Chapter 22: Miss You
Chapter 22: Miss You
Feng Yusu turned his eyes away from Ning Zhe and remained silent for a long time.
After figuring out that the medium through which ghosts steal identities is 'cognition', many things that happened before were explained, such as the deaths of Xie Si Ning and Gu Yun Qing, Zhang Yang Xu's experience, and... Ning Zhe's previous deliberate ridicule and sarcasm towards Ye Miao Zhu.
The more things Feng Yuxu figured out, the more difficult it was to suppress the fear and chill in her heart. Looking back at the past with everything she knew now, she discovered that almost every inexplicable action of Ning Zhe had perfect logic and clear purpose, and behind every seemingly risky decision was a surety.
Ning Zhe seems to have never known what fear and confusion are. He looks at every death with a detached perspective. He thinks about every seemingly nonsensical event with absolute rationality, finds the key to solving the deadlock from the mess, and outlines the elephant in the room in the darkness.
What kind of person is he...?
The more Feng Yusu thought about it, the more he felt that Ning Zhe was so strange to him, so strange that he didn't seem like a 17-8 year old adolescent boy, or even like a "person".
"You deliberately provoked Ye Miaozhu, causing her to lose control of her emotions and become targeted by the ghost." Feng Yushu lowered her voice and asked softly, "Are you using her life to test your guess about the rules?"
"What else?" Ning Zhe smiled slightly: "If I were a ghost, in order to trigger my killing rules, my first choice would be to pick people who are alone, especially emotional idiots. Such people are the easiest to kill."
If Ning Zhe didn't find a way to disperse everyone and allowed the vigilant people to stay together, it would be difficult for the ghost to find an opportunity to strike, and Ning Zhe would have no way of verifying his guess about the ghost's killing rules.
Fortunately, Ye Miaozhu was emotional enough and stupid enough, and she used her own death to put an end to Ning Zhe's speculation.
"The puzzle has been solved. What we need to do next is to crack the rules here step by step." Ning Zhe said, letting go of Feng Yusu's hand, gently patted her tear-stained face, and turned to walk towards the house.
Looking at his leisurely back, Feng Yusu suddenly understood one thing.
The so-called rules are rigid and absolute. There is no ambiguity or lip service. Black is black and white is white. There is no gray area in between. The whole world operates according to the established rules of black and white. Complying with the rules is a prerequisite for survival in this world.
"God is no exception." Feng Yuxu murmured, "Yes, all beings must abide by the rules, even God is no exception..."
She took out her cell phone and checked the time. It was a little after 7 in the morning, but not yet 8, so it was still a long way from lunch time.
Ning Zhe walked confidently into the room where the portrait of the snake god was enshrined. This time, Feng Yusu was no longer confused. She already understood what Ning Zhe was doing, and Ning Zhe himself had always known it.
Just imagine what would happen if Ning Zhe continued to go from house to house and steal the offerings from the snake god like this?
At noon, every household would take out a small bowl of food before lunch as per custom, and come to the image of the snake god. They would see that the food offered in the morning had been eaten. Who had eaten it?
What would they think at that time? Was it a stray cat that stole the food? Was it an ignorant child? Or...
Ning Zhe could not control what people believed, and the same was true for ghosts, so he could only continue to expand the sample size, going from house to house non-stop, frantically stealing the offerings of the snake god, to maximize the probability of "that thing" happening.
"Just one household, no... just one person. Even if one person saw the eaten offerings and thought that they might have been eaten by the snake god, then..."
Ning Zhe looked up at the flying snake god in the portrait, picked up a piece of beans with chopsticks, put it in his mouth and chewed it: "Then, I have a chance to win."
This is of course an ideal situation. He is not sure whether it makes sense to do this, and whether this method will work is also unknown. However, he has no choice. In this strange world dominated by rules, it is very rare to find a way to "probably win". Even if there is a bottomless abyss ahead of this road, he must go on. Walking on the edge of the abyss at night is like walking on thin ice.
Ning Zhe's expression was calm, and his empty eyes were as lifeless as a pool of solidified stagnant water.
But the next moment, his expression suddenly changed, and his hands uncontrollably grasped his throat, looking extremely painful:
"Fuck, this is so hot."
A few minutes later, Ning Zhe walked out of the hall where the snake god was enshrined and called Feng Yusu to go to the next house together.
Women's minds are delicate. Feng Yusu noticed that Ning Zhe's eyes were slightly red, and it looked like she had just cried, but she quickly wiped away the tears.
For some reason, Feng Yuxu felt a long-lost sense of "security" in his heart when he saw this scene. Perhaps it was because he finally caught the weak side of Ning Zhe, or in other words, the human side of him.
It turns out that he would also be afraid and terrified, and he would cry quietly in a corner where no one was around, then suppress all his emotions and pretend to be strong and calm...
"So you can cry too?" Feng Yusu whispered to herself, and her eyes softened as she looked at Ning Zhe's shoulder.
At the same time, Ning Zhe was hissing and breathing in cold air, because the thing he had just eaten was not a bean at all, but a piece of green pepper disguised as a bean.
"If I were the Snake God, I would sentence you to blasphemy..." Ning Zhe cursed in his heart.
The two men, each with different thoughts in mind, walked lightly through the streets and alleys of Hejia Village, stealing offerings from the snake god from house to house. Although the amount they ate each time was not large, as the number of times accumulated, Ning Zhe inevitably felt a little full, and the growing boy could not withstand such a cramming method.
But in order to expand the sample size as much as possible, Ning Zhe still forced himself not to stop and continued to eat from house to house.
While stealing the offerings, Ning Zhe and Feng Yusu both remained highly vigilant, never letting each other out of their sight.
"I don't know how, but that ghost has shown the ability to 'teleport' within the range of Hejia Village. We must be on guard against it." Feng Yusu thought nervously.
She didn't dare let Ning Zhe leave her sight for too long. Who knew that it would be him who would open the door next time?
Ning Zhe was thinking about another question.
"Of the two mysteries of Hejia Village, only the one about the ghost has been accurately solved, and my guess about the snake god has not been verified yet."
"…What if I'm wrong?"
Furthermore, would the ghost really let himself go on like this without taking any action and just sit there waiting to die?
(End of this chapter)