Chapter 744: Chapter 744: Sunday
“Takeout? But I didn’t order anything,” Shen Luo looked towards the living room door, suddenly realizing another matter.
Earlier when he feared there was a ghost in the house, he hadn’t locked the front door upon entering; this ant that right now the door was ajar, and anyone outside could easily push it open.
Realizing this, Shen Luo’s skin erupted in goosebumps. He grabbed a chair by the hand and stared at the door that was slowly being pushed open.
As the door was pushed further inward, no delivery person could be seen outside. The voice from before seed like it was his own illusion.
Dragging the chair, Shen Luo cautiously approached the door. Looking down, he saw a heavy delivery box outside his own door.
“Did soone really co by? Is this thing for ?”
With a mix of unease and curiosity, Shen Luo lifted the lid of the delivery box. Butterflies and moths flew out; the box also contained so insect cocoons, larvae, and at from so unidentifiable animal!
“What the hell?!”
Shen Luo was both frightened and infuriated. He didn’t understand why he was being targeted, as if caught in an invisible net that was tightly trapping him.
“Soone has been watching , those creeps spying on my life!”
After climbing out of the Ga Box, Shen Luo had been under imnse pressure, which completely erupted after seeing the delivery box.
“You think this prank is funny?”
He turned and went into the kitchen, grabbed a lighter and so flammable materials, and threw the flaming ball into the delivery box: “Burn to death, you disgusting bugs…”
Before he could finish, the fire-detection system in the corridor detected the flas, and powerful jets of water sprayed towards Shen Luo and the delivery box.
“Ah! FUCK!”
Soaked to the skin, Shen Luo jumped up angrily. The neighbors, alerted by the noise, opened their doors to look, but this ti nobody ca out to help. Their gazes towards Shen Luo were tinged with a bit of sympathy and caution.
“I’m not insane, my mind is fine, don’t look at like that!” Shen Luo knew his own explanations sounded feeble, and he helplessly returned to his apartnt to bring out a cleaning robot and began to mop up the water stains in the corridor: “I’ll get rid of this ss.”
Suppressing his discomfort, he picked up the delivery box and walked towards the elevator.
In the process of moving, Shen Luo discovered a compartnt at the very bottom of the delivery box.
An ordinary person would have to stir through the box, moving aside the cocoons and insects to find this compartnt, but Shen Luo had seen it accidentally because of the water sprayed from the fire-detection system.
“If I look inside, wouldn’t I be proving that I’m a creep too?” Despite what he said, Shen Luo couldn’t control his gaze and looked at the compartnt, where he found a piece of skin with hair on it.
That’s right, it was an entire scalp, which, due to being stored for too long, was already rotting and stinking.
“A murderer? I’m just playing a ga, how could I have attracted the attention of a murderer? What kind of deadly ga is this ‘Perfect Life’?”
Shen Luo frantically pressed the elevator button, planning to report to the police imdiately.
Inside the elevator, as the tallic doors slowly closed, Shen Luo suddenly felt suffocated as if all the oxygen had been sealed outside.
His heart hamred in his chest as he watched the numbers on the elevator display change. The sensation of butterflies flapping their wings once again surfaced in his mind.
Holding the delivery box with one hand, Shen Luo forcefully beat his head, trying to drown out the increasingly loud sound of fluttering butterflies inside his skull. To make matters worse, there was now movent inside the delivery box too!
The lid was pushed open by a force from within, and Shen Luo looked at the box, where among the butterflies, a human face was staring back at him.
“Welco back…”
The face, covered with butterflies, slowly rose from the box and got closer to Shen Luo as if it wanted to press against his face and enter his body!
“You must have the wrong person!”
Completely terrified, Shen Luo threw the delivery box to the floor and curled up in a corner of the elevator.
There was nowhere to hide in the enclosed space; the face kept creeping out from the delivery box, inching closer.
“Congratulations on waking up from the nightmare and completing another rebirth.”
“You got it wrong! You really got it wrong!”
“Hasn’t your mory returned yet? It is indeed a bit ahead of the scheduled ti. It’s a pity, many super criminals have been waiting for this mont; they can’t wait any longer!” The face stopped moving closer to Shen Luo, no longer sticking to him, and after a long while, as if it had discovered so amusing toy, it suddenly smiled.
The numbers on the elevator display began to change wildly, black blood oozed from the elevator cabin, and blood-red butterflies flew out from the corners. Shen Luo seed to have fallen into a nest of butterflies.
“What do you want? I’m warning you, stop ssing around! I—I’m incredibly unlucky! If I die and beco a ghost, I’ll haunt you for life!”
Shen Luo yelled incoherently. Suddenly he felt weightless, stepped into thin air, and then all the butterflies around him disappeared.
The delivery box had fallen to the ground at so point, and all of the insects inside were dead, covering the scalp.
The elevator doors slowly opened, and an old lady holding a bowl of chicken soup stood in the doorway. She saw Shen Luo crouched inside the elevator and kindly wanted to help, but then she saw the delivery box on the ground full of dead insect bodies.
“Sorry, I forgot sothing,” said the old lady before turning and walking away, leaving Shen Luo alone in the elevator.
“The hallucinations seem to be getting worse,” Shen Luo no longer dared to take the elevator and dragged the delivery box into the corridor, leaving the place where he lived.
Walking on the street, he looked at the clean and orderly road and felt an indescribable sense of loneliness and despair, unsure of what to do next.
“Maybe we should just call the police.” Shen Luo took out his phone, but then he saw the email from the doctor. After hesitating for a mont, he decided to go see the doctor first.
His mind was sotis clear, sotis chaotic. On the taxi ride, Shen Luo kept spouting nonsense, scaring the driver enough to record the whole trip live.
Once they arrived, the driver didn’t stick around for a second, not even waiting for Shen Luo to steady himself before driving off.
“Is he afraid I’ll die in his car?” Holding his forehead, Shen Luo walked towards a sowhat old building: “The address in the email is here, but why do I feel like there’s not a single person in this entire building? It’s so eerie and deserted.”
As he approached the steps, Shen Luo tried pushing the door in front of him.
The old door opened with a creak, not locked at all.
“Is anyone there?”
Shen Luo wasn’t sure of what to expect as he peered inside. The building was an old-style residential block, but its residents had long moved away, and the landlord had rented out the entire building.
The first floor housed a barbecue stall and a small shop, the second floor had tutorial classes and a dance studio, the third floor was a clinic, and it seed that the rooms from the fourth floor upwards were not rented out.
“Is anyone still living in such a remote place as Xinhu North Suburb?”
While Shen Luo kept having illusions at ho, here in this genuinely dangerous place, the butterflies in his mind strangely cald down.
“Doctor Bai?”
The decrepit floors were plastered with flyers. At first, Shen Luo thought they were just simple advertisents, but a closer look revealed they were rather disturbing.
These flyers were anti-science and anti-humanity, extrely radical, suggesting that modern humans were hastening their own destruction and that eternal life was rely a ruse to deceive humanity, possibly leading to extinction in the process of achieving it.
They despised all technology associated with eternal life, including the “Perfect Life” ga and consciousness transfer devices, calling for all those who had lost jobs and lives due to the technological wave to rise up in protest.
Every sentence on the flyers was dangerously provocative, and if soone were to post these in the Smart District, the Smart Brain would surely arrest them.
“Did I co to the wrong place, or is this the trend in Xinhu North Suburb?” Shen Luo felt the urge to back out. He ca for treatnt, not to look for trouble.
Backing away, Shen Luo had just turned around when suddenly there were footsteps from downstairs. He hadn’t yet figured out how to react when a middle-aged couple appeared in the corridor.
Not everyone has the sharp observational skills and agility of Han Fei, and Shen Luo, whose mind was sowhat muddled, stood still as the couple approached him.
“Are you here for the class?” The middle-aged couple looked simple and honest, giving the initial impression of being straightforward and kind.
“I’m here to see a doctor,” Shen Luo replied softly.
“But today is Sunday, and Doctor Bai never sees patients on Sundays.” The couple suddenly beca very enthusiastic, flanking Shen Luo on both sides, chatting with him and accompanying him up the stairs.
“Maybe I should just forget about it. I left the gas on at ho; I need to go back.” After the couple drew closer, Shen Luo slled a faint stench on them.
Their clothes and bodies were clean, but the sll seed soaked into their hair and sweat glands, impossible to wash away completely no matter how many tis you cleaned them.
“You’ve co a long way, it’s not easy. Just go up and take a look.” The middle-aged woman hooked her arm into Shen Luo’s, preventing him from leaving.
“How do you know I ca from far away?” Shen Luo’s question went unanswered as he was almost forcibly taken to the second floor.
The door to the tutorial class was pulled open from the inside, and inexplicably, the couple led Shen Luo into the room.
There was only one light on the podium inside the room. Doctor Bai, whom Shen Luo had seen online, was standing there, patiently explaining several processes of psychological deviance to the adults in the classroom.
The study atmosphere in the tutorial class was excellent, with the tutor teaching diligently and the students listening attentively, until Shen Luo entered the room.
“Shen Luo? You’ve co at just the right ti. I’m discussing so issues with everyone. Would you like to listen too?” Doctor Bai looked to be just of age, but Shen Luo absolutely didn’t believe that soone who could draw a simple diagram of brain anatomy by hand was only eighteen years old.
“Um…”
Shen Luo hesitated a mont as all the others in the class turned their gaze to him, their eyes not like those directed at a living person, more like looking at a fresh piece of at.
“Alright.”
Shen Luo pulled out a chair and sat at the back of the class.
Doctor Bai smiled at him in a friendly manner, then continued speaking, “Does everyone know why a week has seven days?”
“Ancient people, through observing the phases of the moon, discovered that it takes seven days from the half-moon to the full moon; and from the full moon back to half-moon also takes seven days; from the half-moon to the disappearance of the moon, and from the disappearance back to half-moon, still requires seven days. Seven days is exactly one cycle.” A woman sitting by the door answered. She wore glasses and bright red lipstick.
“And do you know why we have holidays on Sundays?” Tapping on the blackboard, Doctor Bai’s gaze moved to Shen Luo.
“According to the Babylonian calendar, the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of the month are ‘evil days’. Very bad things will happen on these days. So, the last day of the week is a day off, allowing everyone to stay at ho and not go out recklessly.” After the woman by the door finished speaking, she seed to realize sothing and turned to look at Shen Luo, “Interestingly, today is Sunday.”
After the woman finished speaking, all the students in the room focused their gaze on Shen Luo again, their expressions slowly changing from before.
“A week is a cycle, and Sunday represents the end and a new beginning…”
…
In the Ga Box called Zero Paradise, Han Fei was standing in front of the Monday door, knocking incessantly, but the Ghost Manager would not co out.
He tried opening the door but could not unlock the door to Monday. Out of options, he decided to try other doors, to see if he could find a way around to bring out the Ghost Manager.
One door after another, when Han Fei pushed forcefully on the door of Sunday, it finally opened.
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