Mr. Du and the others shivered in fear. This was especially true for Mr. Du, who was currently pinned beneath Pei Ye's foot; even the slightest movement made him howl in pain. However, compared to losing his life, what did a little pain matter?
"It was my fault. I won't ever dare to do it again! As long as you let me go, as long as you spare me, I will definitely burn lots and lots of money for you during every festival—"
Mr. Du was originally an atheist, but watching Lan Ying—who had been dead for over a month—appear right before his eyes, her hair growing bizarrely to wrap Sister Bai's head tightly, was a scene that simply could not be explained by science. He had no choice but to believe. Listening to the conversation between Pei Ye and Lan Ying, he realized that the unlucky crony who died in a car crash was also Lan Ying's doing. A sudden shiver ran down his spine. The car crash wasn't an accident; it was clearly a fierce ghost claiming a life! He still had the prime of his life ahead of him. He was so young, his old man's family fortune was still waiting for him to squander, and there were so many girls waiting for him. He couldn't die.
Lan Ying let out a cold sneer. Her neck stretched out like rubber, her head suddenly pressing close to Mr. Du's face. He was so terrified that his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. A moment later, a warm, pungent smell of urine drifted through the air.
Lan Ying stuck out her cold, stiff, grayish-brown tongue and licked Mr. Du's face. The freezing, deathly temperature of it made his heartbeat erratic.
"Begging for mercy now?" Lan Ying giggled, a flash of scarlet passing through her eyes. "That day, I also begged you all for mercy just like this. None of you stopped. Not a single one of you!"
Mr. Du cried, "I was wrong. I really know I was wrong."
Lan Ying used the cold, stiff tip of her tongue to lick Mr. Du's earlobe and eyes. "Apologizing? Realizing your mistake? It's too late."
To take revenge on these animals, she had died full of resentment and willingly transformed into a fierce ghost. She would rather be denied reincarnation for all eternity and suffer all the torments of the Eighteen Layers of Hell than let these people off.
"Do you know what I went through after you ruined me?"
Pei Ye watched from the sidelines with a cigarette dangling from her lips, flicking the ash twice. She suddenly remembered what a certain jinx surnamed Jiang had once said—villains always died from talking too much. Striking cleanly and decisively was the true way to go. Dawdling with a trip down memory lane would definitely be interrupted by someone bursting onto the scene halfway through.
"I say—why don't you make your move first before reminiscing about the past?" Pei Ye offered this genuine advice to the female ghost, Lan Ying. Anyway, even after a person died, they became a ghost. Any trash talk could simply be continued with Mr. Du's ghost soul.
"You threw money at me, telling me to take those two thousand and get lost, so I got lost." Lan Ying turned a deaf ear to Pei Ye. Her elongated neck stretched a bit further, wrapping around Mr. Du's neck twice. She pressed her cheek affectionately against his face. Terrified, Mr. Du burst into tears, his pants now mostly wet. "I was in so much pain, so lost. I was followed and robbed by a forty-something old man. He took my money and dragged me into an alley. That alley was so, so dark—I couldn't see a sliver of light, and it was so, so cold inside..."
Mr. Du squeezed his eyes shut in fear. Unable to see, his sense of touch became even sharper. He didn't dare to move a muscle. Snot dripped down into his mouth, but he didn't even dare to wipe it away.
"That old man beat me ruthlessly and sold me to a hair salon owner. They took my ID card and phone, put an iron chain around my neck, and locked me in a basement to serve one man after another like a dog... Do you know how many days I lived like that?" Lan Ying giggled. "I finally died, but I was so lonely, so I came back to see you all. Are you happy? You men are really cowards. When you do bad things, you're as bold as the heavens, so why do you become as timid as mice afterward? So naughty~"
Lan Ying's cold wrist wrapped around Mr. Du's cheek, her bluish-black fingers tracing his face like a lover whispering sweet nothings. It clearly sounded like a lover's coquettish banter, yet the living people in the private room found it absolutely bone-chilling.
Pei Ye watched Lan Ying dallying and let out a soft sigh. This girl's efficiency was really lacking. Weren't those three prior car crashes executed cleanly and decisively?
When a certain guy with a spiritual fluctuation of one hundred approached, Pei Ye knew that Lan Ying's revenge plan was most likely going to be aborted prematurely.
As if to prove the "villains die from talking too much" law, a clap of thunder rang out, and the righteous party made a flashy entrance.
"Thunder God and Thunder Mother, descend with your Divine Skills swiftly! I command this in the name of Lord Lao Zi of the Great Monad, heed this order instantly."
Blue electric arcs leaped and sparked outward. The ghost wall set up by the female ghost collapsed along with this Spell.
A young man in a white shirt held a Peach Wood Sword in one hand, while his other hand formed the hand seal for the Five Thunders Technique. As the miasma dissipated, the true situation inside the private room was revealed.
Seeing the scene of a fierce ghost about to harm someone, Zhu Chun'an roared in uncontrollable anger, "Demon! Surrender without a fight!"
Lan Ying's ghostly face suddenly turned ferocious, revealing her true appearance at the time of her death. The blood-drenched sight was enough to make anyone's heart palpitate with fear.
"Stinky Daoist, ruining my good deed!"
With that, the black yin energy around Lan Ying surged wildly. Exuding a chilling ghost energy, she curled her fingers into claws and charged at the young man in the white shirt.
"Die, Demon!"
After a standard round of trash talk, the human and the ghost began to fight.
Pei Ye crushed her cigarette butt into the ashtray to extinguish it. Honestly, she had already finished smoking an entire cigarette. If the female ghost truly had the intention to kill, in the time she spent blabbering, the corpses of the people nearby would have had time to grow cold. The female ghost had just stood there yapping endlessly the entire time and had even ignored Pei Ye's reminder. In the end, how could she blame the Daoist for ruining her plans?
Alas, the female ghost didn't care about that. In the logic of ghosts, they were never wrong.
She let out a piercing howl. Not only was the sound harsh and unpleasant to the ears, but it also made one's mind wander in a daze.
Lan Ying lunged straight at Zhu Chun'an, who calmly stepped up to meet her attack. The human and the ghost darted and shifted around the private room, flying up and down. They chased each other, advancing and retreating like a fancy gymnastics routine. For a time, they were actually locked in a dead heat.
Pei Ye watched for a while and found it boring. Not having something dangling from her mouth also felt uncomfortable.
"Hey—"
Seeing the flashy entrance of the young man in the white shirt and his entanglement with the female ghost, Mr. Du and his group of cronies suddenly felt a sense of relief, as if they had returned to the human realm from Hell. Before their little hearts could return to a normal frequency, Pei Ye's voice rang out like the call of an Evil Ghost, forcefully dragging them right back down to Hell.
"W-What do you want?"
They certainly hadn't missed Pei Ye's violent display just now. It seemed even that female ghost was very wary of Pei Ye.
Pei Ye cast a disgusted glance at Mr. Du's wet pants, raised her hand, and snatched a pack of cigarettes from one of the cronies. She pulled one out and placed it in her mouth. After watching for a while, she said, "The kid is going to lose."
Just as her words fell, the female ghost's claws tore through the sleeve of Zhu Chun'an's shirt. Even though she only left three shallow scratch marks on his arm, the nails of the ghost claws contained a potent poison, causing the wound to turn black at a visible rate.
When ghost energy entered the body, it would erode Yang Qi. This kind of injury would be very serious for an ordinary person. However, Zhu Chun'an was born with a Pure Yang Body and was a Daoist cultivator, so logically, he should have been fine. Zhu Chun'an himself thought the same.
"A mere trifle of poison—"
Before he could finish speaking, the hand holding the Peach Wood Sword rapidly lost all sensation. The sword slipped from his grasp as the black energy spread up his arm at a terrifying speed.
Mr. Du's cronies were speechless.
Zhu Chun'an, who was halfway through showing off, was also speechless.
He cursed inwardly, "Damn it, what a jinx!"
Lan Ying smiled, narrowing her eyes. "Little Daoist, why don't you finish your sentence? A mere what?"
Zhu Chun'an leaped back violently to create some distance, using the sofa as cover. He pulled out a yellow talisman paper, pressed it against the wound, and silently chanted the Detoxification Talisman. In just the span of a breath, the talisman paper spontaneously combusted, yet the color of the wound only lightened the slightest bit.