Hearing such crude words, Gu Daosheng felt his ears get a little dirty.
He immediately covered Nan Ying’s ears, and Lou Ling covered Lou Mingzhang’s.
Their faces were filled with disbelief.
Since “Gu Daosheng’s” wish was to have an intimate relationship with Lou Hongchen, it was normal for Lou Hongchen to have the same thought.
But “becoming a fierce ghost to kill him” was a bit too much, wasn’t it?
Unexpectedly, Lou Ling wasn’t finished. He continued, “When the Eldest Young Master was alive, he was a very possessive person. No one could touch his things. He told me… you are his.”
“So he asked me to watch over you, to not let the Old Thing get you. The Eldest Young Master also said the Old Thing would die, as long as you aren’t taken by the Old Thing; even if you die, it’s fine.”
“!!!”
This sounded like a real death. Gu Daosheng stared with wide eyes: “Even if I die, it’s fine?!”
Doesn’t he love “me”?!
Is this love or hate?
If I die…
We can be together forever.
The Lou Family didn’t have many servants. Mr. Lou said that having too many people would cause trouble.
Once they got used to each other, they would start forming factions.
Even the other nine wives, whose status was never officially recognized, only entered the household when another woman was on the verge of death.
So many marriages to ward off misfortune had been performed, yet instead of bringing auspicious joy to this grand estate, they had only thickened the ghostly aura.
“They were all eighteen when they joined Mr. Lou. He prefers young girls,” Lou Ling said inside the room. He acted as if no inch of the floor was worthy of his presence, lowering himself into a half-crouch with his humble knees serving as a pivot. He gripped the end of a white cloth strip and began unwrapping the “mummy.”
He added, “No one in the Lou family lived past three years.”
Gu Daosheng offered him a seat on the sofa, but Lou Ling shook his head, refusing to overstep his station.
Gu Daosheng had initially thought that in this damned Ghost Origin Land, everything revolved around him. He believed that as long as he overcame his own inner demons and fulfilled his wish, he could escape. He never imagined the situation would be so perilously fraught with danger.
There were people here who wanted him dead.
As a servant of the Lou family, Lou Ling was bound to know everything. He was certainly in a much better position than Gu Daosheng, who was like a blind cat; he’d never even found a dead rat, only kept running into ghosts.
The first time they met, Lou Ling was savage. He showed none of the deference a servant should, immediately trying to establish dominance over Gu Daosheng. His demeanor suggested he wasn’t just acting on Lou Hongchen’s orders to disrupt the proceedings; rather, it seemed he had some sway with Lou Guangrui.
He was clearly “riding his master’s favor.”
Before descending the mountain, Gu Daosheng had seen few people, but his senses were as sharp and dazzling as his face, which seemed to have absorbed the very essence of the sun and moon. He possessed extraordinary hearing, sight, and intuition.
When he focused, he could perceive the most subtle emotions with unerring accuracy.
That was why his Master never asked the names or stories of the wandering spirits in his presence. Once Gu Daosheng took them to heart, he could never forget.
Keeping Lou Ling here now wasn’t because Gu Daosheng was so desperate he’d believe anything the man said; well, alright, he was desperate.
He was truly at his wit’s end. His stepson, who had been “loved” into a position of fearless arrogance, was now a vengeful killer waiting to strike him down. He wondered how much that love had curdled into such hatred.
The pet ghost, who dared to devour humans in public, was actually a useless coward who fled at the sight of a Heavenly Master and trembled before any ghostly entity. In the end, he knew no more about the Lou Family than Gu Daosheng did.
Gu Daosheng, who seemed so capable and dared to blasphemously complain about his Master’s incompetence, was actually a fraudulent Heavenly Master. He was the kind of fraud who dared to face a fierce ghost as long as it didn’t turn around, but would lose his nerve the moment it did.
Fierce ghost, useless, fraud…
Bringing these together, Gu Daosheng concluded with great self-awareness that he had finally developed that “divine nerve” of self-awareness.
He didn’t have to wait until he was dead to learn it.
“Died at twenty-one? All of them?” Gu Daosheng’s teeth clattered together as he gasped in shock.
Lou Ling said in a low voice, “All of them.”
As the “mummy” gradually emerged, Lou Mingzhang thought Lou Ling was playing with him and whooped with joy.
The moment his arms were freed, he raised them high and spun around, unraveling the white cloth strips. “So much fun! It was fun when you unwrapped me, and it was fun when Big Brother wrapped me up! Hahaha!”
The white cloth quickly scattered all over the floor. They were just ordinary bedsheets, but as they piled up on the ground, they looked exactly like spirit banners to Gu Daosheng, piercing his eyes. His throat tightened, feeling dry and bitter.
Those older sisters looked mature and glamorous, as if they had experienced so much in life. Gu Daosheng guessed the oldest one couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
At the time, he had felt sad and thought it was such a pity.
Who would have thought they were all only twenty-one…
“Did the Eldest Young Master bully you?” Lou Ling asked Lou Mingzhang. The initial shock of learning that Lou Hongchen had taken him away had yet to fully subside. However, he paused, his gaze momentarily fixed on Lou Mingzhang’s lower half; the open-crotch pants were gone, replaced by a pair of normal, small trousers meant for infants.
“He did. I was too noisy, wasn’t I? I kept crying, so Big Brother wrapped a cloth strip around my mouth first, and then I stopped crying,” Lou Mingzhang explained honestly, knowing he had been the noisy one. “Then he kept tying me up, and I thought it was fun, so I laughed. But then Big Brother wouldn’t untie me, so I started crying again. And the more I cried, the more Big Brother ignored me, so I stopped crying… And then…”
And then, after an unknown number of such cycles of crying and not crying, Gu Daosheng rushed over and demanded Lou Hongchen release him.
“Who changed your pants?”
“Big Brother did. He said my butt is ugly and that he’d hit me if I showed it again. I’m scared of Big Brother,” Lou Mingzhang pouted unhappily, tears welling in his eyes again. “But I keep wetting my pants… I’m scared of Father.”
As he spoke, his attention was drawn to a paper windmill trampled flat on the ground. He ran over to pick it up.
He began to play, completely oblivious to everything else.
Gu Daosheng asked with great difficulty, “I heard some malicious gossip before… that Cheng Jingru sent Mingzhang to Lou Guangrui.”
“No,” Lou Ling shook his head. He was long since used to such rumors. Men gathered outside the Lou Family’s gates every day, spewing filth about Cheng Jingru, the madwoman who constantly ran away. Everyone knew about it.
Hadn’t Gu Daosheng, who had never visited the Lou Family before and had only been married into it for a few days, also heard those foul words?
But the words of people were like a plague, spreading like a bone-eating worm once they took hold.
Still…
Things really weren’t going well.
It seemed there was no such thing as baseless rumors.
“It’s just that Mr. Lou is always looking for him…” Lou Ling’s voice was strained. His gaze fell upon a spot of pure white. Gu Daosheng sat on the sofa, his bare feet having run back and forth the entire way, yet the dust seemed to avoid him, not dirtying him in the slightest.
How could Lou Ling have known that Gu Daosheng was cheating with a “body-purifying talisman”? With just one glance, Lou Ling felt as if his eyes were being scorched by pure white jade, and he bowed his head deeply. In his entire life, he had only seen filth, never anything so clean. It made him realize that some people, no matter how hard they struggled, could never even compare to a single toe of another.
The title “Old Thing” had once been a scrap of courage Lou Hongchen had granted him. Now that he was no longer delivering messages, that last shred of courage had withered away in his suppressed memories. Lou Ling didn’t dare harbor even a flicker of rebellion against his superior.
Lou Ling said, “Mr. Lou just asked him to come over and watch him and his wife, or a servant… Mr. Lou only likes women and men sixteen years and older. He despises anyone younger, saying they haven’t even grown their peach fuzz yet, nor have their souls fully formed. Sometimes he rambles on about it, and he forbids anyone else in the house from speaking. If he catches you, there will be hell to pay. He says people are most susceptible to yin energy before sixteen, and it’s bound to lead to trouble.”
“Young Master Mingzhang was small. When others cried, he cried. When others were afraid of Mr. Lou, he was afraid too. To this day, he still wets his pants at the sight of Mr. Lou. The rumors outside say he can’t even manage his basic needs anymore.”
“Mr. Lou has always been a man who pursues thrills. That’s how he gets more pleasure, ” Lou Ling struggled to say the word, his face flushing with embarrassment as Gu Daosheng’s eyes widened. He finally forced out the last syllable: “, ure.”
“Except for the First Madam, every young mistress has lived for only three years… well, not quite, a little over two years,” Lou Ling said. “They come in at eighteen, and none have ever lived past twenty-one.”
No wonder that beast Lou Guangrui got so excited when he saw Gu Daosheng in Lou Hongchen’s courtyard, all because of the word “again.” His reaction was completely inhuman.
So, he, a man who craved thrills, had finally been “thrilled.” What a subhuman beast.
Gu Daosheng spat with disgust and fury, “What’s wrong with being twenty-one? Why wouldn’t he let them live!”
His disgust seemed to be directed at Lou Ling, who instinctively shrank. After finishing with the “mummy,” Lou Ling didn’t even stand up; he remained kneeling on the floor as if in penance. “They say Mr. Lou met the First Madam when he was twenty-one. At the time, he had nothing and didn’t even have the surname Lou; the First Madam, Lou Junlian, helped him and gave him her own surname.”
Lou Ling continued mechanically, “Mr. Lou was ‘devoted’ to the First Madam… Later, no matter which woman he married, she remained his greatest love. He would never let any other woman live past twenty-one. Because that was the First Madam’s privilege; only she could meet him at twenty-one.”
“How is a person like that still alive?! He doesn’t even deserve to be reincarnated! Beast! May his soul be scattered to the winds!” Gu Daosheng slammed his hand on the sofa, but it was too soft to make a sound. Instead of the sharp slap he wanted, it produced a dull thud. Enraged, Gu Daosheng stomped his foot on the floor. “That ugly, leprous bastard! That lightning bolt should have struck him dead right then and there! Heaven is blind!”
Nan Ying, lying on the floor, wasn’t much of a gossip. What kind of gossip could he possibly need to hear now when he’d personally witnessed so much of it years ago before these people died? Whether others ate bran and vegetables or delicacies like abalone was none of his business; he lacked the surplus empathy to spare.
If Gu Daosheng hadn’t stomped his foot, nearly landing on Nan Ying’s stomach, he wouldn’t have even bothered to turn over.
He rolled away from the undeserved calamity, clutching his stomach, and said in a milky voice, “I’m still a baby. Why are you so worked up? You can’t let your bad mood affect your family.”
Gu Daosheng retorted, “You’re infuriating me!”
Lou Mingzhang could see the stepmothers but not Nan Ying.
Nan Ying couldn’t play with his “peers.”
The moment he spoke to Gu Daosheng and Gu Daosheng replied, Lou Ling would give him that “You’ve gone mad too” look, scaring him so much he wanted to jump into a well right then and there.
Nan Ying might have been a bit of a nuisance when he was a ghost, but he wasn’t malicious. He had no desire to scare ordinary people into myocardial infarctions.
He only hoped for foul-mouthed people to appear so he could devour them one by one.
Delicious.
For the sake of Lou Ling’s mental and physical health, the man and the ghost had been quite chivalrous; they’d exchanged countless glances but hadn’t spoken a single word to each other.
Nan Ying grew bored of listening to the gossip. Though he didn’t need to sleep, he closed his eyes and felt a rare drowsiness creep over him.
Just then, Gu Daosheng recalled the various insults he’d heard outside the Lou Family’s gate. Lou Guangrui was the one acting like a bastard, yet the women bore all the blame. The injustice of it all infuriated him.
The unprintable filth he’d heard suddenly transformed into “knowledge,” sparking a “thirst for learning” in Gu Daosheng that was rarer than the sun rising in the west. It was a miracle, he was now swearing fluently.
If his master ever found out, he’d be forced to burn a few sticks of incense to his ancestors on the mountain, if they even existed, though his prized pupil wasn’t learning anything respectable, let alone something he could show in public.
But his “knowledge” was limited. Gu Daosheng ran out of new insults, stopped, and felt utterly frustrated.
After his tirade, Lou Ling was still staring at him, his eyes shining with an intensity that was almost frightening, as if two lamps were hidden within them.
“Mr. Lou cherishes his reputation above all else,” Lou Ling said, digging his nails into his own skin until it turned white. “Except in bed, he would never call anyone a slut. Every woman is so perfect… He also won’t let anyone else say it.” He’d never dared to spout such nonsense before, even with a hundred times his usual courage, but today he must have lost his mind. He didn’t even know what he was doing. “Anyone who dares to speak ill of the Lou Family will be brutally beaten if caught. Many people learn their lesson after just one beating. No one knows how to torture a person better than Mr. Lou. Everyone is terrified of him.”
“The man you’re talking about… no matter how many beatings he took, he kept his foul mouth running. He was tough as nails.”
Gu Daosheng’s heart sank. Things weren’t what he thought. “Why?”
Lou Ling replied, “Probably because he figured that if he got beaten, the Lou Family would take him back to their estate to continue the punishment. He thought Mr. Lou was so kind-hearted that he wouldn’t let the whole world know about it. That way, he could see his daughter again, maybe even speak to her… He’d throw himself under the wagon, endure all that abuse just to talk to his daughter. Though he never actually succeeded. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Heaven takes the wretched in its own time. No matter how tough Teacher Cheng’s hide was, what good did it do? She died just a few days ago… right on the day you married into the Lou Family, she suddenly died a violent death.”
Gu Daosheng’s face went completely blank. He turned to Nan Ying, his expression one of sheer horror.
It was the person Nan Ying had eaten!
Nan Ying opened his eyes without warning and let out a loud burp.
The sound sent a jolt of terror through Gu Daosheng.
As Gu Daosheng stared at him, Nan Ying burped again. “Burp!”
Then, Nan Ying’s stomach thudded like a heavy door, as if someone were knocking from the inside.
But how could a head have hands? It could only throw its weight against the wall, slamming hard.
“Oh my…?” The head spoke with surprising politeness. “Excuse me, but how did my head get chewed into such a pulpy mess? Where are my eyes? Where is my mouth? How am I speaking? I’m sorry, I can’t find my mouth… I hope I’m not scaring anyone… Mr. Fierce Ghost? The Fierce Ghost who ate me, can you hear me? Please, have a heart and let me out. I want to see my daughter. I haven’t spoken to her in three years.”