Chapter 17: This Venerable One’s Shizun Got Injured; This Venerable One Really…

What is the ghost mistress even doing, being a mistress of ceremonies?! Change your career and sell aphrodisiacs instead!

Other people's aphrodisiacs could at best maybe make a wilted living person show off some male prowess, but these gods and deities were really something else. A slight wave of the hand and even a dead person could get it up—how miraculous!

Just as Mo Ran was really getting into the show, Chu Wanning suddenly reached out and covered his ears.

"Eh?" said Mo Ran.

Chu Wanning's expression was frozen over. "Don't look at such obscenity."

"But why are you covering my ears instead of my eyes?"

"Don't look or listen," Chu Wanning said tonelessly. "You can close your eyes yourself."

"Pfft. Shizun, you're really…" Mo Ran snorted. Take a look at your own blushing face. Even your ears are red. You're clearly the one who should be closing their eyes here.

Mo Ran couldn't help his amusement. Chu Wanning, who was as frigid as ice and snow and had never seen so much as a single erotic painting… Having to witness a coupling at such close quarters now might just make the man choke to death.

The dead couple almost seemed to come alive as they screwed. Even their stiff throats, which shouldn't have been able to produce any noise at all, somehow started making lifelike moaning and panting sounds.

Chu Wanning jerked his face away from the sight, too disgusted to continue watching. Mo Ran's amusement only grew. With a mischievous grin and full teasing intention, he reached out to turn Chu Wanning's face back.

Chu Wanning flinched away as if stung. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing whatsoever." Mo Ran's voice was honey-sweet with a hint of mockery as he looked at him. Aren't you too old to be turning red at this kind of thing?

Oh, wait. It was more like Chu Wanning's face was turning green and red at the same time. Pretty hilarious, actually.

"Shizun, don't you teach us to always assess the opponent's capabilities before engaging them? You have to at least look to take the measure of the ghost mistress's capabilities."

"What's there to see? I'm not looking."

Mo Ran sighed. "How is your face this thin?"

"Filth and debauchery are harmful to the eyes!" Chu Wanning shot back.

"Guess I'll have to look, then." Mo Ran lay there cheekily, peering outside and providing a running commentary of "ah," "wow," "awesome," "aiyo," and so on.

Chu Wanning was so furious he was about to explode, and he hissed in a low voice, "Look if you want, but don't talk!"

Mo Ran played innocent. "I thought you'd want to know."

Chu Wanning finally couldn't take it anymore. Gripping Mo Ran by the neck, he said through gritted teeth, "If you make one more sound, I will throw you out there to feed the zombies!"

Okay, enough was enough. You really couldn't push Chu Wanning too far unless you wanted a full course from Tianwen, and so Mo Ran showed some discipline and obediently lay there watching without a sound.

As the ghost couple's pleasure peaked, the male corpse let out a low roar and spasmed on top of the female corpse. A wisp of green smoke rose from their bodies, and the ghost mistress opened its mouth, greedily sucking the wisp down until every last tendril of smoke was consumed. It wiped the corner of its mouth with satisfaction, eyes shining.

That would be the "merit" from the ghost marriage couples that increased its cultivation.

"Ha ha, ha ha ha!" Having had a taste, the ghost mistress seemed more radiant, and its beaming smile intensified. When it spoke again, its faint, drifting voice had become much clearer; it shouted, bellowed, sharp voice resounding as if it could rip through the endless night. "Get up! Get up! All you single men and unwed women! I grant you the blessings of intimacy! You shall provide me worship in return! Up! Up! All of you, up!"

Mo Ran's heart thumped. Shit…

What was it planning to do?!

The simultaneous shaking of the hundreds of coffins around them confirmed Mo Ran's worst fears. The ghost mistress was going to call on the couples in all the coffins to screw so that it could devour all their merits at once.

This was no joking matter. Mo Ran pulled at Chu Wanning. "Shizun!"

"What is it this time?!"

"Hurry! We have to get out there! Shi Mei is trapped with that Chen woman!" Mo Ran was beside himself with panic. "We have to hurry and save him!"

Chu Wanning glanced outside. Who would've thought the ghost mistress would have such an appetite, skipping individual pairings to gobble up everything at once!

The neighboring coffins shook more and more violently as the ghost marriage couples inside were compelled to do the deed. Chu Wanning choked at the thought, color draining from his face even more than it already had.

Just then, the beaming ghost mistress seemed to sense something. Its head abruptly twisted, and a pair of pure-black, pupil-less eyes passed over all the rest to stare directly at Mo Ran and Chu Wanning's coffin.

The ghost mistress might not have been smart, but it could feel the absence of familiar venereal energy from that coffin.

There was no worship within that coffin. There was no…

They were alive!

Rearing up, the ghost mistress charged forward, shrieking, clothing a flurry behind it—and a pair of bloodred, razor-sharp claws pierced directly through the wood and into the coffin.

The attack was too sudden. Mo Ran had no time to dodge or defend. Besides, there was hardly any room for movement inside the coffin to start with. Just as those bony claws were about to add five new holes to his head, he was shoved lower. Chu Wanning had swiftly gathered Mo Ran into his arms and covered him with his own body. The ghost mistress's five claws sunk viciously into Chu Wanning's shoulder.

Deep into the bone.

Chu Wanning bore through it without crying out, letting out only a muted groan. His uninjured hand glowed with a silencing spell as he pressed a finger to Mo Ran's lips, blocking off the sound that he was about to make.

The ghost mistress's claws dug into Chu Wanning's flesh, scratching and tearing. It had clay for a head, and it only knew how to distinguish between the living and the dead by sound. Somehow, in this terrible situation, Chu Wanning managed not to make a single peep even as blood poured from his shoulder. Mo Ran couldn't see the injury from where he was pressed against Chu Wanning's chest, but he could clearly feel Chu Wanning shivering.

Alive…or dead? There was no way a living person would fail to make a sound after this treatment. The ghost mistress couldn't make sense of things, and her claws in Chu Wanning's shoulder continued to brutally dig and tear.

Chu Wanning trembled from the pain, shuddering, his robes drenched in cold sweat. Still he did not falter. He bit down on his lips as he protected the disciple in his arms, as if he had really become a corpse, and blocked the opening in the coffin like forged metal.

At last, the ghost mistress was finally satisfied that the people inside the coffin couldn't possibly be alive and abruptly retracted its claws. Blood splattered, accompanied by the hair-raising, sickeningly sticky sound of claws sliding against flesh and bone.

All at once, the strength drained out of Chu Wanning's tense body. He let go of Mo Ran, panting quietly. The scent of blood inside the coffin was suffocating.

Mo Ran lifted his head. By the dim light streaming through the holes, he could see Chu Wanning's lowered eyelashes, and beneath them, unshed tears in those silent, stubborn eyes. Those phoenix eyes were blurred with pain, but beneath the layer of tears, his gaze was fierce and headstrong…

Mo Ran wanted to talk, but Chu Wanning shook his head and maintained the silencing spell on his lips. A while passed before he let out a slow breath and wrote on the back of Mo Ran's hand with a shaky fingertip: The barrier has been breached. Do not speak.

Outside, the ghost mistress tilted its head, confused as to why it couldn't sense any worship from the people within the coffin—who clearly had to be dead, yet were somehow refusing to follow its commands.

Chu Wanning raised his head to see the ghost mistress through the crack, a golden light enveloping his uninjured hand as a willow vine appeared, fiery light flowing through it. He narrowed his eyes, Tianwen in hand.

And in the next moment he burst out from the coffin.

The casket split apart, and Chu Wanning flew up like lightning. Tianwen lashed out with perfect accuracy to wrap around the ghost mistress's neck as it let out an ear-piercing screech—

"Who are you?! How dare you!"

Chu Wanning's answer was one word: "Scram!"

Crimson wedding robes flowed in the air like waves of clouds. He had endured everything to make this one hit count, and Tianwen wrung with savage brutality, directly snapping the ghost mistress's neck.

A dense red mist mixed with a strange, perfumed scent welled out from the entity's severed neck. Chu Wanning drew back rapidly to avoid it, calling out, "Mo Ran! Thousand Strikes!"

Mo Ran was waiting at the ready. At the command, he channeled spiritual energy into the hidden blade in his sleeve and directed the strike at the ghost mistress's body, which was groping around for its head.

The body of clay cracked open, revealing within it the ghost mistress's true body, translucent and radiating a red light. Chu Wanning raised Tianwen again and ripped the ghost mistress's celestial spirit right out of it.

A scream came from within that headless body. "How dare you! How dare you! Get up! Get up! Kill them! Kill them!"

The originally featureless faces of the golden boys and jade maidens were suddenly illuminated with bloodred eyes. Hundreds of them shrieked as they charged toward Mo Ran and Chu Wanning.

The coffins on the ground also shattered, one after another, the corpses inside rising and rushing to join the fray. Mo Ran's gaze darted rapidly between those in the crowd, looking for Shi Mei.

"What are you doing, making eyes at zombies?!" Chu Wanning said harshly. "Hurry and fend them off!"

In the chaos of the battle with the ghost mistress, they had ended up standing on a coffin, the slow-moving corpses gathered all around them. Mo Ran lit up a handful of exorcism talismans and threw them forward. Explosion after explosion followed, but there were just too many foes; each defeated wave was rapidly replaced by the next.

Mo Ran was losing his mind. "How are there so many dead people in Butterfly Town? Just how many ghost marriage couples are there?!"

"Just look at this ghost mistress's cultivation—of course this many young people couldn't have died of natural causes!" Chu Wanning said, aggravated. "Eight, maybe even nine out of ten were probably bewitched to commit suicide! Attack over there!"

Mo Ran flung another talisman in the direction Chu Wanning indicated. White bone and rotten flesh flew from the resultant explosion.

"How is this ghost mistress not dead yet?"

"Normal weapons can't hurt it."

"Then what about Tianwen?"

Chu Wanning was incensed. "Do you not see that Tianwen is still binding it?! This thing is extremely fast—if I were to release the binding, it would be gone before I could even lash it!"

More and more corpses swarmed toward Mo Ran and Chu Wanning. As Mo Ran purged them, he kept an eye out for Shi Mei in the crowd for fear of accidentally injuring him. A golden boy threw itself at Mo Ran and bit him savagely on the leg; he cursed under his breath and flung a talisman on its face before kicking it into the crowd of corpses, where it exploded with a loud bang.

"Do you see Shi Mei and Mistress Chen?" Chu Wanning asked.

Mo Ran searched frantically before finally spotting two swaying figures in the distance. "I see them!"

"Get the hell over there and pull them back! As far away as you can!"

"Got it!" Mo Ran answered, then paused. "What are you going to do?"

"I can't lift my other arm to summon another weapon, so I'll have to use Tianwen," Chu Wanning said, exasperated. "I'm going to destroy this entire area as soon as I release the ghost mistress, so get lost if you don't want to die!"