Chapter 19: Among Your Remaining Wives, Who’s the Prettiest?

Chapter 19: Among Your Remaining Wives, Who Is the Most Beautiful?

In his previous life, Pei Zhi had given him a feeling of being cold, brutal, un-warmable, and a manwhore...

Too many adjectives to list, and none of them were flattering. And this life's Pei Zhi? Xue Youtan felt the exact same way. Plus, this Pei Zhi was even quieter, his face completely blank.

This was the first time Xue Youtan had seen him crack a smile, and for a split second, his whole face lit up.

Catching Xue Youtan's stare, Pei Zhi's smile vanished, and he went back to looking all broody.

Tsk, I swear, protagonist, why the hell are you named Pei Zhi? You might as well be Pei Tanhua, grinning like a damn flash-in-the-pan flower.

"Tanhua's your name," the system, quiet until now, cut in. "A name that short-lived doesn't fit the protagonist."

Yeah, sure, so a short-lived side character deserves a short-lived name.

2484, get your ass out here, I swear I won't kill you.

While the system was yapping, Xue Youtan had already walked into the mansion. In the courtyard, a few NPCs in yellow Taoist robes were doing some ritual dance around a corpse under a white sheet, chanting gibberish "spells"—obviously a bunch of con artists.

The moment Xue Youtan walked up, the head Taoist started shooing him off. "What's the deal? Didn't we say nobody can come near during the ritual? If you mess up the dead guy's trip to paradise, you gonna take the blame?"

"Master Taoist, you've sent off so many dead folks—surely you know that someone who died a wrongful death can't reincarnate until their killer's caught? Oh, and one more thing..."

Xue Youtan cut himself off, which got the fake Taoist curious. "What?"

"That Thirteenth Madam is standing right next to you right now."

The second he said that, the Taoist felt a chill run down his neck, like someone—no, some ghost—was breathing right on his ear. Freaked out, he stumbled back, bumped into the corpse, and a pale hand flopped out from under the sheet.

"The corpse moved! The corpse moved!" the Taoist screamed, and his buddies joined in, scrambling and booking it out of there.

Tsk, being that chicken, they shouldn't be pretending to be Taoists and scamming folks. No wonder they can't make a buck.

Xue Youtan rolled his eyes and looked at the white sheet. Just as he was about to lift it, Li Luoshu stepped up. "Master, corpses are bad luck. Messing with one'll bring you days of misfortune. Let me, let me do it instead."

"What ghosts? I was just messing with him."

As a hardcore atheist (though a bit less sure after getting thrown into this book), Xue Youtan flat-out refused to believe the dead could leave ghosts behind. Otherwise, when he got turned into a pincushion in his last life, he'd have become a vengeful ghost and haunted the protagonist to death—no way that guy would've gotten to rule the world!

With that thought, Xue Youtan glanced at Pei Zhi again without thinking.

Pei Zhi looked too weak to stand, leaning on a tree for support, when Yuan Changsheng came barreling in from the side and slammed into his shoulder, nearly knocking both him and the tree over.

Tsk, put a bean sprout next to a fat potato, and yeah, the weight difference is pretty damn obvious.

Before Xue Youtan or Li Luoshu could lift the sheet, Yuan Changsheng came sprinting over.

"Thirteen, my little Thirteen... boohoo..." Yuan Changsheng sobbed as he lifted the sheet to peek, then immediately covered his eyes.

Xue Youtan figured the corpse must be nasty, so he snuck a look while the sheet was up.

Surprisingly, this Thirteenth Madam had a delicate face. Aside from being completely drained of blood, there wasn't a scratch or sign of struggle on her. Her expression was so peaceful she looked like she was just asleep.

Yeah, this really did look like demon work—who else could drain a living person dry without a peep?

Xue Youtan wanted to look longer, but Yuan Changsheng had already dropped the sheet. He wiped at the fake tears in his eyes and started wailing again:

"Heavenly Master, you gotta save me! The Yuan family's been one son per generation for ages, and I haven't even had a boy yet. I can't die to some demon!"

His wives were almost all dead, and instead of worrying about them, he was worried about kicking the bucket before having a son.

Ever think you can't have a son 'cause you're just too damn evil?

Xue Youtan ignored his blubbering, leaped up, and landed cleanly on the rooftop. Closing his eyes, he let his spiritual sense spread out, covering the whole Yuan estate.

The demon aura in the mansion was faint. Not only weak, but scattered—spread from the front courtyard to the back, a little bit everywhere but nowhere concentrated.

The demon should still be in the mansion, but he couldn't pinpoint its exact spot yet.

Xue Youtan opened his eyes, and the epiphyllum mark on his forehead faded back into his skin. He jumped off the roof, straightened his sleeves, which the wind had messed up on the way up, and asked casually, "So, tell me—how did the monster kill them?"

Yuan Changsheng then started telling his story.

Yuan Changsheng was loaded and had married a ton of concubines. His place was out in the sticks, but things were peaceful until recently, when his prettiest concubines started turning up dead at home, necks bitten open and blood drained.

At first, Yuan Changsheng figured it was wild animals from the nearby mountains, so he had his servants keep a close watch. But at night, people still died right under their noses. That's when they figured out it was an evil spirit.

This threw the whole household into a panic. Watching his concubines drop one by one, Yuan Changsheng got desperate. Using a bit of a connection between his ancestors and Feng Mingjue, he went to Cangya Mountain for help.

"Before I left, I figured the demon's next target would be Little Thirteen, 'cause besides the ones already dead, she was the only one in the back courtyard with any looks to speak of. But even with all the guys I posted to guard her, Little Thirteen still didn't make it."

So, the monster kills by looks? Xue Youtan quickly asked, "Among your remaining wives, who's the prettiest?"

If he couldn't pinpoint where the demon aura was concentrated, he'd just have to wait for the demon to show itself.

Find the prettiest one among the survivors, stake the place out, and it shouldn't be too hard.

But plots usually go off the rails.

Xue Youtan looked at the dozen or so concubines Fat Yuan dragged out and almost choked on his own spit.

He'd expected Yuan Changsheng's concubines to be a mixed bag, but he hadn't expected the gap to be this insane.

Going backward from the dead Thirteenth Madam, Yuan Changsheng's wives took a massive nosedive in looks.

Sure, it's rude to judge women's looks, but after seeing all of them, Xue Youtan could only think of one phrase: "ugly as sin."

Yeah, pretty people all look the same, but ugly folks are ugly in their own special ways.

"So, Heavenly Master? Who do you think the monster's coming for tonight?" Yuan Changsheng leaned over and asked.

If the monster killed by looks, Xue Youtan figured it'd go after Yuan Changsheng before any of these women.

Not ready to give up, Xue Youtan kept pushing. "You got any other women in this house?"