The Ghost Husband's Body Temperature

The ghastly wailing and howling around gradually subsided. For Pei Ji, dealing with these wandering souls drawn by the scent of blood was even easier than handling those so-called righteous cultivators from prestigious sects. Those怨气 that had no physical form and merely congregated by instinct were like fragile cobwebs before him—the millennium-old ghost king who once commanded thousands of yin soldiers. He effortlessly tore and devoured them with the狂暴阴气 radiating from his body, turning them into nourishment for his remnant soul.

He turned around. His pitch-black robe rustled loudly in the night wind. Looking down from his height, he gazed at Jiang Ying, who sat slumped on the muddy, rotting leaf-covered ground. Her entire body trembled like a withered leaf shivering in the autumn wind. Both hands clung desperately to her right ankle. Her originally fair face was now smeared with mud and blood, pale as paper.

"Broken ankle?" he walked over, his voice as cold as if it had been soaked in icy water, devoid of any pity. To a general who had once crawled out of a pile of corpses, such an injury was nothing.

Jiang Ying did not answer. She bit her lower lip tightly, with such force that she nearly drew blood again. Tears silently slid down her mud-stained cheeks. It was not because of the piercing pain in her ankle, but because of a bottomless, ice-cold despair. She had racked her brains, even risked her life crashing through the underbrush, only to fall from one cage into an even deeper one within this monster's grasp. That invisible red thread had become the noose around her neck.

Pei Ji had no patience to wait for her answer. He crouched down directly and, without warning, grabbed her injured ankle with his cold, rough fingers.

"Ah!" Jiang Ying's entire body convulsed violently in pain, jerking her foot back as if electrocuted. But under absolute压制 of strength, her leg was clamped firmly in his iron-like grip, unmoving.

"Don't move." Pei Ji's voice was low, oppressive, and brooked no argument.

Roughly and without a trace of tenderness, he stripped off the tattered red embroidered shoe from her foot, along with the silk sock that had been dyed beyond recognition by muddy water and blood. Her slender, pale ankle was exposed to the air. By now, it was swollen like a leavened steamed bun, taking on a ghastly bluish-purple hue.

Pei Ji's icy fingertips pressed and probed the swollen joint a few times. His technique was professional but utterly indifferent to her pain. Cold sweat broke out on Jiang Ying's forehead, and even her breathing became intermittent.

"Not broken. The bone is dislocated." He made the冷酷 judgment, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather.

Just as Jiang Ying was about to breathe a sigh of relief at the words "not broken," Pei Ji suddenly gripped her ankle with both hands, a sharp glint flashing in his eyes, and twisted with sudden force.

"Crack!"

A grating sound of bones grinding echoed with stark clarity in the silent woods.

"Ah—" Jiang Ying let out the most miserable scream of the night, a sound that seemed to pierce the very sky. The pain was so intense she nearly fainted on the spot. Her mind went blank. Cold sweat instantly soaked through the thin white undergarment against her skin.

"What's all that screaming for? Can't even withstand a little pain like this? Is this how the Jiang family taught you to handle things—just crying and screaming?" Pei Ji shook off her foot with extreme impatience, stood up, and dusted off his hands disdainfully, as if he had touched something dirty. "The bone is back in place. If you move it carelessly and it dislocates again, I'll just break your leg outright."

Jiang Ying gasped heavily, her chest heaving violently. After a long while, when the soul-rending agony had subsided somewhat, she finally managed to pull herself together. Though the sharp pain in her ankle had lessened, it still felt like thousands of needles were stabbing her—a deep, piercing ache.

"Thank... you, General," she said weakly, her voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz. Though his methods had been brutal, he had after all reset her bone. In this world of the survival of the fittest, she would cling desperately to any chance of survival.

Pei Ji ignored her insincere thanks. Standing to the side, he scanned her with a scrutinizing, critical gaze. She was still wearing that tattered, mud-stained red wedding dress. The garment should have symbolized joy and celebration, but on her now, it only exuded endless irony and utter wretchedness.

"Take off those rags." He commanded coldly, his tone like a military order.

Jiang Ying was stunned, her mind going blank for a split second. Then, instinctively, she raised her hands to shield her chest and shrank back. "G-General..."

"What? Think I'd be interested in a bag of bones like you—no chest, no ass?" Pei Ji let out a mocking laugh at her reaction. "This dress is soaked with the stench of blood from那些玄门 priests, and the阴气 from those wandering souls that just dispersed. In these deep mountains, wearing this is like being a walking target. You want to attract even more monsters and ghouls?"

Jiang Ying bit her lip, a sharp sting coming from the wound. She knew he was right. This wedding dress was now a fatal liability. Not only was its smell too strong, but its bright red color was far too conspicuous under the moonlight.

But she was only wearing a thin white undergarment beneath it. If she took off this thick outer robe, in the bone-chilling late autumn night, in this cold, damp forest, she would freeze to death even if the monsters didn't get her.

Just as her mind was locked in a fierce internal struggle, an outer robe smelling strongly of frigid sandalwood and faint blood was suddenly thrown over her head, covering her completely.

It was Pei Ji's outer robe.

"Put it on. Don't dawdle. I don't have the patience to wait while you weigh your options in here."

Jiang Ying fumbled inside the oversized robe, her trembling fingers undoing the intricate buttons of her wedding dress. Pei Ji's robe was very long; on her slender frame, it almost dragged on the ground. The fabric felt cold and stiff to the touch, as if woven from some kind of ice silk, carrying none of the warmth of a living person. But when she wrapped herself tightly in the robe, she miraculously found that it shielded her from the biting mountain wind that had been clinging to her like a persistent ghost.

She could even feel the lingering, terrifying aura of the millennium-old ghost king emanating from the robe—a presence that invisibly dispelled the coldness that had been trying to creep closer.

"Can you still walk?" Pei Ji looked at Jiang Ying, now bundled into a ball, and asked coldly.

Jiang Ying tried to stand. The moment her right foot bore any weight, a searing pain shot up her nerves straight to her brain. She grunted softly and shook her head helplessly. The bone was set, but walking immediately was out of the question.

Pei Ji frowned in disgust. He walked over to her, turned his back to her, and crouched down.

"Get on."

Jiang Ying hesitated. Her hands hovered in the air, afraid to touch this murderous monster. That cold outer robe had already made her uneasy; direct contact with his body was even more daunting.

"If you want to stay here and be food for the wolves, or wait for those cultivators to catch up and skin you alive, I don't mind going alone. After all, dragging a corpse would still be easier than dragging a living burden." Pei Ji's cold催促 came again, a hint of anger now creeping into his voice.

Jiang Ying had no choice. In this desperate situation, his cold back was her only path to survival.

Cautiously, tentatively, she climbed onto his back. Her hands hesitated, then rested gently, like feathers, on his shoulders, trying to minimize contact.

His back was broad, but as hard as a cold stone, digging into her uncomfortably. There was no rising and falling breath, no warm body temperature, no living heartbeat. It was a constant reminder that the one carrying her was a ghost.

Pei Ji stood up effortlessly, holding her steadily as if she weighed no more than a leaf.

"Hold on tight. If you fall off and die, don't blame me."

With those words, he shot forward like an arrow released from a bowstring, weaving swiftly through the dense forest.

The speed was astonishing. If she could have seen the surroundings, they would have been nothing but blurry streaks. The night wind howled shrilly past her ears, cutting her cheeks like a knife. Jiang Ying instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in the hollow of his neck, trying to avoid the wind that felt like a blade.

There was a strange smell there.

Not the stench of rotting corpses, not the moldy odor of places untouched by sunlight for years. It was a complex scent—a mix of fresh earth after rain, the cold fragrance of some unknown wood, and a faint, lingering trace of blood. It was a remarkably complex, aggressive, yet inexplicably soothing cold fragrance.

I don't know how long they raced through the darkness, but Pei Ji's pace gradually slowed. The wind around them also lessened.

"We're here."

He set her down, not gently at all.

Jiang Ying felt soft grass beneath her feet, no longer the sharp gravel. The surroundings were quiet—so quiet that she could only hear the wind "sobbing" through broken window lattices and the rustling of leaves.

"Where is this?" she asked softly, trying to discern their location in the darkness.

"An abandoned temple." Pei Ji's voice sounded in the darkness, echoing somewhat hollowly. "Remote enough. My aura is masking this place. Those priests won't find us for a while. We're safe for now."

Jiang Ying breathed a sigh of relief. Groping around, she found a corner that seemed relatively clean and sat down, leaning against the dust-covered wall. Her ankle still ached dully, and the violent jostling from before had churned her stomach, making her feel nauseous.

"Cold?"

Pei Ji suddenly walked over to her, his tall figure blocking the slight breeze coming in from outside. His tone was unusually softened, though still cold, no longer as murderous as before.

Jiang Ying hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Though she was wrapped in his神奇 outer robe, in the depth of this autumn night, especially after just going through a life-or-death escape, the exhaustion and weakness of her body made it easier for the cold to seep in. She was still shivering uncontrollably.

Suddenly, she felt a cold hand land on her forehead without warning.

Jiang Ying was startled, her body stiffening, but she forced herself not to flinch.

"No fever. Lucky you."

Pei Ji withdrew his hand and walked to the center of the temple.

"Sss—"

After a strange sound, like cloth being torn, a ball of eerie green ghost fire ignited in the broken temple, illuminating the ruined interior.

Though the fire gave off no warmth—in fact, it even felt cold—that flickering spark of light in the endless darkness seemed to bring a faint, psychological comfort.

"Sleep. Rest while you can before dawn. We have to travel again tomorrow morning."

Pei Ji sat down against a cracked vermilion-lacquered pillar and closed his eyes, as if entering some kind of meditative state.

Jiang Ying curled up in the corner, tightly wrapped in the oversized black robe. She "stared" at the direction of the green flame, listening to the howling wind outside. Perhaps because she had escaped from a death trap, or perhaps because she was just too exhausted, her nerves, stretched to their limit, finally began to relax.

She slept deeply.

It was the deepest, most defenseless sleep she had had in twelve years. For the first time, she did not have that terrible nightmare about the fire and her mother's screams.

I don't know how much time passed. The night gradually receded, and the darkness just before dawn was at its deepest.

In her sleep, Jiang Ying felt as if she had fallen into an ice cellar, shivering from the cold. But gradually, she sensed a strange, faint warmth surrounding her.

It was an extremely faint, almost imperceptible heat. In the middle of a freezing winter wilderness, it was like a ray of sunlight piercing through the clouds—thin and meager, yet so alluring that one wanted to cling to it tightly.

Instinctively, like a moth drawn to a flame, she shifted little by little toward the source of warmth, leaning in, and finally pressed her ice-cold cheek tightly against it.

"Mmm..."

An extremely low, suppressed grunt sounded above her head. The sound carried a hint of surprise, a trace of restraint, and an indescribable emotion.

Jiang Ying woke with a start.

Her consciousness was still lingering on the edge of dreams, but her body had already reacted. She found that at some point, she had rolled into a hard embrace. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his waist like an octopus. And her cheek was pressed firmly against his broad chest.

What shocked her even more, almost making her stop breathing, was—

His chest, which should have been cold as stone, devoid of any signs of life, was now transmitting an extremely faint, yet genuinely real... body temperature!

"Awake?"

Pei Ji looked down at the little thing curled up in his arms like a kitten. His voice was somewhat hoarse in the silence of the early morning, and his deep eyes flickered with a complex, unreadable light.Jiang Ying let go of her hand as if she had touched a red-hot iron, electrocuted. She scrambled back into the corner, pressing her back firmly against the wall, stuttering and incoherently saying, "I-I'm sorry, General, I... I didn't know... I didn't mean to..."

Her mind was a mess of confusion. How could she have run into the arms of this monster? And moreover, how could he have body temperature? Although she couldn't see, common sense told her that ghosts don't have body temperature!

Pei Ji watched her panic, like a frightened rabbit. Unexpectedly, he did not get angry, nor did he mock her as he usually did.

He just slowly raised his hand and touched his own chest.

There, where she had pressed against him, there was indeed a faint, almost negligible, yet real warmth.

That was the pure yang energy from her body, circulating within him through the blood pact of the nether marriage and those few drops of heart blood, slowly and subtly transforming his soul form.

For the first time in a thousand years, he felt that he was transforming into a "person," into a being of flesh and blood. This feeling was unfamiliar and somewhat resistant to him, yet it carried an indescribable trace of longing.

And all of this was because of this lowly blind woman before him.

"You had a fever last night." Pei Ji withdrew his hand, his tone flat, unreadable. "You caught a chill in the deep mountains, coupled with excessive blood loss. If you died, the blood pact backlash would also cause me great trouble. So I had to use yin energy to forcibly cool you down."

He did not tell her that in this process, he had absorbed the pure yang energy emanating from her body, which caused that trace of body temperature to appear on him.

"So that's how it is..." Jiang Ying lowered her head, her fingers nervously twisting the hem of her clothes, not knowing what to say. She only felt that the current atmosphere was awkward and eerie.

"Your blood..." Pei Ji looked at her, his gaze becoming somewhat fervent—the look of someone seeing a priceless treasure. "Not only can it break the Mystic Ice Curse, but it can also help me reshape a physical body. Really quite interesting."

Jiang Ying's heart skipped a beat, a chill shooting from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. She knew that what he called "interesting" was definitely not a good thing for her. It meant that she would forever be treated as a blood bag, a cultivation cauldron.

"General, where are we going next?" She tried to change the subject, to break this suffocating sense of oppression.

Pei Ji stood up and walked to the door of the dilapidated temple. Outside, the eastern sky had begun to show a hint of pale light. Dawn was breaking.

"Back to the Jiang family."

He turned his head, looking at Jiang Ying in the corner, a cruel and bloodthirsty smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.

"To take back what belongs to you, and what is owed to me."