The Nine Nether Venerable no longer had the strength to talk back this time.
Not because he didn’t want to, but because he simply lacked even the energy to speak.
At this moment, he felt as though he had lost all sensation.
Only the pungent, sickly-sweet stench of rotting corpses lingered in his nostrils!
All he could do was shut his eyes tightly, lest the ghosts steal his sanity.
Meanwhile, he silently recited every exorcism mantra he knew, waiting for the two groups to leave…
He had no idea how much time had passed.
Perhaps the mantras had actually worked.
The sounds of suonas and gongs gradually faded into the distance.
The putrid, cloying stench in the air also vanished without a trace.
The Nine Nether Venerable couldn’t help but smirk inwardly, thinking to himself:
‘Thank the heavens for my experience. Even in the face of such an ominous omen, I’ve survived unscathed…’
With that thought, he slowly pried his eyelids open.
Only to find—
Eight white ghosts carrying a coffin and eight red ghosts bearing a palanquin had encircled him, all staring at him with eerily twisted grins!
Their expressions were nothing short of predatory mockery!
They hadn’t left at all…
The fading sounds were an illusion. The vanishing stench was an illusion too!
It was all an act…
Every last bit of it!
All to trick him into opening his eyes!
The Nine Nether Venerable’s scalp prickled, his legs trembling uncontrollably.
He tried to shut his eyes again, but it was already too late.
With a whoosh,
the red and white processions merged into one.
The Nine Nether Venerable was shoved into the black coffin, unable to move a single inch.
He knew exactly what awaited him—
Once these fiends dragged the coffin into the water, he would become a substitute ghost!
“No… NO!!”
The Nine Nether Venerable clawed frantically at the coffin, his nails splintering, blood oozing from his fingertips.
Inside the black coffin, his sanity plummeted at a rate of five points per second!
By now, water had already begun seeping in.
“Items… I still have items!!”
The game items he had dismissed as mere toys not long ago were now his only lifeline.
In a panic, he fumbled out a Grade-3 Exorcism Incense and lit it with a match.
Just before the water submerged his head,
he strained to raise the incense above the water’s surface…
……
“Hah…!!”
The Nine Nether Venerable’s eyes snapped open as he gasped for air.
The moment the water had closed over him, he had truly felt the terror of impending death.
Now, his surroundings were pitch-black, so dark he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of him.
Yet compared to the suffocating confinement of that black coffin, this was infinitely better.
His sanity, after just those few seconds in the Red-and-White Omen Collision, had plummeted to a mere 53 points.
Desperate, he searched for any source of light.
The debilitating effects of low sanity were simply too torturous to endure.
Just then—
Light flickered to life.
Two crimson lanterns, emblazoned with the character for “Double Happiness”, glowed ominously in the darkness.
The Nine Nether Venerable’s heart lurched—something was terribly wrong.
Turning his head, he saw her: a ghostly bride with a pallid, bluish-purple face, her head veiled.
“!!”
He sucked in a sharp breath, instinctively trying to flee.
But he couldn’t move an inch!
Two towering, stiff-faced ghostly groomsmen pinned him down from behind.
Only then did the Nine Nether Venerable realize—
He was clad in black robes that blurred the line between wedding attire and funeral garb!
Two words exploded in his mind—
Ghost Marriage!
“The hour has come!”
A bone-chilling voice echoed from the depths of the dark passageway.
The two ghostly groomsmen forced him forward.
“First bow—to Heaven and Earth!”
The Nine Nether Venerable resisted, straining against their grip, his hands scrambling for items.
But the groomsmen showed no mercy.
They seized his head and slammed it downward toward the abyssal darkness ahead.
“Second bow—to the ancestors!”
The same brutal motion repeated.
“Third bow—to each other!”
The groomsmen wrenched his neck around, forcing him to face the lifeless bride.
The Nine Nether Venerable knew—
Once this bow was complete, his life would be forfeit!
No!
He couldn’t bow!
Sheer panic made him fumble every attempt to retrieve an item.
Just as the groomsmen were about to force his head down for the final bow—
He finally managed to light a second stick of Exorcism Incense!
Under its influence, the two groomsmen lost sight of him, clutching their eyes in agony.
“Scram! All of you, SCRAM!!”
The Nine Nether Venerable swung the incense wildly, though the gesture held no real power.
His eyes were bloodshot, his legs quaking.
The incense only blinded ghosts temporarily, allowing escape—
But it couldn’t harm them.
With the ghost marriage one step from completion, the groomsmen and bride raged through the ancestral hall, searching for him.
Cornered.
The incense in his hand was nearly burnt out.
Terror-stricken, the Nine Nether Venerable turned and fled into the pitch-black passage.
“Hah… hahaha…”
“I’m alive… I’M STILL ALIVE!!”
“I’m not afraid! Not afraid at all!!”
“A mere illusion, nothing more… NOTHING MORE!”
“Why won’t you answer me… Where is everyone!? WHERE!?”
In the endless corridor, the Nine Nether Venerable ranted madly into the darkness.
Because…
The viewers’ comments were gone!
He hadn’t even noticed when they’d vanished…
Those comments were his only tether to the real world.
Even if nine out of ten mocked him, their presence had been a comfort.
Unbeknownst to him,
his livestream was exploding with chatter about the scene.
[Damn, the old man’s got it rough… He doesn’t realize sanity below 30 blocks the comments, does he?]
[30 sanity… Even wandering ghosts would start hunting at this point.]
[Fellow cultivators, ready the incense for the Nine Nether Venerable!]
[Rest in peace!!!]
[Red-and-White Omen into Ghost Marriage… Old Demon Lu is downright inhuman.]
[What if… there’s something even worse waiting?]
[Now that you mention it… these are just eerie events. The real “ghost” hasn’t shown up yet…]
[Wait, what exactly did they bow to earlier?]
……
Stumbling through the dark passage, the Nine Nether Venerable finally spotted a sliver of light ahead after what felt like an eternity.
In his extreme terror, light was his only solace.
Like a madman, he clawed his way out of the tunnel.
But what greeted him was a statue.
A black Ghost Buddha.
To the livestream audience, the statue stood no taller than two meters—ordinary by all accounts.
But in the Nine Nether Venerable’s eyes,
the Ghost Buddha loomed with overwhelming majesty, its oppressive aura suffocating him!
The hollow sockets beneath its eyelids suddenly split open, revealing crimson pupils as its lips curled into a grotesque smile.
In the next instant—
Visions of a thousand gruesome deaths flooded the Nine Nether Venerable’s mind, each more horrific than the last.
Blood, flesh, screams…
Countless nightmarish illusions flashed before his eyes.
Until finally—
He saw himself, trembling as he knelt before the Ghost Buddha, humble as an ant.
At this moment, Nine Nether Venerable finally understood why the two ghostly brutes had forced him to bow in this direction earlier…
Worship heaven and earth?
This Ghost Buddha was the heaven and earth of this place!
It—
was the true abomination they sought!
Just as Nine Nether Venerable’s mind teetered on the brink of collapse,
an ethereal yet profoundly sinister voice echoed from the Ghost Buddha’s maw:
“Since you behold the future…”
“Why do you not kneel?”
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
ng to die together with you." Lin Xuan is dead, his body thrown into the river by his scumbag lover and her accomplice. She, the president of the Su Group, is decisive, ruthless, and ice-cold. For three days and three nights, she had his body fished out of the river, and without hesitation, she kissed the bloated corpse of Lin Xuan. She laid down beside him in a cold coffin, their fingers intertwined, a smile lingering on her lips as she closed her eyes. The noble and cold-hearted woman, only bending for one man—Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan, with his golden finger, is reborn and returns to the day of his wedding to the treacherous woman. Su Qiang comes to steal the bride. Lin Xuan's eyes light up, eager to pledge his loyalty on the spot, but instead, her kiss transfers a glass of drugged wine into his mouth, causing him to pass out... 【Male Protagonist with Single Female Lead】【Yandere Tycoon】【Action-Packed】【True vs. Fake Heir】
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
