Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 24: Ghost Animal (21)

April 14, 2023 by Wyrd

Since learning that the girl was pregnant, even though the little pig couldn’t fit in with them, he would often stick to the girl’s side.

He often glanced at the girl’s belly, appearing lost in thought.

Because of this baby, his empathy with the black dog became stronger, and he also wanted to protect this girl.

Unfortunately, he knew he couldn’t change anything.

The girl’s pregnancy was exceptionally difficult; she couldn’t eat anything and spent every night vomiting in the toilet. Her face was getting increasingly gaunt, but she smiled more and more.

On that pale face, her shallow smile was like a white gardenia flower about to fall.

When the weather was good, she loved to sit on the grass in the yard and bask in the sun, with the black dog on one side and the little pig on the other.

“What name should we give the baby?” The girl happily pondered, sighing and laughing. “Let’s wait for him to come back to decide.”

The girl looked at the gate. “He said he was going to a faraway place to do business this time, but he should be back by now.”

The girl’s husband returned on the third day.

He brought back some friends and a gift for the girl, a beautiful red wedding gown.

The husband said that when the girl married him, she didn’t wear a good wedding gown, so this was a way to make up for that regret.

The girl smiled happily.

The little pig looked at the bright red wedding gown and snorted.

He nudged the dress, feeling lonely, and stumbled over.

He still couldn’t touch anything, except for the black dog. Everything else was like a mirage to him.

That night, Ning Su suddenly woke up from his sleep and was still dazed when he was overwhelmed by anger.

This emotion came from the black dog.

The black dog next to him was no longer there.

After the girl’s husband returned, the black dog no longer stayed by her bed, and instead slept in the dog kennel room that the girl had specifically set up for it. Ning Su couldn’t be too far from it and found a place to sleep in the same room.

When it was a bit cold at night, he would snuggle up to the black dog to keep warm, like many nights before.

Outside came the angry barking of a dog, and the little pig immediately got up and ran outside.

In the living room on the first floor of the villa, the girl was wearing the red wedding dress, with every button fastened neatly and not a single wrinkle on her body, as if she had carefully dressed herself.

She was being held in her husband’s arms, which was normal behavior between husband and wife, but the black dog was growling anxiously and fiercely at her husband.

When the little pig ran over, he smelled a faint smell of blood.

That night, the moon was very bright, illuminating the corners of her husband’s eyes and his crazy gaze, “Get out of here!”

He shouted at the black dog and kicked it hard with his foot.

The black dog had known how to bite people since it was young. After dodging the kick, it pounced on the flesh on his thigh and bit it hard.

The husband screamed in pain, attracting the “friends” outside the door, who came forward with stones, iron shovels, and other tools to beat the black dog.

Ning Su stood at the staircase in the living room, watching the black dog covered in dog and human blood, crazily biting the husband’s leg.

The other four men used various tools to beat the black dog’s head, legs, and spine, and someone even took a fruit knife and stabbed it in the stomach.

The sound of dripping blood and broken bones was barely audible amidst the angry curses of the men.

“Damn it, what kind of crazy dog is this?”

“This dog doesn’t feel pain or die, huh? Stab it again!”

No matter how much they beat or kick it, the black dog kept biting onto the husband’s leg, its sharp teeth tearing through flesh and piercing the bone.

Ning Su thought of another scene in a small courtyard in another village, where a palm-sized puppy had bitten onto a thief’s leg and refused to let go no matter how much the thief kicked it.

On the round and chubby puppy’s head, the blood pressed its soft black fur down as it closed its round eyes tightly and bit onto the thief’s leg, which was flailing around.

The black dog finally couldn’t hold on anymore, and a large wound was sliced open on its belly before it was pulled outside by a dog leash around its neck.

There was a thick, blood-red trail left on the floor and the stone outside the door.

It was almost lifeless as it lay on the ground, tied to a tree in the yard.

The pig that sympathized with the black dog stood still for a long time before finally running over to nuzzle it.

The black dog let out a faint sob, as if it was in the snow, and opened its eyes dimly. It didn’t see the girl who used to smile at it, but saw the red veil of the girl in the arms of the husband being lifted by the wind.

The girl’s lips and eyelids were sewn together with coarse red thread and could never be opened again.

The black dog let out a mournful howl, stood up again, trembling and struggling forward with the leash.

The husband of the girl carried her to the black coffin that had already been prepared in the yard, his leg limping from the dog bite. When he finally approached the coffin, he broke down in tears and said, “This is my wife, the one I married.”

“But once you put her in the coffin, dressed in her bridal gown, she’s no longer your wife!”

“She was born in the pure yin of the yin year, yin month, yin day, and yin hour, worth five million!”

“Don’t you want five million?!”

The husband’s tears were still flowing, but his eyes had already shown greed and cruelty.

He himself put the young girl in the red wedding dress into the coffin and placed her on top of a dead body.

The black dog watched as they played with and beat the girl’s body, letting out a mournful howl.

It struggled harder and harder, with more and more blood pooling beneath it, its cries becoming more desperate and angry.

When the husband looked over, it painfully turned over, its twisted paws touching its own stabbed belly as it let out a pleading cry.

It was telling the girl’s husband something.

The girl’s husband, with red eyes, walked over and kicked the black dog’s belly like crazy. “I know! I know! I know already! You don’t need to tell me!!!”

The black dog was barely alive, its wet eyes dimly fixed on the sealed black coffin.

There was its master.

The one who had picked it up from the snow and said that they would live together.

The sealed black coffin suddenly trembled violently, someone inside struggling and banging in fear.

The dying black dog’s eyes were filled with tears and blood, its pupils almost splitting.

It desperately stretched out its neck, which was already half choked, and its twisted and broken paws sank deeply into the ground.

The entire Huaiyang Village’s night sky echoed with its mournful, resentful, and despairing howls.

“Wuwang-wuwang-wu-wu-wu-ao——”

The sound traveled through the night breeze and into every household in Huaiyang Village, sending shivers down their spines.

Ning Su lay stiffly on the ground, facing the pool of blood growing larger and darker beneath the black dog.

From the crimson-black blood grew a deep green-red-near black vine.

The vine sucked up fresh blood and surrounding grievances, slowly growing longer, blooming a small crimson lily flower.

The small lily flower had three petals, and under the nourishment of the blood, it became redder and redder, almost turning the night sky red.

The little pig stretched out its pig foot and lightly touched the lily flower.

The vine carried a slightly cool touch and a fresh blood scent as it climbed up the little pig’s foot and bloomed a blood flower in the middle of its foot.

The little pig snorted, and the numb pain in its body gradually dissipated.

As the black dog finally fell in a pool of blood, Ning Su saw its black fur stand up straight and grow longer, and a black dog shadow rose from the corpse and grew larger and larger...

The commotion in the villa attracted the villagers’ attention.

There were more than twenty households in Huaiyang Village, and more than half of them came to stand at the villa gate and look inside.

The richest person in the village lived in this villa and had always been the focus of the villagers’ attention. Whenever there was a disturbance, they would hurry over.

The husband of the girl came out of the villa, and the villagers looked at the bloodstains on his body and the wound on his leg, with varying expressions.

After going through madness and breakdown, he had returned to a cold calmness, and spoke hoarsely, “100,000 per household. We can work together in the future and make at least one million per job.”

All the villagers had the same expression, except for a man with curly hair wearing a blood-stained apron who was anxious and looked inside. “What, one million? What are you all doing? Where is Yin Daijun? Are you all... killing people?!”

As he was about to rush into the villa, he was suddenly knocked unconscious with a stone.

The person holding the stone had eyes wide open, full of excitement and greed. “One, one million?”

For the poor people who had been worn down by poverty, how much money was that?

Excited and dazed, the villagers walked into the villa and saw the black coffin and the black dog that had died next to it.

The villagers, who were ruled by greed, had smiles of anticipation on their faces.

All of them were flushed with excitement, their faces showing ecstatic joy.

Men who had been bitten by black dogs before kicked and beat the black dog with a smile, releasing the excitement and dark grudges boiling in their blood at the moment.

They kicked the knife wounds in the black dog’s belly and poked the bloodshot eyes of the black dog that refused to close after death.

Their smiles were ugly, and eerie, like demons, set against the backdrop of blood and flowers.

The vines grew faster and faster, and the shadow of the dog grew larger and larger, almost covering the entire Huaiyang Village.

The shadow blocked the moon, and the whole village was dark and without light.

Ning Su couldn’t leave and watched as those people hit the dog.

Two days later, someone came here again, hitting while making the black dog’s corpse even more gruesome, muttering, “This can make money too,” and walked away satisfied.

At this time, the growth rate of the lily flowers suddenly accelerated, climbing up the walls of the villa.

On the seventh day, when someone came to lift the coffin, the lily flowers had already covered the walls of the villa.

That night, the black dog’s shadow in the sky condensed into a solid form and flew into the villa, directly swallowing the girl’s husband alive.

He rushed into the dilapidated church in the village and into the coffin, where he saw the male ghost lying on the girl, licking her collarbone, turning his head and smiling at it.

Like when it was alive, the black dog charged up and fought with the male ghost regardless of everything.

It fought with the fierce ghost every day, from being torn apart to being evenly matched in the increasingly prosperous blooming of the lily flowers.

During a fight that left the fierce ghost with only a faint trace of its ghostly presence, the girl in the coffin suddenly reached out her pale arm, her long nails clutching the fierce ghost’s neck.

She screamed and opened her mouth to break the red thread on her lips, and swallowed the fierce ghost into her stomach.

The black dog, with its wet eyes wide open, stared at her motionlessly like when it was a puppy.

But she only moved that one time and never woke up again.

She not only fed the fierce ghost but also her own ghost to the child in her stomach, the child she had been eagerly looking forward to, who had her blood flowing in his veins.

A child crawled out of her stomach, his eyes one dark and one light, half-human and half-ghost, half-yin and half-yang.

At that moment, the red thread burned in the girl’s eyes and lips, and she began to fade away.

The black dog couldn’t accept all of this, and its sharp teeth bit into the child’s neck, throwing him out and rushing into the coffin.

Blood and tears fell drop by drop on the girl’s face, which was about to burn out, just like when the girl’s tears fell on its bloody head when they were young, and it sobbed helplessly like it did in the snow.

***

Blood and tears fell into Zhu Shuangshuang’s eyes.

Just before the black dog’s mouth swallowed her.

She seemed to see many scenes in her eyes, and the volcanic eruption-like howl in her ears became tragic and desperate.

The moment her head was about to be swallowed, something like a small bomb hit the dog and fell to the grass several meters away.

After the red cloth covered Zhu Shuangshuang, Chen Tian could only see someone struggling inside the thin red cloth. He rushed out at that moment, but someone was faster than him.

Once inside the villa, Su Wangsheng put the child down.

The child continued to stumble forward, holding the little pig.

When the red cloth covered Zhu Shuangshuang, he happened to run to the bride’s feet from the other side.

He jumped up and bumped into Zhu Shuangshuang directly, placing the little pig in the bride’s arms.

The black dog’s blood and tears only dripped into Zhu Shuangshuang’s eyes once, and all the rest fell onto the little pig. The white hands held the little pig stiffly, and the little pig trembled lightly under the blood and tears, as if it had fallen into a nightmare.

The child looked at her warily, with black lines appearing on his face. The black dog stared at the child with blood-red eyes, suddenly roared and threw the pig, tightened its red hood, and disappeared on the spot.

The child and Zhu Shuangshuang both rushed towards the pig. Zhu Shuangshuang nervously asked, “Is it not dead from the fall?” Her voice trembled, choking her breath. “It seems like it’s almost time.”

“...”

The pig woke up, turned over and stood up, and quickly ran to a yellow patch of land, using its four short legs to scratch the ground.

The four people and the child ran to him and looked at it for a while before recognizing the two characters he wrote on the ground: “Snowball.”

“Snowball?” Su Wangsheng asked, “What does that mean? Are you saying you’re like a snowball now or you want a snowball?”

“...”

The pig continued to scratch on the ground with its feet.

“Ghost Master”, “Black Dog”.

Chen Tian said, “The Ghost Master is the Black Dog, called Snowball?!”

Zhu Shuangshuang was stunned for a moment, and thought of the chaotic scene she saw when tears of blood dripped into her eyes earlier. She thought of the black dog in Yin Daijun’s photo and suddenly realized.

“It’s the black dog next to Yin Daijun!”

“After Yin Daijun’s death, she did not become a vengeful ghost. However, the black dog she raised witnessed her tragic fate and became a vengeful ghost. It created this small hell in Huaiyang Village to take revenge on the people there! This black dog is called Snowball!”

As Zhu Shuangshuang finished speaking, there was a deafening explosion in front of them.

After the explosion, the village of Huaiyang was completely boiling in the middle of the night.

All the ghosts let out chilling screams, laughter, and cries at that moment.

Some were excited, some were mournful, and some were ecstatic.

The overlapping sounds of crying, laughing, and roaring formed monstrous ghostly shadows struggling to break free into the night sky.

Only half of the ghosts in Huaiyang village were chasing them just now, but this time they all came out.

All the ghosts, humans, beastmen, and animals were running madly towards the location of the explosion, in bizarre and grotesque forms of the night parade of a hundred demons.

A few ghosts flew quickly past the villa, and the villa door was shaken open and closed.

Chen Tian looked in the direction of the explosion and said coldly, “It seems to be the direction of the slaughterhouse.”

Several people’s hearts sank.

They all thought of the same answer in their hearts - the source of the explosion that excited the ghosts was the incinerator.

Zhu Shuangshuang murmured, “It shouldn’t be the closure of the passage, but the passage was blasted open. The outer and inner worlds are going to merge, so...”

Chen Tian said, “Let’s go and see!”

Su Wangsheng immediately went to pick up the piglet. Seeing the child sitting on the ground, a crack appeared on his face.

He gritted his teeth, held the piglet in his left hand and the child in his right, and ran quickly to catch up with Chen Tian.

Without having to run by himself, the piglet was comfortably nestled in Su Wangsheng’s arms, and reached out with its pig feet to touch the child’s face.

The piglet finally got a response from him, and the child stretched out his arms to hug the piglet’s neck and lightly rubbed his face against the piglet’s face.

When Su Wangsheng lowered his head and saw this scene, he was speechless.

“Can you be intimate later?”

Also, why did he feel like Ning Su was not in a hurry but rather enjoying himself after turning into a little pig?

When the four of them rushed out of the villa, they were still a little worried, but in reality, there were no ghosts paying attention to them at all. All the ghosts were running towards the slaughterhouse.

As expected, the incinerator in the slaughterhouse was blown up.

The ground was covered with broken stones and a sticky, fishy-smelling liquid. Countless small finger-like buds crawled on the ground.

The place where the incinerator had stood was now a door shaped like a water wave, and the ghosts were rushing in one after another.

The bright moon cast a layer of translucent gauze over Huaiyang Village.

In the villa that had just held a wedding, the family was happily counting money on the wedding stage.

Suddenly, the “groom’s” father said, “Did you hear something?”

“What’s there...”

The “groom’s” mother stopped in the middle of her sentence because she also heard the sound.

The sound became clearer and clearer, and everyone in the wedding hall heard it.

They slowly turned their heads to look at the black coffin tied with red cloth in the center of the wedding stage.

Under the light of the red candles, the coffin shook again and again, and the coffin board trembled as it was pushed upward.

The “groom’s” father snickered. “She’s still causing trouble. This bride is pretty good. She hasn’t died yet.”

The “groom” curled his lips, and the gentle expression on his face had long disappeared. “I chose her. Can she be any worse? It wasn’t in vain that I put in so much effort into her.”

“Good son, my son is really amazing. This is already our fourth deal.”

The “groom’s” mother was about to pat her son’s head when she suddenly heard a loud noise behind her.

The family turned around again, their eyes widening in horror. The lid of the coffin behind them was pushed open from the inside, and the bride they had sealed inside the coffin sat up straight, revealing a beautiful yet cold smile towards them.

The family immediately stepped back in fear. If the first bride sitting up could be explained by her strong life force and physical strength, how could they explain the second bride sitting up right after her?

This second bride was not wearing any clothes, had a strong and muscular body, and had various scars and cuts all over ‘her’ face. The words “Bai Xiangning” were carved in blood red on ‘her’ cheek.

It was as if their eyes were playing tricks on them.

Then, the corpse named Bai Xiangning in the coffin also sat up. What could they say about that?

The red candles in the wedding hall were still burning, and the peonies were in full bloom. In the center of it all, a red silk was hung with the gold “double happiness” character hanging from both ends, surrounding the black coffin in the middle.

There were three corpses in the coffin, sitting up in order with different expressions, looking at them.

The scarred man sat behind the bride, much taller than her, with nothing blocking him.

Bai Xiangning was very weak and sat behind the scarred man, blocked from their view. He tilted his head to the right and smiled at the family, a piece of his tongue falling out of his mouth.

“Ah!”

The family screamed in terror, running away in all directions.

The door of the wedding hall slammed shut in front of them, and the candles in the hall trembled and extinguished two of them.

The moonlight was cut off from the outside, and the wedding hall became darker, but they could still see clearly as the three ghosts slowly got up from the coffin.

The first bride in front was the first to get up, and she floated out of the coffin towards the “groom.”

Next was the scarred man, who picked up the piece of tongue that had fallen out of Bai Xiangning’s mouth from the ground.

It was his own, cut off and put into the corpse’s mouth.

He covered his critical area with a piece of red cloth, stood up, and grinned at the three of them.

The family of three desperately banged on the door and yelled for help, “Help! Help!!! There are ghosts!”

The bride floated to the side of the “groom”, crying sorrowfully while placing her hand on his chest, “Husband, do you really love me? What does your heart really look like?”

Her gray fingers inserted into the groom’s chest. “Can I see it?”

The “groom” opened his eyes wide, his body violently shaking upwards, his face twisted in pain.

In the last second before his death, he saw the girl he had deceived reach into his chest and pull out a bloody, still-warm heart.

The “groom” fell to the ground with a loud thud.

The bride sat beside him, holding the heart in her hands and eating it.

Blood stained her dead white face, and she cried and laughed at the same time, her voice crisp and mournful.

The scarred man pinched one of them and flipped the groom’s parents over.

The two middle-aged and elderly people trembled and dared not even lift their hands, only begging for mercy with their mouths open.

When they opened their mouths, the scarred man reached in and grabbed their tongues.

He pulled their tongues up with one hand. The two people who were so scared that they couldn’t stand up straight suddenly stood up straight.

The scarred man laughed cruelly, pulling their tongues back as he walked all the way back to the edge of the coffin.

He stepped onto the coffin with one foot and continued to slowly raise his hand and pull their tongues upwards.

The husband and wife tried their best to tiptoe, but the scarred man was already much taller than them, and standing on the coffin while lifting his hand, they couldn’t reach him no matter how hard they tried.

Their toes were off the ground.

The two of them had their eyes wide open, their faces purple and red.

Their tongues stretched to the fullest, breaking suddenly at their maximum limit.

Bai Xiangning did not stay in the wedding hall. He floated lightly through the heavy black wooden door of the wedding hall, passed by two young beastmen running towards the banquet hall, and continued to drift along the road.

The Bai couple had just come out of the “groom’s” house, where they had been given half of the money and were promised to come back tomorrow to deliver the coffin. They felt relieved.

“Xiangning doesn’t have to be a lonely ghost anymore, right?” The middle-aged woman cried, “My poor child.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she suddenly stopped.

A figure appeared in front of them. He slowly turned his head, and the corpse spots on his face were clearly visible under the moonlight. “Mom and Dad, I came back to see you.”