Chapter 12: Zhong Ying's Fury Almost Caused Her to Die on the Spot.
As the unfamiliar softness entered his mouth, and the warmth of a human breath emanated from her lips, Li Linshi's frozen body seemed to regain its vitality. He immediately struggled to push Zhong Ying away, but at this moment she was more like a water ghost than he was, clinging to him like seaweed, and no matter what he did, he couldn't push her away.
The sound of water breaking the silence of the night was followed by urgent, heavy breathing.
Li Linshi grabbed Zhong Ying's waist with both hands and burst out of the water like a hot knife through butter. As soon as he was out of the water, she immediately let him go.
Zhong Ying braced her hands on his cold shoulders, panting heavily. The air, which was usually so ordinary, was now a precious treasure to her, a rebirth after escaping death.
The thin summer shirt, soaked by the river, was almost invisible. Li Linshi could clearly feel the temperature transmitted through his skin, which was normal human body temperature, but it made him feel as if he were being burned by flames.
He instinctively plunged back into the river.
Zhong Ying suddenly lost her support and was about to fall into the river again when the originally calm river surface inexplicably surged with a turbulent wave, as if carrying some kind of anger, and slammed her onto the bank.
"Holy crap—" Zhong Ying fell awkwardly onto a large rock on the riverbank. Fortunately, the constant impact of the river had smoothed out the sharp edges of the rock, preventing her from getting hurt. However, the mud from the depressions in the rock covered her up, so her bath was wasted!
The thought flashed through her mind, and Zhong Ying propped herself up, unable to resist turning her head to glare angrily at the water ghost in the river.
Li Linshi reformed into human form, his lower body submerged in the river, with only his upper body above the water. Under the moonlight, he resembled a mermaid from a mythological story, except that when he opened his mouth, he did not utter a seductive and beautiful song, but rather cold and icy words.
"Go back by yourself."
Zhong Ying pounced on the ghost like a tiger, grabbing its sleeve and demanding, "Wait! I can go back by myself?"
She turned her head and looked at the village houses shrouded in darkness. The silence, so different from the bustling daytime scene, seemed somewhat eerie. Zhong Ying unconsciously swallowed. Countless news stories she had read flashed through her mind. At this moment, her fear of people outweighed her fear of ghosts.
“You took me from my house to the river, and now you want me to go back on my own? You might as well just give me a quick death. Do you know how many times I could die on this road? There are no streetlights, no surveillance cameras, and someone could suddenly pop out of the darkness at any intersection I cross…” Zhong Ying became more talkative out of fear, her words tumbling out like a barrage of bullets, “My house isn’t even at the village entrance, it’s in the middle of the village!”
Li Linshi's gaze moved from his hands, which were tightly clutching the hem of his clothes, to Zhong Ying's face. Her panic and fear were plain to see. He didn't feel much sympathy, and only said, "Were you raised to be scared?"
She was like those children in the village who were frightened by their parents from a young age that there were man-eating wild beasts in the mountains, and over time they dared not go up the mountain anymore.
"What?" Zhong Ying quickly reacted. "I'm not a child. I read news reports about real events. Do you know how many criminal cases can happen to a single woman like me late at night?"
Thinking of something, Zhong Ying continued, "Unlike now, in the future, we won't need letters of introduction for travel. Although it will be much more convenient in life, there are advantages and disadvantages. The dangers brought about by a highly mobile society will also increase. Do you think we women want to live in this fear? Isn't it all because men are doing evil..."
Li Linshi pulled back the hem of his clothes and coldly and ruthlessly disappeared into the river.
Zhong Ying: ...
Thinking about why she wasn't sleeping in the house and instead had to walk home alone in the dark, Zhong Ying couldn't help but curse silently in her heart. She was right; it was all the man's fault for doing evil!
Like cursing a boss who's inhuman in modern times, Zhong Ying cursed a male ghost who was inhuman the whole way in her mind—it was truly inexplicable! They moved her from her house to the river in the middle of the night and made her go back by herself! It was like forcibly dragging a prisoner to the execution ground, putting the guillotine on her, spraying her neck with liquor, and then the executioner suddenly said, "Alright, you can go now. I'll kill you next time."
That's inhuman! Well, he's not even human to begin with!
While cursing and swearing inwardly, Zhong Ying ran home without stopping. Driven by fear and a surge of adrenaline, she nearly pushed herself to her limit. Had the villagers not all been asleep at that hour, those who witnessed Zhong Ying's frantic sprint would likely have been terrified.
Perhaps it was the overwhelming resentment emanating from her that gave her the buff to scare away evil spirits, but Zhong Ying managed to run safely back to her front door in one breath. She calmed her breathing, her heart pounding wildly in her chest, and raised her hand to pound hard on the wooden door of the Zhong family home.
The sudden knocking startled Zhong Xin, who happened to be getting up to use the outhouse. Hongtang rushed out of the house and barked at the gate.
Zhong Xin asked warily, "Who is it?"
Zhong Ying recognized his voice: "Your sister."
"Sis, why are you out so late at night—" Zhong Xin heard the voice and hurriedly opened the door from the inside. When he saw Zhong Ying, he was shocked. "Sis, why are you all wet? Did you fall into the river?"
Zhong Ying looked like a drowned rat. She nodded helplessly, her face full of embarrassment. "It's just my bad luck..."
Others transmigrate with a system, but she transmigrates with a dead ghost. How can that not be considered bad luck?
A look of sudden realization crossed Zhong Xin's young face as he mentally filled in the blanks for a plausible "unlucky event" for his sister.
——
"Wheat should be harvested quickly; don't complain after the summer solstice."
The wheat spread on the threshing floor was threshed again and again until all the grains were separated, leaving only bare stalks. Several times, dark clouds covered the sun, which tightened the production team's belt. After the summer solstice, it even rained twice, making the work more intense and exciting.
As the raindrops fell, people howled and wailed, frantically moving the "wheat hill" to a place where they could take shelter from the rain.
Another incident occurred at night. The weather was fine when work ended, with a beautiful sunset. The threshed wheat ears were piled up in the threshing ground, simply covered with straw, intending to continue drying them the next day. But who knew that at midnight, the weather would turn against them, and it suddenly started raining!
Li Ming, the production team leader, was awakened by the sound of rain hitting the eaves. The man in his fifties jumped out of bed and rushed out of the house, shouting for people in the village to get up quickly. When he passed Zhong Chunsheng's house, he paused and then turned into it.
The sound of a suona horn woke everyone in the production team, who were so frightened that they thought someone in the village had died again.
June weather is like a child's face; you never know when it will rain again. People can only work frantically. After the wheat ears are threshed and dried, they still need to be winnowed to separate the wheat grains from the husks.
These days, Zhong Ying has been exposed to the wind and sun at the threshing ground, and she has gotten a bit tanned. She has no time to think about why that dead guy hasn't reappeared for so long or why he hasn't killed her.
Zhong Ying was so exhausted that she felt a faint sense of death, just like when she was a beast of burden in modern times. Whatever, she was just too tired to care about anything else.
Once most of the processed grain was stored away, the busy and tense work at the threshing ground gradually subsided.
Li Ming led most of the production team back to the fields to thin out seedlings, leaving only a few people who couldn't work in the threshing ground.
Liu Qiang remained as the foreman. He watched the group of people working and then unconsciously gathering together to talk, and was speechless. However, the urgent work was almost finished, and most of the grain had been stored in the granary. The remaining people had to pick out the remaining grain from the chaff that had fallen during the winnowing process. This was an easy job with few work points, so Liu Qiang turned a blind eye to Hu Datong and the others' grouping together.
I was so busy a while ago that I didn't even have time to chat, which really got me going. Now that I have some free time, my mouth just won't stop.
"I heard that Da Ni is pregnant again?" Hu asked. The "Da Ni" she was referring to was the eldest daughter of the Fan family, whose full name was Fan Da Ni.
Fan Dani's mother, Nie Ying, nodded with a happy expression, "It's been a month and a half."
"I diagnosed it myself!" Lin Shuhong came closer, her dark red face full of pride. She was a well-known "lucky person" in the Tonggan production team. She had five sons and one daughter, all of whom she raised to adulthood. She was very skilled at diagnosing pregnancy, delivering babies, and raising children. Fan Dani married Liu Mancang, the second son of Lin Shuhong and Liu Qiang.
Hearing this, the people around gathered around to offer their congratulations.
Nie Ying glanced at the young girl lazily working on the other side of the threshing ground and couldn't help but feel a sense of pride.
Nie Ying's womb couldn't compare to Deng Xia's next-door neighbor's, who had given birth to two sons. But fortunes change, and so what if Nie Ying only had daughters? Her eldest daughter was already pregnant with her third child, while Zhong Cheng, who was the same age as her eldest daughter, only had one. Her second daughter was getting married in the spring, while Deng Xia's daughter was a year older and still hadn't found a husband.
Thinking this, Nie Ying felt even more energetic. "If I calculate that my eldest daughter's childbirth and her second sister's wedding are close together, then everyone will come to the banquet!"
Third Aunt nodded happily; older people like to hear about happy events. "Who is Erni talking about?"
“The Zhou Changqing family of Zhoujiawowo Brigade, it was you, Third Aunt, who calculated the horoscopes for the two young people, have you forgotten?” Nie Ying said.
After thinking for a while, Auntie San said repeatedly, "Yes, yes, yes, Zhou Changqing's third son, I remember him. He's a very spirited young man. Because his grandfather passed away, he's set to get married next spring."
Nie Ying glanced across at the other side again and said loudly, "That's why I say, a young lady should marry into a good family. Who would want a daughter-in-law who's so shrewish and domineering?"
Since things had come to this point, Zhong Ying could easily tell that this was a direct reference to her, but she only glanced at Aunt Fan Wu without being angered at all.
Do fish get angry when told they can't ride a bicycle?
Aunt Fan said she was like her mother, shrewish and domineering, and would never get married. What was there for Zhong Ying to be angry about? If Aunt Fan said she was virtuous and gentle and suitable for marriage and having children, Zhong Ying would get angry. Hey, why do you curse people so rudely?
Lai Hunzi, who was standing nearby, noticed the sarcasm in Fan Wu's wife's words and glanced at Zhong Ying as well. "If that Li boy hadn't gotten into trouble, Zhong Lao Er's daughter would probably be married to him by now. Tsk tsk, speaking of that poor Li boy, he died without a wife..."
Zhong Ying couldn't help but roll her eyes. "Fine, fine, so you guys are pitying each other again, aren't you?"
"I've heard that unmarried people are all alone and vulnerable in the underworld, and they get bullied." Lai Hunzi wasn't particularly capable, but his ramblings were what drew attention, and over time he became increasingly adept at it. "The best thing would be to arrange a ghost marriage for him, so he'd have company down there. If both of them had died back then, it would have been perfect for a ghost marriage. Now one's dead and the other's alive… but it's not like there aren't ghost marriages between the living and the dead…"
The women, who had been nodding along, frowned by the end.
Even Nie Ying couldn't help but spit at him, "A perfectly good girl marrying a dead man? Saying such things, aren't you afraid of damaging your own karma and being reborn as an animal in your next life!"
She disliked the Zhong family next door and hoped her own child could surpass the Zhong family's children, but that doesn't mean Nie Ying was so wicked as to wish a girl a bad ending.
Hu, his face pale, patted his chest. "Oh, you reckless fool, how dare you say such a thing? You're going to get into trouble..."
Zhong Ying didn't take Lai Hunzi's nonsense to heart at all.
Feeling lonely and helpless? Being bullied?
That damned guy is incredibly powerful; he can turn the world upside down with a flick of his wrist. He could even take her from her house to the Ganlin River in a second. He's a tyrant in the human world; who can bully him?
Zhong Ying thought to herself, and rolled her eyes again.
As night fell, the "poor little thing" in Lai Hunzi's eyes quietly sneaked into the house.
Li Linshi stared at the girl who was sleeping soundly on her side on the bed with a gloomy look in his eyes, and anger welled up in his heart.
Why is she always able to so easily stir up his emotions?
During the period when he accepted the fact that he was dead, Li Linshi felt like a stagnant, dark, and murky pool of dead water. He no longer needed to eat or sleep like a human being, and even human emotions seemed to have disappeared...
But why is it that her every word and action is like a stone thrown into water, shattering this cold, lifeless silence?
Li Linshi's gaze involuntarily fell on Zhong Ying's lips. They were rosy and full, and with her long, even breaths, they parted slightly, revealing glimpses of her pearly white teeth. They were as delicate and alluring as cherries, tempting one to pick them and taste them... He knew what they tasted like.
A gloomy and angry gaze swept across the sleeping person's face.
How could she fall asleep so soundly as if nothing had happened?
He was so distraught that he couldn't regain his composure for several days.
Li Linshi carefully scanned Zhong Ying's face, his gaze tracing over it inch by inch as if caressing her.
She said she was born thirty years in the future and died at the age of twenty-seven. At that age, she would probably have been married and had children long ago. So, did she do that kind of thing to others? Of course, she wouldn't care about something so commonplace, which is why only he is bothered by it.
Thinking of this, Li Linshi's anger flared up again.
He was not only angry at Zhong Ying's indifference because of the unexpected kiss in the river, but also angry at his own lingering resentment.
She doesn't care, so why should he care so much?
Even after all these days, things haven't calmed down.
Li Linshi glared angrily at the culprit lying on the bed. Whether he was a human or a ghost, she was disturbing his peace.
Today, work wasn't too tiring, so Zhong Ying didn't sleep as soundly as she had the past few days. Under such intense gazes, she slowly woke up.
The moment I opened my eyes, I was met with the sinister and terrifying gaze of a pale-faced male ghost.
Zhong Ying nearly died on the spot.
For a moment, I had a daze that overlapped with the time of her sudden death, and my heart skipped a beat.
After strangling, choking, and drowning, is this ghost trying to scare her to death this time? Or is he planning to scare her half to death before taking action?
Zhong Ying was truly fed up with this cat-and-mouse game, it was like being cut with a dull knife, it was so agonizing, she'd rather just give her a quick death.
She impatiently rolled over, lying flat to be killed, "Hurry up, hurry up, kill me, then I'll go reincarnate!"
Unlike other families, Deng Xia and Zhong Chunsheng never skimped on Zhong Ying's food rations just because she was a girl. In fact, most of the rare foods ended up in Zhong Ying's stomach. As a result, she was not as thin as other girls her age, and not only in height, but also in other parts of her body, she developed well.
She lay there casually, the thin clothes she wore as pajamas draped over her like wisps of smoke, her young body undulating like mountains, and thus she entered Li Linshi's eyes.
He abruptly averted his gaze as if his eyes were being burned, his anger rising even higher, his thin lips tightening, "...Shameless!"
After speaking, the ghostly figure disappeared, and a pool of water spread and seeped into the ground.
His four words were more effective than all the words spoken by Aunt Fan and Lai Hunzi, and Zhong Ying was immediately furious!
It's bad enough that they wanted her dead and said she was sick, but now they're subjecting her to sexual humiliation?
Zhong Ying had already given up and was ready to be killed, so what was there to be afraid of, what was there to swallow, and what was there to endure? "How is it shameless for me to be sleeping peacefully in my own room? I'd like to ask you the same thing: is it shameless for you to be running around in a girl's room at night? Wandering around in a slightly damp white shirt, where did your traditional virtues go?"
The water droplet seemed to pause for a moment as it seeped down.
He had been carefully controlling the water on his body so as not to get his clothes wet ever since!
"Besides, who are you to me? Why do I need your judgment? If you're so free, why don't you go reincarnate? If I didn't know, I would have thought you died in the sea instead of in the river. Mind your own business..."
Li Linshi quickened his pace to leave.
He had actually been thinking along the lines of what she said, and he was starting to think that she was a different person.
But now that I see it, she has the same shrewishness as Aunt Zhong Er, she is clearly Zhong Ying!
After Zhong Ying finished cursing, she let out a long breath, feeling relieved. Now that she was no longer afraid of death, she felt much less stifled. Indeed, everyone goes crazy sometimes.
A note from the author:
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Li Linshi: Shameless!
Zhong Ying: You're the shameless one!
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