Ostentatious Zhao Yao

Old Lady Née Zhou brought her son over, and I shot that scholar a glance from top to bottom. Towards his own mother, he was blindly subservient. I reckoned that when he was alive, he was always this stupid and cowardly. Even now, when he was dead, he could not break away from that identity.

Née Zhou asked him whether or not he likes me, if he likes me, then this matter would be settled. He would take my eight-character birthdate to go write a wedding document, get married, and then give me the betrothal gift.

I was standing behind Née Zhou. After seeing Née Zhou asked the scholar, the scholar timidly and shyly  raised his head to look at me. Originally, he had a sweet bashful expression like a big young lady, but when he met my gaze, his body shook with terror from head to toe.

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I stared at him coldly. Behind Née Zhou, I opened my mouth and soundlessly said these three words with a wooden face: “Say you do.”

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The scholar swallowed a mouthful of saliva: “I li-li-li… Like…”

Née Zhou beamed with happiness, and wanted to hold my hand. However, I evaded, turned around, and said: “Let’s go. Let’s immediately go and write the wedding document.”

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Née Zhou was very happy: “Look at your wife, she’s even more anxious than you.”

As she took her son and I along the way, she talked long-windedly about their family’s past. She said that when they were alive, they were a rich family in their village, doing a lot of good deeds and accumulating good merits. The only bad thing was that the child’s father died too early. Née Zhou raised her son into an adult through many difficulties. Then finally, he passed the county level imperial exam. Just when he wanted to go take the next imperial exam, the village in the mountain was robbed by a group of bandits, and the pair of mother and son both lost their lives.

When the old lady was alive, she did not have any other wishes. The only thing that she was not reconciled with, was that her son did not get the chance to take a wife when he was alive. Therefore, she was always at the ghost market, looking and searching for quite some time. She was choosing based on their eight-character birthdates, selecting based on their appearances, nitpicking whether or not they were virgins, from their pitifulness to their stubbornness.

Even now that she had encountered me, Née Zhou was still nitpicking: “You just lived for too long, so you’re born a lot older, but it still doesn’t matter. When you were alive, I presume you’re a celestial cultivator. As celestial cultivators, you guys save a lot of people but also kill a lot of people, not as good as my son, who has a lot of good fortune and virtue…”

Beside me, I stared at the scholar who did not even dare to lift his head to look at me. He was so stupid and cowardly to have become this way, what good fortune and virtue were there to even talk about.

He and I signed the wedding document, and then I left with them to go to the Soul Return Store. Standing before the Soul Return Store, when Née Zhou was about to lift her foot to go in, she suddenly asked me: “I only have enough to buy you the Soul Return Pill that lasts for two hours, but you have to tell me first, why do you want the Soul Return Pill, what are you going to do?”

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My expression did not change nor did my heart jump, as I said to her. “When I was alive, I had a sect. I died  suddenly, so I did not get a chance to hand over things to my subordinates. Now that I intend to get married in the Netherworld, I want to return to finish some things. I’ll also conveniently tell my subordinates to burn more paper offerings for me so that I can take care of you and your son in the future. If you let me stay in the human world for a little longer, then I can have more people help me burn paper money and burn more, too.”

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Née Zhou finished listening: “Then I’ll buy you two pills!”

She wanted to enter the store, while I followed behind her. The ferocious-looking ghosts allowed Née Zhou to enter, but stopped me at the door. I did not move, Née Zhou rushed back to explain: “This is my daughter-in-law.” 

In this ghost market full of discrimination against evil people, this was my first time entering the Soul Return Store.

From the shopkeeper, Née Zhou purchased two Soul Return Pills. The shopkeeper said behind the black cloth: “After taking the Soul Return Pill, you can only return to your own body, but whatever your skin’s appearance has become, that is naturally your own problem. We only guarantee the ability for the soul to return and do not guarantee the quality. If the framework of the human skeleton cannot crawl back up, we are generally not responsible. Even the coffin buried in the ground, if the lid is tightly closed and you cannot get out, we still do not care. When the time is up, no matter where you are, your body will disappear and automatically return to its original place, while your soul will go back to the ghost market and continue to be a ghost.”

I felt that the most expensive thing that was sold in this ghost market was probably their irresponsibility to their merchandise…

However, it did not matter, I had said that even if I was a set of dried-up bones, I would still get back up and kill Luo Ming Xuan.

Without waiting to leave the Soul Return Store, without caring what Née Zhou still had to say to me, I lifted my head and swallowed the two Soul Return Pills into my stomach.

Immediately, my mind was reeling, everything before me began to blur, while Née Zhou’s voice turned into a buzzing drone in my ears. She seemed to be quarreling and venting, disliking that I consumed the pills too anxiously.

There was a sudden pain in my chest, ripping my soul into pieces, tearing my heart out, and splitting my lungs apart. It was more unbearable than any pain that I had experienced in my life.

I tightly clenched my teeth. When my whole body was trembling and twitching, only one thing came to my mind — I hoped that that Ugly Little Monster did not nail my coffin too tightly.