Chapter 39: Cause and Effect
Chapter 39: Cause and Effect
When had Zhu Chun’an ever seen such a strange “soul-searching technique”?
“Senior, do you mean... what we’re seeing and hearing right now... is the fierce ghost’s memory?”
Pei Ye nodded. “Yes, but the memories are too long. A lot of it is useless garbage information, so I need to filter and process it.”
Relying on her enormous mental power, she could browse through the fierce ghost’s memories in minutes.
“The story probably starts when this guy was fourteen...”
Having already browsed through the fierce ghost’s memories, Pei Ye naturally understood the entire sequence of events.
She extracted the key memories and played them for everyone.
Zhu Chun’an: “...”
He suddenly had the illusion that he was sitting in a university lecture hall listening to a professor teach.
“At age fourteen, Zhou Dachui forced himself on a village girl surnamed Hua... Out of professional habit, I’ll censor the female victim’s identity. I hope you don’t mind.” Pei Ye twisted the fierce ghost’s brain as if it were genuinely one of the devices operating her projection. “The following year, the female victim Hua gave birth to a daughter, which displeased both her in-laws and her husband.”
Pei Ye brought up a certain moving scene.
In the scene, Zhou Dachui got up in the middle of the night to urinate. On his way back, he saw his mother carrying away his daughter from the room and throwing the child headfirst into a manure bucket.
Zhou Dachui stepped forward to stop her.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
Already feeling guilty, Zhou Dachui’s mother was startled by her son’s voice.
“Mom, you put the child...”
Although he said this, Zhou Dachui made no move to retrieve her.
“Don’t be stupid. Our family’s so poor, how can we afford to raise a money-losing daughter? Raising her would just mean feeding another useless mouth. What’s the point?”
Zhou Dachui felt uncomfortable, but he accepted the explanation.
The Zhou family needed a son to carry on the family line. A daughter would only be raised for someone else’s family anyway. It wasn’t worth it.
Besides, he was still young. There would be more children later. One daughter didn’t matter.
The projection function was incredibly powerful. Not only could everyone hear the conversations and see what the people in the memory saw, they could also hear Zhou Dachui’s thoughts at the time.
Thus, the baby girl, only half a month old, let out a few weak cries before drowning in the foul-smelling manure bucket.
The women present all darkened with anger!
They had heard stories of female infants being killed because sons were preferred, but they had only heard about it. They had never witnessed it with their own eyes.
The scene changed, and Pei Ye explained, “This is the third year. Zhou Dachui’s wife gave birth to a second daughter.”
This daughter also failed to survive. Her grandmother hacked her to death alive, chopped her into minced meat, and fed her to the pigs in the backyard.
Zhou Dachui witnessed it with his own eyes, and his temperament became even more violent.
He increasingly despised his wife for her “useless” womb and beat her every few days.
In the fourth year, his wife gave birth to another daughter.
Mocked by his sharp-tongued peers for having no fate with sons in this lifetime, he drowned his sorrows in alcohol. After drinking heavily, he returned home in a drunken rage and personally smashed his third daughter to death.
Miss Lu was so furious that she nearly exploded.
Three infant girls who had not even reached one month of age had died like this. Why hadn’t Zhou Dachui died instead?
His wife had been forced into the marriage. Why hadn’t she killed this scumbag for her children and for herself?
She had struggled, but in return she only received even more frequent beatings and abuse.
“Your womb’s useless. How is that my fault?”
“Did I tell you to give birth to daughters? Who told you that nonsense? Have you been listening to those educated people so much you’ve become stupid and want to die?”
“If you say that again, I’ll chop you to death with a knife!”
Two more years passed, and a fourth daughter was born. Zhou Dachui’s wife had already fallen into despair and jumped into a pond while holding the child.
After Zhou Dachui lost his wife, the most anxious people were his parents.
Their family’s reputation had become notorious. What village girl would be willing to marry into their household?
Left with no choice, they lowered their standards and tricked a widow from a neighboring village into marrying him. She had previously given birth to a son.
Surely she could produce a son this time?
The result was...
Zhou Dachui and the widow had three daughters in a row.
The widow had a strong personality. Their first daughter was not watched closely enough and was murdered by the old woman using the same method as before.
The widow went mad and used a kitchen knife to hack everything in the house into pieces, frightening the entire family so badly that they no longer dared provoke her.
The following twenty-plus years were relatively peaceful. The two daughters she bore afterward both grew up and married into good families.
After enjoying several years of comfort, Zhou Dachui died of liver cancer.
Two years later, the widow also died because treatment for a stroke did not arrive in time.
It was only after spending two years as a ghost that Zhou Dachui learned from another old ghost that reincarnation was not so easy.
“You caused the deaths of five daughters. They’ve definitely reported you to the underworld messengers. You’ll have to spend a hundred years in prison before you’re even qualified to enter the queue for reincarnation.”
Zhou Dachui was dumbfounded.
“I only killed one. The others were all killed by my mother.”
Why should he be the one going to prison?
At that time, Fengdu was suffering from disorder caused by the resentment of countless baby girls, and the workload had increased dramatically. Zhou Dachui was fortunate enough to avoid being arrested and remained hiding in the human world.
While waiting, he became lonely.
Even as a ghost, he was still a male ghost. He had physical desires and wanted a wife to warm his bed.
He waited and waited, and finally the widow died.
Who would have thought she would refuse to live with him? Without even looking back, she followed the soul-collecting underworld messenger to Fengdu.
She had made her position clear.
She would rather endure high housing prices than ever see his disgusting ghost face again.
Zhou Dachui became furious.
“A widow nobody wants dares to be this arrogant? Do you really think I can’t find a young and beautiful wife?”
Unfortunately...
He truly could not.
There were simply too few female ghosts.
Far too few.
They also had priority rights for reincarnation. They moved through the reincarnation queue faster than male ghosts. In special circumstances, they were even given fast-track access.
“This is gender discrimination! Why do they get reincarnated faster than us?”
Zhou Dachui complained to his ghost friends.
His ghost friend wore a weathered expression as though he had already seen through all worldly matters and lost the will to care.
“The human government complains about the gender imbalance. There are tens of millions more men than women, so of course they’re letting women reincarnate first.”
Zhou Dachui said, “We’re short on female ghosts here too!”
Whenever a female ghost decided not to reincarnate, male ghosts surrounded her in layer after layer of eager attention.
A male ghost like Zhou Dachui, with no offerings, no looks, and no status, naturally possessed no advantage in the marriage market.
After thinking it over, he suddenly remembered that he had a childhood fiancée.
By then, he had already been a ghost for many years and believed he could easily dominate newly deceased ghosts.
Perhaps once that woman died, a little intimidation would be enough to make things happen.
The result was...
As a “lonely wandering ghost” with no descendants offering sacrifices or worship during holidays, how could he possibly defeat Old Master Lu, who had been properly honored and provided for by his family for many years?
Lu Jinzhong was furious.
His mother looked young, but she was already over seventy years old, while Zhou Dachui had died when he was only in his forties.
The thought of an old ghost who looked forty-something setting his sights on his mother made him so angry his lungs felt ready to burst.
When Pei Ye withdrew her mental domain, the fierce ghost also realized that his secret had been exposed.
“It’s hard for a ghost to find a wife these days. Otherwise, do you think I’d be interested in a seventy-year-old old woman?”
He was far more interested in Miss Lu’s youth and beauty, but she still had a long life ahead of her. She regularly engaged in charitable work, and Lu Jinzhong was also a philanthropist. Their entire family was protected by Merit.
Had Zhou Dachui’s strength not increased by chance, he would never have been able to let the old lady see him fighting with Old Master Lu, thereby frightening her into a fatal heart attack.