After the secret marriage to my top star partner

Chapter 40

Editor: Princess

Breakfast was still shared with the two deceased spouses.

When everyone walked into the dining room, they were surprised to discover that in the morning, the corpse-like traces on their bodies seemed less obvious.

Their originally grayish-blue faces now showed a hint of rosy luster.

“You two look quite well today.” Mu Nan, seeing that the scene had become too uncomfortable, said with an awkward laugh.

However, as soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them, because everyone looked at him with disbelief, since complimenting dead people on their complexion was something ordinary people simply wouldn’t do.

Mu Nan realized he had said the wrong thing and awkwardly closed his mouth.

Fortunately, the hosts began their meal at that moment.

Everyone had been hungry all night, so they picked up their utensils and started eating.

Unexpectedly, this breakfast turned out to be quite good. It was a Western-style breakfast that had just become popular in C Country during the Republican era.

The coffee alone was aromatic and very tempting.

Nevertheless, they couldn’t enjoy even the finest food with peace of mind.

They all ate nervously, because with unsettling hosts in front of them and teammates who might stab them in the back at any moment, everything tasted like sawdust to them.

Mu Nan also couldn’t eat much. He slowly sipped a cup of coffee until it was nearly finished, picked at some scrambled eggs from his plate, and barely touched the dry bread.

However when he drank the coffee down to the bottom, a blood-red eye appeared.

He was so startled that his hand trembled, however he managed to steady himself and calmly set down the cup.

He looked left and right carefully. No one else showed any unusual expressions.

He reached for Cheng Han’s cup: “If you’re not drinking this, can I have it?”

“Go ahead.” Cheng Han didn’t think much of it.

Mu Nan took Cheng Han’s coffee cup and poured it into his own. He just wanted to check the bottom of Cheng Han’s cup.

There was no symbol at the bottom of Cheng Han’s cup, so it was very likely that his own was unique.

He didn’t show any abnormality and drank most of Cheng Han’s coffee, leaving a little to conceal the symbol.

He didn’t know what this symbol meant. Perhaps it was hinting that he would be the next to die.

After breakfast, the day’s tasks began.

By this point in the story, everyone understood that all the NPCs in this house were dead people.

They were cursed to be trapped in this mansion, and the guests’ task was to help them find a way to break the curse.

If they couldn’t find a solution by tonight, everyone would be permanently left behind, becoming living dead like the others.

Since they had a whole day and no ghosts chasing them, everyone proceeded at a leisurely pace, forming pairs to search as usual.

However, due to last night’s heart-stopping scream, everyone finally decided to team up according to last night’s room assignments, which would at least ensure that the person beside them was temporarily harmless.

Just as they walked out, Mu Nan felt the urge to go to the bathroom.

He felt somewhat embarrassed: “I drank too much coffee this morning – it’s too diuretic.”

Then he ducked into the bathroom.

The bathroom was also old-fashioned, full of period atmosphere, and there were no men’s urinals, so he had to enter a stall.

However as he unzipped his pants, the room key fell out of his shallow pocket, bounced twice, then slid into the adjacent stall.

Their nighttime rooms could be locked from the outside, and the butler had given them the keys in the morning, which he had casually pocketed.

He was about to go to the next stall to retrieve it when he heard Cui Zhixing humming as he entered and went into that adjacent stall.

“Brother Cui? Could you help me pick up the key?” Mu Nan called out.

“Sure thing.” Cui Zhixing replied cheerfully. “Where is it? Oh, I see it.”

“Here, catch it.” Cui Zhixing’s hand reached under the partition.

Mu Nan reached out to catch it, however the moment he touched the other person’s fingertips, goosebumps instantly covered his entire body.

The hand that reached over had long fingernails and was terrifyingly cold, completely lacking human body temperature.

Mu Nan’s fingers stopped just a few centimeters away from that hand, horror movie scenes flashing through his mind freely. He even felt a cold wind behind him that chilled him to the bone.

Just then, the hand suddenly moved, grabbing his hand with lightning speed. Mu Nan was so frightened that he even forgot to scream.

The hand gripped Mu Nan tightly, its nails even leaving marks on the back of his hand.

However despite the pain, he didn’t dare cry out. He could only watch as the hand pried open his palm and placed the key and a note inside.

Then the hand released him, and Mu Nan opened the note to look.

It showed the eye he had seen at the bottom of the coffee cup, with words written in blood below: “You and we are the same kind. You have two companions. We want everyone to be buried with us.”

Reading this message, Mu Nan felt not fear but even a hint of excitement.

Being a mole! The thought was really cool – both cool and thrilling. He had been the “good guy” being chased around miserably for several episodes, and finally he would get to be a mole.

He suppressed his excited feelings forcefully then walked out of the stall to wash his hands with cold water at the sink.

As his palm temperature decreased, his excited mood gradually calmed down.

Cheng Han was too clever – he couldn’t let Cheng Han see through him, he told himself.

Soon, Cui Zhixing emerged from another stall. The stall next to Mu Nan hadn’t actually been occupied by him.

Cui Zhixing rinsed his hands casually then walked out. And as Mu Nan watched his retreating figure, a plan gradually formed in his mind.

According to the instructions on the back of the note, he only needed to sprinkle bone powder made from human bones onto someone, then find a way to leave that person alone for more than ten seconds. This way, the person would be possessed by a ghost and successfully transformed into one.

Cui Zhixing appeared in his sight at such a special time, and besides Cheng Han, he was the only other male guest. It made sense to target him.

Sorry about this, Mu Nan apologized silently while his hands never stopped moving.

He sprinkled some of the bone powder he had obtained from the bathroom stall onto his hand, then casually put his arm around Cui Zhixing’s shoulder.

“Hey Brother Cui, what are your plans…”

After several recordings, Cui Zhixing had become quite familiar with him, so he didn’t think much of this intimate gesture and chatted casually: “I don’t know, but at least we’ll be done after recording this episode. This show is so exhausting, one episode feels like three.”

The two chatted as they walked out of the bathroom.

Outside, Cheng Han was waiting there, and seeing them coming out with their arms around each other’s shoulders, he merely raised an eyebrow.

“That long?” Cheng Han asked, his gaze sweeping over Mu Nan’s lower body with implied meaning.

Mu Nan glared back indignantly, but Cheng Han just smiled.

“Let’s go.” He beckoned to Mu Nan as if he was calling Papaya and Orange over.

Mu Nan rolled his eyes, then asked Cui Zhixing: “Want to walk together for a bit? We haven’t decided where to go anyway.”

“Sure.” Cui Zhixing called over Du Ling, and the four of them went upstairs together.

Unlike the school’s structure, the mansion had few rooms. One side of the second floor had servants’ quarters and storage rooms, while the other side had several guest rooms.

They decided to split into pairs and search each side.

Cheng Han used his eyes to ask Mu Nan if he wanted to go together.

Mu Nan was about to agree but remembered his mission, so he rolled his eyes in disgust and walked in the opposite direction from Cheng Han.

“Brother Cui, want to come with me?”

After Cui Zhixing left with him, he even gave Cheng Han a provocative look.

However the moment he turned around, he breathed a small sigh of relief quietly. He had acted well enough, right? Was it overdone? Cheng Han was very professional at acting, could he see through it?

Fortunately, Cheng Han didn’t seem to notice anything.

What followed became very easy. He only needed to find some excuse to leave Cui Zhixing alone for a long time. He hadn’t expected the first target to go so smoothly.

He secretly peered through a crack in the door and saw a staff member dressed as a female ghost quietly slip out of the room where Cui Zhixing was. He knew it was done.

However according to the rules, he couldn’t let Cui Zhixing know he had done this.

Because although a living person had been transformed into a ghost, because they retained their obsession with being human, they would harbor deep resentment toward whoever harmed them, which meant he would retaliate against him if he knew.

Now he had dealt with one. Excluding Ai Qianqian and Duan Shi, who had already become ghosts, only Du Ling and Cheng Han remained.

Mu Nan had originally planned to deal with Du Ling first, but he discovered that she was surprisingly alert.

Several times he tested approaching Du Ling, she consciously or unconsciously avoided him.

Mu Nan felt that continuing would risk exposing himself, so he had to give up temporarily.

Now only Cheng Han remained. If Cui Zhixing was beginner difficulty and Du Ling was advanced difficulty, then Cheng Han was hell difficulty.

He clutched the packet of bone powder in his pocket, unsure how to approach Cheng Han without arousing suspicion.

Recording time passed quickly, and with breaks and various procedures, it was soon noon.

At lunch, Ai Qianqian and Duan Shi brought good news first.

They had found the mansion’s family genealogy and discovered that the current lady of the house was not the master’s original wife, but the so-called “new woman” he had met after returning from studying abroad.

However, the master had originally had a first wife, and her family was wealthy and powerful. They had even paid for his overseas education.

The master’s original wife hadn’t received much education and was strong-willed and domineering, which the man detested.

As for the original wife, although she had “magnanimously” allowed the new wife to enter the household on the surface, she had secretly bullied the young wife considerably.

Unexpectedly, this young wife turned out to be a deeply hidden white lotus flower, crying to the master on one hand while secretly whispering poison in his ear on the other.

Finally, the despicable pair conspired together and actually poisoned the original wife to death, seizing all the property she left behind. The young wife successfully rose in status and became the sole lady of the house.

The original wife had been kept in the dark when she died, but after death, her soul saw through everything.

In extreme hatred, she cursed everyone in the entire mansion, transforming them all, regardless of age or gender, into the living dead they were now.

After hearing this story, Mu Nan looked at the male and female hosts with inexplicable disgust. He hadn’t expected that people who appeared so respectable could be so ruthless in private.

But just as everyone was immersed in sighs, he finally spotted an opportunity.

Du Ling had somehow gotten a bit of wall dust on the back of her clothes, the grayish-white mark very obvious on her blue garment.

“Hey, where did you brush against this?” Mu Nan secretly grabbed some powder in his pocket and patted her back twice. The powder on his hand mixed with the wall dust, making it impossible to tell he had tampered with anything.

However he stopped after one pat, as if suddenly realizing that this wasn’t appropriate between men and women.

“Sorry about that.” He said. “You two help her with it.” He said to the other two female guests.

Then, in front of everyone, he clapped his palms together, shaking off all the powder while muttering: “Got my hands all dusty.”

After this series of Oscar-worthy performances, he looked toward Cheng Han subconsciously.

Cheng Han was looking in his direction with his head tilted, his expression unreadable. It was unclear whether he had noticed anything.

Mu Nan’s heart skipped a beat, but he quickly steadied himself. Even if he had noticed, he had no evidence and couldn’t do anything about it.