My Four Amnesiac Husbands Are Back

In my tenth year as a ghost, I met my first husband.

He was a ghost too.

Though he was a ghost, his magic was pitifully weak. He was even worse off than me, a poor ghost who couldn't absorb any yang energy day after day.

Still, he was handsome, and what did magic matter?

I liked his face, not his cultivation.

So when he shyly asked if I wanted to become his partner, I agreed without even knowing what that meant.

Later, he regained his memories and learned that he wasn't an ordinary ghost, but one burdened by a deep blood feud. He told me he had to go take revenge and asked me to wait for him.

I nodded, but he never came back.

Instead, a group of ghost officials showed up and ordered me to stop looking for him.

I was heartbroken for a while. It felt like losing the first bit of yang energy I'd ever managed to absorb.

Xixi tried to console me, telling me to get over it. There were plenty of men out there.

I said my standards weren't high. He just had to be better-looking than A Qiao. Xixi rolled her eyes.

Before long, I met my second husband.

He was a cultivator, and he was just as good-looking as A Qiao. I was very pleased.

He was more considerate than A Qiao. He took care of all the housework without being asked and even married into my family. Who could say no to such a generous offer?

Until one evening, while I was trying to decide which unlucky fellow to drain today, he suddenly said that his memories had returned. He was actually the senior disciple of Wen Shui Sect, and his master, junior sisters, and brothers were waiting for him. He begged me to let him go and told me to wait for his return.

I thought, keeping someone from going home is basically kidnapping, isn't it?

So I said, "All right."

He didn't come back either. A crowd of cultivators showed up and ordered me to stop pestering him.

Xixi called me an idiot and said I should learn from my mistakes.

I didn't see the problem. She didn't understand. It was all part of the routine. Wen Jisong had left, but there would be someone new.

I'd figured out the pattern. That's how stories told by storytellers always went.

My third husband was a rat spirit.

When I married my first two husbands, he was still young, barely a hundred years old and not yet able to take human form. He often curled up on my lap and played with the feathers on a shuttlecock.

Later, he took human form and became a pretty young man with red lips and pearly teeth. He still clung to me and played just as he used to. Before long, our games moved to the bed.

The rat didn't leave. This was his home.

But he disappeared too. The day after he told me he was preparing a birthday present for me, all contact with him was lost.

An elder of the rat clan came to see me and said vaguely, "Su Li won't be coming back. You... should find someone else."

I knew it would happen.

It didn't matter. There would be another one anyway.

I waited, brushing my hair, until at last my fourth husband arrived. He was a living person.

He wasn't afraid of ghosts, but his temper was worse than all the others'.

He was arrogant and rude, constantly picking fights with Wang the Butcher, who sold pork next door. He gave me headaches, and I had to clean up after him.

At last, I lost my temper and told him to get out. Only then did he rein in his temper and protest, looking aggrieved, "I thought they were all my rivals in love." Me: ?

Anyway, this mortal was too much trouble to deal with, so I had to take him in. Of course, I wasn't going to keep him for free. He had to become my live-in husband.

The mortal readily agreed.

I kept waiting for him to leave, but he seemed to be planning to stay for good.

One day, he put on the same clothes he'd worn when we first met and came to see me. I knew he was about to leave, so I braced myself.

The mortal rambled on and on before finally getting to the point. "My father is dying. I want to go back and see him one last time."

I gave him a look that said, "I know how this goes." "Go ahead. Be careful on the way."

The mortal set off on his journey home, reluctant to leave. Xixi worried I'd be heartbroken and spent a long time comforting me.

Then my fifth husband arrived. Wait, why did this fifth one look exactly like the first?

A Qiao buried his face against my shoulder, his eyes red and his teeth clenched. "Youyou, why didn't you wait for me?"

Me: ? Why would I wait?

I had a bad feeling.

According to the usual pattern, my missing second, third, and fourth husbands would come back too. Before long, my premonition came true.

*

The Bridal Guide is a folk-custom game where players can choose any character and enter different scenarios. The "Corpse Bride: The Seventh Night" is one of its haunted-house chapters, with a hidden perk:

By romancing the female ghost NPC in the chapter, players can restore health and magic, as well as receive an extra gift from the NPC. But it takes a long time, so not many players chose this route during beta testing.

During an official maintenance session, four players who hadn't managed to exit the game were left trapped inside.

Unable to use paid items to restore health and magic, the players all independently chose to enter "Corpse Bride: The Seventh Night" and pursue its romance route. Once maintenance was complete, several of them left the game and went straight to F Company, demanding to buy the chapter.

They had just one reason: they didn't want to see Yun You fall in love with a new player.

F Company: ?

First-person blurb, third-person narration in the story.

Blurb written on 2024/01/10.

Theme: Deception is unacceptable.