39: This man is my husband, Lin Mengyao's officially recognized husband!

That dragging sound didn't sound like it was coming from the living; instead, it sounded like a heavy coffin lid grinding against concrete.

Su Chen held his breath, his fingers resting on the cold window glass as he peered outside by the faint glow of the dashboard.

The thick fog swirled, and hundreds of hunched figures gradually became clear.

They were all wearing dark red long jackets, looking like the porters who carried palanquins for wealthy families in old Republican-era photographs.

However, those jackets had long since rotted into rags, hanging off skeletal frames covered in corpse spots.

They didn't lunge forward to tear at the bus; instead, they stopped in unison five meters away.

"Is this... a delivery?"

Su Chen's brow furrowed, and his nostrils flared. Aside from the stench of rotting corpses, there was a strange smell of formalin in the air.

The group of "porters" stiffly unloaded the items from their backs.

They were hundreds of wooden boxes painted with the large red character for "Double Happiness."

As the boxes hit the ground, the red paint on them had mostly peeled off, revealing the blackened wood underneath.

Every box lid was plastered with a faded piece of yellow paper, upon which the "meander pattern" ancestral emblem he had just seen on Lin Mengyao's jade pendant was drawn in cinnabar.

"Click."

The lead zombie porter, half of whose face was missing, politely made an "after you" gesture, his skeletal finger lightly tapping the box lid.

As if a synchronization button had been pressed, the hundreds of mahogany boxes all popped their lids open at once.

There were no gold or silver treasures; instead, transparent glass jars were neatly arranged inside the boxes.

In the murky, pale yellow liquid, hearts of various sizes that had once beat vibrantly were soaking.

Su Chen's pupils constricted sharply.

It wasn't just because the scene was so macabre, but because his excellent vision caught what was pinned to those hearts.

They were two-inch-long peach wood nails, and the nail heads were covered in densely packed small characters detailing a person's birth date and time.

Geng-Chen year, Xin-You month, Jia-Zi day... That was Su Chen's birth date and time.

A chill ran from his tailbone straight to his head.

What kind of ghost trick was this?

The birth date of a twenty-first-century modern man was pinned to the hearts of people who had died hundreds of years ago?

So it turns out the Lin family wasn't looking for a son-in-law; they were raising Gu.

"Ugh—"

Behind him, Lin Mengyao let out a dry heave, and then her entire body went limp as if her bones had been removed, collapsing to the floor.

She stared intently at the jar closest to the window; there was a distinct purple-blue birthmark on the side of that heart.

"That's... that's Cousin Qingrou..."

Lin Mengyao's voice shook like a leaf.

"She went to the mountains to teach three years ago and went missing. The family searched everywhere but couldn't find her... How could her heart be here?"

"Because those are betrothal gifts."

Zhao Wanting's metallic voice rang out again, tinged with urgency.

"They're forcing you to accept the gifts! This is a blood sacrifice. If the women of the Lin family accept this wave of 'return gifts,' the Yang Energy in the bus will be completely drained!"

Before she could finish, the zombies that had been standing still suddenly moved.

Without a roar, they silently picked up the jars and approached the bus step by step.

With every step, the liquid in the jars sloshed, and those pinned hearts seemed to resonate with Lin Mengyao's bloodline, emitting a dull "thump-thump" sound.

"Don't come any closer!"

Qin Ya's face was pale. Although she was also a woman, her instinct as a teacher made her shield Lin Mengyao.

She quickly pulled a stack of lesson plans from her bag. With her fingertips stained with the blood from bandaging Su Chen earlier, she rapidly drew several twisted talismans on the paper.

"Order!"

Qin Ya gave a sharp cry and threw the lesson plan papers out the window.

However, those talismans, which were usually somewhat effective against low-level wandering spirits, fell to the ground like scrap paper the moment they touched the "gift-bearing procession," without even a spark.

The zombies didn't even spare her a glance; their hollow eye sockets were fixed only on Lin Mengyao's pale face.

This thing actually had an auto-targeting function, only going after those with Lin family blood?

"Don't waste your energy; this is a family debt."

Su Chen pulled Qin Ya away as she tried to block the window with her body, his gaze falling on the marriage contract runes frantically moving across the glass.

Since it was a marriage contract, there had to be a Party A and a Party B.

"Lin Mengyao, if you don't want to die, pull yourself together!"

Su Chen shouted, his right hand slamming onto the window glass.

The Sacred Yang Qi within him surged wildly, and the previously dim marriage contract patterns were instantly activated. Like fire snakes slithering across the glass, they quickly wove into a golden-red wall of fire.

"Sizzle—!"

The first zombie to approach had just touched the bus's exterior when it was instantly incinerated into charcoal.

But this wall of fire only lasted for a second before it began to flicker violently. The golden-red flames visibly withered, turning into a dull, ashen color.

"What are you hesitating for?"

Su Chen turned back to see Lin Mengyao huddled on the floor, shivering, her eyes glazed over. She was clearly frightened out of her wits by the sight of her "relatives" in the jars.

The marriage contract runes needed the woman's emotional resonance as fuel.

She was afraid and resistant, so the fire naturally couldn't burn.

As the zombies pressed the jars against the glass, an icy corpse qi even seeped through, causing the temperature inside the bus to plummet.

"Slap!"

A crisp slapping sound rang out, but it wasn't Su Chen's doing.

Qin Ya was kneeling in front of Lin Mengyao at some point, her usually intellectual and gentle face now filled with resolve.

Without even looking at Su Chen, she raised her wrist and used a piece of broken glass that Su Chen had dropped earlier to slash her vein.

Blood gushed out, but it carried a faint, strange golden glow.

That was the meager Yang Energy she had accumulated in her body after her contact with Su Chen over the past few days.

Without any hesitation, Qin Ya pressed her bleeding wrist against Lin Mengyao's tightly shut lips, her other hand firmly gripping Lin Mengyao's jaw to force her mouth open.

"Since you don't dare to acknowledge this family, I'll hold them off for three minutes for you!"

Qin Ya's voice trembled from blood loss, but her tone was as hard as a rock.

"This Yang Energy was given to me by Su Chen, and now I'm lending it to you! Swallow it!"

The warm blood, tasting of iron, poured down her throat. Lin Mengyao choked and coughed violently, but the scorching Yang Energy contained within the blood instantly exploded through her cold limbs and bones.

It was Su Chen's scent—overbearing and arrogant, yet filled with a reassuring warmth.

Lin Mengyao snapped her eyes open, her glazed pupils refocusing.

She looked at Qin Ya, whose face was as pale as paper, and then at Su Chen, whose back was already drenched in sweat as he blocked the window.

The phrase "Lin family curse" had haunted her like a nightmare for twenty years, but now, someone was risking their life to block that nightmare for her.

"He's mine..."

Lin Mengyao muttered to herself, the fear in her eyes gradually replaced by a nearly pathological sense of possessiveness.

She pushed Qin Ya's hand away and tremblingly pulled out the remaining pearl hairpin from her hair.

That was the token of the Lin family head, and also her last bit of dignity.

"Puchi!"

The sharp end of the hairpin pierced through her left palm. The intense pain caused her features to contort, but her eyes shone with a terrifying light.

"Using blood as a medium..."

The blood from her palm didn't drip onto the floor; instead, it was greedily absorbed by the marriage contract runes on the window.

In the next second, the blood exploded in the air, turning into countless golden threads as thin as hair that pierced straight through the solid window glass.

As if they were alive, they shot accurately toward the glass jars outside.

"Crash—!"

Hundreds of glass jars shattered simultaneously.

The golden threads danced like wild snakes, instantly piercing through the hundreds of hearts floating in the air, stringing them together.

"This man is the husband I, Lin Mengyao, have claimed!"

Lin Mengyao swayed as she stood up, her blood-stained palm slamming onto the glass, overlapping with Su Chen's hand from the other side.

"A bunch of old ghosts who have been dead for who knows how many years, how dare you covet what's mine?!"

The wall of fire on the window instantly turned from red to gold, fueled by pure, extreme jealousy and possessiveness.

Outside the window, the gruesome necklace made of hundreds of hearts burned fiercely in the golden flames, emitting shrill, ghostly wails.

Under the impact of this overbearing Yang Energy, the zombie porters didn't even have a chance to resist, instantly turning into ash that filled the air.

The flames dissipated, and the mess on the ground turned to ash.

In the center of the smoldering ash, there were no monster remains, only a palm-sized miniature bronze coffin quietly floating in the air.

The bronze coffin lid slid open automatically. There was no corpse inside; instead, there was a miniature model of the survival bus, so exquisite that even the tire treads were clearly visible.

Su Chen withdrew his hand; his palm was burning hot.

The miniature bus model slowly floated into the cabin, hovering above the three of them and beginning to rotate at a steady speed.

On the driver's seat, two lines of seal script, smaller than grains of rice, were faintly engraved, shimmering with a strange, eerie light under the dim bus lights:

"Loyal souls as the guide, jealousy as the fuel—this bus only carries the hearts of the living."