Midnight Bookstore

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

“What’s wrong?” Zhou Ze frowned. He noticed the burning smell too.

“Nothing, I feel like going to the toilet, you can leave first!” Old Dao immediately left the restaurant.

Zhou Ze looked at his hand. He did not go after the man. He hailed a ride to go back to the bookstore.

—

Old Dao went to the side of the road and took out a piece of joss paper inside his pants. The joss paper had turned red. It soon turned into ashes and scattered in the air as the wind blew.

It was a piece of joss paper that Old Dao’s ancestors had been passing down for generations. As for why he had kept the joss paper inside his pants, it was a secret that he could not afford to tell anyone.

However, what happened just then left an imprint in Old Dao’s mind.

He lowered his head and looked at the walnuts now stuck together because of the heat.

The walnuts were burned into his flesh, too.

“Damn it, boss, I never thought I would bump into your old friend in Tongcheng over two thousand kilometers away.”

It was no longer a coincidence that he had ended up coming here…

——

It was like how Zhou Ze had a strange feeling when he saw the young man that was struggling to eat porridge in the background in Old Dao’s clip.

It was not because the man was suffering from anorexia. It turned out that they were actually the same kind.

He was not the only unique existence in this world!

It explained why the faceless woman yelled at Zhou Ze so furiously, Why are you allowed to leave too?

It implied that someone else had managed to escape from the faceless woman before Zhou Ze.

The old man with black fingernails that was involved in a crash, whom Zhou Ze had tried to save…

It turned out that the world was not as calm and peaceful as he first thought.

——

It was already one in the morning when Zhou Ze arrived back at the bookstore. He cleaned up the broken pieces of glass in the washroom and boiled some water to clean himself with towels.

He decided to ask someone to install a shower in the washroom. For someone with an obsession with cleanliness, not being able to shower was like a torture to him.

He went to the second floor and set the temperature on the freezer. He laid down inside it and closed his eyes. It was time to bid farewell to his fatigue and the worries he had during the day.

It was a peaceful sleep.

——

The next morning, Zhou Ze went to brush his teeth and wash his face after waking up. He opened the shutter of the entrance and looked at the restaurant opposite him. It was still closed.

On the other hand, it was clearly unwise to contact Doctor Lin for the time being. He had lost his wife and Xu Qinglang.

Zhou Ze quickly shook his head. Why would he have a thought like that?

Xu Le was still influencing his thoughts. That must be it.

Zhou Ze had not eaten since last night. He took out his phone to order a takeaway and asked the restaurant to give him extra vinegar.

Around twenty minutes later, a young man in a yellow uniform showed up in a scooter. The man came in through the door and placed the food on the counter where Zhou Ze was reading a book.

“Thank you, that’s pretty tough, still delivering takeaways during New Year,” Zhou Ze said.

“It’s tough for you too, eating takeaways during New Year,” the young man responded.

“…”

Zhou Ze felt like an arrow had just hit his knee. He lifted his gaze and glanced at the young man. He seemed to be in his twenties.

“It’s a bookstore?” the young man observed his surroundings, “A place where I can just sit down and read the books? How much do you charge?”

“Based on how long you stay,” Zhou Ze opened up the takeaway box.

“Cool!” The young man sat down on a plastic stool after taking the novel Battle Through the Heavens from the shelves. He seemed to be enjoying it.

Meanwhile, Zhou Ze had emptied the vinegar with one go. Somehow, the vinegar was quite tasteless, as if Zhou Ze had gotten used to the sourness of Xu Qinglang’s plum juice.

He immediately wolfed down the food. While he was eating, the same, strong disgust rose inside his stomach.

Zhou Ze grabbed his throat to stop himself from vomiting. Finally, after some struggle, the disgust slowly faded away. Zhou Ze wiped his mouth and coughed heavily.

“Brother, take it slow! My grandmother would say that you’re the reincarnation of a person who died of hunger!” the young man said while reading his novel.

Zhou Ze rolled his eyes at the man. He leaned back into the chair and panted heavily.

-That goddamned Xu Qinglang, why is his restaurant still closed today?-

Zhou Ze decided that if the man still did not show up in the afternoon, he would just break into the restaurant and see if there was any plum juice or bitter gourd juice around. Otherwise, he would have a hard time eating anything.

The young man seemed to have stopped taking takeaway orders. He had been reading the novel for an hour.

“Huh, did you smell something burning?” the young man suddenly sniffed and walked out of the bookstore.

Zhou Ze did not treat it seriously. The young man might be using it as an excuse to leave if he was unwilling to pay. He did not really care if the bookstore was making a loss or a profit.

However, the young man yelled as soon as he went outside, “Crap, it’s on fire!”

That immediately alerted Zhou Ze. He went out of his bookstore and raised his head. Huge smoke was coming out of the fourth-floor of the shopping mall.

It was where the cinema was!

The cinema was the only reason why people still came to the shopping mall. He saw quite a crowd in the shopping mall, since it was New Year.

“Come on, we have to lend a hand,” the young man sprinted toward the cinema.

Zhou Ze hesitated for a few seconds. The fire was quite big, but it would never reach his bookstore. He was resisting the urge to go and save the people.

He could not remember how many times he had gone to the scene during an emergency to save people’s lives when he was still a doctor, but he had decided to get rid of the habit recently.

However, after struggling for a little, Zhou Ze decided to follow the young man instead. He still could not control the urge!

—

Many people were running down the stairs, only Zhou Ze was running up.

Even though the shopping mall was mostly deserted, it was still located in an urban area. It would not take long for the fire brigade to arrive.

Not many people would go to the cinema during the day, but there was still quite a crowd. When Zhou Ze reached the fourth-floor, the smoke was a lot thicker. In addition to that, the fire was oddly huge too. It was unlikely that the fire was caused by an accident!

However, now was not the time to think about the cause of the fire. Zhou Ze saw the young man carrying an old lady out of the thick smoke.

The man smiled when he saw Zhou Ze, revealing his white teeth. He immediately turned around and went into the cinema to save more people.

The fire had not spread from the cinema, but it was out of control inside the cinema.

Zhou Ze did not hesitate further. Since he already came, he had to do something. He immediately ran into the smoke.

Cough cough…

It was quite reckless to run into the smoke without any protective gear. He might even put his own life at risk, instead of saving others.

As such, Zhou Ze knew time was of the essence. He just needed to bring any person he stumbled into inside out of the fire. There was nothing much he could do. He had to leave the rest in the hands of the professionals when the fire brigade arrived.

Gasp…

Flames sprouted out as soon as he opened the door to the second hall, forcing Zhou Ze to back away temporarily.

He could hear someone crying inside the hall.

Zhou Ze clenched his teeth and dashed into the hall. The whole place was burning. The ceiling, the walls, and the ground were all on fire. Since it was a confined space, the place was covered in thick smoke.

People were more likely to die from smoke suffocation in a fire rather than the heat.

Only when a fire broke out would the people realize how important the annoying reminders about the procedures to follow if a fire was to take place were.

As soon as Zhou Ze went into the hall, he saw two people lying on the ground.

One was an adult in a suit. He was coughing while lying on the ground. He seemed to be struggling to rise to his feet.

The other was a boy around the age of ten. He was laying unconscious on the ground. It was difficult to tell if he had only fainted, or he had already died of suffocation.

“Help…help me… please…” the man in a suit raised his head and looked at Zhou Ze.

Zhou Ze decisively went past him. He put the kid on his back and made his way toward the exit.

He was already feeling a little dizzy. It was quite obvious that he could not hold on for much longer without the appropriate gear.

However, as soon as he went for the exit, he tripped and fell to the ground as someone was grabbing his foot. The kid fell to the ground too.

“Save…save me first… I’ll…I’ll give you money…”

The man was on his last breath, but he was holding Zhou Ze’s ankle firmly. He knew he could not last any longer, as he was having trouble breathing. It felt like his lungs were burning.

Zhou Ze’s head started spinning when he fell to the ground. He almost fainted. He immediately bit his tongue, forcing himself to stay awake.

Zhou Ze used his other leg to kick at the man’s hand and his head.

The man finally let go after a few kicks.

Zhou Ze struggled to his feet, and carrying the little boy on his back, he quickly left out of the hall.

After making his way out of the thick smoke and reaching safety, Zhou Ze fell feebly to the ground. The kid he was carrying fell off too, but Zhou Ze subconsciously used his body as a cushion for the kid.

The fire brigade had arrived. They were working hard to put out the fire. Some were rushing into the smoke.

“There’s a person in the second hall still,” Zhou Ze grabbed a fireman that was running past him and said.

“Got it,” the man nodded and ran into the fire.

Zhou Ze lay on the floor and panted heavily. The young man whose yellow uniform was scorched black was trying to catch his breath too. The two exchanged glances with one another before they both chuckled.

The medical personnel arrived too. A bunch of nurses and doctors came. Zhou Ze was so tired that he did not even bother to see if Doctor Lin was among the doctors.

He clenched his teeth and rose to his feet. He glanced at the kid whom a doctor was attending. The kid’s chest was rising and falling steadily. He should be fine.

Meanwhile, Zhou Ze saw the firemen carrying a few people out of the fire. Some were dead, some were still alive. The man in a suit was lying still on a stretcher. He was not breathing.

Zhou Ze did not feel guilty. He had no reason to feel guilty.

He was risking his life trying to save someone in the fire. He had the right to decide who he was going to save.

He did not have the strength to carry both the kid and the man out of the fire. If he chose to help them both, he would have ended up dying in the fire, too.

The body he had claimed once belonged to Xu Le, a nerd who did not even have the strength to truss a chicken. He was not Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Besides, he almost died in the hall because of what the man did!

He struggled to his feet and rejected the offer of a nurse to check the condition of his body. He went to the washroom on the other side of the shopping mall and splashed the cold water onto his face.

He finally managed to catch his breath. He raised his head and looked at his reflection in the mirror.

He suddenly noticed the faint outline of a human slowly appearing behind him.

It was the man in the suit. He was glaring at Zhou Ze with obvious hatred.

He kept murmuring, as if he was asking Zhou Ze why he had left him behind.

Under certain circumstances, when a person died, there was a certain chance that they would turn into a vengeful spirit.

The man had just died. His spirit was still turning into a ghost. It would most likely take seven days.

He was not a ghost yet, he was still in his embryonic form.

However, Zhou Ze was able to notice its presence because of his special capabilities.

The man had great hatred for Zhou Ze because Zhou Ze had chosen not to save him. His strong hatred had turned him into a vengeful spirit!

“Hehe, how interesting,” Zhou Ze smiled.

He continued to splash water onto his face in the basin as he exclaimed, “Oh, humans…”