“Brother Leg!!!”
“I’m sorry! So young and already—”
Zhang Wei saw Yang Jian’s fallen corpse and wept, snot and tears flying everywhere.
“Ah Wei… what are you shouting about…”
Accompanying Yang Jian’s ice-cold voice, a massive headless black shadow slowly rose erect from the ground.
Above where the neck should have been, strange and savage tattoos formed the outline of Yang Jian’s lifeless, deathly face. At his forehead, the scarlet Ghost Eye snapped open, and an extreme scarlet sharpness instantly spread outward.
“Splash!”
A large expanse of frigid lake water continuously seeped from the ground, rapidly engulfing and covering that female corpse. A Ghost Hand violently shot out, grabbing straight toward the red-clothed female ghost on Zhang Wei’s back.
Yang Jian hadn’t even considered restarting himself. He wanted to suppress this corpse, restart Zhang Wei, and remove this female corpse from Zhang Wei’s back.
However, something unexpected happened. Even with Yang Jian’s supernatural power nearly fully unleashed, this female corpse still remained lying prone on Zhang Wei’s body, motionless, as if Yang Jian’s attack was completely useless.
“Can’t suppress it… no, that’s not right.”
Yang Jian noticed that although this female corpse was still lying prone on Zhang Wei’s back, Zhang Wei’s movements seemed to have slowed.
“It’s effective, but only barely.”
Right then, Yang Jian was astonished to discover that he actually couldn’t release the Ghost Hand gripping the female corpse. His fingers were stuck fast to the corpse’s arm. No matter how much force Yang Jian exerted, he couldn’t unclench his palm.
This horrifying female corpse had actually invaded in reverse, dragging Yang Jian along with Zhang Wei as they moved toward that strange bridal sedan chair.
“Brother Wei! Don’t move! Hold on!”
Ye Zhen’s voice came from not far away. He was holding a long sword, making a throwing motion.
“Easy for you to say! You try it!”
Zhang Wei’s current expression was even worse than crying. Dark red corpse spots had already covered more than half his body.
“Don’t move. If you move, I can’t shoot!” Ye Zhen held that long sword, seemingly waiting for something.
Zhang Wei shouted, “If you’re going to shoot, then shoot already! If you don’t shoot soon, I’m going to restart!”
Suddenly, a colossal scarlet eyeball abruptly hung suspended above the graveyard. Large swathes of frigid lake water slowly poured out from within the eyeball, landing on top of that female corpse’s head.
Immediately, the suona sounds throughout the graveyard abruptly paused. Zhang Wei’s movements also stopped, but it lasted less than a second before his feet once again showed faint signs of stepping forward.
But this was enough for Ye Zhen. A buzzing sound suddenly rang out, and a sinister white dot abruptly appeared on that female corpse’s red veil.
In the next second, Ye Zhen, holding that long sword, stabbed toward Zhang Wei’s back in a bizarre posture. No, rather, it was more accurate to say that the long sword was dragging Ye Zhen as it charged toward this female corpse.
Ye Zhen’s face had already turned ashen; his entire person was like a corpse.
The instant he raised his hand, his figure abruptly vanished from its original spot, then immediately reappeared, but his position was one step closer to the female corpse.
Immediately after, the hand holding the sword once again made a motion to gather strength. In the next moment, Ye Zhen vanished from his spot once more. When one looked again, he had reappeared less than ten steps away from that female corpse.
Within the graveyard, Ye Zhen’s corpse-like body was like a lagging stop-motion animation—abruptly vanishing, appearing, vanishing, repeating over and over.
But every time Ye Zhen appeared, he was one step closer to that horrifying female corpse.
Yang Jian looked at that sinister white dot on the red veil. Ye Zhen had used some unknown method to lock his Ghost Domain into a single point covering the female corpse’s red veil, but because the corpse’s level of terror was too high, the long sword that should have instantly appeared above its head instead dragged Ye Zhen’s corpse-like body as it charged toward the female corpse in a bizarre fashion.
“Smack!”
The long sword violently stabbed into the female corpse’s head, emitting the sound of a sharp weapon piercing dead flesh.
Zhang Wei’s footsteps completely stopped.
A supernatural clash. Under Ye Zhen and Yang Jian’s combined assault, a temporary supernatural clash formed between this horrifying corpse and the two of them.
Perhaps due to the killing rule, under the effect of the identities “groom” and “bride,” this female corpse was rigidly following its predetermined killing rule as it acted.
All of its killing rules were contained within this wedding procession. Yang Jian and Ye Zhen had merely made direct contact, passively enduring the attacks from that female corpse.
But even so, the two of them had paid an extremely high price to make Zhang Wei stop.
Yang Jian knew very well that this bizarre state of equilibrium wouldn’t last long—perhaps only a few minutes.
The Ghost Hand gripping the female corpse clenched forcefully. This time, Yang Jian successfully tore this female corpse off from behind Zhang Wei. It was slammed onto the ground, and the Headless Ghost Shadow rapidly covered it. The firewood cleaver was already gripped in the Ghost Hand.
With the Headless Ghost Shadow’s coverage, the medium was triggered.
Hand raised, then brought down.
A seemingly casual hack, delivered through the medium triggered by the Ghost Shadow, attacked the female corpse.
“Rip…”
That deathly, lifeless female corpse was split in two from head to toe by the firewood cleaver. Almost simultaneously, the massive black shadow also violently split apart, dividing into two.
As red light flickered, the Ghost Shadow slowly pieced itself back together. Yang Jian was repairing the damage brought about by the cost of using the firewood cleaver.
But soon, Yang Jian discovered a fact that filled him with despair—his vision blurred, and that female corpse had abruptly vanished without a trace.
Yang Jian subconsciously turned his head to look at Zhang Wei’s back. There, a dark red figure was shockingly lying prone on Zhang Wei’s back!
Yang Jian immediately realized: the dismemberment had failed. That female corpse possessed the ability to restart, and it had completed its restart almost the very instant it was dismembered.
Stiffly lifting his legs, Zhang Wei once again took heavy steps.
At this moment, Zhang Wei was completely silent. His ashen face bore no trace of a living person’s aura. Deathly still, he carried that horrifying female corpse on his back as he slowly walked toward the bridal sedan chair.
The scarlet Ghost Eye stared at that female corpse as Yang Jian thought rapidly.
If he activated an area-wide restart like that time in the Ghost Painting, he could save Ah Wei. But if he didn’t remove that female corpse, no matter how many times he restarted, the result wouldn’t change.
Thinking this, Yang Jian suddenly understood the true meaning of that final piece of information from the Human Skin Paper.
“The marriage contract, replacing the groom’s identity…”
Perhaps the Human Skin Paper had calculated that Yang Jian wouldn’t have time to investigate that marriage contract. The information it revealed was a trap filled with wordplay, luring Yang Jian to this step and forcing him to choose to use that marriage contract.
But Yang Jian was someone who, once he decided on something, would not regret it. He wanted to save Ah Wei. Whoever stood in his path, he would kill. Yang Jian’s personality had always been that simple.
Just as Yang Jian was preparing to act, Ye Zhen’s voice rang out. He seemed to have already recovered, lying on the ground and pointing at Yang Jian as he said:
“I told you, I’ll protect Brother Wei no matter what. Not even Jesus can kill him.”
Immediately, a buzzing sound rang out around Ye Zhen. His figure instantly vanished from its spot, his Ghost Domain shooting straight toward that large courtyard within the village.