Zuo Zhu had nowhere to cry even if she wanted to, and she was terrified that Huo Fu would truly change partners. If that happened, she would not even have the chance to delay her death; she might very well drop dead tonight.
Wronged and obedient, she stayed close beside Huo Fu, striving to be a qualified partner and never daring to act frivolous again.
The day passed quickly. Before the evil ghost persona emerged, Zuo Zhu hugged her pajamas and prepared to ask a servant to change her room, only to have Huo Fu catch her by the back of the collar.
“Go stay in the bathroom.”
She shot him an accusatory look. “You’re actually making me watch while you go have fun?”
Huo Fu clearly disliked that remark. He reached out and stroked her cheek. “The evil ghost can’t touch you for now, but it still has to fill its stomach.”
Sullen, Zuo Zhu went into the bathroom, like a weak wife forced to make way for her husband’s mistress despite knowing about his affair.
Huo Fu had arranged everything carefully. Yet when the evil ghost persona emerged, the very first thing it did was drag Zuo Zhu out of the bathroom.
“Sit on the bed,” the evil ghost said excitedly, rubbing its hands together as it prepared for its late-night snack. “I’ll show you how I swallow a living person in seconds.”
Zuo Zhu was speechless.
“Thanks, but no need,” she thought. She had already witnessed it when she first transmigrated into the comic.
Huo Fu had in fact taken her feelings into consideration. After the evil ghost swallowed someone, he had thought about letting Zuo Zhu switch rooms. Strictly speaking, she was still human, and she might not be able to bear watching the evil ghost devour someone. Out of sight would at least spare her the horror.
But he was afraid that if the evil ghost discovered she was not in the room, it would go looking for her, so he had simply shoved her into the bathroom.
The evil ghost, however, had no such delicate thoughts. It simply regarded Zuo Zhu as its companion and intended to share the experience with her. It even planned to restrain itself and leave her an arm.
After a moment of silence, Zuo Zhu leaned closer. “Does it feel terrible to be hungry all the time?”
The evil ghost nodded. “Terrible.”
“Does it cause any harm?”
“No.” It answered honestly. It was an evil ghost. Even if it never ate, it would suffer no real loss or injury, only endure endless hunger day after day.
Zuo Zhu did not know how to describe her feelings. Humans were complicated creatures. Earlier, she had been worried sick over her own life. Now that her life was temporarily safe, she found herself meddling in other matters.
“Maybe I should just go back to the bathroom?” she suggested cautiously.
To be honest, she still could not adapt to watching the evil ghost devour someone. But persuading it not to eat at all seemed equally impossible.
Whether Huo Fu or the evil ghost, they were essentially one being. They had both died years ago and could no longer be classified as human. Could she really expect him to abide by human laws and refrain from eating people?
Yet she had drawn this comic herself. She knew better than anyone that the Heavenly Dao operated in cycles. Although the later part of the comic had verged on a rushed ending, Huo Fu had indeed been beaten until his soul was scattered by a group of ghost catchers.
Did she want him entangled in that cycle?
After all, if he truly became caught in it, she could simply endure until that day and withdraw unscathed.
Zuo Zhu could not sort out her thoughts. She had persuaded the evil ghost to spare Liu Minmin before because Huo Fu had needed to take someone out. This time, however, Zhao Yunling was someone Huo Fu had personally permitted the evil ghost to devour.
The evil ghost would not give her up willingly.
I did not understand why Zuo Zhu looked so dispirited. Rarely pulling itself out of its excitement over an imminent meal, it poked the soft flesh at her side.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She shook her head. “I’ll go back to the bathroom.”
She returned to the bathroom and sat on the toilet. Her emotions felt like a pie chart, three parts bitterness, three parts reluctance, three parts conflict, and one part unease.
All she could do was pray that Zhao Yunling would not come tonight. Since when had beauty ever been so easy to approach? Just look at the original host. If she had not transmigrated into this body, it would already be in the evil ghost’s stomach.
But as always, what she feared came true. Even from inside the bathroom, she could clearly hear a knock at the door.
The evil ghost went to open it.
Zhao Yunling stood outside, draped in a coat, smiling radiantly, even more dazzling than she had been during the day.
The evil ghost silently let her in, not daring to speak for fear that it would start drooling the moment it opened its mouth. It simply locked the door behind her.
With its back turned as it locked the door, Zhao Yunling saw everything. Her voice grew softer.
“Master Huo, don’t worry. No one saw me come over.”
As she spoke, she moved closer to the evil ghost and began to slip off her coat.
The evil ghost opened its bloodstained maw toward the door, waiting only to turn around and swallow Zhao Yunling whole.
At that crucial moment, a sudden scream rang out from the bathroom.
Instinctively, the evil ghost retracted its gaping mouth. In a flash, it vanished from in front of Zhao Yunling and reappeared in the bathroom.
The bathtub, at some unknown moment, had filled with water. Zuo Zhu had just struggled out of it, drenched from head to toe. Water was splashed all over the floor in a chaotic mess.
Half-sitting on the ground, she coughed violently. Behind her, a dark shadow was still trying to drag her back into the water, but the instant it touched her, it was burned by the light emitted from the necklace around her neck.
The moment the evil ghost saw the shadow, rage erupted within it. It lunged forward and seized the shadow. The power of the evil ghost transformed into flames, ready to burn it to ashes.
Zuo Zhu grabbed its hand in time. “Cough, don’t. We still need to show it to the Li family.”
The evil ghost simply immobilized the shadow in place, allowing the flames of its power to scorch it without reducing it to complete annihilation.
Zuo Zhu had originally been sitting quietly in the bathroom, even covering her ears to block out any screams from outside. At some point, the faucet had turned on by itself, and cold water had quickly filled the bathtub.
An immense force from nowhere had lifted her up and thrown her into the tub, then tried to hold her down beneath the surface, clearly intending to drown her.
She had not even had time to cry out. The only thing she saw was the dark shadow pressing her down, and she had thought she was done for.
But as the shadow attempted to drown her, the necklace around her neck suddenly shone brilliantly, scorching it. Seizing that chance, she had struggled free from the tub.
Her scream had then drawn the evil ghost in.
The fury in the evil ghost’s heart had yet to subside. It bent down, picked Zuo Zhu up, kicked open the bathroom door, and set her outside.
“I’m going to ask it how it got here,” it said coldly, turning to go back inside.
Still struggling to recover from the sensation of suffocation, Zuo Zhu managed only to remind it, “Remember to keep it alive.”
When the evil ghost stormed back into the bathroom, Zuo Zhu, sitting on a chair, suddenly realized that there had originally been another person in the room.
Zhao Yunling no longer knew how to describe her feelings. The scream from the bathroom had startled her. Then the evil ghost had vanished from in front of her only to reappear inside the bathroom, startling her again. Finally, when the bathroom door had opened, she had seen the same kind of dark shadow as the hanging ghost from yesterday, startling her yet again.
Most importantly, Huo Fu had said he would send Zuo Zhu away, but it was now obvious that this was not the case.
Her expression shifted repeatedly, and Zuo Zhu felt equally awkward. She raised her hand and gave a small wave.
“Hi?”
Zhao Yunling stared at her and asked bluntly, “Does Master Huo know you’re in the bathroom?”
That question was crucial. If Huo Fu did not know Zuo Zhu was in the bathroom, then she must have learned about tonight’s plan and deliberately hidden there to catch them in the act. If Huo Fu did know, then it meant he had allowed it.
The implications of the latter were obvious.
Originally, Zuo Zhu had intended to cover for Huo Fu. After all, that was part of their partnership.
But at that moment, her thoughts shifted. She deliberately put on a shy expression. “What do you think?”
Zhao Yunling did not need to guess.
The answer was already clear. Huo Fu obviously knew Zuo Zhu was in the bathroom, perhaps even permitted it.
What did that imply?
Surely it could not be that Huo Fu knew Zuo Zhu had some strange obsession with watching her boyfriend cheat and therefore allowed her to stay there.
Did Zuo Zhu look like some perverted man from an adult film who enjoyed watching his wife have an affair?
Zhao Yunling was a woman in her thirties. She had her own judgment. Although she had initially panicked upon realizing Huo Fu truly possessed abilities and might expose her secret, prompting her to rush over in desperation to offer herself to him, she still had her wits about her.
Tonight’s incident meant one of two things. Either the two of them had joined forces to humiliate her, or there was some other hidden purpose.
Her beautiful face flushed red with anger, and she no longer cared whether the bathroom was haunted. All she felt now was humiliation.
If Huo Fu did not fancy her, so be it. There was no need to place her in such a position just to let the two of them laugh at her.
Zuo Zhu watched as her complexion cycled through green, purple, and white, nearly gathering all the colors of the rainbow.
She was determined to dispel Zhao Yunling’s thoughts of continuing to approach Huo Fu, mainly because she did not want to witness the evil ghost devouring anyone.
For the time being, she refused to consider whether this stemmed from fear of karmic retribution for Huo Fu. She preferred to think of herself as kind-hearted and upright, even if Zhao Yunling herself was no saint.
Glancing toward the bathroom where the evil ghost remained, and taking advantage of Huo Fu’s absence, she began to thoroughly tarnish his reputation.
“Although this may hurt you,” Zuo Zhu said hypocritically, “I still have to tell you the truth. I argued with Brother Huo last night because you kept approaching him. He told me he has absolutely no feelings for you, but I didn’t believe him. So he said I should stay in the bathroom tonight and see with my own eyes how he rejects you, so I can understand his sincerity toward me.”
It was an outrageously shameless, green tea–worthy statement.
Zhao Yunling was so furious she nearly blacked out.