Chapter 167 Control Variables
Chapter 167 Control Variables
What is to the north of Zanju Town?
There are abandoned quarries that supply stone to the town's stonemasons, a cluster of air-raid shelters built during the Cold War, a clear stream flowing from the mountain stream through the Emerald Basin into Taojiang, and...
There is also Ah Zhen who died in the air-raid shelter three years ago.
And the face of the Four-Faced Buddha without any facial features.
Xiao Ke opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. He just looked carefully at the jade earrings on Ning Zhe's pink earlobe.
She recognized this style. Unlike those mass-produced light luxury products that target the middle class, each piece of this true top-level luxury product is unique and you will never forget it once you have seen it.
The pair of earrings on Ning Zhe's ears were auctioned at a public auction held by the Yongzhou First Court in August last year. Its original owner was a female director of a jewelry company named Wen, and it was the treasure of her store.
It was rumored that Director Wen liked to speculate in digital currencies privately and was extremely addicted. The company's originally healthy cash flow was often on the verge of breaking because of this, and she often needed support from her husband. This support lasted until the beginning of last year, when a mining disaster occurred and Director Wen lost all her fortune.
After the company filed for bankruptcy, Director Wen stopped running the company and went home to be a concubine. All the physical assets in her account, including finished jewelry and semi-finished raw materials in the warehouse, were sent to the judicial auction site, which became a hot topic at the time.
At that time, Xiao Ke was sitting on the sofa holding a tablet, watching the prices of each piece of exquisite jewelry being auctioned off, and his heart felt itchy as if it was being scratched by a cat.
Xiao Ke has the aesthetic taste of young people. He likes sparkling diamond rings and intricately carved platinum roses. In fact, he doesn't like jade very much, as he thinks it is old-fashioned and tacky.
But when she saw the price tag below the pair of jade earrings, which were the store's treasure, on the Internet and counted the long string of seemingly endless zeros... there was a moment when she felt that the transparent and restrained green light of the jade inlaid on the earrings was so beautiful, as if it was more dazzling than the most expensive diamonds.
Luxury goods themselves have no value; it is the price that gives them value.
But this false value is enough to deceive the eyes of vain people.
Just like now.
"What are you doing?" Ning Zhe raised his hand and grabbed her wrist that was reaching towards his ear with an expressionless face.
"Ah!" Xiao Ke was startled, as if awakened from a sleepwalking, with a flustered look and a bit anxious: "I'm not, I...I, I don't know."
"You'd better behave yourself and don't approach me without warning." Ning Zhe released her wrist and said, "I can only warn you once. If you do it again, I will kill you."
"Eh..." Xiao Ke was a little confused. When he looked up, he saw the gun 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 say anything, just glanced at her, then in front of the two of them he unloaded the magazine of rubber bullets, removed the bullets, and replaced them with steel-cased live bullets.
Xia Yubing was silent.
What she was thinking was why she didn't muster up the courage and seize the opportunity to take Ning Zhe's gun while he was changing the bullets.
It is true that there are ghosts in Zanju Town, but she feels that this guy who calls himself Ning Zhe is more terrifying than any ghost.
"It is normal for a vain woman to be greedy for luxury goods such as jewelry, but it is not normal at all if her greed is so strong that she directly reaches out to pick off someone's earrings in front of them." Ning Zhe thought to himself.
The upper corpse is greedy for treasures, which means that Xiao Ke’s upper corpse is actually not satisfied yet?
That's right, observing Gengshen is not a matter of one day or one night. According to the records in the books, it takes three times of observing Gengshen to make the three corpses frightened, and it takes seven times of observing Gengshen to make the three corpses completely extinct, thus achieving the result of long-lasting body and tranquility of the five spirits.
Strictly speaking, Xiao Ke did not observe Gengshen even once. Her three corpses just accepted bribes and gave up complaining to the sky tonight.
When the next Gengshen day came, the three corpses would roam around again, asking the heavens for their lives on her behalf.
But so what?
Ning Zhe was paid to do the job, and the commission he received did not include this internet anchor named Xiao Ke. It doesn't matter whose son he is or whether he dies or not.
Taking a deep breath, Ning Zhe sorted out his thoughts.
"Come with me and find Jiang Han." Ning Zhe said, holding up an umbrella and going downstairs.
Xia Yubing hurriedly followed.
Xiao Ke hesitated for a moment before deciding to go together. They didn't see Shen Qing while going downstairs. He was probably scared by Xiao Ke's resurrection, so he ran away in a panic. He left indoors, and in Te Rang's field of vision, there was only a shadow that suddenly appeared and disappeared, and then never appeared again. It was impossible to determine where Shen Qing ran to.
Fortunately, Ning Zhe doesn't care.
Two women and a man disguised as a woman walked quickly along the deserted country road. Occasionally, some human-shaped objects whose faces could not be seen passed by among the ruins on both sides of the road. Xiao Ke huddled beside Xia Yubing trembling with fear. She was already a little stressed out by these ghost things.
She didn't know if it was a psychological effect, but she always felt that something was following her, and her gazes moved along with the footsteps of several people.
It was as if they were not walking on a deserted and broken road, but were in the center of a crowded and bustling city.
"Ugh——"
The three of them walked in silence when suddenly a strange cry was heard from the tangled weeds beside the road. The sound was sharp and long, as if a newborn baby was breathing its first breath of air with difficulty and kicking and punching the midwife.
"Woo--Woo--"
The sound was getting closer, and the evening breeze blew through the weed-covered alley, bringing with it the scent of grass, trees, and dust, mixed with the slightly sweet smell of blood, which drifted into my nose.
"This voice..." Xia Yubing suddenly opened her eyes wide and turned her head to look in the direction where the crying sound came from, but she saw a figure in a crimson purple dress.
Ning Zhe took a step forward and pulled the trigger. With a dull gunshot, the spinning live bullet exploded in the grass, splashing blood, and the crying stopped abruptly.
A hairy skull fell at Xia Yubing's feet, splashing up dust.
Ning Zhe bent down and picked out a cat from the grass. Its body was pure black, except for its four white paws.
"Walking on snow!" Xia Yubing exclaimed.
"Your cat?" Ning Zhe thought about it. Before coming here, he seemed to have heard someone say that she brought a cat with her: "It's better if it dies."
"..." Xia Yubing gritted her teeth slightly. She almost blurted out a swear word just now, but she held it back.
Well, I didn’t curse because I have good manners, not because this guy has a gun.
"Go ahead and scold me if you want. There's no need to endure it." Ning Zhe picked up the black cat's body by its tail and said, "I won't lose a piece of meat if you scold me. If it makes you feel better, I don't mind."
This is not a lie, Ning Zhe really doesn't mind being scolded by others.
There was no need to care about such useless things as verbal attacks. In Ning Zhe's opinion, even if someone verbally attacked his entire family, it would not be as harmful as a direct slap in the face.
Ning Zhe is such a person. Ning Zhe thinks it is good like this and there is no need to change it.
As he spoke, Ning Zhe casually spread out the black cat's body on the road, exposing it to the moonlight.
Ning Zhe was an excellent shooter. The black cat named Taxue was shot in the head with one bullet. The limited lethality of the pistol was still considerable at close range. Its skull was blown off, and it was deader than dead.
He just stood beside Taxue's body, watching motionlessly. So Xia Yubing and Xiao Ke had no choice but to wait as well.
A few minutes later.
"What are you looking at?" Xia Yubing finally couldn't help asking.
"See if it has three corpses." Ning Zhe poked the soft belly of the cat corpse with the umbrella in his hand: "It seems that there are none."
Taxue died, and that was just death. There was no resurrection of the dead body, nor were there three corpses separated from the body.
why?
Because it wasn't human? Or because... it died west of town, not north?
It is very simple to get this result, just control the variables.
"Kill one more person each to the west and north of the town."
(End of this chapter)