great-Aunt, long time no see.”

She was greeting Zhuang Huaishu. The older woman’s lips curled, though she couldn’t squeeze out even a hint of a smile: “Better if we never met.”

Zhuang Huaishu showed little warmth toward Kang Miaoxian, but her reaction changed when her gaze shifted to Kang Shuming: “You… are Kang Shuming?”

Since arriving, Kang Shuming had kept her head down, trying her best to hide her face. Now that her identity had been called out directly, she was forced to look up, offering a strained smile: “Little Aunt, it has been a long time.”

Zhuang Huaishu frowned: “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

It was a difficult thing for Kang Shuming to explain, but Kang Miaoxian took the initiative: “For that, we have the Little Great-Aunt to thank.”

Neither Zhuang Huaishu nor Kang Shuming understood what she meant by that.

Yu Ruoyin, meanwhile, was curious about something else: “You know Grandma Zhuang?”

The moment the question left her mouth, she received a look from Kang Miaoxian that suggested she was an idiot. Yu Ruoyin realized immediately—Zhuang Huaishu and Kang Shuying had been entangled for decades. As Kang Shuying’s “family,” it would be stranger if Kang Miaoxian didn’t know Zhuang Huaishu.

The Soul-Losing Gu wasn’t just messing with her heart; it was clearly addling her brain as well.

Perhaps shouting across the crowd felt too strange, because Zhuang Ciyue stopped talking to Yu Ruoyin. They all remained in their respective positions, playing out their roles in the Old Scene.

Voices continued to rise around them, mostly discussing the same topics: the Village Head, the Taoist, and Ruolian.

The protagonists of the scene had not yet appeared. Because the roles assigned to Yu Ruoyin and her group were those of younger juniors, they didn’t have much opportunity to speak now that they were in a crowded area.

Kang Shuming took the chance to whisper to Kang Miaoxian: “What are you thanking my Little Aunt for?”

Kang Miaoxian didn’t usually like explaining things unprompted, but since it was Kang Shuming asking, she didn’t hide it. Yu Ruoyin, standing right beside them, ended up listening in.

Yingzhu was the Wheel-Turning King (Chakravartin), the ruler of the Realm of Reincarnation. Although the Kang family’s method of reincarnation was unique and fell outside her direct jurisdiction, creating an identity and a physical body for herself was trivial. When a new pregnancy occurred in the Kang family, she used the blood of the child in the womb to condense an infant shell for herself, turning what should have been a single male fetus into a pair of fraternal twins.

She became Kang Shuying. The original boy became her brother—who was also Kang Shuming’s father.

Technically, Kang Shuying did not possess the true Kang bloodline and shouldn’t have been able to practice Picture Shamanism, but that was only in theory. An Underworld Deity is still a deity; the extent of their power is beyond imagination. There was no one in the Kang family strong enough to defeat or see through her.

Playing the role of a Picture Shaman was easy for Kang Shuying. She played it so well that no one in the family ever discovered her secret, and outsiders were even less likely to know. To Kang Shuming, Kang Shuying was a kind aunt; to the younger Kang Miaoxian, she was an excellent great-aunt.

Yes, “once upon a time.”

The turning point was Zhuang Huaishu.

Zhuang Huaishu had a falling out with Kang Shuying when she was twenty-two, but Zhuang Huaishu was never the one in control of their relationship. If Kang Shuying didn’t want to let go, Zhuang Huaishu didn’t have the right to leave. It wasn’t just a gap in power, but a gap in emotion. Kang Shuying had lived for far too long; she knew exactly how to manipulate a woman, how to make her heart soften—especially back when Zhuang Huaishu was just a young girl.

From a very young age, Kang Miaoxian knew Zhuang Huaishu was her aunt’s lover. She followed her aunt’s lead and called her “Little Great-Aunt.” To be honest, she hadn’t been very satisfied with this relative back then because Zhuang Huaishu was always throwing tantrums. Many toys the aunt bought for Miaoxian were smashed by the “Little Great-Aunt” before they even reached her hands.

Of course, she liked Zhuang Huaishu now.

If it hadn’t been for that day when Kang Shuming’s illness worsened and Miaoxian went to find her aunt for comfort…

If she hadn’t overheard Zhuang Huaishu and Kang Shuying arguing that day, she might never have learned that Kang Shuying was the Wheel-Turning King.

If she hadn’t known her true identity, she wouldn’t have watched her movements so closely, and she wouldn’t have discovered that Kang Shuying was gathering the souls of the Kang ancestors. Consequently, she wouldn’t have found a way to keep Kang Shuming around.

Even though those fragmented souls couldn’t fully solidify, Kang Miaoxian felt their immense power. She took advantage of the moment when Kang Shuying was weakened from the soul-gathering process to steal a remnant soul.

Souls are nourishment for ghosts, but a powerful soul can also be nourishment for a human.

Kang Miaoxian refined that remnant soul and fused it into her own body, then shared the purest part of that energy with Kang Shuming. This ensured that even after Kang Shuming “died,” she could continue to exist within Miaoxian’s body. As long as Shuming stayed close to her, she looked no different from a normal person—she was “alive.”

Kang Miaoxian needed Shuming to be alive because she was her last family member, and also her… lover.

She felt she no longer had the right to call her that, but the remnant soul had brought her more than just power; it brought fragmented memories of their past.

In their very first life together, they were lovers.

Kang Miaoxian believed she wasn’t the only one with these fragments. Kang Shuming, who shared the power of that soul, surely had them too. Even if she didn’t have as many, she definitely remembered something. But Shuming was a person who would lie even to herself; she would never admit it.

But so what if she didn’t admit it? Miaoxian would never let go. They would stay entangled like this until the moment their souls finally scattered.

“Souls scattered?”

Kang Miaoxian looked at Kang Shuming and said with great pride: “Ever since I got my past-life memories, I sealed both of our souls into our physical bodies. Auntie, you rely on me to live. When I die, you won’t survive either. At that time, we can scatter into nothingness together. And the entire Kang family will vanish with us.”

“The Kang family?”

Yu Ruoyin was slightly startled, but quickly understood.

In the Picture Shaman clan, only Kang Miaoxian remained alive. If she refused to carry on the bloodline, there would be no new life. The seventy souls in the Netherworld would have no way to reincarnate into the family. With Kang Miaoxian’s death, the Picture Shamans and the Kang family would cease to exist in this world.

Sensing a hint of pity from Yu Ruoyin, Kang Miaoxian glared at her: “You don’t seriously think a family burdened by such a curse needs to continue, do you?”

Yu Ruoyin shook her head.

The seventy-two souls of the Kang family were trapped in a cycle of tragedy—constant forgetting, losing, and then remembering their secrets and old loves at their happiest moments. A newborn they held might be their own grandfather or lover from a previous life. They could never truly experience happiness; they could only reenact tragedy.

Kang Miaoxian’s willingness to be the “terminator” was, in a way, a form of salvation for those cursed souls. No one knew what would happen once the bloodline ended, but the worst that could happen was being forced back into the cycle.

Kang Miaoxian was willing to gamble her soul’s existence on it. She was mad. And Kang Shuming, who seemed to be dragged along, appeared willing as well. Yu Ruoyin noticed that when Miaoxian mentioned their souls scattering, Shuming looked visibly relieved.

It wasn’t just Miaoxian who resented the curse that displaced their identities; Shuming likely hated it just as much.

Yu Ruoyin couldn’t help but sigh: “Isn’t the curse a bit too cruel?”

She had said something similar once before, lamenting the fate of Lu Qichun. She remembered Jiang Huaining’s face turning cold at those words. Jiang Huaining had said: “Curses don’t appear for no reason. Perhaps they did something even more malicious in their past lives.”

Kang Miaoxian, for once, agreed with her: “I think you’re right.”

Kang Shuming’s view was slightly different. She said: “The curse fell… perhaps because we did something evil in a past life.”

It struck Yu Ruoyin how similar Shuming’s words were to Jiang Huaining’s. She looked at Shuming, who continued calmly: “Xiaoxian, according to the Kang family genealogy, our ancestor was a traitor to the gods and caused many deaths.”

“That was the ancestor. What does it have to do with us?”

“Maybe we were accomplices.” As Kang Miaoxian showed signs of losing her temper, Shuming tried to soothe her. “Even if we weren’t accomplices, we were… betraying the gods always leads to death…”

She couldn’t go on. She hated the curse herself; she hadn’t even convinced herself to accept her fate, so how could she convince Miaoxian?

“Kang Shuming, you don’t actually believe there are gods in this world, do you? Have you ever seen one?”

Kang Shuming bit her lip: “That’s how the ancestors recorded it.”

“Are records always true?” Kang Miaoxian’s eyes turned red as she growled at Shuming. “Even if it’s true, the guilty one is Kang Nanhua, not you or me!”

“Your memories aren’t even complete. How can you be so sure we’re innocent?”

“…”

She had finally admitted she had fragmented memories too. And those were precisely what hurt the most.

As the two women stood in a tense silence, Yu Ruoyin didn’t dare interfere. She could only ponder their words. Gods? Do gods really exist?

The noisy crowd suddenly went silent. After a brief hush, a much louder clamor broke out.

Yu Ruoyin heard someone scream: “The demon! The demon is here! The Village Head has brought the demon!”

The crowd naturally parted to create a path. A woman with a cane walked at the front. She was clearly young, but was currently hunched over, playing the role of an elderly woman. Behind her followed a woman in Taoist robes, holding a rope. Tied to the other end of the rope was a young woman.

She had vibrant red hair and crimson eyes.

Yu Ruoyin recognized her.

It was Xia Yu.

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