01
The man laughed maliciously and tore at my clothes.
“The dead can come back to life? Even if you were King Yama’s wife, you’re already in here. You could grow wings and still wouldn’t get out.”
My collar was ripped open, revealing the pale skin of my neck and the faint outline of my lower body beneath.
He gulped and cursed.
“Damn, we really hit the jackpot this time.”
He cursed as he advanced on me.
Just as he was about to take the next step, his body suddenly froze.
At some point, a strange mark had appeared on my snow-white skin.
On closer inspection, the mark seemed to have a life of its own, spreading without pause.
Like the roots of some demonic tree, it sprouted branches, each growing a grotesque face wailing in agony.
The man trembled all over, his soul seeming to fly five miles away.
I smiled faintly and deliberately leaned closer, blowing into his ear. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
The ghostly faces grew even more ferocious, as if they were about to lunge and bite through his throat.
“Aah!”
He shrieked and fell hard onto the ground, then dragged his limp body backward again and again.
A long wet streak appeared on the ground. At some point, he had been so scared that he’d wet himself.
The commotion was so loud it alerted the neighbors. A hard pounding sounded at the door. “Knock, knock!”
“Da Liu, what happened?”
“Is Teacher Xiao Yang in there too? Is everything all right?”
I calmly straightened my clothes.
Madam Liu hurried over. As soon as the door opened, a crowd poured into the house.
The man was still shaking uncontrollably. The moment he saw Madam Liu, he looked at her as if she were his lifeline and pointed at me with a trembling finger.
“Mom… she… she’s not human. She’s a ghost!”
“I was only visiting one of my students’ homes. I never expected Mr. Liu to…”
My eyes reddened with tears, and I choked out, “He… he tried to assault me.”
The neighbors whispered among themselves. “Da Liu, were you so desperate for a woman that you’d do this? I’m telling you, Teacher Xiao Yang is a city girl. How could she possibly put up with your scare tactics?”
“That’s right. Teacher Xiao Yang isn’t like that woman from last time—”
At that, it was as if they suddenly remembered something, and they fell silent.
Madam Liu’s face turned terribly grim. She forced a smile.
“It’s just a misunderstanding. Da Liu must have had a sudden episode. He’ll be fine after a little rest. Everyone, please go home.”
“And Teacher Xiao Yang, I’m so sorry. I’ll bring Da Liu over to apologize properly another day.”
As she spoke, she kicked Da Liu and hissed through gritted teeth.
“You useless fool. I gave you your chance, and you still couldn’t take it.”
She said the last part very quietly. No one else heard it, but I heard every word.
With the crowd protecting me, I returned to the school dormitory.
I stroked the demonic markings still stirring on my body, regret filling my heart.
If only I’d had a little more time, I could have eaten my fill.
02
By the time I returned to the school dormitory, it was seven in the evening.
I said goodbye to everyone, then quietly sat down alone at the desk.
The mirror across from me reflected a beautiful face, along with demonic markings growing freely across it.
With no one else around, the markings spread more and more brazenly.
Before long, demonic markings covered my entire body, leaving only my deep, pitch-black eyes exposed.
I looked at myself in the mirror and sighed softly.
I was looking more and more like a monster.
Six months ago, my adoptive parents used my grandmother’s serious illness as an excuse to summon me home.
When I arrived, I discovered that my grandmother had been dead for a month.
They spent all the money she’d left them, then turned their sights on me.
They sold me to a dead man from the neighboring village.
They’d lured me home just to force me into a ghost marriage with that corpse.
They forced me to kneel and perform the wedding rites with the dead man’s portrait, then made me share his bed.
Afterward, they locked me alive in his coffin and hammered in forty-nine nails.
I lay beside his corpse, reeking of death, leaving one desperate scratch after another on the coffin lid.
When a few little demons carried a bright red bridal sedan chair to fetch the bride, I finally learned that the man I’d been married off to was a powerful vengeful ghost.
He might soon have become a Demon King of one direction.
Unfortunately, Heaven didn’t give him that chance.
A vengeful demon came looking for him, and the two fought to a standstill.
I took advantage of his weakness, devoured that stream of ghostly energy, and returned to my own body.
As for his soul meridian, I sealed it inside the Eternal Soul Lantern.
It was a magical artifact forged from his very bones, and it now belonged to me.
From then on, I became a corpse demon—what you might call someone who had come back from the dead.
I took the Eternal Soul Lantern and went to my adoptive parents’ house.
I tormented them in every way I could, then set off to wander the world.
I chose this small village as my first stop.
My best friend had once disappeared here.
I had to come and uncover the truth.
By chance, I met a young woman who was about to come here to teach.
I set up a Ghost-Wall Formation to lure her away from this place of trouble.
Then I took her place and came here to teach instead.
03
“Thump, thump, thump—”
The knock at the door startled me awake. The demonic markings began to slowly fade.
A little girl hugged a crumpled book in her hands and looked at me timidly.
“Teacher, there’s a problem I can’t solve. Could you teach me how?”
I smiled kindly and invited her in.
As she flipped through the book, a photograph accidentally fell out. I bent to pick it up. It showed the girl with another young woman.
Before I could get a good look, the girl snatched the photograph away and tucked it into her pocket as carefully as if it were a treasure.
“Linh Linh, who’s that? You two look very close.”
“Oh… that’s Miss Lam. She was my teacher before you. Just like you, Teacher Duong, she was a very, very good person.”
“Then where is Miss Lam? Did she go home?”
Linh Linh’s gaze suddenly dimmed.
“I don’t know… One day, out of nowhere, she just stopped coming to class.”
“The villagers said it was too hard to live here, and Miss Lam couldn’t take it anymore, so she secretly went home.”
“But I don’t think Miss Lam was that kind of person. If she really wanted to leave, she would definitely have told us.”
As she spoke, the little girl’s hand clenched into a fist.
My emotions got the better of me, and I carelessly cut myself on the paper.
Fresh blood kept seeping out.
I stared at the blood, and my eyes slowly reddened.
I hurriedly covered my mouth with my hand and turned away.
This is bad. I’m about to lose control.
I’m so thirsty for blood…
04
“Teacher, are you all right?”
Linh Linh leaned closer, looking at me with concern.
“Why are your eyes so red?”
I swallowed and quietly edged a little farther away from the girl.
“I’m fine. My conjunctivitis is acting up again. It’s an old condition; I’ll feel better soon.”
“But your wound needs to be treated right away. I’ll go buy you a Band-Aid. Sit here like a good girl, and don’t go wandering off.”
Linh Linh obediently nodded, and I hurried out of the dormitory.
If I waited any longer, I was truly afraid I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back.
On the way, men kept staring at me from head to toe.
Their eyes were full of lust, scrutiny, and aggression.
It was as if I were just a piece of meat on a chopping block, waiting to be carved up at any moment.
Women seemed to be scarce in this village—or, more accurately, almost none of them ever showed themselves outside.
I barely saw any women the whole way there.
When the shopkeeper saw me, his face immediately broke into a wide grin.
Without the slightest restraint, he slapped me on the chest and asked with a leer:
“Has Teacher Xiao Yang had a baby yet?”
I smiled. “Not yet, but I did have a husband once. He’s dead.”
He froze. “Oh, Teacher Xiao Yang was married?”
“You’d never know it. I thought you were still a virgin.”
“But being married doesn’t matter. It won’t affect your ability to have children.”
I smiled and changed the subject.
If he said much more, I was afraid I really wouldn’t be able to stop myself from biting his throat to pieces.
“Teacher Xiao Yang, did Linh Linh come running over to see you again?”
A woman came over. She was Linh Linh’s mother, Auntie Wang.
When she saw me nod, she frowned and immediately started cursing:
“That little brat! I’ve told her so many times: she’s no good at studying. She’d be better off getting married sooner.”
“Xuân Hoa next door is the same age, and she already has a child.”
Auntie Wang followed me back to the dormitory, fuming.
The moment she saw Auntie Wang, Linh Linh’s face went pale.
The girl clung tightly to the hem of my shirt, her voice catching with a hint of a sob:
“Teacher… this may be the last time I get to see you.”
05
I was still trying to figure out what Linh Linh meant.
Across the room, Auntie Wang had already grabbed Linh Linh by the ear and was dragging her out roughly.
A loud slap landed across her face.
Linh Linh held her flushed cheek and turned her face away without saying a word.
Clearly, this was all too familiar to her.
“You little brat! If you have time to spare, learn how to serve men. Then you’ll get beaten less later.”
“What’s the point of studying all this? You think you can actually get into college?”
As she spoke, she tore the book in Linh Linh’s hands into tiny pieces.
I clenched the little scrap of paper in my hand.
It was what Linh Linh had just slipped to me.
I clearly couldn’t feel pain anymore, yet my palm still stung from that piece of paper.
Auntie Wang took Linh Linh away, and their cries gradually faded into the distance.
I unfolded the scrap of paper. Three large, unmistakable characters were written on it:
“Help me.”
Help me?
Why had Linh Linh left me a message like that?
And what did she mean by “the last time I get to see you”?
Something about this didn’t feel right.
In this tiny village… how many secrets were they hiding?
As the thought crossed my mind, two hazy streams of mist immediately billowed out of the Eternal Soul Lantern.
In the lantern light, three contorted shadows writhed at my feet.
Two of them grew more and more restless, until they finally emerged as little demons.
They were my husband’s subordinates in life, and could be considered part of the dowry he’d left me.
The two little demons crept over and bowed respectfully in unison:
“My lady.”
I folded a little paper figure and placed it on the shoulder of one of the demons.
“Go. Follow those two.”
I wanted to find out what they were hiding that they couldn’t let anyone else know.