Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 18: Ghost Animal (15)

April 05, 2023 by Wyrd

The black-robed man’s assistant sneered as if he had heard a big joke. “So what if you don’t like it?”

Before the black-robed man could say anything, he saw the young man grab the rope around his neck.

His sharp gaze swept over some black substance oozing out of the young man’s fair palm.

Before he could see what it was, the rope tightened instantly.

The black-robed man stumbled as he was pulled and was then thrown against the wall by the young man using the Soul Locking Rope.

At that moment, he realized how terrifying the young man’s strength was.

The wall was left with a human-shaped hole, and the sound of 34 spinal bones breaking was drowned out by the violent impact.

The black-robed man spewed out a mouthful of blood.

Once again, he felt a strong sense of familiarity with the young man. He wanted to ask who the young man was, but the blood in his mouth prevented him from doing so, and he was about to witness an even more terrifying scene.

The young man’s hands moved to the loop around his neck, and after stopping for a second on the Soul Locking Rope, he actually snapped it in half.

Then the black-robed man’s eyes widened in disbelief and anger.

He was very famous in the entire gaming base, and many club presidents would show deference to him. One of the main reasons was this Soul Locking Rope.

He obtained the Soul Locking Rope by the skin of his teeth in an underworld dungeon instance.

In the publicly ranked player instance hosted by the system, he locked the soul of a player who was ranked sixth in the previous season with his Soul Locking Rope, and pulled her soul out of her body in that supernatural instance.

With her soul separated from her body, countless ghosts fought each other to occupy it, and her body burst due to the excessive internal struggle.

He became famous overnight because of this incident.

He was able to lock the sixth-ranked player for five seconds because the Soul Locking Rope was hard to break. At the time, the experts in her team used various weapons and methods, but they were unable to even scratch the Soul Locking Rope.

A weapons expert on the base, who specializes in researching weapons, had examined his Soul Locking Rope and said that it was born in the Hell dungeon, containing the dark energy in the game. It was beyond the reach of players, and even the strongest player in the game couldn’t easily destroy it.

How could this young man break it?

“Who are you?” The black-robed man asked, coughing up blood. “Why can’t my Soul Locking Rope lock your soul?”

Due to the blood and his low, hoarse voice, Ning Su didn’t quite catch the first sentence, but he heard the second question clearly.

He thought carefully, wondering if a zombie with only 0.1 vitality could have a soul?

Ning Su sincerely replied, “It’s probably because my soul is too weak, just a bit, and the Soul Locking Rope can’t catch it.”

He added, “Actually, even if you took my soul away, it would be useless. This body of mine is too human, and you wouldn’t be able to hold on to it for more than a few seconds.”

“...”

The black-robed man closed his eyes, his chest heaving violently, perhaps in pain.

There was a strange silence in the wedding hall.

Everyone looked at Ning Su in shock and confusion.

Ning Su didn’t notice. He threw away the broken and scrapped Soul Locking Rope and muttered in a small voice, “This is what happens when you don’t let me hug your thigh and don’t respect the consequences of your actions.” (*1)

“...”

He murmured very softly. The black-robed man couldn’t hear him, but Zhu Shuangshuang and Su Wangsheng, who were beside him, heard him.

They didn’t know whether to be shocked or silent for a moment.

Zhu Shuangshuang even held back her tears. “Ning Su, why are you here?”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Ning Su said, turning his head to see the black-robed man’s assistant, who was holding a flying knife aimed at him.

“Stop, you’re no match for him,” the black-robed man weakly said in a hoarse voice.

The assistant looked at Ning Su once more, reluctantly withdrawing the knife.

He hurried over to the black-robed man who was sitting against the wall and half-knelt before him. “Are you okay?”

Once the black-robed man no longer stopped them from leaving, only the villagers were left.

Ning Su and his team looked at the villagers.

They all knew that if Ning Su could handle the black-robed man with ease, these villagers wouldn’t be a problem.

They had no qualms if the black-robed man dealt with the villagers.

But if it was Ning Su, they had a lot of worries.

The system’s teachings to them on the bus were still fresh in their minds, and obedience to the rules was ingrained in their bones, including for NPCs.

The villagers were also watching them.

Not knowing if Ning Su’s attack frightened them, they didn’t rush forward.

Just as the two sides were at a stalemate, someone unexpected appeared.

The bride.

She walked over in confusion, taking a few steps towards them. When she saw them, her eyes widened in surprise, and she anxiously opened her mouth but couldn’t speak.

The people in the wedding hall were also surprised to see her.

The assistant asked the black-robed man, “What’s going on? Wasn’t the bride dead? We saw her body in the system’s backpack.”

The black-robed man said hoarsely, “Don’t worry about it. It’s good that she’s here. This is a good thing.”

The villagers thought the same thing. The bride had always been their best option, and it had taken countless manpower and resources to find someone like her.

The tense atmosphere of the standoff suddenly dissipated.

The villagers rushed forward to drag the bride over. She struggled desperately, but with so many villagers, the thin and weak bride was subdued in less than a minute and pressed into the coffin by the villagers.

Zhu Shuangshuang said with a complicated expression, “It seems like she knows the truth now.”

Su Wangsheng said, “This is strange. Didn’t the villagers say she was dead? If she’s not dead, why did they capture Zhu Shuangshuang?”

“The villagers lied to us,” Zhu Shuangshuang said. “When they saw the bride alive, they didn’t look shocked, only surprised.”

“Indeed,” Su Wangsheng recalled the villagers’ behavior just now. “Perhaps the bride knew the truth beforehand and ran away by herself, but she couldn’t escape from this village and was brought back by the surrounding villagers.”

The poor girl didn’t know that the whole village was in cahoots.

Su Wangsheng glanced at the bride and said, “Let’s go now while we have the chance.”

Ning Su nodded in agreement.

Zhu Shuangshuang immediately removed the heavy phoenix crown made of pure gold from her head and threw it on the ground, then untied Su Wangsheng’s ropes.

While the villagers were still surrounding the bride, the three quietly left.

The black-robed man’s assistant exclaimed, “They actually left at this moment, without knowing what Yin Daijun has experienced?”

The black-robed man took a deep breath, wincing in pain as his brow furrowed. “Never mind them. We’ll stay here and watch.”

The assistant handed him the broken Soul Locking Rope and asked, “Can it still be used?”

The black-robed man tried holding the Soul Locking Rope and said, “It should still work.”

The assistant’s eyes flickered. “That’s good. As long as we watch carefully, we might be able to solve the mystery soon.”

The assistant looked towards the center of the wedding hall, while the black-robed man’s hand holding the Soul Locking Rope trembled continuously. He stared at the center of the wedding hall with unprecedented nervousness, even starting to pray in his heart.

In the center of the wedding hall, the village elder asked, “Does she still need to kowtow?”

The “groom’s” father replied, “Yes, and it should draw blood. We need to redo the ceremony.”

The elder became a bit impatient and said, “There’s no time left. Since we can’t make her willing to marry, let’s just get it over with quickly.”

At his words, two strong villagers immediately came forward and held the bride’s neck, slamming her head onto the floor with a “bang, bang”.

No one stopped them, and the sound of heavy blows echoed in the wedding hall. In no time, the bride’s forehead was covered in blood.

At first, the struggling bride tried to resist, but now her head was already dizzy from being hit.

She desperately opened her mouth and silently pleaded for help, her nails leaving marks on the floor.

Through the gaps in the crowd, she looked towards the black-robed man with pleading eyes.

The assistant turned to look at the black-robed man, and suddenly, a sharp and mournful scream came from the bride’s mouth.

Under the fierce blows, the bride’s forehead had already been cut open. To make her blood flow into the coffin faster and more directly, the two villagers pressed on the back of her head and ground her broken forehead against the coffin lid.

The sound was chilling, and even the assistant’s forehead began to ache.

Just then, the second couple to arrive at the wedding, a middle-aged husband and wife, appeared.

According to Su Wangsheng’s conjecture, they were the parents of the dead person that the bride was supposed to marry.

The middle-aged man tapped the ground with his cane and said, “We agreed that we wanted a happy wedding. How did it turn out like this?”

The “groom’s” father kept apologizing, “She somehow escaped, and this is all we can do. The girl and the young master are a perfect match. Suitability is more important than harmony. We will do it cleanly. Please allow it.”

“What else can we do if we don’t allow it?” The middle-aged man said, “Hurry up and don’t delay the auspicious time.”

The important client gave orders, and the villagers immediately took action.

The dizzy bride was pulled to the side.

The “groom’s” father twisted the vase of peony flowers, and a pure black coffin emerged from there.

The bride, dressed in a bright red wedding dress, widened her eyes in terror.

The coffin lid was opened, and a person who had been dead for who knows how long lay flat inside.

He was dressed in a gorgeous longevity robe, which was different from the ordinary ones. The color was the same as the red worn by the bride and groom at their wedding. The brightly colored longevity robe looked eerie against his grayish-purple, densely covered face with corpse spots.

The “groom’s” father said, “Take off the red clothes on the bride’s body to prevent her from becoming a ghost.”

The bridesmaid ripped the scared bride’s wedding dress off, leaving only a light pink dress underneath.

The bridesmaid said to her, “Don’t blame us. We pulled you out of the abyss of poverty, brought you to see the world, let you feel a love you have never experienced before, and found you a good family. In the future, you will not be short of money.”

The “groom’s” father said, “The first step in recognizing your husband is to carve the word ‘husband’ on the bride’s face.”

His voice and tone changed, and this sentence sounded like it was sung in some ancient, eerie melody.

In the pure black coffin, the dead man dressed in a bright red longevity robe emitted a foul and deathly smell.

The wedding hall was shrouded in a cold and creepy atmosphere.

The bride was forced to kneel in front of the coffin. The old lady who clapped her hands walked up to her excitedly, holding a blood-red thick needle, and touched her face, carving words on her face.

The nail looked sharp, but the carving was very stiff.

Upon closer inspection, the black-robed man discovered that the thick needle, which had been painted red with some unknown substance, was made of wood, perhaps peach or locust, or some other type.

It was not as easy to use as a steel needle, so the old woman had to use more force.

The bride’s face was torn and twisted in a grimace, and blood oozed rapidly under the red wooden needle.

She was being held by two people by the neck, forced to remain motionless with her head tilted back, only able to move her eyeballs.

Her left eye turned to the left on the bloody face, looking at the black-robed man and his assistant.

Filled with horror, despair, and pleading.

Translation Corner:

*1 - The phrase "to hug someone's thigh" (抱别人的大腿) is an idiom that means to seek protection or support from someone who is powerful or influential.