Chapter 85: Sitting on the Ground and Raising the Price

Early on the morning of June 10, Shi Yurou got up early. After washing, she took off her pajamas and changed into a plain long dress. Her entire temperament became a bit more restrained, just like a red plum blossom with falling snow.

Why else would they say: if you want to be pretty, wear mourning clothes.

Although she couldn't hold a grand funeral for her father because of the will, the most basic mourning clothes still had to be worn.

After changing her clothes, Shi Yurou came to the dressing table, combed her long black hair straight in front of the mirror, pinned it up with a white silver pear blossom hairpin, and applied light makeup on her beautiful face, drawing a faint daily makeup.

Shi Yurou, who had finished tidying up, organized the dressing table, opened the door of her room, and went to call her brother to get up.

While Ji Yunying was washing in the bathroom, Shi Yurou leaned against the window and looked at the lush forest below.

She and her brother didn't usually live here, but were studying in Yun Ducheng, and didn't know much about this manor. Shi Yurou only discovered after being reminded by Lan Shiwen yesterday that the ornamental forest around Chuyun Shanzhuang was actually full of paper mulberry trees, plus the rattan chairs and paper mulberry paper that were replaced one after another in the study...

The successive related events made her heart unable to calm down for a long time.

Suddenly, a startling rainbow cut through the sky, like a stone falling into the water, disturbing the girl's already complicated heartstrings. A swift shadow that was too fast to be captured by the naked eye darted out from the deep forest, pounced from the side directly at Shi Yurou's shoulder, and knocked her to the ground with a bang.

"Ah!"

Shi Yurou, who fell on the floor, screamed instinctively, but saw the shadow that pounced on her emit a wisp of ethereal smoke. The gray-white feathers faded away, turning into a man with a face like a ghost.

"... Mr. Ye Yao?" Shi Yurou couldn't help but be stunned, doubt and fear emerging from the bottom of her heart at the same time: "How did you get here... why?"

"It's not just me who came," Ning Zhe said, grabbing Shi Yurou's left hand: "Your dad is here too."

Ning Zhe said, took out a folding knife from his arms, and the sharp blade directly cut the red string tied to her wrist. The bracelet with 4 copper coins fell into his hand.

Ning Zhe cut the red string again, stuffed 2 coins back into Shi Yurou's hand, changed again while holding the other 2 copper coins, and the man who pounced on Shi Yurou turned into a peregrine falcon with gray-white wings, clutching the red string with 2 coins in its sharp claws, and flapped its wings away from this small building.

From his appearance to his departure, Shi Yurou was confused the whole time. What just happened was really too much for an ordinary female college student who had never been in contact with a Strange World event, and it was no longer a category she could understand.

However, just as natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes will not wait for you to take all safety measures before breaking out, the arrival of a Strange World event will not change because of a person's understanding or not.

Whether you understand it or not, the ghost is there, and the rules are there. Survival or death, it's that simple.

In the short time after Ning Zhe left in a hurry, a kind of indescribable "sense of alienation" began to spread in this manor.

It was a very discordant feeling, like seeing a piece of white paper hanging on the wall in an art exhibition, or an empty classroom without students, or the water in a swimming pool becoming as deep as a trench... It seemed that nothing had changed, and it seemed that something irreparable had happened.

"Sis! Did you unplug the router? Why is there suddenly no internet..."

Shi Yurou turned her head and saw Ji Yunying walking out of the corridor with an electric toothbrush in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. He was used to brushing his short videos with his mobile phone while brushing his teeth and going to the toilet, but he didn't know what happened just now, and several refreshes showed that the network was disconnected.

"Strange, why doesn't mobile data work either..." Ji Yunying walked to Shi Yurou, who was sitting on the ground and hadn't climbed up yet, with a confused look, and asked suspiciously: "Uh... why are you sitting on the ground?"

However, Shi Yurou seemed to ignore his question completely. Ji Yunying only saw his sister's body become stiff because of extreme shock, her shoulders and ankles were trembling uncontrollably, and a kind of emotion called "fear" appeared on her usually charming and moving face. "Yunying, run, run..." Shi Yurou bit her lip tightly, raised her hands tremblingly, and pointed behind him: "Be, behind..."

Ji Yunying turned his head, and his curious gaze met a pair of empty eye sockets without eyeballs.

That was a face that both siblings were very familiar with, their father's face. The shriveled and dehydrated skin was tightly attached to the surface of the bones, and the pale lips didn't know whether they were bitten by insects or something else, exposing a cracked gap, and the bright red gums were exposed from it. In the empty eye sockets, it wasn't that there were no eyes, but that both eyeballs had shriveled and fallen off, hanging on both sides of the cheekbones by two shriveled optic nerves like tree roots.

"How could it be..."

The electric toothbrush in Ji Yunying's hand was still buzzing and trembling, and the mobile phone screen was still looping a short video of a dance student dancing in a short skirt. The festive waist drum accompaniment was played from the speaker. The noisy music made this small building submerged in the forest even more dead and silent.

Shi Yurou's lips opened and closed slightly, but she couldn't say a word. Extreme fear made her body limp, and she didn't dare to look directly at her father's terrifying face. Shi Yurou's stiff gaze slowly moved down, from the neck full of age spots to the weird belly that was bulging round, and the withered, eagle-claw-like hands.

In the old man's left hand, he was holding a small cloth bag tied tightly with a thin string.

Shi Yurou was stunned, and suddenly thought of the child statue in the study for no reason. It seemed that the child was also holding such a small cloth bag in his hand.

"... God of Wealth?" Such a vocabulary popped up in Shi Yurou's heart.

But the God of Wealth didn't seem to notice them. Only two empty eye sockets looked far away, which was the direction of Yunmeng Marsh.

It was also the direction the peregrine falcon left.

=9+Shu_ba

The God of Wealth faced the direction Ning Zhe left for a long time, finally lowered his head, looked at Ji Yunying, who was closest to Him, with empty eye sockets, and silently raised a hand, reaching out to him.

Immediately, a chilling coldness rushed from Ji Yunying's tailbone to his heavenly spirit.

The God of Wealth turned around and looked at Shi Yurou, who was paralyzed on the ground. The empty gaze seemed to be able to penetrate her chest and directly examine the beating heart inside.

Both of them stood still and didn't dare to move. Then, the God of Wealth nodded, clenched his outstretched palm into a fist, and turned to go downstairs.

The process of Him going downstairs didn't make any sound, as if He was floating down instead of walking with His legs. It wasn't until the extremely discordant sense of alienation finally faded that the siblings came back to their senses and walked to the balcony railing on the second floor to look downstairs.

Only to see the God of Wealth still holding the small cloth bag tied with a thin string with one hand, floating toward the main gate of Chuyun Shanzhuang in a weird form of near-translation.

"He's gone..." Ji Yunying breathed a sigh of relief, his whole person paralyzed on the balcony as if his soul had been drained.

Shi Yurou's tense nerves also relaxed slightly. She turned to look at Ji Yunying beside her, and suddenly asked suspiciously: "Yunying, your bracelet..."

Ji Yunying looked down when he heard this, only to see that the red string that had never left his body since childhood was still tied to his left hand, but the 4 copper coins originally threaded on the red string were missing 2 at some point.

Shi Yurou opened her hand, and a cut red string was held tightly in her palm, and the 2 copper coins threaded on it were also gone.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 86 =====