Chapter 19
After entering the village, they put the Twisty Car back into the system panel.
Wei Cheng held Guanguan’s hand with his left hand, while his right hand rested on a small crossbow. At his waist hung a quiver packed full of sharp bolts.
He scanned the surroundings warily, feeling only that it was too quiet.
All along the way, the villagers’ doors were shut tight, and there was not even the usual sound of chickens crowing or dogs barking.
Wei Cheng lifted Guanguan up with one arm and said in a low voice, “Hold on tight to Brother. We need to get home quickly.”
The flesh on Guanguan’s little face tensed up as he held his breath. “Okay!”
The little black dog in the backpack also seemed to quiet down.
They walked southeast for more than ten minutes before finally seeing a few village houses by the roadside. After passing a stone bridge over a riverbed that had long since dried up, a lonely old house came into view.
“Is this Brother’s old home?”
“Yes.”
Perhaps because of the rainstorm and the extreme heat, the old lock, which had not been repaired in many years, was now completely rusted inside. Wei Cheng took out a pair of bolt cutters and, with hardly any effort, snipped the lock clean off. Then he selected a new heavy lock from the mall and hung it on the gate.
He knew this iron gate would make a huge noise every time it was opened, so he carefully controlled his strength and gently pushed it open.
Guanguan hurried in first, hugging the little black dog.
This house was not much different from the others in the village. It had high walls coated with lime plaster, a large yard, one side for growing vegetables, the other fenced off as a chicken coop and pigsty, and a few fruit trees planted in the back yard.
To enter the house, one had to climb more than ten steps. Inside was a very ordinary two-story building, with solar panels on the roof.
The first floor was fairly empty, aside from the kitchen and a storage room piled with odds and ends. The second floor, however, had two bedrooms and one bathroom.
Wei Cheng suddenly thought of the old days.
Every morning, Grandma had carefully wiped down every single tile in the house. So even after so many years, although the tile floor looked somewhat old, there was not a single hidden dirty corner anywhere. It was still extremely clean.
All at once, inspiration struck Wei Cheng. He thought he had probably guessed where Grandma had hidden the gold jewelry. Today they would clean the house first; tomorrow they could think about digging up the gold.
“Brother!”
Wei Cheng came back to himself at the sound of Guanguan calling him from upstairs.
He hurried over and saw Guanguan holding a display photo album in his hands. “Is this chubby kid Brother?”
Wei Cheng took it and looked. Smiling, he said, “It is. Grandma said this was taken when I was one year old.”
Guanguan gave him a thumbs-up. “Brother, you’re amazing. You were already so cool even when you were a baby!”
“So-so. Not as cool as Guanguan.” Wei Cheng smiled and pinched his cheek.
Then he said, “Guanguan, the house smells pretty strong. Brother might need to clean it. Do you want to go play in the safehouse?”
Guanguan straightened his little neck proudly. “Guanguan wants to clean too! Guanguan is the little sanitation monitor of Sunflower Class!”
“Sunflower Class?” Wei Cheng said. “Don’t tell me it’s just you and Wang Xiaotiao?”
“That’s exactly right!” Guanguan planted his little hands on his waist and grinned proudly. “Guanguan is the proper sanitation monitor, and Xiaotiao is the crooked sanitation monitor!”
Crooked sanitation monitor? Did he mean vice sanitation monitor?
Wei Cheng laughed so hard he could barely stand it. He rubbed his little bald head. “Okay then, Sanitation Monitor Guanguan, your task right now is to take the puppy into the safehouse, put away the toys we bought yesterday, and feed the puppy a little dog food!”
Guanguan raised a chubby little hand very solemnly. “Guaranteed mission accomplished!”
Once Guanguan and the puppy were inside the safehouse, Wei Cheng put on a mask and could finally throw himself into the work.
He opened all the doors and windows to air the place out, threw away the moldy bedding and clothes, as well as the rotten food in the kitchen and refrigerator.
Only after dealing with all that did he start spraying disinfectant everywhere, wiping down dust, and mopping the floors.
Right now, they could only stay in the safehouse continuously for a maximum of one hundred hours. No matter how cleverly they tried to game the system, if special circumstances arose, there would always be a few days when they had to sleep in the old house. So the house absolutely had to be cleaned properly.
He worked all the way until sunrise. By then, the house looked completely refreshed and was finally fit to live in.
That was when he clearly heard the new lock on the iron gate being fiddled with a few times.
Wei Cheng immediately became alert.
The gate was locked from the inside, so the person outside could not get in for the moment.
Wei Cheng deftly took out the small crossbow, then loosened the clothing tied around his waist and covered his hand with it. Moving lightly, he stepped out of the house and heard a middle-aged man shouting, “Did Granny Song come back?”
Wei Cheng did not relax his guard, nor did he answer.
“Granny Song? I heard someone in your house. It’s me, Ajun!”
Wei Cheng knew exactly who this Ajun was.
Every village had a man like this: an idle loafer who spent his days either gambling and drinking or going around other people’s homes scrounging food and drink.
And this Wang Ajun also had sticky fingers. The most infuriating part was that he only stole small things. The police station could lecture him for a few days, but in the end they could only let him go.
A few days later, he would steal again.
Then one night, several men suddenly jumped into his house. They threw a sack over his head and broke his left leg alive and by force. Afterward, he cried bitterly and shouted that he wanted to call the police. But there were no surveillance cameras in his house, and there were too many people in the village who hated him. Where could he possibly find the culprits?
What a scourge that just would not die—someone like him was still alive.
“Granny Song? Don’t stay silent. You came back from the city with your grandson, right? A lot of old folks in the village died during this period, and their sons and daughters didn’t even come back. Just look at that, a bunch of ingrates! They might as well have given me their retirement money. I’d have taken care of them in the village!”
Wang Ajun kept babbling on. “The village cadres helped bury the old people, but those cadres disappeared in the last two days too. And the villagers all keep their doors shut now. I knock, and they won’t answer. Granny Song, you must’ve brought back a lot of food from the city, right? Let me come in and eat a little, okay?”
After a long while, seeing that the people inside clearly had no intention of responding, Wang Ajun flew into a rage out of humiliation. “Old hag, so you’re not dead yet! Why didn’t that heat two days ago cook you and that little grandson of yours to death? Just because you moved to the city with your son and daughter-in-law’s compensation money, you think you’re city people now? Pah! If you’ve got guts, don’t come out. Let’s see who starves to death first!”
After kicking the gate one last time, he left while still cursing.
People like him only got worse the more you paid attention to them.
A worthless cripple whose body had been hollowed out by drink and lust could not climb the wall. And even if he somehow did get in…
Wei Cheng looked coldly at his crossbow. That would count as self-defense.
In the afternoon, Wei Cheng sprayed a lot of all-natural weed killer around the yard. The courtyard had been abandoned for too long. If there were snakes hiding in the weeds, they could bite Guanguan and the little black dog.
After finishing those chores, he was sweating all over too, so he carried several buckets of bottled water into the bathroom.
He had just checked the well water and found it extremely murky, with countless dead spiders and insect carcasses floating in it. Just looking at it made his scalp crawl. Wei Cheng made up his mind that from now on, he and Guanguan would not use well water for daily life. Anyway, with the money they currently had, buying living water was more than affordable.
Yesterday’s barbecue had left the two brothers deeply satisfied, so for dinner they decided to eat something a little lighter.
Wei Cheng chose a small basin of lively shrimp and razor clams from the mall. After cooking them, he made them into a cold lemon seafood dish. Guanguan, standing on tiptoe, picked out a dish of pan-fried tofu slices from the refrigerator himself.
Those two simple home-style dishes were paired with a steaming bowl of white rice.
Guanguan popped one smooth, sweet-and-sour shrimp into his mouth after another. “It tastes amazing!”
Wei Cheng ate with equal satisfaction. At the end of the meal, he even mixed the leftover tofu sauce into his rice and finished an entire bowl in just a few mouthfuls.
Once they had eaten their fill, Guanguan ran around in the safehouse playing with the puppy. Meanwhile, Wei Cheng selected several items from the mall’s outdoor supplies section and hardware section.
The self-defense weapons currently available in the mall all had their own strengths and weaknesses.
The small crossbow and compound bow he liked best and found most useful had the advantage at long range, and he was confident he could hit every shot. But in close-range use, unexpected situations were very easy to arise, and he might fail.
All kinds of long knives and straight blades were sharp and portable, but they required close combat, and at present, Wei Cheng’s biggest disadvantages were his strength and height.
In his previous life, it had been difficult for ordinary people to get their hands on scarce firearms. Although Wei Cheng had been a bounty hunter, he had only owned a single Beretta 92F pistol he had used for many years, and even then he had often faced the problem of insufficient bullets. When it really came down to it, no matter how good a gun was, it was useless without ammunition.
Fortunately, Cloud Mall had an abundant supply of bows, crossbows, and bolts. Right now, all he needed to do was sort different kinds of bolts into bags by type. Then no matter what situation arose in the future, he would be able to respond in time.
“Brother!”
Guanguan pounced onto his brother’s back and laughed. “Puppy, puppy wants to bite Guanguan’s little feet!”
The little black dog barked with a lot of spirit, but because it was so tiny, when it threw a little tantrum, its whole body would bounce up off the ground.
Guanguan was completely won over by the cuteness and could not resist running over, scooping the puppy up, and holding it high. “Puppy is so cute!”
The little dog wagged its tail happily and licked Guanguan’s little hand.
“Puppy! You just licked your butt!”
Guanguan’s eyes widened, and he hurriedly put the puppy down, deciding to take back his kindness and reflect on himself.
Watching this, Wei Cheng laughed and said, “All right, get ready. Brother’s going to bathe you in a bit.”
Guanguan was still small enough that he could just bathe in the safehouse using the bathtub they had bought.
Before sleeping, Guanguan and his brother followed their usual routine and opened the system panel to see whether the mission area had issued any new tasks.
When they saw the red dot on it, they were both excited and a little nervous.
[Mission Area Section]
[Daily Missions]
(1) Learn ten Chinese characters [1 character = 1 Twist Coin]
[Beginner Mission]
(1) Little House Owner participates in killing 500 zombies [1 zombie = 10 Twist Coins]
Five hundred zombies?
That meant five thousand Twist Coins—in money, that was five million!
[Reminder: A cute pet has been detected around the Little House Owner. Please give the pet a name promptly. Once the new pet moves into the personal information section, you may claim a Dog Health Gift Pack!]
The zombie-killing task was not difficult for Wei Cheng, but making Guanguan participate in it was somewhat tricky.
The moment Guanguan heard that naming the pet would get them a Dog Health Gift Pack, he became wildly excited. His two chubby little legs instantly turned into controlled weapons, kicking the blanket with loud thumps. “Brother! Brother! What should Guanguan name the puppy?!”
Wei Cheng pulled his thoughts back and said, “How about you say some names out loud and let the puppy choose for itself?”
Guanguan nodded at once. “Okay!”
Wei Cheng got up and picked up the puppy, which was inside the playpen chewing on a toy bone.
Guanguan even imitated an adult by clearing his throat first. “Puppy, how about your name is Lamb Skewer? Or Little Strawberry? Little Orange?”
“Watermelon Ball? Little Chicken Wing? Lemon Seafood?”
The little black dog stretched out one little paw. Its dog face even seemed a bit offended. “Woof!”
Guanguan listed all the tasty things he had eaten over the past few days. Then suddenly he said, “Dried apricot? Little Apricot?”
Who would have thought that the moment those words came out, the little black dog would wriggle right out of Wei Cheng’s hands and start wagging its tail in frantic circles on the floor. “Woof woof woof!”
Wei Cheng looked surprised. “It… it really seems to like that name.”
Guanguan smacked his little fist into his palm. “Then the puppy will be called Little Apricot Baby from now on!”
The little black dog grinned with its dog mouth open. “Woof!”
Wei Cheng found it rather amusing. According to what the people at the pet hospital had told him, this little black dog was a large-breed dog. If raised well, it could grow to be eighty centimeters to a meter tall!
A majestic, giant black wolfdog with the adorable name Little Apricot?
But as long as the puppy and Guanguan liked it, that was all that mattered.
Wei Cheng opened the Dog Health Gift Pack, and unexpectedly, it contained some valuable dog vaccines and medicine, plus lots of dog toys, dog food, leashes, and all kinds of protective muzzles.
It really was like being handed a pillow right when you got sleepy. This system was actually pretty humane.
—
Two days later, the overgrown weeds in both the front and back yard of the old house had finally been cleared away. And every day, that Wang Ajun had come to the gate cursing and begging for food.
Strangely, another day passed, and Wang Ajun still had not shown up by sunset.
That did not fit the character of a mangy cur like him at all.
Wei Cheng guessed that Wang Ajun had most likely already turned into a zombie.
And one zombie would always attract others, just like flies were always drawn together in swarms.
So after spending one day at the old house and regaining the right to enter the safehouse again, Wei Cheng decided to take Guanguan with him to deal with Wang Ajun.
He helped Guanguan put on a little helmet over his child-sized protective suit. “Are you scared?”
Guanguan shook his head. “Not scared!”
“If a lot of zombies appear together, you go straight into the safehouse, understood?”
“Understood!”
Wei Cheng gently pushed open the gate, but the moment he clearly saw the scene outside, his breathing stopped. At the same time, the sound of the rusty iron gate had alarmed the dozen or so zombies currently tearing apart Wang Ajun’s remains!
“Guanguan! Get back into the safehouse, now!”
