Dawn was gradually breaking, yet the village remained gloomy, daylight filtering weakly through the heavy cloud cover.
"."
A sharp, piercing sound rang out within the silent village.
Inside the main courtyard house, an old marriage contract lay upon a dark-red wooden table. Beside it, an oil lamp on the verge of extinguishing faintly emitted a red glow. The village chief stood rigidly to one side, his ashen face utterly lifeless.
At this moment, Ye Zhen's body was completely rotting, livor mortis covering nearly his entire body. He was kneeling side by side with a female corpse dressed in a dark-red bridal gown.
Following the piercing sound emitted by the village chief, the previously motionless female corpse suddenly moved, violently smashing her head toward the ground with a dull, heavy thud.
Immediately after, the corpse's movement came to an abrupt halt. She remained motionless in a kneeling, prostrating posture, as if waiting for something.
Ye Zhen's rotting body trembled violently. His consciousness remained clear, but ever since this horrifying female corpse had entered the room with stiff steps, he had been completely unable to control his body. He could only kneel alongside her, their movements startlingly synchronized.
At this moment, he could only watch helplessly as his head inched bit by bit toward the ground.
"Pa."
Ye Zhen's forehead lightly touched the floor tiles.
Yet the instant he touched the ground, a crisp cracking sound came from his skull. In a flash, his head was covered in cracks, which then continuously expanded and tore open.
But bizarrely, the moment his skull cracked open, it began recovering at an inconceivable speed. However, the recovery couldn't keep pace with the shattering, giving the illusion that the cracking was abnormally slow.
An eerie orange-red line rapidly extended from afar. Yang Jian had also heard the sound of the wedding rites and was currently rushing toward the main courtyard.
Right at this moment, Yang Jian's forehead suddenly cracked open without warning. Deep fissures continuously spread across it.
The wound kept spreading. Yang Jian's skull was about to explode. The Ghost Shadow instantly covered his entire body, overlapping with it, and the speed of the fissures' spread immediately slowed, then stopped completely.
"Substitute death?"
A flicker of surprise crossed Yang Jian's mind. He hadn't made contact with Ye Zhen at all, yet the supernatural power of the substitute death ghost had selected him.
There was no time to think. Yang Jian charged into the main courtyard. Before his eyes, Ye Zhen and the bride were kneeling prostrate on the ground, the marriage contract lying right in front of Ye Zhen.
The next wave of attack arrived immediately after.
".~!"
The piercing sound rang out once more.
That horrifying female corpse slowly raised her upper body, then once again rigidly kowtowed toward the ground.
"Bang—!"
This time, the sound was even more terrifying—a dull, heavy crash like a dead pig being slammed onto a chopping block. The instant the female corpse's forehead touched the ground, Ye Zhen abruptly straightened up and smashed his still-not-fully-recovered head toward the floor once more.
With this impact, Ye Zhen's skull completely shattered. Blood scattered in all directions, flowing across the ground.
But then a bizarre thing occurred. The blood flowing across the ground actually began slowly flowing back, bit by bit gathering together and flowing in reverse back into his ruined body.
Yang Jian watched as Ye Zhen, who was already deader than dead on the ground, was recovering through the substitute death ghost via some unknown method. This kind of supernatural manifestation was practically akin to an alternative form of restart.
In the next second, the blood all over the ground instantly contracted. His skull recovered almost in the blink of an eye. Then Ye Zhen abruptly opened his eyes. In that instant, the surrounding space seemed to change. Yang Jian sensed that a ghost domain had suddenly appeared, filling the entire room.
Accompanied by a buzzing hum, Ye Zhen slowly raised his head. His ice-cold eyes swept across the surroundings.
Ye Zhen first turned to look at the motionless female corpse kneeling beside him, then turned to look at Yang Jian and slowly spoke.
"Yang Jian..."
Yang Jian narrowed his eyes as he watched Ye Zhen. At this moment, Ye Zhen gave Yang Jian an extremely incongruous feeling. Clearly, Ye Zhen was right before his eyes, yet he actually couldn't quite determine whether the person before him was the same Ye Zhen he had known before.
If he had to put it into words, Yang Jian felt that Ye Zhen had changed.
It wasn't an external change. Rather, the air radiating from his entire being was completely different from before.
If the previous Ye Zhen had given off a chuunibyou impression, then the current Ye Zhen was reserved, steady, and simultaneously unfathomable.
Around his body condensed a semi-transparent ghost domain that was nearly substantial, emitting waves of buzzing hums. His entire body would at times become rotted, at times recover completely.
This external change in Ye Zhen's body seemed to imply that he had achieved a deeper level of control over the substitute death ghost.
But Yang Jian had no time left to ponder Ye Zhen's changes.
The current situation had already reached the limit of what the two could endure. Ye Zhen seemed capable of moving, but this state absolutely couldn't be maintained for long. If this bizarre wedding continued, the only outcome awaiting them was death. Yang Jian planned to finish off this female corpse right here.
"I have a theory, but it might not work. If it fails, both of us will die here today."
"There's nothing to hesitate about. In supernatural incidents, none of us have a choice."
Yang Jian walked up to that horrifying female corpse. By now, the corpse had completely gone still, kneeling rigidly on the ground, waiting for the next attack to arrive.
Yang Jian took out a dark-red bracelet and was about to put it on the female corpse.
Ye Zhen stopped him with a voice.
"What do you plan to do?"
"In my current state, casually touching that marriage contract is no different from seeking death. I need to graft the risk onto this female corpse. This bracelet just happens to satisfy the conditions for such a transfer."
Ye Zhen narrowed his eyes slightly, staring at that bracelet.
"The connection between me and this female corpse is very subtle right now. Put it on my wrist."
Yang Jian fell silent for a moment, rapidly analyzing in his mind. 'Is he planning to transfer it through the substitute death ghost?'
Yang Jian roughly understood what Ye Zhen wanted to do. There was no time to hesitate. He snapped the bracelet onto Ye Zhen's wrist in one motion.
Yang Jian looked at Ye Zhen and said, "I think you should know that as long as a person is controlling a fierce ghost, there is a limit. Although I'm not clear on what happened to you, from here on out, you might truly die."
Ye Zhen merely nodded. "I know."
Yang Jian didn't respond further. Intense red light surged outward. Lake water instantly flooded the entire room, but Ye Zhen and the female corpse weren't affected by the water, still kneeling rigidly in place.
Amidst the red-glowing lake water.
A thick, heavy marriage contract floated directly in front of Yang Jian.
Using the power of a fierce ghost with such high frequency and intensity in a short time meant that Ghost Lake was now rapidly reviving. But it was slightly different—the target of Ghost Lake's revival attack wasn't Yang Jian.
Through that blood-red bracelet, the attack of Ghost Lake's revival was grafted into Ye Zhen's body.
And Ye Zhen, using the characteristics of the substitute death ghost and borrowing his identity as the "groom," transferred the risk of revival onto that horrifying female corpse.
Yang Jian wasn't clear on exactly what method Ye Zhen had used to transfer Ghost Lake's revival attack onto the female corpse. At this moment, his full attention was concentrated on that marriage contract.
At this moment, cold, gloomy lake water continuously surged forth from within the dark-red bridal gown on that female corpse, then slowly seeped back into the corpse, cycling repeatedly.