Chapter 34

Ning Zhe walked into the house and didn't see his grandfather and grandmother.

He opened his phone and glanced at the time:

June 06, 2018, Lunar April 22, 07:27 AM.

At this time, his grandfather should have gone fishing at the reservoir outside the town, and his grandmother was probably setting up a stall to sell vegetables on the old street of Gubei Town. There was no one in the old house.

Ning Zhe came under the old camphor tree, brushed the fallen leaves off the wooden stool, sat on it, and lowered his head to examine himself. He found that his clothes were very neat, without any dust or bloodstains. The injuries he had suffered in He Family Village were all gone, and his physical condition was as usual.

Just like before he entered He Family Village.

If it weren't for the fact that he could still easily transform into a magpie and fly onto the branches, he would even think that his previous experience was a dream.

"By the way, Auntie... she shouldn't be dead, right?" Ning Zhe picked up his phone, unlocked the screen, and scrolled to the bottom of his contacts, but didn't see the contact noted as 'Feng Yushu'.

"So that's how it is?" Ning Zhe frowned slightly; he seemed to be able to understand the logic behind it.

Unlike Ning Zhe, who entered that strange place early in the morning, Feng Yushu was pulled into He Family Village around 7 PM. At that time, she was planning to deliver a cup of coffee to her husband's room. After pushing open the door, she entered that place.

"If the time point of returning to reality coincides with the time point of leaving reality, that means Feng Yushu hasn't entered He Family Village yet. She will return from that shattered world at the moment she pushes open the hotel room door after 7 PM tonight."

Then a thought couldn't help but surface in Ning Zhe's mind: "Does this mean that if I go to the village clinic now, I can see Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu who haven't died?"

And Zhang Yangxu, the time he entered He Family Village was also later than his own. Perhaps he and Xie Sining were still alive in the real world...

Thinking of this, Ning Zhe stood up, quickly walked through the courtyard piled with fallen leaves, left his old house, and walked onto the streets of Gubei Town.

Gubei Town is Ning Zhe's hometown, a backward rural town with no pillar industries. Everything in the countryside seemed quiet and peaceful. There were few people on the streets in the morning, only a few students who had just finished early self-study sitting in the breakfast shops that opened early, with hot steam drifting toward the sky.

The boss and the landlady of the breakfast shop were acquaintances of Ning Zhe. Before he even got close, he heard the auntie wearing a plaid apron holding a strainer and shouting enthusiastically toward this side: "A-Zhe, when did you come back? Is school on break? My daughter didn't even tell me..."

"No, I asked for leave to come back. Isn't there talk about the town being demolished? My family's land was requisitioned, but there's no one in the family who is literate, so I have to come back and take a look." Ning Zhe replied casually.

Using Alipay to scan 2.5 yuan for the breakfast shop, Ning Zhe took three steaming pickled vegetable buns and a cup of soy milk from the landlady.

Walking on the street while gnawing on a bun, Ning Zhe took out his phone and entered Feng Yushu's number from memory.

Before long, the call connected, and a calm and gentle female voice drifted from the speaker: "Who is this..."

"Hello, my name is Ning Zhe."

"Ning Zhe? Do I know you?" Feng Yushu's voice was a bit puzzled. There was a faint sound of wind coming from her side; she should have answered the phone in an open place like a car or a gas station.

"Then maybe I dialed the wrong number, sorry, sorry." Ning Zhe took a sip of soy milk and said: "But we will meet in the future, in another place."

"What are you talking about..." Feng Yushu was full of confusion, but Ning Zhe had already hung up the phone. Ning Zhe finished the bun in his hand in a few gulps, threw the plastic bag and the soy milk cup into the sanitation bin on the side of the road.

Taking advantage of the fact that there was no one around, he turned into a hidden alley, and subsequently, a black and white magpie flew out of the alley.

The place where Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu interned was the village clinic of Gubei Town, a designated medical insurance unit, located across the street from the Dragon King Temple by the bridge. Ning Zhe spread his wings and glided over the morning town. The warm sunlight fell softly, and the gentle breeze brushed through the gaps between his feathers, which was very comfortable.

Before long, Ning Zhe arrived above the village clinic.

He landed as if nothing had happened, just like the sparrows landing on the power lines nearby, and stood on a money tree potted plant in front of the clinic, quietly watching the scene inside the clinic.

The clinic, like the barbershop and the breakfast shop, was a shop that opened very early. It was not yet eight o'clock in the morning, and there were already patients waiting for treatment in the clinic. A woman holding a child sat on a bamboo chair, looking at the child's flushed cheeks with worry. It seemed the child had a fever in the middle of the night, which was why they came to see a doctor so early.

Ning Zhe had also been brought here by his grandmother early in the morning when he was a child.

Soon, Dr. Lin of the village clinic finished washing his face and brushing his teeth and walked out from inside. After simply asking about the symptoms, he inserted a mercury thermometer into the child's armpit.

"Let's take the temperature first. You sit for a while, I'll go buy some breakfast, I'll be back in a few minutes." After Dr. Lin finished speaking, he went out the door of the clinic, and at the same time, he saw Ning Zhe standing quietly on the money tree.

The worry on the woman's face holding the child faded a little, and she said with a smile: "A magpie standing on a money tree, Dr. Lin, you're going to make a fortune."

"Making a fortune from seeing patients is not a good thing." Dr. Lin laughed and teased the magpie on the money tree, finding that Ning Zhe didn't fly away, so he smiled even more brightly and strolled out the door.

Ning Zhe waited patiently until Dr. Lin returned home with breakfast and finished diagnosing the child's condition. Only then did the two young people, who could be called talented and beautiful, come to the clinic together to work.

It was precisely Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu.

For modern young people, as long as they can get up before 9 o'clock, it counts as getting up early.

Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu arrived just in time. Dr. Lin had just finished giving the child an injection, so he let Ye Miaozhu go to the pharmacy to get medicine according to the list, while Gu Yunqing consciously came to the entrance of the clinic and pushed open the gate that was originally only half open.

Subsequently, only a thud was heard from the pharmacy, and Ye Miaozhu, who had just pushed open the pharmacy door, fell in front of everyone.

Ning Zhe watched all this silently. He saw that inside the clinic, Dr. Lin, who was eating breakfast, and the woman holding the child were both startled by Ye Miaozhu's sudden fall. At the entrance of the clinic, Gu Yunqing's body also leaned powerlessly against the gate he had just pushed open, slowly sliding to the ground, and stopped breathing.

Both of them were dead.

"As expected..." Some things in Ning Zhe's heart were confirmed.

Just now, the time had come, and Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu from He Family Village had returned one after another.

But what returned were two dead people.

I wonder if Feng Yushu, who returns from He Family Village at 7 PM, will be a living person or a dead person? (End of chapter)