Chapter 42 employs the technique of subtle writing, intentionally leaving blank spaces to invite interpretation…
With the New Year just around the corner, everyone in the production team was beaming with joy, but Zhong Lao Er's family all had sullen faces. Li Ming had been secretly glared at by Zhong Lao Er's family several times, and even Zhong Lao Er, who was usually a kind and honest man, had given him a cold shoulder, which puzzled Li Ming for several days.
It wasn't until the Zhong family came to visit that Li Ming learned why.
Deng Xia and Zhong Chunsheng were truly at their wits' end. They had tried everything, but nothing worked. Every time they asked their daughter, she said the ghost was still there. What else could they do but come to her parents for help?
Li Ming and Liu Hongyan were completely bewildered when they met the Zhong family of three. Deng Xia had a stern face, and Zhong Chunsheng had a cold expression. They only brought their daughter, Zhong Ying. Anyone who didn't know better would think that their son had bullied the Zhong family's daughter and that the parents had come to settle scores.
"Let the younger ones go out first. You two old folks can just listen to this." Deng Xia's lips curled down, and her tone was anything but pleasant.
Liu Hongyan was good-natured and told her eldest and second sons to take their wives and children to their respective rooms first.
After the door closed, Deng Xia looked at Zhong Ying with a deflated expression and said, "Tell me what you want to say."
Zhong Ying stepped forward, and weakly (she pretended to) glanced at Li Ming and Liu Hongyan, "Uncle Li, Aunt Li."
Liu Hongyan was still completely confused, and asked in her usual gentle tone, "What's wrong, girl? Tell me."
Zhong Ying glanced at Li Lin in the room again, and then she was about to begin.
"Li Linshi came to me after his death, saying he wanted to marry me..."
This unexpected remark caused Li Ming and Liu Hongyan's expressions to change simultaneously, and they exclaimed in unison, "What?"
Zhong Ying twisted the hem of her cotton-padded jacket with her fingers, "He even came to my room at night..."
Li Ming and Liu Hongyan both gasped in shock. It was true that their son had bullied someone else's daughter, and now the girl's parents had come to settle the score with them!
“My aunt wanted to arrange a ghost marriage for him before, but he was unwilling and forced me to come and talk to you.”
"Furthermore, we have already consummated our marriage..."
Li Linshi, who had been listening to this for a while, couldn't take it anymore and gritted his teeth in anguish. "Can you please explain yourself clearly? You and I only went through the motions of the wedding ceremony for Changgui's sake. Don't make it sound like... like..."
Following his statement that "only living people can write history," Zhong Ying then employed another tactic: the "Spring and Autumn Annals style of writing."
This is called appropriate blank space, Zhong Ying thought. There is a similar saying in painting, which is to intentionally leave blank areas to give people room for imagination.
As expected, people have already misunderstood.
This was the first time Deng Xia had heard her daughter mention this, and her face changed drastically. "What? He's already bullied you?!"
Zhong Ying nodded, feeling wronged. "I didn't want to either, he choked me..."
Li Linshi took a deep breath. He had indeed choked her, but back then he wanted to kill her! But now, with these words and this tone, others would think he had forced her to do whatever he wanted while choking her!
Li Ming coughed. "Yingnier, did you dream about him?"
Rather than believing these absurd claims, Li Ming suspected that Zhong Ying might have gone mad or suffered a mental breakdown.
Zhong Chunsheng frowned. "We saw it at home that day. We were talking when suddenly there was a man's wet footprint on the ground."
Zhong Ying chimed in, "Yes, Uncle Li, he's inside right now."
Li Ming and Liu Hongyan immediately looked around the room, feeling a little scared, but also wanting to find their son.
"Do you want to say something to your parents?" When Zhong Ying looked at Li Lin, it looked to everyone else as if she were talking to empty space. The scene was so eerie that it sent chills down everyone's spine.
Li Linshi said, "Explain to them clearly that I did not do anything I shouldn't have done."
He has a moral bottom line. Whether he is a human or a ghost, he always maintains the proper distance between men and women. Even when his murderous intent is at its peak, he immediately avoids seeing things he shouldn't.
Zhong Ying said, "He said he would admit to everything he did, he just wanted to get me and possess me."
Li Linshi was burning with rage, his dark eyes seeming to ignite with a cold flame. It wasn't just anger at her deliberately distorted words, but also... a sense of shame and rage, as if someone had exposed something he had carefully hidden all along.
"I...didn't!" Li Linshi's jaw tightened, and he squeezed out each word through his teeth. His pale face was gloomy, making him look even more ugly and terrifying.
Deng Xia's face was also very pale. She turned to the Li couple and questioned them, "How is my daughter supposed to get married now?"
Zhong Chunsheng continued, "Yingni said that your fourth son doesn't want her to marry anyone else, and he'll kill whoever she marries."
Liu Hongyan clutched her chest and slumped onto a stool, already mostly convinced. "It really is something Si'er would do... He's never let anyone touch his things since he was little..."
Li Linshi frowned and turned to look at his mother. He didn't allow others to touch him because if anyone touched him, he would lose his way.
However, he clearly focused too much on his studies and spent too little time with his family, resulting in some misunderstandings about each other.
Li Ming had assumed his youngest son was just that domineering, and that Li Linshi had become even more obsessive after becoming a ghost. The gratitude he owed for saving him had now turned sour. He felt ashamed and troubled. "What... what should I do?"
“My son, don’t be so attached to it. Just let yourself be reincarnated.” Liu Hongyan earnestly advised the void, “There is no future for the living and the dead. If you keep clinging to it, you are only forcing things.”
Li Linshi felt like he was swallowing a bitter pill, incredibly frustrated. Was he the one being forced to do it? It was clearly Zhong Ying who was forcing things!
He stared straight at the "culprit" of everything, his eyes filled with suppressed, terrifying anger, like a ferocious beast poised to pounce at any moment.
Zhong Ying seemed oblivious, but how could she not feel that intense gaze that seemed to pierce through her head? The worst outcome was being pounced on by a "beast" and choked like before, which was better than marrying a man with different values and no way to communicate, and having one child after another.
Everyone dies eventually, sooner or later. Zhong Ying has a kind of detached and indifferent attitude. She will either be strangled to death by an angry male ghost now, or die in the future on the bed where she is giving birth, or lose her vitality in her seventies or eighties because her body has been hollowed out.
Moreover... Zhong Ying wasn't a crazy gambler. This ghost had never made a move in front of others. She believed in science and probability, and there was a 99.9% chance that she wouldn't die in the present moment.
Just like the original "Zhong Ying," who was completely fearless, Zhong Ying stretched out her left hand, rolled up her sleeve, and revealed a pink mark on her wrist. "He even left a mark on me. I don't dare let anyone else see it..."
Li Linshi laughed in exasperation, extending his wrist. "Who left the mark on whom?"
The bright red hair tie on her pale wrist and the faded marks Zhong Ying had made herself with the hair tie—what a perfect imitation!
Liu Hongyan was so ashamed that her face turned red. What inhuman things her son had done! But then she thought again, her son really hadn't become human anymore.
Li Ming was also in a difficult and embarrassing situation. If his son were still a human being, he would simply take responsibility at this point, but now...
"Yingni'er, your uncle is so sorry, look at the awful things he's done!" Li Ming scolded, then said with shame, "But I can't let you really be a widow for him..."
Yes, yes! Zhong Ying suppressed her joy at the imminent success of her plan and continued to "push forward," saying, "He said he's mine in life and in death, he's determined to be with me for life, and I can only marry him."
Li Linshi tried his best to restrain himself.
How could she be so wicked?
Selfish, cunning, and prone to distorting the truth.
With just a few words, she can manipulate people's hearts and guide them step by step toward the result she desires, just as she planned.
But why is it that she can always so easily stir up his emotions with just a few simple words?
He had finally calmed down, almost severing the part of himself that was closest to being "human," but now, those surging emotions were back.
Li Linshi suddenly felt a kind of hatred towards her, a resentment that bordered on hatred.
He rationally knew that Zhong Ying's words were all malicious and for her own benefit, but... he still couldn't help but feel mentally disturbed.
A fear that made him tremble all over surged up, almost like drowning. Li Linshi seemed to feel a warning from the side of reason: no, he shouldn't let her do whatever she wanted, he couldn't let her cling to him like this anymore... He would drown again, and be unable to extricate himself again.
Zhong Ying was like someone standing on the shore, throwing "stones" at him as he sank into despair.
Driven by the fear of drowning and the instinct to save himself, Li Linshi suddenly reached out and grabbed Zhong Ying's face. His eyes were cold and eerie, and his whole body was filled with a gloomy and dark aura. At this moment, he had only one thought in his mind: he couldn't let her say any more.
Several parents found it absurd and unacceptable; how could a person marry a ghost?
Zhong Ying wanted to add fuel to the fire by feigning retreat, saying, "I didn't want to either—"
Before she could finish speaking, the ghost grabbed her cheek.
Zhong Ying instinctively grabbed his taut arm, blinking in disbelief. Her first thought was, why was he choking her face instead of her neck? He couldn't kill her by choking her face; at most, he'd just silence her.
While others couldn't see Li Lin, they could see the finger marks that suddenly appeared on Zhong Ying's cheek, deeply embedded in her flesh with tremendous force.
After witnessing this scene, both sets of parents had no more doubts and were anxiously trying to persuade each other.
"Son, let Yingni go first, and I'll promise you!" Liu Hongyan was so anxious that she tried to pull her son away, but she couldn't see the ghost or touch him, which made her even more anxious.
Deng Xia was also anxious, "I'll marry you, I'll marry you! Quickly let go of my daughter!"
Zhong Chunsheng was also worried about his daughter and said anxiously, "I know you don't want to hear what she has to say next, so she won't say anymore, she won't say anymore, please let her go!"
Li Ming shook his head with a stern face, sighed heavily, and scolded, "Let go! Didn't you see that everyone already agreed to your marriage?!"
Zhong Ying's eyes widened immediately: Huh? It worked?
Li Linshi's dark eyes regained some clarity, but he was also a little confused. He had originally wanted to stop it, but how could this have happened?
Liu Hongyan and Li Ming were deeply ashamed of the outrageous things their son had done.
Deng Xia and Zhong Chunsheng were filled with worry. If they found an ordinary son-in-law, they could teach him a lesson if he treated their daughter badly, but this... like what just happened, there was nothing they could do. Would their daughter have to let him bully her from now on?
Only Zhong Ying was happy. If she had known that his anger would make things twice as effective, she would have said even more outrageous things to provoke him into taking action sooner.
However, Deng Xia and Zhong Chunsheng were worrying for too long; it was always their daughter who bullied ghosts.
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Author's note: No matter what, I'll always be bullied by Zhong Ying. It's so pitiful! (Expressing a gloating expression of watching the show)
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