CH 76

Edited by: Dust Bunny

As Gu Xizhou drank the coffee, he felt the sofa behind him. The sofa was very soft. As for the price… Gu Xizhou didn’t plan to ask, and he couldn’t afford to ask. It was likely to give him a heart attack. 

“After you’re done drinking, be ready to enter the world.” When Si Yu finished speaking, he glanced at the time. “There are still a few minutes left.”

Gu Xizhou’s lips curled, and he continued to leisurely sip the coffee. “Got it.”

A month had passed quickly, and it was once again time to enter the supernatural world. Gu Xizhou kneaded his forehead. His sight was fuzzy, but after a moment Gu Xizhou was shocked to find himself sitting inside a room.

The room’s walls had all become moldy from being soaked in water, and they were yellow and cracked. There were several other figures around him. These people were clearly just like him, and all had blank expressions on as they looked around the place. He quickly confirmed that Si Yu and Fang Zhi were also inside the room. 

Right now, they were unable to confirm the situation of the surrounding people, so Gu Xizhou didn’t immediately speak to the two of them, but the three of them all exchanged glances, silently remaining in their spots.

In front of Gu Xizhou was a file folder on top of a desk.

“Yi, what’s going on?” A middle-aged man stood up and took stock of his surroundings, shaking his head. He had a helpless and vacant expression, and he was still somewhat shocked.

“Where is this? Shouldn’t I be in the hospital?”

Nobody replied to these words, but instead, they all looked at the middle-aged man. Gu Xizhou noted that everyone obviously let out a breath. There was a newcomer, which meant that this world was unlikely to be outrageously difficult.

Just then, a man with a face like he’d smelled something terrible entered the room. He walked in and suddenly slammed his hand on the table, saying furiously, “How do you even make a living? You can’t even handle a smelly old man?”

“I’ll tell you now: if he doesn’t move out in five days, I’ll fire all of you!” After the man came in and lost his temper, he turned around to leave. 

“What is going on?” asked the middle-aged man, unable to make heads or tails of the situation. “Who is he?”

Coafg atf wjc ifoa, jqjga ogbw Xe Wlhtbe’r ugbeq bo atgff jcv atf wlvvif-jufv wjc ktb kjr ja j ibrr, atf batfgr jii lcagbvemfv fjmt batfg.

“Lfiib, P’w Olc Ljb.” Ktf wjc yfrlvf Xe Wlhtbe fzafcvfv tlr tjcv jcv lcagbvemfv tlwrfio.

Xe Wlhtbe cbvvfv jcv rtbbx tlr tjcv. “Lfiib, Xe Ejc.” 

After they introduced themselves, the middle-aged man was still incessantly asking questions about where they were. Fang Zhi answered his questions. “The mission world. The people who enter this world are all people whose remaining life has begun to count down.”

The middle-aged man’s mouth dropped open in the shape of an “o”, but he wasn’t like the previous newcomers they’d met who shouted that this couldn’t be real. He very quickly accepted Fang Zhi’s answer. “So that’s why! I was wondering why I had the strength to walk.”

“It looks like there’s a red countdown in the air. Is that the time left of my life?” the middle-aged man asked in a whisper.

“En, that’s right,” replied Fang Zhi. 

The middle-aged man seemed like he wanted to ask something, but he was interrupted by Gu Xizhou. “If you have any questions, ask them later. Right now, we have to first figure out what the mission is, and how to complete it.”

“Building demolition and resident relocation.” Si Yu pointed at a banner hanging inside the room. “Connecting that with what that man just said, our mission must be to persuade the old man to move. Let’s look over the data on the desk. There should be important information for us.”

Gu Xizhou nodded and looked at the folder on the desk. The first page in the folder was the old man’s basic information: Mo Jiaqing, address No. 11 Citrine Village.

After looking through the comments and combining the information, it seemed that Gu Xizhou and the others were playing the role of the demolition and relocation office’s staff members. Citrine Village’s demolition and relocation had already been underway for half a year, and the other residents had all agreed to their conditions. There was only this one old man, Mo Jiaqing, who refused to agree to their proposals. Even when they offered him tens of thousands more yuan than the other residents, the old man still stubbornly refused to move. 

“It seems we have to go and take a look,” said Gu Xizhou, pointing at the address.

Six people brought the stuff and left the demolition and relocation office. In fact, the office was a house in Citrine Village that was rented temporarily to make it convenient for them to work with the residents. The demolition office wasn’t far from the old man’s home. It was less than 200 meters.

“No. 11 Citrine Village.” Gu Xizhou pointed at the house number and said, “This is it.”

Walking up to the forbiddingly closed door, Gu Xizhou took the lead and knocked. Soon, an old man came out. Opening the door, the old man looked at Gu Xizhou and the others and raised his eyebrows. He grabbed the shoulder pole on the side and said angrily, “I said not moving means not moving. Are you dumb?” 

Si Yu blocked the old man with the shoulder pole and asked, “Sir, we aren’t here to force you. Could you tell us why you don’t want to move out?”

The old man raised an eyebrow and looked at Si Yu. He dropped the shoulder pole heavily onto the ground, making a large bang. “My wife has Alzheimer’s, and she got lost. I’m waiting for her to return. Actually, I also know your conditions are very good, but I’m afraid that if I move, she’ll come back and be unable to find me. Then what could she do?”

“She got lost? When?” Si Yu asked.

“Isn’t that what I said?! Before you came here. I was cooking at home and after a while, she ran out and disappeared. There were some neighbors who saw her, but they couldn’t find her either. The police came, too. 

“She definitely went somewhere far. If you demolish this place and change it, she won’t be able to find the way back. Then what will happen?” said the old man, anxiety clear on his face.

Gu Xizhou understood after the old man spoke. When the old man was making lunch, there was no one to look after the senile elderly lady. After a while, the elderly lady left the house and disappeared.

However, since their range of movement in this mission world was limited to the village, the elderly lady was surely not lost. It was clear that something unexpected had happened, leading to the current scenario.

As Si Yu, Gu Xizhou, and the others were still learning about the situation, the middle-aged man in the team’s expression suddenly turned pale and he began to tremble. “Th-there’s something behind my foot… Something just touched my foot.” 

The two people beside him gasped and retreated a step in fear. Only Gu Xizhou directly moved behind the man. He raised his eyebrows. “You stepped on a mouse.”

The middle aged man slowly turned to look at the thing under his foot. There was a mouse beside his foot with its tail trapped under his shoe. He lifted his foot, and the mouse flew like a wisp of smoke into the old man’s house.

“That mouse ran in your…”

The middle-aged man hadn’t finished speaking when the old man waved his hand and said, “It’s fine. It’s just a mouse running around inside, that’s all. It doesn’t matter. If you’re done, I’ll go inside. This sun is making me feel unwell.” 

As the old man spoke, he used a hand to sweep at the sun in the sky. Apparently, he wasn’t fond of sunshine. His brows pinched inward.

“The sun?” Gu Xizhou raised his head to look at the dark sky. The sun was almost completely covered by black clouds, and there simply wasn’t much light at all. The old man’s movements contrasted with this, seeming somewhat exaggerated.

When the old man went to close the door, the people suddenly called for him to stop.

“Hold on,” said Si Yu. “If we help you find the elderly lady, are you willing to move?” 

In response, the old man raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Of course. If you can help me find her, not only will I move, I can even give you a gift.”

After hearing that, Gu Xizhou looked at the old man more seriously. The keyword “gift” made him think of the gift of gratitude Fang Zhi received from Lin Meng, although that little round mirror still hadn’t been used so far.

Once the old man left, besides Gu Xizhou paying attention to the gift matter, two others also clearly understood the meaning of the gift. From their passive slacking, they became energetic.

“What’s that gift thing?” Yu Yizhou gave a full display of his good habit of asking questions whenever he didn’t understand. Yu Yizhou was the name of that middle-aged man. As for whether the name was genuine or not, the others didn’t care at all. 

Fang Zhi walked behind to explain it to him while Lin Hao and Xiao Nan walked very quickly, already outstripping Gu Xizhou and Si Yu to walk at the front. Apparently they were already itching to help the old man find his wife.

They went to the only household that had seen the elderly lady before she disappeared. These people had only signed the agreement and hadn’t yet moved out. The house in front of them belonged to the Gao family that the old man mentioned: No. 21 Citrine Village.

The vegetable seller was a big-bellied middle-aged woman with a ponytail. She wore a black long-sleeved shirt with safflowers on it. She sat on the curb clipping her fingernails.

“Hello.” Lin Hao and Xiao Nan politely walked over and asked her about the elderly lady’s disappearance. 

“Oh, you’re asking about this, ah? Mother He had Alzheimer’s, but it wasn’t actually very serious. It was very good most of the time—Nothing like other deranged people.

“I don’t remember that day very clearly. I was selling vegetables and balancing the books that day when I absent-mindedly looked over and saw Mother He passing by out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t pay it much mind. Who could have imagined that she’d wander off?” The woman gave a somewhat unwilling smile and sighed regretfully.

After hearing this, Gu Xizhou and Si Yu looked around. Several nearby families were selling vegetables at their own stalls. Although this area was rural, it was also a suburb. Many residents went into town to work, so most of the farmland had been abandoned. There were only a few households who still grew vegetables. This family was just one of them.

Just then, Gu Xizhou spotted a man wearing a white apron covered in blood stains passing by on the road. Gu Xizhou looked at that man in shock and turned back to the seated woman selling vegetables and asked, “Who is that?” 

“Oh, he came from outside. He’s our village’s butcher,” the woman spoke thoughtlessly, standing up as she did so to stretch her body and crack some melon seeds. “He’s not very talkative, and he has a bad temper. Don’t provoke him.”

When the woman spoke of the butcher, she was obviously restraining her fear.