Chapter 161 Awkward

Xu Qinglang and the female corpse, including the middle-aged couple, all came out. The middle-aged couple looked beaming; obviously, with the female corpse's help, they had snatched the first incense.

Whether it was useful or not, it was still a good omen.

Even parents who aren't superstitious will give their child a zongzi and a rice cake before a big exam, symbolizing "gao-zhong" (high school success).

The female corpse's complexion wasn't very good. As the group walked back together, she lagged behind.

"Let's go for a late-night snack, how about barbecue?" Xu Qinglang suggested.

He owns a restaurant himself, but he certainly wouldn't prepare barbecue late at night.

Xu Niangniang's skin is too precious to be subjected to smoke and fire.

However, Xu Qinglang regretted the suggestion as soon as he made it.

Among this group,

there was a jiangshi and a living dead person who didn't eat worldly food.

Just imagine the scene at dinner: these two would sit there motionless, like clay statues in a temple enjoying the incense.

The image alone was enough to kill any appetite.

"You guys go ahead, we'll go back first," Zhou Ze said.

"I wouldn't want to trouble you," the middle-aged man said.

"It's okay, Uncle. You go eat, and they can take a walk by themselves."

Xu Qinglang pulled the middle-aged couple away.

Zhou Ze didn't rush to take a taxi; he walked along the sparsely populated road with the female corpse.

The weather was starting to warm up, and the evenings weren't as cold as before.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Ze asked the female corpse.

The female corpse had been listless ever since she came out of the Confucian Temple.

"Uncomfortable," the female corpse replied.

"Still haven't stopped menstruating?"

It's been two hundred years.

"..." The female corpse.

After a moment of silence, the female corpse finally spoke, "The statues in the Confucian Temple were staring at me; it felt weird."

"You think they were watching you?" Zhou Ze asked.

"Mm," the female corpse nodded.

"You think they were disgusted by you?"

"Mm," the female corpse nodded again.

"You think it's because you're a jiangshi, so you shouldn't have gone to that place?"

"Mm," the female corpse still nodded.

"The sage advocated teaching regardless of background." Zhou Ze smiled, reached out, and patted the female corpse's head. "You're a jiangshi, a type of existence that people and ghosts alike detest, but you went to the Confucian Temple to help people burn incense, which also contributed to their incense and popularity.

You think they were watching you;

maybe it's because of your special nature, so they were paying attention to you.

It's like if a husky suddenly appeared in a pack of prairie wolves; anyone would take a second look, right?

Of course, it's also possible that they're just a bunch of clay figures. It's said that their eyes are made from donkey dung balls, because that makes them look more lively and radiant.

Everything is just psychological pressure you're putting on yourself."

"But if they really were watching me, if they really did have a problem with me..." the female corpse was still hesitant.

"Then they don't deserve to be enshrined in the temple as those so-called sages!"

Zhou Ze said emphatically,

"A sage enjoys thousands of years of incense offerings; if he doesn't even have this much magnanimity, then what face does he have to sit on the altar table in the temple?

There's nothing to be afraid of from a fake sage."

The female corpse looked at Zhou Ze, a smile on her lips, and said, "Boss, what you just said was really domineering."

"That's right." Zhou Ze enjoyed his maid's flattery.

"But Boss, you're a ghost messenger; there's a destiny in the dark. For ordinary people, the consequences might not be great, but it's different for you.

Plus, you run a bookstore, which is a profession blessed by the sage's luck. It's really not good for you to slander a sage like that."

It was rare for the female corpse to confide these words to Zhou Ze; in the past, she would have been eager for Zhou Ze to court death.

Jump, jump, jump to your death so I can collect your corpse and grind down your fingernails into powder to drink in tea like pearl powder,

oh no, to feed the pigs!

"It's still that saying: If you don't have a guilty conscience, you don't need to fear ghosts... or sages knocking on your door."

Zhou Ze looked up at the street lamp and continued,

"In my past life, I treated people and saved lives, didn't accept red envelopes, didn't compromise my principles, and always adhered to medical ethics.

Even after becoming a ghost in this life, after borrowing a corpse and returning to life, I haven't done anything that goes against my conscience.

What is there to be afraid of?"

Zhou Ze took a deep breath and repeated, "There's nothing to be afraid of."

Upon hearing this, the female corpse's eyes showed contemplation.

Zhou Ze's words weren't a chuuni declaration; they were more like a warning to himself.

The two continued to walk aimlessly forward; the evening breeze was slightly cool but very pleasant.

Finally, the female corpse stopped and asked, "Boss, where are you going?"

Zhou Ze stopped and subconsciously looked around, stunned to find that he had actually walked to the entrance of a residential complex.

Familiar surroundings,

familiar security room,

familiar security guard sleeping on the job at night in the security room,

familiar express delivery lockers.

He had actually strolled,

naturally, walked back to the complex where he used to live.

Although he had been at the bookstore for a month, subconsciously, this was still his home.

Having grown up in an orphanage, he understood the meaning of home even more, and at the same time, he was even more attached to having a house.

Fortunately, when he bought the house, the price of housing in Tongcheng hadn't risen to the outrageous levels it would later reach. It was also because he couldn't wait to start preparing to be a mortgage slave after he started working that he actually picked up a bargain, making his colleagues who bought houses later very envious.

However, Zhou Ze couldn't even retrieve his old WeChat and QQ accounts. He couldn't do phone verification, and asking friends on his list to help him verify would either make them think he was crazy or scare them to death.

Even his house had been sold by the hospital after his death, and the money was donated to the orphanage in his name.

Zhou Ze didn't dislike this arrangement; after all, he had no other relatives in the world.

"This is my former home," Zhou Ze said to the female corpse.

"Then, shall we go up and take a look?" the female corpse suggested.

"It's already been sold," Zhou Ze said with a sigh.

"Just treat it as a revisit to an old place."

Zhou Ze nodded and walked over.

He entered Building 8, Unit 2, took the elevator, and arrived on the fifth floor.

Zhou Ze walked to the door of an apartment. The door was still the same door; the buyer probably hadn't had time to renovate it, right?

Even the mat at the door hadn't changed.

And the cactus placed at the door was still there.

Zhou Ze reached out and felt under the pot, finding a key.

Back then, he was often called to the hospital for emergency treatment at night, and he often forgot to bring his phone or keys, so he kept a spare key here to avoid being locked out of his house.

With a try-it-and-see attitude, he inserted the key and twisted it.

"Click..."

The door lock opened.

The door hadn't been changed,

nor had the lock?

Zhou Ze was a little surprised, pushed open the door, and turned on the light.

The furnishings in the living room were all the same.

Zhou Ze even saw his slippers, changed into them, and walked in. The female corpse followed him in.

"Boss, is it still the same as before?" the female corpse asked.

"Yeah, that's what I find most strange."

It really was the same as before,

but this didn't make sense.

After buying a house, wouldn't ordinary people throw away the things used by the dead?

How could they possibly keep everything, and preserve it all, without finding it unlucky?

Perhaps, the person who took over his house was just using it for investment? Not really living in it himself?

Zhou Ze sat down on the sofa. At this moment, he seemed to have become himself again.

Every time he returned home tired, he would watch TV and cook a late-night snack. The days were tight, but also fulfilling.

The female corpse boiled water, poured Zhou Ze a cup of tea, and then said,

"Boss, you've been dead for half a year, right?"

"Seven months."

Zhou Ze replied, but why did this conversation feel a little strange?

"But this place is so clean; it doesn't look like it hasn't been lived in for seven months," the female corpse reminded him.

Zhou Ze nodded; that was indeed the case. This place was very clean and must have been cleaned regularly.

But Zhou Ze found it hard to imagine that the person who bought his house was so lazy that they didn't throw anything away, didn't change anything, and even kept the door lock.

Zhou Ze pushed open the bedroom door and discovered that even his bedding and sheets were the same ones he used to use.

"Boss, I'm going to take a shower. Those old geezers in the Confucian Temple stared at me for so long that I got goosebumps all over."

"Go ahead, turn on the water heater first," Zhou Ze reminded her. "The bath towel is in the cabinet at the entrance of the bathroom."

If,

all the furnishings really were the same as before.

The female corpse went to take a shower. She was very clean; women were inherently clean. In her previous life, she was also from a respectable family. Lying in a coffin for two hundred years, unable to take a shower, how uncomfortable that must have been.

So she basically showered once in the morning and once at night, wasting a lot of Zhou Ze's water bill.

But when he thought about how she worked as a waitress in his shop without asking for wages, Zhou Ze endured it.

Pulling back the curtains, Zhou Ze stood on the balcony, looking at the glowing lights of the night in front of him.

Here,

was his home.

It hadn't changed,

but it no longer belonged to him.

Things were the same, but people were different;

a true sense of things being the same, but people being different.

Taking out a cigarette, he lit it, and Zhou Ze exhaled a smoke ring.

He felt a little lost. He thought he should be able to let it go, but in reality, he couldn't.

Just like when he personally threw that baby into hell to await reincarnation,

he now deeply realized that,

as a living person, his attachment to the yang world was truly hard to describe in words.

Even he, at this moment, had an impulse to buy his house back.

As for the money,

with his abilities, would it really be difficult to get some money illegally?

This impulse was finally suppressed. Zhou Ze knew that this was a path of no return, a Pandora's box. Once opened, he definitely wouldn't be able to stop himself.

Zhou Ze felt that he was a self-disciplined person, but at any time, he should avoid testing the "humanity and integrity" aspect as much as possible.

"Click..."

Unexpectedly,

the sound of a key entering the lock came from the door.

The owner was back?

Zhou Ze turned around and walked from the balcony back to the living room. He was thinking about how to explain his presence in this house to the owner, but he wasn't too nervous.

In any case, he was a ghost messenger. If he was finally caught by the police station for trespassing,

wouldn't that be too unfair to himself?

Self-discipline was self-discipline, but there was no need to self-flagellate.

This was, after all, his former home.

However, when the door was pushed open,

the person who walked in,

was actually a familiar figure.

Doctor Lin stood at the door, looking at Zhou Ze standing in the living room, a look of shock and panic on her face, and said,

"You... how are you here?"

Zhou Ze was also temporarily speechless.

The person who bought his house,

was actually Doctor Lin?

"Let me explain," Lin Wanqiu.

"Let me explain," Zhou Ze.

The two said this sentence together.

For Lin Wanqiu, she was very flustered because she felt that Zhou Ze had discovered the evidence of her "spiritual infidelity,"

and had found this place. She was his wife, but she bought a house left by another man, and she had been cleaning and tidying it up all the the time. Because of that man, she refused to share a bed with him and live a married life.

Doctor Lin felt very guilty.

Fortunately, this awkward atmosphere didn't last long,

because an even more awkward thing happened.

"Boss, I accidentally got my clothes wet,"

the female corpse said as she walked out wrapped in a bath towel,

walked,

into the living room,

and stood,

between Zhou Ze and Lin Wanqiu.