Su Xiaoniu burst out laughing, covering her mouth with her hands. That beautiful face, even though pale and colorless, made my heart flutter. Beautiful... too beautiful! I was practically mesmerized by it.

"Am I pretty?" she asked suddenly.

I nodded: "Good... looks good."

"You bastard! Which beautiful girl haven't you said something like this to?" Su Xiaoniu suddenly punched me and then stood up.

I stood up depressedly. She saw the three candles on the ground and said with a smile, "I didn't expect that the owner of this house was so moved by you that he actually gave you three days to stay. It's incredible."

I chuckled and said, "That's right! After all, I'm begging them like this."

Su Xiaoniu walked outside, looked at the pale moonlight in the sky for a long time, and then said, "The boatman and Feng Ling were captured by the ghost master, right?"

I said yes.

Su Xiaoniu turned around gracefully and said seriously, "You disrupted the Ghost King Festival. They will be fine for at least three days. You should heal your wounds first."

I said "Oh" and suddenly my head felt dizzy, just like the first time I recited the Divine Mantra for Purifying Heaven and Earth. I felt a black screen in front of my eyes, my whole body became weak and powerless, and I fell to the ground with a thud.

I don’t know what happened afterwards, but I could feel that Su Xiaoniu was hugging me tightly, and I actually fell asleep peacefully on her…

The next day, the sun was high in the sky, its glaring rays streaming into the house, waking me up. I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the ground. Su Xiaoniu was gone. I was startled. What the hell? Had Su Xiaoniu been taken to the exhumation site again?

I called out everywhere, but there was no sign of Su Xiaoniu. I was getting really anxious and was about to run to the corpse digging site behind the village.

Su Xiaoniu's lazy voice came to my ears: "Stop yelling, I'm inside."

I breathed a sigh of relief. The events of the past few days had made me incredibly allergic to Su Xiaonu. If I didn't hear her voice for even a moment, I'd start to overthink things. I wondered if she'd been taken to the cadaver dig site again. Fortunately, I was just overthinking it.

These past few days, Su Xiaoniu has been free and has been chatting with me, which has kept me from feeling bored during my recuperation.

Every night, the dark shadow in the house would appear, accompanied by a faint, chilling breeze. It would circle around me twice before disappearing. I didn't know what it meant, but Su Xiaoniu told me it was because the owner of the house was talking to me, but I just couldn't hear it. I asked her what the owner of the house was saying to me, and Su Xiaoniu said slowly, "It was just asking about my injury."

I was very moved when I heard this. I never thought that the owner of this old house would care about an outsider...

I rested like this until the third day. My leg injury was almost healed, and Su Xiaoniu asked me to prepare to go to the cadaver site to rescue the boatman and Feng Ling that night. Before that, she asked me to draw a few talismans for purification, which would be used later.

By the time I was ready, it was almost evening, so I went to the lake behind the village and rowed my boat to the site where the bodies were being exhumed.

The sky gradually darkened.

Su Xiaoniu told me to keep chanting the cleansing mantra in my mind, not to stop, otherwise I would be forced to participate in this disgusting Ghost King Festival again. As you can imagine, Su Xiaoniu didn't want to stay here and become a Ghost King. She hated every plant and tree here, especially the group of little ghosts who appeared on the ground digging up corpses and held the Ghost King Festival.

I did as I was told, silently chanting the Purification Mantra in my heart, and the effect was truly miraculous. A few days ago, when I came to this cadaver dig site, I didn't chant the Purification Mantra, and the moment I entered, I felt a sense of eerieness. Now, chanting the Purification Mantra as I walk past, I don't feel the creepy feeling at all. It's as if a sense of righteousness is protecting me.

The moon is dark and the wind is strong.

I just looked up at the moonlight, and near the excavation site, a group of people in white clothes suddenly appeared. Their number was half that of the last time, nearly seventy or eighty people, surrounding the excavation site and starting to circle around it.

There were still four men carrying the ghost sedan chair from the underworld, and there was still a woman in white clothes sitting on the sedan chair. I was startled and thought it was Su Xiaoniu for a moment, so I called out to her a few times in my mind. Fortunately, Su Xiaoniu responded to me and she did not go out.

So it was certain that the person in the sedan chair was not Su Xiaoniu, so who could it be? Who was elected as their ghost king?

I took two steps over and took a closer look. I was almost scared to death. Wasn't that Su Xiaoniu? I quickly called out to her in my mind. Strangely, Su Xiaoniu still responded to me and told me to stay calm. The person in the sedan chair was not her real self, but just an empty shell.