Her exquisite features looked almost translucent against the blood-red clothes, black hair shifting and swaying. Zhang Ya stood before Chen Ge, the two faces separated by less than thirty centimeters.
Bone-piercing cold seeped through his skin. Chen Ge's lips turned purple, his body as though plunging into an ice pit.
He, who feared nothing, now felt the faintest flicker of retreat. He wanted to dodge backward, but his body refused to obey.
The weeping candy was like a frozen river coursing through his veins, sealing shut every last blood vessel.
Inside him, restless spirits howled. Yin energy coiled outward from within, wrapping around his still-beating heart, as if a pair of ice-cold hands had seized it.
Chen Ge was suffocating. A vengeful ghost's candy was not so easy to eat.
Zhang Ya drifted closer, radiating an aura of cold dread, until she stopped mere inches from Chen Ge's face.
It was a face devoid of warmth — so beautiful it was heart-stopping, so beautiful it made every hair on Chen Ge's body stand on end.
His throat produced no sound. The candy had dissolved, and Chen Ge could feel a vengeful spirit thrashing wildly inside him. He stared at Zhang Ya, barely five or six centimeters away, and his calves began trembling on their own.
"This isn't how I imagined this at all! Somebody stop her!"
Perhaps his title of "Vengeful Ghost's Beloved" actually carried some weight — the creature that the pen spirit had blinded in one eye came crawling toward him, brimming with fury.
Its sinuous body writhed forward like a massive python. Bony hands clamped onto Chen Ge's shoulders, and its lower half arched upward as though preparing to leap onto his neck.
Pain radiated through both shoulders. Staring at the creature's grotesque face, Chen Ge returned it a look of gratitude.
Gratitude?
Perhaps its dignity as a monster had been trampled one too many times — the dangling severed head finally snapped. It had no intention of provoking Zhang Ya, so it picked a different angle and lunged at Chen Ge's throat.
The twisted, sickly head gaped its jaws wide, but the moment it was within half a meter of Chen Ge, it stopped.
Not because it wanted to — but because from the darkness, strands of blood-streaked long hair coiled around its body.
The creature let out a shriek, glaring at Zhang Ya with venomous hatred. It had no desire to cross Zhang Ya, but that did not mean it feared her.
The three monsters exchanged signals and attacked simultaneously from three directions.
Chen Ge didn't know what Zhang Ya intended. All he saw was her expression darken. Black hair lanced into the creature's body, a slender arm seized its head, and she slammed it against the wall with brutal force.
"Aah!"
That was the second time the creature had screamed tonight. The first had been when Chen Ge drove the pen spirit's needle into its eye.