Free Web NovelThe bullet traced a thin line through the air, hitting the man square in the forehead, traveling through his skull, and exiting the back of his head. As his body tilted backward, it left a splattered mark of red and white on the alley wall.
A certain comrade of justice once said, "When a person is killed, they die."
Although this statement sounds a bit strange, it's something that aligns perfectly with the rules of this world. The man was shot and killed by the burly man, so he died.
His pupils shrunk to pinpoints, his eyes wide and round. His body, dressed in work clothes, lay in a pool of blood, like a pile of mud.
After the gunshot and the dull thud of the man's body hitting the ground, the alley fell into a brief, deathly silence. Then, the burly man holding the gun was the first to snap back to reality, sneering, "Hilarious! I thought he was something special!"
A guy who gets knocked down by a single shot dares to act like a hero for justice?
As he spoke, the burly man turned his gun towards the owner of the small shop and said with a gloomy face, "There was a small interruption just now. I hope you don't get any bad ideas because of it."
Gulp—!
The owner swallowed hard, looked at the dark muzzle still emitting smoke, and then looked at the man lying in a pool of blood outside the door, shaking his head like a rattle.
Before the man was shot, he hadn't expected the burly man to actually kill someone. But now, seeing a life vanish before his eyes, he was truly scared. His brain short-circuited, completely unable to think.
So, the "zero-dollar purchase" continued.
However, Hua Xieyu suddenly lost her earlier cheerful demeanor and became unusually quiet. Even when taking raw stones from the display shelf, she was extra careful.
It was as if she was afraid of disturbing something.
"Hey Hua, is something wrong?" A burly black man noticed something unusual about Hua Xieyu and asked her through the gaps in the display shelves.
Hua Xieyu, suddenly asked, flinched slightly, but quickly composed herself and smiled sweetly at the burly black man, "No!"
Of course there was!
The man's death made her feel an unusual fear. A bone-chilling coldness rose from the depths of her heart, causing her soul to tremble. Such deaths were too common in Liming City, so much so that even local news outlets couldn't be bothered to report them. But the moment the man fell into a pool of blood, something seemed to truly change.
"I was just thinking that after finishing this job, I can buy a lot of things I want, like those clothes, bags, and shoes that seem to be floating before my eyes. I just got lost in thought for a moment, hehe."
As if feeling guilty about something, Hua Xieyu added another explanation.
After hearing Hua Xieyu's words, the burly black man teased her a couple of times and didn't take it to heart. Hua Xieyu had lied. She had indeed seen something.
It wasn't clothes, shoes, or bags, but the man's bloody, contorted face and wide, unwilling eyes just before he died. That gruesome scene seemed to be seared into her mind, constantly replaying like a Nightmare.
They seemed to have come alive, everywhere, hidden in the corners just outside her line of sight, occasionally making faint noises, reminding people they were there, but never allowing themselves to be seen.
Hua Xieyu extended her weak Spiritual Sense to its maximum. Spiritual Sense detection: everything was normal.
But she always felt like something was watching her.
It seemed to be a deeply dark, formless flame, filled with chaos and madness, flickering. It was just outside the range of her Spiritual Sense detection, less than a micrometer away.
There were faint noises by her ear, seemingly the sound of wind swirling trash and debris in the alley, or perhaps something whispering.
Scolding, condemning, cursing.
Someone died because of you!" No one spoke. But everyone in the alley seemed to be hallucinating, hearing such a sentence.
In an instant, it was as if everything within sight became an enemy. The rules of the entire world were rejecting their existence in a silent, yet suffocatingly oppressive way.
Although the three burly men were also Psychic, their Spiritual Energy fluctuation levels were even lower than Hua Xieyu's. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to use firearms to rob a small shop.
Low Spiritual Energy fluctuation levels resulted in dull Spiritual Sense.
They noticed the abnormality a little later than Hua Xieyu, but they did notice it. The unease that rose in their hearts made their movements when taking the jade raw stones more cautious.
The small shop fell into a deathly, eerie silence.
Why is this happening? It was just an Uncle who thought too highly of himself who died. So many people like him die in Liming City every year!
It wasn't me who did it, why should I be blamed?
Damn it, he wouldn't suddenly come back to life, jump up, and shout 'Give me back my working-class Grandpa's life!' and kill us all, right? Hua Xieyu thought uneasily and resentfully.
She felt a little wronged, and a hint of inexplicable guilt.
That feeling was like seeing a bullying incident and walking by with her head down, witnessing a petty theft and turning a blind eye, encountering an elderly person who fainted...
...but worrying about being extorted and keeping her distance. None of these were particularly serious mistakes, but she would suddenly remember them in the middle of the night, blushing with regret and shame.
However, despite feeling wronged, she silently grabbed a top-grade jade raw stone and put it in her backpack. Life comes first, money is tied for first. That's the kind of person she was.
It's just that the situation is
a bit weird, but it doesn't stop me from making money!
~~~~
Hua Xieyu grew up hustling in the Liming City night market and had seen all sorts of treasures. With the enhancement of her Spirit Mark 【Evil Spirit Seed Sheng Cai Gui】, she had become an expert in appraising treasures.
When it came to judging the quality of jade raw stones, she was completely at ease and never made a mistake. Her backpack wasn't large and didn't hold many jade raw stones before it was stuffed full.
It's not good to stay here long, it's about time to sneak away. With her backpack full, Hua Xieyu muttered to herself, put on her backpack, and walked towards the leading burly man.
"Elder brother, I'm pretty much done here. If there's nothing else, I'll take off first?" "Leaving already?" The burly man looked at Hua Xieyu, then at the backpack on her back, and frowned.
The jade and jade raw stones that small backpack could hold probably accounted for less than one-twentieth of the total amount in the small shop.
She's suddenly asking to leave now, could it be... The burly man thought.
Noticing the growing suspicion in the burly man's thoughtful eyes, Hua Xieyu quickly explained, "Elder brother, don't misunderstand. I'm a timid person, I'm just a little scared."
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Speaking of this, she paused, turned her head to look at the man's body outside the alley, put a hand to her mouth, lowered her voice, and said, "That Uncle is very strange. After he died, I always feel like something is off, it makes my hair stand on end. I really can't stay any longer."
Anyway, the most valuable goods are all in my bag, worth much more than half. Hua Xieyu added in her heart. She had indeed promised the burly men to split it equally with them, but how could she possibly split it equally?
The value of jade is never determined solely by quantity and size. The three burly men had limited skill and didn't know how to appraise goods, so they couldn't blame anyone else.
Three muscle-brained idiots want to split treasures equally with me, Grandma? Don't they even bother to find out who's the boss in this Liming City night market!
Perhaps also sensing the uncomfortable and strange atmosphere after the man's death, the burly man believed Hua Xieyu's words without much thought and nodded, "Alright then, it was a pleasure working with you. If there are similar jobs in the future, remember to call us brothers, and we'll all get rich together."
"Certainly, certainly!" Hua Xieyu forced a smile and replied. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
As she spoke, she casually took out a handwritten business card with a red ghost face drawn on it from her pocket and handed it to the burly man. "This is my contact information. If you have any big jobs and need help, remember to call me."
"Also, if you encounter any trouble when selling things, you can also find me."
Hua Xieyu watched as the burly man took the business card she handed him, put it into his pocket without suspicion, turned around gracefully, the corners of her mouth slightly curved upwards, and stretched.
Big brothers, work hard to make money. As for me, Grandma, I'm going back to get my beauty sleep first! ----
After Hua Xieyu left, the three burly men also quickly finished their "big business" and rapidly left the scene. Thus, a not-so-common, yet quite reasonable, vicious robbery incident in Liming City came to an end. Everything seemed to be over.
However.
Every participant in the incident still felt themselves shrouded in a massive shadow. As if something terrible was quietly approaching.
The owner of that small shop was so scared he seemed to have lost his soul. He sat slumped behind the counter, looking at the emptied shop, like a statue.
It wasn't until Hua Xieyu and the three burly men had left for a long time that his fingers moved slightly. Immediately after, one hand rubbed his temples, and the other reached towards the counter, skillfully finding the box of cigarettes.
Click!
With a soft click, the lighter's flame lit up in the darkness, illuminating the owner's slightly plump face, and then extinguished. Only a spark remained, flickering like a crimson eye.
"Hoo—!" Accompanied by a puff of smoke exhaled, a strange sound echoed in the darkness.
"I didn't expect that guy to actually shoot. I wasn't careful... Tsk, this is bad. I definitely won't be able to get back before half past twelve..."
He muttered to himself, slowly stood up with the cigarette in his mouth, and walked out of the shop door to the body that had been soaking in blood for about half an hour.
He squatted down, his eyes meeting the lifeless eyes of the corpse. After a few seconds of silence, he sighed with a complex expression, "Ah, no matter how many times I go through this, seeing myself like this still feels very uncomfortable..."
His tone of voice carried a hint of regret, as if he had just lost something not very important, but something he was reluctant to discard. Immediately after, he reached out and gently placed his hand on the corpse's shoulder.
The next moment, a wisp of black flame rose from the corpse's chest. Then the flame spread at an alarming speed, engulfing the corpse in the blink of an eye.
Under the flame's shroud, the corpse quickly deformed and melted like an ice cube being burned at high temperature. Finally, everything turned into pure Spiritual Energy, flowing along the man's arm and into his body.
After the entire corpse and all the blood on the ground were completely consumed by the black flames, the man withdrew his hand, looked up in the direction Hua Xieyu had left, and sighed.
"Ah, I'll go find the guy who shot first, then go find Hua Xizhuang."
As he spoke, he stood up and walked out along the alley. After only a few steps, a ball of black flame appeared at his feet. The black flame swirled upwards with a "Whoosh!", completely enveloping his body.
Taking another step, like being reborn from fire and shedding a cocoon, the black flame dissipated in a breath, and he returned to his ordinary appearance, medium build, and listless look.
When a person is killed, they die, that is the rule of nature. A life for a life, that is the rule of society. He likes to do things according to the rules, so everything has just begun.
Da Chunyang Palace backyard, Lan Yue Cave.
After listening to Lu Yibei's account, Zhang Huainan, who was rummaging through healing potions on the display shelf, paused and turned around, asking, "You mean, when you were visualizing the Quanrong Hunting Chart, you saw a white wolf, so the Spirit Mark you condensed also became a..."
...white wolf?"
Lu Yibei placed her hands in the gap of her legs, supporting herself, and sat obediently on the meditation cushion. Hearing Zhang Huainan's question, she shook her head and corrected him, "No, no, not a white wolf, it's a white dog!"
Zhang Huainan pondered for a moment, turned back, and while continuing to look for medicine for Lu Yibei, explained, "In ancient times, there was the White Wolf Kingdom, which was a descendant of the Quanrong. They called themselves 'Er Bai Quan'..."
"Ah? Er Bai Quan? Isn't that still a dog?" Lu Yibei mumbled.
Zhang Huainan glared at Lu Yibei out of the corner of his eye. Seeing that she obediently shut up, he continued, "The 'Er Bai Quan' mentioned here is not the dog that people recognize today."
"In the era when the Quanrong tribe flourished, dogs were not completely separated from wolves as they are now. In fact, you could say they were wolves mixed within human tribes, and the Quanrong tribe took the 'Er Bai Lang' as their totem, revering it as the White Wolf God. Quanrong was a derogatory term used by the Central Plains against them, not their own name."
"You visualized the Quanrong Hunting Chart and condensed the White Wolf God Spirit Mark. That's a great success. Don't be ungrateful after getting a good deal." "Woof woof—!" Just as Zhang Huainan was speaking, he suddenly heard two barks from behind him, as if agreeing with his words.
"Strange, where did the dog come from?" he muttered as he turned around, slightly stunned.
He saw Lu Yibei holding a tiny puppy in one hand, not much bigger than her palm, like a snowball. She looked at him sideways and said faintly, "You're saying this thing is a wolf?"
Zhang Huainan looked at the puppy's tail wagging like a propeller, gritted his teeth, and forced the word "dog" that was about to come out of his mouth back down his throat, then calmly said, "Yes, it's a wolf!"
Lu Yibei, "?"
Oh my god, this person! At such an old age, how can he still tell lies with his eyes wide open? Do you believe I'll throw a dog at you and blow you up?
Just as she was complaining inwardly, Zhang Huainan threw a bottle of Alchemy potion over. "Here, try this bottle first. It should probably heal your injuries."
"Probably? Try?" Lu Yibei took the dusty ceramic bottle, her eyes wide. "No, you're healing someone! How can you use words like 'probably'?"
"If you go to the hospital and the Doctor tells you when prescribing medicine, 'For your illness, you probably need to try XXX medicine first,' wouldn't you panic? Would you dare to use it?"
Zhang Huainan glanced at Lu Yibei and said calmly, "Then this old man is out of options. This old man doesn't know what these potions are."
"Is that strange?" Zhang Huainan's chin lifted slightly. "This old man hasn't been injured or used medicine for over forty years. How could I remember what these are?"
"Anyway, there are no poisons. At worst, I'll try them all." Lu Yibei, "
