"Are those two eyes on your face used for breathing?!" Su Kun said, coughing a few more times due to his agitated emotions. His throat felt scorching and sore from being strangled too hard earlier, causing his voice to become hoarse.

"It's precisely because they're not that I have the fortune of seeing you in this state, looking like you're about to die from overindulgence..." Geng Zimo yawned and scratched the little tuft of hair sticking up on the back of his head. With his eyes half-closed, he didn't seem to have fully woken up yet. He merely glanced at the general situation of the room and habitually started bickering with Su Kun.

"Which part of me from head to toe could make you have that kind of association?" Su Kun finally caught his breath. Propping himself up with his elbows, he sat up on the bed. The jade pendant slid back into his collar following his movement.

Geng Zimo pointed his finger at the thin blanket messily covering his thighs and lower abdomen, then at his still flushed chest and neck. "Every part - what happened to your neck?"

Su Kun touched his neck as Geng Zimo's gaze directed. Just touching the outer skin made the inside of his throat feel scorching hot and piercingly painful, causing him to involuntarily hiss and cough again.

His skin was very fair. Although the continuous coughing made everything above his neck flush red, that ring of purple bruises left by the strangling still looked quite shocking.

"Don't tell me you have a masochistic fetish!" Geng Zimo's eyes finally opened wide, looking startled. "Playing with yourself to this miserable state is truly unbelievable..."

Su Kun: "...That you can be this dumb is also quite unbelievable."

He never understood how Geng Zimo, with such a refined, scholarly, and extremely deceptive face that could easily disguise him as an iceberg-like elite white-collar with a slight frown, ended up with such a mischievous personality and worrisome way of thinking. He once suspected that Geng Zimo had studied himself silly from reading too much.

However, with Geng Zimo's random interjections, plus the effect of the lighting, Su Kun wasn't as scared anymore. The feeling of fear that had previously ballooned to the extreme in his heart had now dissipated quite a bit.

Of course, this also had a lot to do with that person being knocked back into the coffin and seemingly unable to come out again in the short term.

Although Su Kun's consciousness was in a complete daze when he was nearly strangled to death earlier, aside from instinctively struggling, he knew nothing else. But he vaguely felt that the small piece of coolness that had been sticking to his chest seemed to have slid out.

Then, the hands that had been strangling him suddenly let go as if electrocuted, and that person was also knocked away by something. Immediately after, he heard the sound of hard wooden objects rubbing against each other, followed by the "click" of the coffin lid closing again.

Normal people would realize there must be a connection between the jade pendant that slid out and the series of movements that followed. Idiots like Geng Zimo were the exception.

In fact, similar things had happened to Su Kun more than once.

He didn't know if it was because he had a unique physique, but when walking alone at night in more remote places, the probability of encountering unclean things was much higher than encountering people. However, in most cases, those things would suddenly and inexplicably stop just a few meters away from him, then turn around and quickly leave in another direction. The few that got close, aside from making Su Kun feel cold all over, made no further movements.

He once thought that he had an overly abundant yang energy, so those unclean things didn't dare to approach him. But then he reconsidered - if his yang energy was really strong enough, wouldn't he not even encounter them in the first place?!

It was precisely because he didn't know what was going on that even after countless encounters with ghosts, Su Kun still couldn't get used to it. Not only did he fail to build up his courage, but each time he would be scared witless by those things with all sorts of bizarre shapes and appearances.

Damn it, can't you scare someone else?! TAT

This was probably the biggest inner thought of Su Kun, who had been encountering ghosts for more than a decade.

However, tonight's experience that he absolutely did not want to relive again at least gave Su Kun a bit of a clue - it seemed that those things being unable to truly approach him probably had something to do with the jade pendant he had worn around his neck for over twenty years. Moreover, judging from the fact that nine out of ten of the things he encountered in the past ran away, and the remaining one couldn't stir up much trouble even if it got close, although he wasn't clear about the principle, he could roughly determine that with this jade pendant, those unclean things basically posed no threat...

...Except for the one in the coffin by the bed! TAT

Su Kun looked at the coffin that had settled down again and felt the urge to cry but had no tears. Just how much grievance did that person carry?! I didn't burn his whole family to death!

Wait! This sentence... seemed a bit familiar?

When that person pounced over earlier, he carried a strong scent of dust and blood. His voice was dry and hoarse as if he hadn't had a sip of water in years. What did he shout... "Fatuous ruler! Return the lives of the 179 members of the Gu family!"

=口=

Su Kun didn't know how difficult it was to "convince a person carrying a deep blood feud and burning anger to sit down and listen to you explain that you're not the murderer who killed his whole family", but he knew that convincing a ghost with a deep blood feud and burning anger would definitely be very hard!!

"Damn it, is it too late to throw it away now?" Su Kun stared at the coffin with teary eyes and a dazed expression.

Ever since he sat up, he had been staring at the coffin and muttering to himself like an idiot. His voice was low and hoarse, mumbling incoherently. Others couldn't hear what he was saying at all. Now he suddenly blurted out such a nonsensical sentence, leaving Geng Zimo, who was standing to the side, stunned.

"How did you get so scared?... Hey, this is just a decorative piece. Didn't we both try it before? It's completely sealed and can't be opened." Geng Zimo couldn't stand watching anymore. As he spoke, he strode to the bedside table and heroically picked up the coffin.

"Don't!!" Before Su Kun could stop him, he saw Geng Zimo grip the edge of the coffin lid with his five fingers and exert force -

"Eh? It actually opened!" Geng Zimo stared at the coffin body in his right hand and the coffin lid in his left hand with wide eyes.

Eh your sister!

However, Geng Zimo was only stunned for a few seconds before he found his wits. He extended the coffin body in his right hand towards Su Kun. "Here, look, even if it's opened, there's nothing inside."

"What... there's nothing at all?" Su Kun's voice sounded like it was being squeezed out bit by bit from his throat, so feeble that it seemed like he would breathe his last in the next second.

"That's right!" Geng Zimo lowered his eyes to double check, nodded, and repeated: "There's nothing at all."

Damn it, then what the hell is this thing I see lying inside! Holy! Shit!