Zhou Xiao Zhen surveyed the scene with a bored expression. She didn’t see what the big deal was. So what if there was a corpse with a mushy brain? This world was full of horrors, and she had seen worse. “Come on, people. It’s not like we haven’t met any ghosts before. Why are you all acting like this is some freaky new disease that can liquefy your grey matter?”

    She had a point, Yu Xiao thought. But still, something about this felt wrong. She glanced at the others, “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

    Sun Yun shook her head. “Not exactly. But we’ve faced weirder things.”

    Luo Jin leaned over the coffin, his hand reaching for the corpse’s head. “You know what they say. The soul lives in the brain. That’s why some killers like to smash the skull. To make sure the soul is gone.”

    He made a fist and brought it down near the corpse’s head, mimicking the act of violence.

    Yu Xiao had an idea. “Let’s dig up the other graves and see if they’re all like this.”

    They unearthed a few more coffins, including the one that was buried today. It belonged to the village head.

    All the corpses had their heads smashed, except for the one that was still fresh.

    “Why is the village head the only one with a whole head?” Zhou Xiao Zhen wondered. “Is he the only one who didn’t die from the disease?”

    “Maybe,” Zhao Lan said nervously, as the moon disappeared behind a cloud. “But we should hurry up and get out of here. Who knows what kind of ghosts are lurking around?”

    Yu Xiao held the writhing thing in her grip, feeling its cold and slimy skin. She looked at it with disgust and curiosity. “Didn’t we already run into this?”

    “That is a water ghost,” Zhao Lan said, glancing at the rotting bodies they had dug up from the ground. “With so many graves here, who knows what else is hiding here?”

    She barely finished her sentence when Luo Jin pulled his hand back and declared, “There are no ghosts here.”

    “What?”

    The others strained their ears, not sure if they heard him right. Luo Jin lifted his chin, his eyes serene and aloof under his long bangs. “There are no ghosts here.”

    “Really?” Zhao Lan asked, “How can you tell?”

    Lu Xun grinned and spoke for his brother, “Old Luo has a sixth sense for these things, and he’s not one to lie. If he says there are no ghosts here, then you can bet your ass there aren’t.”

    They realised they had wasted too much time, and the sun was about to rise. They had to get out of here before the villagers noticed their ‘grave-robbing’. They hurriedly filled the holes and retraced their steps to their lodgings.

    As soon as they got in, Yu Xiao dashed to the kitchen and searched for a pressure cooker. But the ghost was too big to fit inside.

    Zhao Lan rolled up her sleeves. “Leave it to me!”

    She snapped the ghost’s spine with a loud crack, making it scream in agony.

    Zhou Xiao Zhen watched as Zhao Lan slammed the lid on, her face softening with pity. “It sounded like the ghost broke a bone.”

    Zuo Qing, who had tagged along to watch, asked, “Do ghosts have bones?”

    “Uh…” Zhou Xiao Zhen scratched her head.

    Yu Xiao slapped a talisman on the lid, sealing the ghost inside. She felt the eyes of Zuo Qing and the others on her, burning with envy.

    Wang Yang couldn’t contain his curiosity. “Boss, how many of those things do you have?”

    Yu Xiao didn’t bother to keep track. She had such a high success rate, she hadn’t really kept count by the end. She had plenty. She shrugged and gave a vague answer, “A few dozen, maybe.”

    “…”

    A few dozen…

    They could barely afford to use one of their precious talismans, and she had a stash of them. They felt like they were dreaming.

    Zhang Feng, momentarily forgetting his terror, licked his lips and asked, “Boss, you must be one of the top players, right?”

    Zhou Xiao Zhen, hands on hips, beamed with pride. “Our Smiley is the best of the best. She’s the number one on the leaderboard…”

    Yu Xiao: “!!!”

    Zhao Lan: “…”

    They all gaped at Yu Xiao in disbelief. “You are…”

    Yu Xiao shot a look at Zhou Xiao Zhen, then smirked and said, “You must have heard about me on the news this morning. Yeah, that’s me. I’m ‘Zhuge Liang burning the Spider Web Cave’.”

    (It is a reference to a famous episode in the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West, where the strategist Zhuge Liang used fire to destroy a cave full of spider demons who had captured his allies.)

    “…”

    “Bloody hell!” Wang Yang’s face flushed with excitement. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He never been so close to someone from the top of the leaderboard, even though it wasn’t from his own hospital.

    Zuo Qing gasped and pointed at Yu Xiao, her eyes sparkling like stars. “You’re the one! The one from the news! I thought you were a dude. Holy shit, this is awesome. Sorry, I’m freaking out a little…”

    Yu Xiao smiled enigmatically, enjoying their reactions.

    Zhou Xiao Zhen slapped her forehead, realising she had blabbed too much. She had a bad habit of spilling secrets when she got worked up. She needed to work on that.

    Zhao Lan quickly changed the topic. “Okay, enough chit-chat. It’s late. We need some sleep while it’s still dark. We have a busy day ahead of us.”

    Yu Xiao carried the pressure cooker to her room, when she heard a soft snicker behind her.

    She turned and saw Lu Xun trying to stifle his laughter. She asked, “What’s so funny?”

    Lu Xun put on a straight face and said, “Oh, nothing. I was just imagining what’s going to happen when the sun comes up. It’s hilarious.”

    They were all exhausted after a night of digging and ghost-hunting. They went to their rooms and fell asleep in no time. It seemed like they had barely closed their eyes when a loud racket broke the silence.

    A woman in a garish red and green outfit barged into the room, shouting at the top of her lungs, “What the hell! This is unacceptable!”

    They all jumped out of their beds, ready for action. They relaxed when they saw it was just a villager.

    “You lazy bums! It’s past sunrise, and you’re still sleeping!” the woman scolded them. “How are you going to live when you get married if you can’t even wake up on time!”

    Zuo Qing rubbed her eyes, confused, “Who is this woman? What the hell is she doing here?”

    The woman ignored them and stormed towards the farthest bed. They followed her gaze and saw Yu Xiao, still snoring away.

    “Still sleeping! Wake up!”

    Yu Xiao was dreaming of ghosts and talismans when someone ripped off her blanket. She opened her eyes and saw a woman with a face painted like a monkey’s behind, hands on hips, standing over her, ranting about something.

    She couldn’t hear a thing; she was deaf again…

    Yu Xiao stared blankly at Zhao Lan, who knew from her look that Yu Xiao had lost her hearing again.

    The woman kept berating Yu Xiao, who didn’t react at all. The woman thought she was an idiot, talking to her like a brick wall. She switched to business mode, “Which one of you is Zhou Xiao?!”

    They all fell silent, then pointed at the same person.

    “You’re Zhou Xiao?!” The woman looked at Yu Xiao in disbelief, examining her for a while. “Your appearance is not bad, you can be pretty with some grooming. But being pretty is not enough to be a good daughter-in-law; you have to be hard-working and virtuous…”

    Blah blah blah, she went on and on, and Yu Xiao still had no reaction. The woman felt bored and pulled out a red paper from her pocket and shoved it into girl’s hand, “This is your marriage certificate, hold on to it. Your wedding dress is already here; the groom will come for you in the afternoon. Get your ass ready.”

    She paused and gave Yu Xiao a sly smile, “You know, you’re pretty smart. I heard you brought four girls with you as your dowry. That’s nice; let them do all the work, and you can take it easy.”

    The woman tossed her hair and swayed her hips, leaving the room and them in shock.

    Half of them felt a surge of emotions, while the other half looked utterly clueless.

    “What?” Wang Yang stared, dumbfounded. “What the hell did she just say?”

    Lu Xun tried to explain, but his mouth was dry. He looked at Luo Jin, thinking, ‘Fuck this, if he wants to marry me off, let him do the talking.’

    But Luo Jin didn’t even acknowledge him; he just sat there, spaced out.

    Yu Xiao couldn’t hear, but the red paper in her hand gave her a hint of what was going on. Zhou Xiao Zhen jumped off the bed and ran outside, coming back with a bunch of red clothes in her arms.

    “These are wedding outfits!” Zhou Xiao Zhen rifled through them, confused. “Weird, why is there only one in deep red, and the rest are all pink?”

    Zhao Lan explained, blushing, “Because only the main wife can wear deep red.”

    “No,” the others were more baffled, “What the fuck is going on? What are you guys talking about?”

    Zhao Lan looked at them, feeling awkward. Luckily, Zhou Xiao Zhen had no shame. She said, “This is what we did yesterday when we went out. The villagers said they needed an outsider for a sacrifice…”

    With a rapid-fire delivery, she rattled off the explanation, “Anyway, after today’s wedding, we’re no longer outsiders.”

    “…”

    A ghostly silence descended, so unnatural that they couldn’t swallow it for a long time. Finally, Zhang Feng, clinging to the last shred of hopeful doubt, looked at Lu Xun, “She’s joking, right?”

    Lu Xun’s head drooped under his stare, a silent admission of shame.

    Zhang Feng shut his eyes, feeling doomed, “So, now it’s just the four of us who are on the chopping block?”

    Zhou Xiao Zhen felt a pang of sympathy, but she knew that making Gu Jing Rong marry five was already pushing it. She tried to be helpful and said, “Why don’t you guys do what we did and marry a local?”

    “…”

    Zhang Feng’s expression twisted for a moment; evidently, the idea of getting married had never crossed his mind in his over twenty years of life. Sёar?h the ηovёlFire .net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    Zuo Qing and Sun Yun, however, gave it some thought. Zuo Qing asked, “Is the village head’s son handsome?”

    “Does it matter if he’s hot?” Zhou Xiao Zhen asked, “It’s not like you’re really becoming husband and wife.”

    “…” Good point.

    While they were chatting, Zhao Lan and Yu Xiao were together. She scribbled down what had just transpired in her notebook and handed it to Yu Xiao. Instinctively, she felt it was better not to let others know about Yu Xiao’s sporadic deafness.

    Yu Xiao nodded after reading it.

    Yu Xiao slipped out of bed and headed outside to splash some water on her face.

    Zuo Qing’s eyes followed her with admiration. “Why isn’t Sister Little saying anything?”

    Zhou Xiao Zhen chided her, “It’s Sister Smiley.”

    (TN: 小 xi?o Little 笑 xiào Smile, Zuo Qing misspoke)

    Zhao Lan rose from the bed as if nothing had happened. “Oh, she doesn’t like talking when she hasn’t slept well.”

    In this village, for some unfathomable reason, weddings were slated for late afternoon. Yu Xiao, clad in fiery red, had been lingering at the doorway for quite some time.

    Flanking her were two petite girls in pink dresses. While looming behind her were two colossal brides, each over 185 centimetres tall, also in pink dresses.

    As firecrackers boomed, villagers arrived with ox-drawn carts draped with red silk.

    Wang Yang and his friends were cowering inside the house, eyes twitching. “Dad died just yesterday, and today the son is getting married. Is this really okay?”

    Gu Jing Rong, in a blazing red outfit with a huge red flower on his chest, trotted over on a donkey. From afar, he could already spot those two colossal brides.

    In that instant, the thought of death flashed through his mind.