Opening the wooden door of the grocery store, Wang Ye stood at the entrance, stunned for a moment.
The small square table in front of the hall, which was originally empty, was now occupied by four people.
Sitting at the head of the table was the middle-aged man in white robes that Wang Ye had seen earlier in the day.
The other three were the dark-faced brawny man, the middle-aged man in black robes, and a woman dressed in bright red wedding attire.
As Wang Ye entered, the eyes of the four people instantly focused on him.
Fortunately, this time the four did not emanate any oppressive aura from their bodies. Otherwise, Wang Ye would have had trouble even entering the door.
With caution in his eyes, Wang Ye leaned against the iron door behind him, holding his backpack, and slowly walked into the shop.
The wooden door closed abruptly on its own without any wind.
Wang Ye had become somewhat accustomed to doors closing by themselves like this.
Under the gaze of the four people, Wang Ye skirted around the wooden table and slowly walked to the front of the counter.
Somehow, the lock on the door deep inside the counter had been opened. As Wang Ye moved forward, the old and dry door made a creaking sound.
The door...opened.
An old man leaning on a cane staggered out to the front of the counter. Just like the clerks in other shops, his body was stiff, his eyes vacant, gazing vaguely at Wang Ye.
Looking closely, the exposed skin of the old man was covered in purplish corpse spots.
Leaning his back against the wall, Wang Ye took out an ancient bronze box from his backpack and gently placed it on the counter. Then, with extreme speed, he rushed towards the outside.
Almost at the same time, the expressions of the four people at the wooden table became strange.
The doors and windows were tightly closed, yet a gust of wind blew up inside the shop, halting Wang Ye's footsteps and making it difficult for him to take another step forward.
The old man threw away his cane and picked up the bronze box reverently, walking towards the wooden door deep inside the counter.
With each step, the old man's body withered further. By the time he reached the door, there was almost no flesh left on him, just a layer of skin covering the bones.
The old man stopped at the door, turned his head to look at Wang Ye, whose steps were halted by the wild wind. The eyeballs in the skull of his skin-wrapped head fell out, constantly rolling on the ground.
The hollow eye sockets gazed at Wang Ye for several seconds. Then the old man strode through the door.
The wooden door slowly closed, and inside the shop, the wind...
gradually faded away.
And the four figures sitting at the wooden table had bizarrely disappeared.
It seemed that everything had returned to calm.
Wang Ye tightened his grip on the iron door behind his back and took two tentative steps forward, easily and freely.
Nothing supernatural happened either.
With flickering eyes, Wang Ye exerted force under his feet and instantly rushed to the door, pushed it open, and walked out.
As Wang Ye left, the doors of No.7 Grocery Store closed once again.
The broken signboard's lettering for "No.7 Grocery Store" also gradually disappeared, turning into a blank.
Was this task easier than he had imagined?
Murmuring to himself, Wang Ye heaved a sigh of relief. Perhaps this time he had been a little too cautious.
Removing the hemp rope from his shoulders and placing the iron door on the ground, Wang Ye loosened up a little and left the dark alley.
On the streets, there were far fewer scavengers.
Most of the shops had also started closing.
This was also one of Salvage City's rules - curfew after midnight.
Looking at the time, it was only 11:10 pm now, leaving enough of the remaining 50 minutes for him to leave this place.
Thinking this, Wang Ye felt somewhat invigorated.
This could be considered the most smoothly completed task since the Post Office appeared.
Pondering, Wang Ye arrived at the city gate.
The bandits were still leaning against the city wall, silently waiting for every arriving scavenger.
When Wang Ye came out, the bandits just glanced at him lightly and then withdrew their gazes, having clearly lost interest.
Ignoring the bandits, Wang Ye got into the Postal Car and turned the key in the ignition.
After returning, he could take a nice shower.
Stretching leisurely, Wang Ye murmured.
But soon, as if recalling something, Wang Ye's hands froze mid-air and his expression became solemn.
Given his usual vigilance, why was his mental state so relaxed when leaving at the city gate?
And when did the bandits ever look at people with such gentleness?
As for the postal car...
The steering wheel's skin-like feel from before, why was it now the same as a normal vehicle?
No, none of this was normal.
Sitting in the postal car, Wang Ye forcefully closed his eyes, making himself calm down.
The surrounding noises gradually faded away as the environment quieted down.
When Wang Ye opened his eyes again, he found himself back inside No.7 Grocery Store somehow, though he didn't know when.
The box on the counter was gone.
He himself was sitting in the wooden chair in the hall. The four figures of uncertain human or ghost origin had indeed left.
The iron door had been removed somehow and tossed on the floor.
According to his memory, he had only discarded it after going out.
An illusion?
Had he been sleepwalking inside the room the whole time?
Glancing at his watch, it was already 11:40 pm. A drop of cold sweat rolled down Wang Ye's forehead.
He had been in this room for a full 40 minutes!
If he had realized it any later, who knows what horrifying things might have happened after midnight.
Fortunately...
he had woken up.
Wang Ye breathed a sigh of relief and walked to the grocery store entrance, pushing open the door a second time.
Outside...
the figures of scavengers had almost completely disappeared.
The lettering on the signboard of No.7 Grocery Store gradually faded away again, turning blank.
Wang Ye looked around warily and hurried towards the city exit.
Sure enough, as it approached midnight, even the bandits' figures had vanished. They were only willing to gamble with their lives, not court death.
In Salvage City, no one could safely spend a night outdoors.
The postal car was parked not far away.
Wang Ye relaxed, walking towards it. Suddenly, looking at the ground, he froze again.
The ground was spotless, as good as new.
But how was that possible!
Just a few hours ago, he had killed a bandit right where he was standing now!
When that bandit was used to feed the copper statue, his blood had dyed a patch of the floor red!
There was absolutely no way his memory was wrong. Such a short time was not enough for the bloodstains to completely vanish from the floor!
Had he...not walked out yet?
Wang Ye gritted his teeth, his expression becoming solemn.
A double illusion?!!
This bizarre grocery store!
Wang Ye grabbed his bone-scraping knife and cut across his palm. The icy feeling spread through his whole body as blood continuously dripped to the ground.
His heart calmed down once more.
Everything around him became blurred and vague, somewhat unreal, as if it didn't exist at all, turning dark and profound, like a bottomless abyss.
In the darkness, a pair of huge eyes appeared in the void, their gaze icy cold, devoid of any human emotion, looking down at Wang Ye as if they belonged to a deity overlooking mortals.
After that...
the scene shattered. Wang Ye found himself back inside the grocery store again.
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
lan, the Luo family, tracked him down - along with the babies in their arms. Mo Xuan stared pensively at the paternity test results from over a dozen top institutions, both domestic and international, showing a 99.99% match between himself and the two baby girls. At 23, Mo Xuan, a doctoral student, had become the father of two three-year-old children. The kicker? The mothers weren't even the same person! He gradually realized he was being lured step by step into an elaborate trap designed by these two yandere sisters. "Be good, little Xuan. Sister's life belongs to you entirely." "Brother, if you try to run away, I'll have no choice but to tie you up." Mo Xuan: "Do whatever you want, ladies. I give up."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
