Chapter 84
Chapter 84
The hour of Xu had arrived. Rao Lin and the others should have had just about enough time by now.
The people standing guard outside the ancestral hall had also left.
Ning Shuo leaned against the wall. “Miss, are you truly unwilling to tell me who hurt you?”
He deliberately exposed a slight opening, and the power of the Binding Talisman Array visibly weakened as well.
The female ghost’s gaze sharpened. Several golden chains turned to ash at once, and one hand shot straight toward Ning Shuo!
By his calculations, he should just have been able to escape the ancestral hall.
But as Ning Shuo ran toward the exit, the corner of his eye caught the memorial tablets arranged on the altar table.
Because of the female ghost’s attack, most of the tablets had already been knocked over. The ones that had fallen were almost all tablets belonging to members of the Sun Family proper. Only a scant few were inscribed with “Wife of Sun So-and-so”-women who had married into the family.
Men married at twenty. Ning Shuo looked back at the female ghost.
Although her clothes were tattered and torn, once he had the idea of a wedding dress in mind, it became obvious that what the female ghost wore was, in fact, a bridal gown.
He had not thought of the female ghost as a bride before because there had been too many different scents of powder and rouge mixed together. He had assumed that even if the Sun Family took brides, there was no need for them to take so many, since the only compulsory marriage happened at the age of twenty.
He had actually been stupid enough to miss that. He had only treated the female ghost as a victim of trafficking in women, forgetting the matter of the brides entirely!
A Greater Ghost devoured Little Ghosts. And looking again at the style of the bridal gown on the female ghost…
As Ning Shuo raised a hand to put the tablets of several brides into his Backpack, he searched through the System Shop for an item that could block her, even if only briefly.
However, most of what the shop could exchange for were daily necessities. For a moment, he truly could not find anything that could withstand an external force.
The female ghost had already reached him. Her crazed eyes stared down at Ning Shuo from above. “Become my strength!”
Ning Shuo barely dodged, only to see that the main doors had already been sealed by several streams of black energy.
At least for the time being, Ning Shuo would not be getting out.
As he dodged, he kept talking. “Miss, your karma has nothing to do with me. Why insist on fighting me until one of us dies?”
“You said it yourself before. To me, someone capable of restraining me is a hidden danger. Since killing you can also increase my power, why wouldn’t I?”
“Besides, this is no longer a matter of one of us dying,” she said, black energy rising around her. “Now, only you die!”
Black energy surged in from every direction. Ning Shuo frowned, bit open his index finger, and swiftly drew a talisman on the floor.
As the talisman took shape, the color rapidly drained from his face. The black energy struck a barrier of golden light, and Ning Shuo finally went limp, collapsing half-dead in a corner of the ancestral hall. “Miss, now I am not going to die.”
“There may be no other way, but at least I still have a life to wager. So please don’t wager yours against mine, all right? If I die, I can still have a soul. If you die, your soul will be scattered into nothing.”
The black energy could not break through the barrier. The female ghost stared at him gloomily from the other side, watching for the moment he revealed another opening.
Listless, Ning Shuo took the tablets out of his Backpack. The female ghost’s pupils contracted.
She immediately looked toward the spirit altar, only to discover that the tablets remaining on it all belonged to members of the Sun Family proper. The other brides’ tablets had vanished without a trace.
Several streams of black energy slammed into the barrier. On the other side, the female ghost screamed herself hoarse. “Give me those tablets! Give them back!”
Seeing how agitated she had become, Ning Shuo looked at the tablets. “Miss, I won’t do anything to these tablets. Calm down first.”
He wiped away the dust on them and found the oldest one. “…Miss Mingzhi.”
Mingzhi slumped down in front of the barrier. “You… don’t touch them.”
The tablets seemed extremely important to her.
If they were merely ordinary memorial tablets, they would not have made her show such fear-such panic.
Ning Shuo examined them carefully. Only then did he notice how they differed from the tablets of the Sun Family members: the characters carved on these tablets all seemed somewhat insubstantial.
He pried up one corner and only then noticed a little white ash beneath the carved words.
As he scraped it away, a bit of white ash fell to the floor, and the black aura around Mingzhi faded as well, as if she had suffered some kind of severe blow.
The one he was examining just happened to be Mingzhi’s memorial tablet.
“…Is this cremation ash?”
The moment he finished speaking, the door opened.
Seeing who it was, Ning Shuo laughed and scolded, “What took you so long?”
A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead, and his face was frighteningly pale.
Before Mingzhi could escape, a net pinned her in place. Ning Shuo caught a waft of cold fragrance on the wind, and in the next second, the world spun around him as someone scooped him up in a bridal carry.
“Sorry,” Ning Wang said, his voice muffled. “I’m late.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ning Shuo had only meant to take the opportunity to act spoiled, but seeing Ning Wang’s expression, he raised a brow. “Have a little faith in me. If it were you, you’d have handled it too, wouldn’t you?”
“Besides, making that talisman net must have cost you quite a bit of effort, right?”
Ning Wang said, “It’s fine. It didn’t take much. And I’ve always had faith in you. That’s why I only came after I finished checking those things.”
Looking at his somewhat pale face, Ning Shuo said solemnly, “Ningning, don’t force yourself. Your King will be heartbroken.”
That one sentence broke the slightly sorrowful mood. Ning Wang laughed and cursed, “You’re already hurt this badly. Can’t you run your mouth a little less?”
Ning Wang left the rest unsaid.
No matter who was the copy of whom, they had both lived Xie Ning’s life and experienced what Xie Ning had experienced.
How could he not have faith in Xie Ning?
Ning Wang carried him out the door and walked through the boundless night toward the bedroom.
Blood dripped, drop by drop, from the person in his arms, and the metallic scent lingered at his nose.
It wasn’t a lack of faith.
It just hurt to see him like this.
…
When Ning Shuo was carried toward the bedroom, Fu Xing and the Guard standing watch beside him did not stop them.
He was just finding that strange when he suddenly heard the Guard say, “Young Master already gave instructions just now, but Second Young Master, the three of you… are going to play with her together?”
Ning Shuo froze. “Together… play?”
Looking like this, he happened to resemble a new bride who still had no idea what was going on, innocent and guileless.
In the darkness, the Guard couldn’t see the blood on him, only Ning Shuo’s pale face.
Just like the women from before.
Wasn’t it just being used by men for fun? He really didn’t know what these women thought they were being so pure about.
Ning Wang carried him inside. Fu Xing said, “I just came back after eating. Other than Second Young Master and Eldest Young Master, who else came?”
Three people playing together meant there was one more.
The Guard said, “Who else could it be? Eldest Young Master Tian from the Tian Family, of course. He and Eldest Young Master are close, aren’t they? Don’t they play with women together all the time?”
Fu Xing carefully watched the room, waiting to see whether this “Eldest Young Master Tian” was a real person or an NPC.
If he was an NPC, surely they wouldn’t really let Ning Shuo be “played with.”
Didn’t Rao Lin have a partner himself?
…
Rao Lin sat beside his own partner and reported their current progress. “There are three people from our team in the Tian Family. Teacher Song, Nan-ge, and Sister Yao are all in the Tian Family. Teacher Song is Eldest Young Master Tian, Sister Yao is Teacher Song’s bride, and Nan-ge is a Guard of the Tian Family.”
While treating Ning Shuo’s wounds, Song Zhu said, “It’s exactly the opposite for me. I found four from the opposing faction in the Tian Family. Their relationships to me are father and son, brother and sister, brothers, and concubine, respectively. They correspond to Yun Zhi, year, Bring in the Wine, and Wanqiu.”
Rao Lin continued, “We only found two from the opposing faction in the Sun Family. One is Fu Xing outside the door, and the other is the concubine Qing Ge.”
“We’re missing Ah Shu.”