The ghost king slammed Ning Xian against the wall and, when she slid to the ground, stomped on her chest.
“I didn’t! It’s all part of their plot! You can’t believe her!” Ning Xian desperately hugged the ghost king’s leg as she shook her head in terror.
“I heard your every word myself, yet you still want to deceive me?!” The ghost king stepped on her harder.
“Ah!”
Ning Yan had been frozen to his spot by Feng Jin’s talisman and couldn’t speak, so he could only watch Ning Xian suffer.
“Look at her now, she’s with another man! Wake up already! She’ll never like you! Not then, not now!” With an unexpected burst of strength, Ning Xian struggled free from the ghost king’s control and stood, roaring hysterically while pointing at Shi Sheng and Feng Jin.
“Bullshit!” The ghost king ruthlessly slapped Ning Xian across the face.
Ning Xian stumbled and half knelt on the ground. She laughed mockingly with a crazed expression, “Bullshit? Then why don’t you turn around and look at them with your own eyes? Why don’t you dare look at them? Even if I what I said to you back then was a lie, I’m not lying to you now!”
The ghost king angrily beat Ning Xian up. She merely laughed maniacally the whole time without fighting back. ‘A century with him couldn’t even compare to less than two decades with her…’
“You’re a coward!” Ning Xian shouted.
“I’m a coward?” The ghost king seemed to have been shocked by these words as he repeated them in a strange tone.
“What are you if not a coward? Back then, I told you Ning Ying had eloped with someone else. Had you run after her, you might’ve discovered the truth, but you didn’t. All you did was bathe the Ning Clan in blood to vent out your feelings. What are you if not a coward?”
Ning Xian’s voice was hoarse from crazily screaming and laughing, but her words cut straight through his heart. The ghost king glared at Ning Xian with terrifying eyes, but she had clearly decided to go through with it since she was doomed anyway. ‘If he hadn’t heard my words just now, I might’ve still had a chance. But now…’
The moment she saw Ning Ying, Ning Xian knew there were only two outcomes. Either Ning Ying disappeared, or she did.
The viciousness in her eyes flared. She wasn’t willing to see either of these outcomes come true. Ning Xian decided right then and there that the two of them should just perish together, so that neither of them could have him. She suddenly shot towards Shi Sheng.
Shi Sheng, “…” ‘Do you think you’re in a movie where you can go for mutual destruction just because you want to?’
Shi Sheng waved her sword, causing an invisible force to sweep towards Ning Xian. Her body was pushed back uncontrollably and she was smacked against the wall again.
Ning Xian was in complete disbelief. ‘How can she be so powerful? I couldn’t even get close to her…’
At that moment, Ning Xian truly despaired.
All this had happened in the span of a few seconds. By the time the ghost king reacted, Ning Xian had already been thrown against the wall.
“Seeking death!” ‘She dared to attack Ning Ying in front of me!’
The ghost king gave her a ferocious kick, causing her to be unable to get up.
She laid on the ground with a pained expression, but her lips were pulled into a queer smile.
“Ning Ying, the only reason I lost to you was because Father chose you and not me.”
‘Had Father chosen me back then, I would’ve been the one he liked!’
“Then go back and get him to change his choice.” Shi Sheng returned her words with a slight smile, her eyes curving upwards. What should have made her look like a goddess made her feel very obnoxious instead.
Ning Xian was angered to death. Her body slowly dissipated into the air.
……
Only now did the ghost king turn to properly look at Shi Sheng. His gaze was complicated—a mixture of guilt, remorse, suspicion, jealousy… and deep love.
“Ying-Ying…”
Before he could say another word, Feng Jin stepped forward and embraced Shi Sheng in his arms as a gesture of staking his claim as well as protecting her. ‘As a man, how could I always hide behind my woman’s back?’
Shi Sheng turned back to smile at him. “Don’t worry. Even if an angel was standing before me, you’ll still be the only one in my heart.”
Feng Jin’s face was black as a pot and he refused to look at her anymore. ‘She says sweet nothings so easily! Who knows how many people she’s spoken them to?’
But his arms tightened around her.
Shi Sheng rolled her eyes. ‘This tempting little devil! His body is way more honest than his mouth!’
When the ghost king saw the two acting so intimate with each other, he wanted to rush up and kill Feng Jin, but he grew timid.
Just like back then, when he hadn’t dared to look for her and missed the truth as a result. Had he not come here today, it was unknown whether he could have even…
Upon thinking that he could’ve ended up attacking Ning Ying because of a misunderstanding, he felt like Ning Xian’s death had been far too easy.
He stared at Shi Sheng with a complicated gaze, as if he had thousands of things he wanted to tell her. But in the end, he only spoke one sentence:
“Ying-Ying, I’ll look for you.”
The ghost king left with Ning Yan in tow after saying this, leaving behind a confused Shi Sheng. ‘He left just like that? Not even going to fight?’
“He’s stronger than Nalan Ying,” Feng Jin judged.
Shi Sheng put away her sword, silent. She didn’t try and pass judgement on whether or not that ghost king really liked Ning Ying. She wasn’t bored enough to be all that interested in the affairs of others.
The only ones she was interested in were the main characters.
‘Stepmother authors exist for the purpose of making life for main characters hard. You can call me an eccentric princess.’
Main characters, “…” ‘Is it our fault that we’re the main characters?’
……
By the time Shi Sheng and Feng Jin left the mansion, the sky was showing faint signs of light. The crowd outside the mansion’s main entrance had completely surrounded the doors, staring so hard that they nearly went cross-eyed.
They had already taken a headcount and discovered only four people hadn’t emerged yet.
So when the crowd saw someone finally emerge from the mansion, they only felt like they’d eliminated yet another suspect.
However, while they were pondering which of the three remaining was the despicable hooligan, Feng Jin poured out all the badges they had collected onto the ground.
The crowd stared at the pile of badges with their mouths agape.
‘I-It was the brat from the Feng Clan? Don’t tell us there really is going to be a new grandmaster from the Feng Clan this year? But we really can’t accept those types of underhanded methods!’
Shi Sheng gave a slight smile of ridicule. ‘Those three are probably still lying around somewhere in the mansion.’
At some point before this, An Su and Xiao Bai ended up standing next to each other, so they exchanged glances. They seemed to be able to read the meanings in each other’s eyes, communicating that the Gathering had gone as they’d expected.
“Feng Jin, you actually used such underhanded means! Where are Wei Li, Song Jiang and Guo Cheng? What did you do to them?!”
‘Since he took them out, it proves that he’s the one who took all of their badges… But those three still haven’t come out yet. They couldn’t have been murdered by him, could they?’
“Inside.” Feng Jin was curt.
‘Inside? What do you mean inside?’
Only now did Xiao Bai remember his Master hadn’t come out yet. He hurriedly dragged An Su with him as he walked towards them. “…And my Master?”
He was looking at Shi Sheng, so the question was directed at her.
Shi Sheng hadn’t put the concealing talisman back on before coming out, so Xiao Bai’s question caused those who had been too stunned by the matter of the badges to finally notice Shi Sheng, who was currently floating in the air in an aqua-blue dress.
The weather had already turned colder, but she was still wearing a summer dress which had sleeves only going down to her elbows.
‘This… is a ghost!’
“Feng Jin! You’re actually keeping a ghost!” Someone shouted, “This is against the rules!”
Author’s note:
[Mid-Autumn Update]
I wish all of you a happy Mid-Autumn! Hope your studies go well and you’re happy and healthy. All of us authors only have two hands and need to help out with Mid-Autumn celebrations too, so we’re really very busy, please be understanding babes.
Also, I want lotus paste mooncakes, steamed crabs, flower lanterns, dual-yolk mooncakes, jade rabbits, and Wu Gang! Wu Gang!! Wu Gang!!! Must say the most important one thrice~
(For those who don’t understand what the above means, go to the donation section haha)