You made all the streamers on the internet kneel before you when you were asked to make a game.

Professor Chen finished speaking.

The wedding procession, which had been brimming with murderous intent and heading straight for Lu Zhixing and Brother Long, actually stopped.

The paper figure that had been playing the suona put down its instrument.

The paper figures carrying the sedan chair stopped in their tracks.

The curtain of the bridal sedan chair, which was constantly oozing black blood, swayed slightly.

It seems that the "bride" inside tacitly consented.

Then, the entire team mysteriously changed direction, bypassing the position where Professor Chen was standing.

He also managed to get past Lu Zhixing and Brother Long, who were already dumbfounded, behind him.

After the wedding procession left, Professor Chen slowly straightened up and put on his hat.

He turned his head, looked at the two disheveled people, sighed, and shook his head.

"Sigh, young man."

"Not knowing the rules will lead to serious consequences."

Berserker Dragon Bro's mouth dropped open. That's it... resolved? Just a few words?

He glanced at Professor Chen, then at his own ghostly wife, who was on high alert and exuding a menacing aura.

In an instant, he felt that his pride in "living off a woman" wasn't so impressive after all.

Lu Zhixing was more severely impacted.

Professor Chen's appearance showed him another possibility.

It's not about confrontation, but about coexistence.

It means acknowledging the other party's existence and then using their rules to deal with them.

"Professor Chen...?" Lu Zhixing asked in a hoarse voice.

"It's me." Professor Chen nodded, his gaze falling on him, his brows furrowing slightly.

"Your body is filled with too much yin energy, your yang energy is weak and unstable, and your spirit is not at peace."

"If this continues, he'll be ruined."

As Professor Chen spoke, he stepped forward, extended two thin fingers, and precisely pinched Lu Zhixing's philtrum.

A sharp, stabbing pain came over me.

Immediately afterwards, Professor Chen took out a small cloth bag from his pocket with his other hand, opened it, and inside were some dried soil and incense ash.

He picked up a little bit and, without saying a word, smeared it on Lu Zhixing's forehead, palms, and back of the neck.

"Hold your breath, concentrate, and guard the clarity of your mind."

Professor Chen's voice seemed to carry a certain calming power.

Lu Zhixing felt a cool, earthy fragrance seep into his body through those areas of skin, forcefully suppressing the madness and violence that had been lurking in his mind.

The blood-red illusion before my eyes receded like the tide.

The world returned to its original grayness and stickiness.

Although it's still depressing, at least it's real.

[System notification: You have been appeased through special means; your sanity has been temporarily restored, and negative status effects have been temporarily suppressed.]

With the crisis temporarily averted, the nerves that had been stretched to the limit suddenly relaxed.

Lu Zhixing could no longer hold on; everything went black before his eyes, and his body slumped forward.

Before falling into a coma, the last thing he did was, instinctively, gently push the little water ghost girl he had been holding in his arms toward Professor Chen.

Professor Chen has achieved an S-rank completion of "The Embroidered Shoes," so the little water ghost girl shouldn't be too resistant to him.

Professor Chen caught Lu Zhixing steadily and let him lean against him.

The little water ghost girl looked at the unfamiliar old man with some fear, clinging to his trouser leg and remaining silent timidly.

Brother Long swallowed hard, jumped down from the ghost bride's arms, and cautiously approached.

"Professor, is he...is he alright?"

"He won't die for now," Professor Chen said succinctly, "but his foundation has been damaged, so he needs to be properly cared for."

He looked around, picked up his lantern, and walked toward an abandoned building not far away.

It was a small ancestral hall.

Professor Chen had already scouted this location during his previous exploration of Sea Fog Town.

The door to the ancestral hall was ajar, and when it was pushed open, a musty, stale smell wafted out.

There were no memorial tablets inside, only a clay statue.

The statue had a human body and a fish tail, with a blurred face and covered in dried fish scales.

It is none other than the legendary Sea Goddess of Haiwu Town.

"It's relatively cleaner here, let's stay here tonight."

Professor Chen laid Lu Zhixing flat on a worn-out altar and then began his lesson.

He first carefully took off the dark ink-colored silk robe that Lu Zhixing was wearing.

"This is a shroud, an extremely unlucky item."

"It is made by taking ink from the underworld, mixing it with the blood of ghosts and demons, and weaving it with silk from the netherworld."

"If a living person wears it, it is as if they are carrying a ghost, which will erode them day and night, shortening their lifespan."

He neatly folded the burial clothes and pressed them down firmly with a brick that was used to weigh down the incense burner, as if he were using the incense smoke to purify the yin energy above.

Brother Long watched in stunned silence.

What surprised him most was that even the usually arrogant and domineering ghost bride subconsciously restrained all her evil aura when facing Professor Chen, standing quietly to the side like a wronged little wife.

It is a kind of reverence for the "rules" themselves that originates from the level of life itself.

It was as if the old man before me was the embodiment of the rules and regulations that govern our lives.

Brother Long was as well-behaved as a primary school student, and he proactively brought over a stool.

"Professor Chen, please have a seat."

"Then... what's going on with this town?"

"Is it really like what Boss Zhou said, that there's no outlet left?"

Professor Chen sat down and took a sip of water.

"Haiwu Town is less a ghost town and more a huge feng shui dead end."

"Look at this terrain, surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the sea on one side, it is a golden basin reflecting water, a formation that gathers wealth and brings good fortune."

"But a hundred years ago, the people in the town took a shortcut in their pursuit of wealth, and they drilled a hole in the bottom of this basin."

Professor Chen summarized the information he had collected and drew on the ground with his cane.

"This eye doesn't attract wealth, it attracts evil spirits, it attracts the resentment of that thing in the sea."

"The great tsunami of that year was not a natural disaster, but a man-made one."

"It was that thing that, taking advantage of the opportune moment, submerged the entire town in one fell swoop, turning this place into its underwater palace."

"Today, every drop of water and every wisp of mist in this town is the embodiment of the resentment of those who drowned back then."

"The 'dampness' entering your body is actually a result of being entangled in resentment."

These words sent chills down Brother Long's spine.

Only then did he understand how terrifying this instance was.

"Then... what is 'The Dragon King's Wedding'?" Brother Long pressed.

A complex emotion flashed in Professor Chen's cloudy eyes.

"That thing is both the Dragon King and the Sea God."

"Marriage is both a ritual and a way to appease others."

"A hundred years ago, their sacrificial ceremony failed, which led to their annihilation."

"A hundred years from now, this ritual will probably begin again..."

Professor Chen glanced, seemingly casually, at the ghost bride beside Brother Long.

Brother Long's heart skipped a beat.

Professor Chen... what does this mean?

Lu Zhixing woke up to a cold, clear opera tune.

The voice was plaintive and sorrowful, seemingly carrying endless resentment and grief, lingering in my ears.

He opened his eyes and found himself lying on a cold wooden table.

The dark ink-colored silk robe that had tormented him was gone, replaced by incense ash with the scent of earth on his forehead and palms.

My sanity level stabilized at 70. Although it was still below the warning line, at least I no longer had that dizzying, manic feeling.

He sat up and found himself inside a magnificent and ancient theater.

Yet it seemed to be a different theater from the one where he had summoned Xiaodie before.

The light here is much brighter.

At the entrance, two huge red lanterns hung, with two large characters written on them in blood-red cinnabar: "Hundred Ghosts".

Professor Chen, the raging dragon brother, and the water ghost little girl were all sitting at an eight-immortal table not far away.

On the table were several plates of melon seeds and a pot of tea.

However, no one dared to make a move.