Chapter 166: Controlling Variables

What is in the north of Zanju Town?

There is an abandoned quarry that supplies stone to the stonemasons in the town, a cluster of air-raid shelters built during the Cold War, a clear stream flowing from the mountain stream through the Emerald Urn Basin into the Tao River, and also...

And A-Zhen, who died in the air-raid shelter three years ago.

And the face of the Four-Faced Buddha that has no features.

Xiao Ke opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated, just carefully examining the jade earrings on Ning Zhe's pink-white earlobes.

She recognized this style; unlike those mass-produced light luxury goods that harvest the middle class, each of these truly top-tier luxury items is unique, and you won't forget it after seeing it once.

The earrings on Ning Zhe's ears were an auction item at a judicial auction publicly held by the Yongzhou First Court in August last year. Their original owner was a female director of a jewelry specialty company, surnamed Wen, and this was the treasure of her shop.

Rumor has it that Director Wen liked to speculate in digital currencies privately and was very addicted. The company's originally healthy cash flow often reached the verge of breaking because of this, and she often needed her husband to bail her out. This bailing out continued until the beginning of last year, when a mining accident caused Director Wen to lose all her family assets.

After the company filed for bankruptcy, Director Wen stopped running the company and went home to be a little pampered wife. All the physical assets on her account, including finished jewelry in the warehouse and semi-finished raw materials, were sent to the judicial auction, which even made it to the hot search at the time.

At that time, Xiao Ke was sitting on the sofa holding a tablet, watching exquisite jewelry being bid on round after round, feeling as itchy as if being scratched by a cat.

Xiao Ke had the aesthetic of a young person, liking shiny diamond rings and exquisitely carved platinum roses; she didn't really like jade, thinking it was old-fashioned and earthy.

But when she saw the price tag under the jade earrings that were the treasure of the shop on the internet, counting that long string of zeros that seemed to have no end... for a moment, she felt that the transparent and restrained green light of the jade embedded on the earrings was so beautiful, as if it were even more dazzling than the most expensive diamonds.

Luxury goods themselves have no value; it is the price that gives luxury goods value.

And this false value is enough to confuse the eyes of vain people.

Just like now.

"What are you doing." Ning Zhe raised his hand and grabbed her wrist as she reached for his ear with an expressionless face.

"Ah!" As if waking up from a sleepwalking dream, Xiao Ke was startled, her expression somewhat flustered, her emotions somewhat anxious: "I'm not, I... I, I don't know."

"You'd better be honest and don't approach me suddenly without saying hello." Ning Zhe let go of her wrist and said: "There's only one warning; if there's a next time, I'll kill you."

"Eh..." Xiao Ke was a bit confused. Looking up, she saw the gun held in Ning Zhe's hand.

Xia Yubing gently tugged at her sleeve and whispered: "Be careful, that's a real gun... although it's loaded with rubber bullets."

Ning Zhe didn't speak, just glanced at her, then unloaded the magazine loaded with rubber bullets in front of the two, ejected the bullets, and replaced them with steel-cased live ammunition.

Xia Yubing was silent.

What she was thinking in her heart was why she didn't gather the courage just now, seize the opportunity, and snatch Ning Zhe's gun while he was changing bullets.

It's true that there are ghosts in Zanju Town, but she felt that this guy calling himself Ning Zhe was more terrifying than any ghost.

"It's normal for vain women to have greed for luxury goods like jewelry, but it's not normal at all for the greed to be so strong that they reach out to take someone else's earrings to their face." Ning Zhe thought in his heart.

The Upper Corpse is greedy for treasures; does it mean Xiao Ke's Upper Corpse hasn't been satisfied yet?

That's right, guarding Gengshen is not a matter of one morning or evening. According to the records in the book, it takes three times of guarding Gengshen to make the Three Corpses tremble in fear, and seven times of guarding Gengshen to make the Three Corpses cut off forever, thereby obtaining the result of the body lasting forever and the five spirits being calm.

Strictly speaking, Xiao Ke didn't even guard Gengshen once; her Three Corpses just accepted the bribe and gave up reporting to heaven tonight.

By the next Gengshen day, the Three Corpses will still wander, asking heaven to kill her.

But so what?

Ning Zhe is here for money; the commission he received didn't include this internet streamer named Xiao Ke. Who cares if she dies.

Taking a deep breath, Ning Zhe sorted out his thoughts.

"Follow me, let's go find Jiang Han." Ning Zhe said, opening an umbrella, and walked downstairs.

Xia Yubing hurriedly followed.

Xiao Ke hesitated in place for a moment, but decided to go together. During the process of going downstairs, they didn't see Shen Qing. He was probably scared to death by the reanimated Xiao Ke and slipped away in a panic—he left through the interior, and in the Strange World's field of vision, only one shadow appeared suddenly and then disappeared suddenly, and then never appeared again, making it impossible to determine where Shen Qing had run to.

Fortunately, Ning Zhe didn't care either.

Two women and a man disguised as a woman walked quickly through the deserted country road. In the ruins on both sides of the road, humanoid objects whose faces could not be seen flashed by from time to time. Xiao Ke shrank tremblingly beside Xia Yubing; she was already a bit stressed by these ghost things.

I don't know if it was psychological, but she always felt that something was following them, and gazes moved as their footsteps moved.

It was as if the broken road they were stepping on was not a desolate, uninhabited road, but they were in the middle of a crowded downtown, shoulder to shoulder, bustling.

"Woo————"

The three walked silently, and a strange cry suddenly sounded in the messy weeds by the road. The sound was sharp and thin, as if a newborn baby was struggling to breathe its first breath, kicking and punching the nurse who delivered it.

"Woo—woo—"

The sound grew closer, and the evening breeze passed through the alley overgrown with weeds, rolling up the scent of grass and dust, mixed with a slightly sweet smell of blood drifting into their nostrils.

"This sound..." Xia Yubing opened her eyes wide, turned her head to look in the direction the cry came from, but saw a figure wearing a dark purple dress.

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Ning Zhe stepped forward and pulled the trigger. Accompanied by a muffled gunshot, the rotating live ammunition exploded a splash of blood in the grass, and the cry stopped abruptly.

A skull with hair fell to Xia Yubing's feet, splashing up flying dust.

Ning Zhe bent down and picked up a cat from the grass that was pure black, with only its four paws white.

"Taxue!" Xia Yubing exclaimed.

"Your cat?" Ning Zhe thought for a moment. It seemed he did hear someone say she brought a cat before entering here: "Better off dead."

"..." Xia Yubing bit her lip slightly. She almost blurted out a swear word just now, but held it back.

Well, not swearing is because she has quality, definitely not because this guy has a gun.

"If you want to swear, just swear, no need to hold it in." Ning Zhe picked up the black cat's corpse by the tail and said: "You swearing at me won't make me lose a piece of meat. If it can make you feel better, I don't mind."

This is not a lie; Ning Zhe really doesn't mind others swearing at him.

Verbal attacks are useless things that don't need to be cared about. In Ning Zhe's view, even if others cycle through his ancestors for eighteen generations with language, it's not as harmful as slapping himself directly.

Ning Zhe is just such a person, and Ning Zhe thinks this is very good, no need to change.

Saying this, Ning Zhe casually spread the black cat's corpse on the road, exposing it to the moonlight.

Ning Zhe's marksmanship is very good. This black cat named Taxue was shot in the head. The limited lethality of the pistol was still very considerable at close range. Its skull was lifted off, dead as dead can be.

He just stood next to Taxue's corpse, watching without moving. So Xia Yubing and Xiao Ke had to wait along with him.

A few minutes later.

"What are you looking at?" Xia Yubing finally couldn't help asking.

"Seeing if it will have Three Corpses leaving the body." Ning Zhe poked the cat's soft belly with the umbrella in his hand: "Looks like there isn't."

Taxue died, and that was just it. No reanimation, no Three Corpses leaving the body.

Why?

Because it's not a human? Or because... the place where it died is located on the west side of the small town, not the north?

It's very simple to get this result: control variables.

"Let's kill one more person on the west side and the north side of the small town."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 167 =====