“Boss, are we doing business today or not?”

Bai Yingying walked to Zhou Ze’s side, looking mournful.

Zhou Ze smiled, took a sip of water, and shook his head, saying, “They’re happy today, let them make some noise.”

Afterward,

Zhou Ze saw the hell money on the ground and the bloody ink paintings made by Tang Shi. He looked at Bai Yingying with pity and comforted her,

“Let them two be responsible for cleaning up tonight.”

“Okay!”

The silly girl Bai Yingying immediately cheered up.

“Pour me another coffee and get me a newspaper.”

Zhou Ze rubbed his right palm. The pain was slowly disappearing, but the sense of belonging to the key of the Gates of Hell was constantly increasing. However, this series of stimuli made him feel somewhat mentally exhausted.

He was already severely injured and had only just woken up not long ago. His body was still a bit weak and couldn’t withstand too much tossing around.

Bai Yingying diligently brought coffee and the newspaper, then scurried upstairs. Since the boss said he wasn’t opening today, she would go back to her room upstairs to play PUBG.

She heard that new gun skins had just been released, and she had already decided to pawn another of her funerary items to buy them.

It was a pity that Bluehole didn’t know of her existence;

otherwise, they really would have given her an award—True Core Gamer!

Zhou Ze continued to sit by the window, flipping through the newspaper in his hand.

The commotion over there was still going on. Zhou Ze originally thought that no more customers would come, but one actually did.

This gave Zhou Ze the illusion:

Ha,

are there really people not afraid of death?

The one who came was a regular customer, leading a corgi. She was Zhou Ze’s first customer when he opened the old shop. At that time, she had lost her beloved dog and found it back with Zhou Ze’s help.

Xu Qinglang had wanted to show off his twenty-odd apartments in front of her,

but she said that the resettlement housing in his area was provided by her real estate company, which depressed Xu Qinglang for several days. He felt uncomfortable showing off and falling flat on his face.

“Boss, it’s quite lively here.”

The young woman sat down in front of Zhou Ze.

Zhou Ze pushed the coffee in front of him over. “Never been drunk.”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t drink this. What’s going on with them?”

The girl pointed to Tang Shi and the old Daoist who were still fooling around.

“Oh, just opened, hired a circus troupe to liven things up.”

The girl smiled, not knowing whether she believed it or not. She walked to the bar herself, poured a glass of water, and came back, saying:

“Boss, remember I told you, if you open a new shop, I can invest.”

“A losing business, I’m afraid of dragging you down.”

“I just happened to be passing by here today and saw the sign for ‘Late Night Bookstore.’ I hesitated for a moment, and sure enough, you’ve moved here. Okay, this location is pretty good. I’ll just come in and say hello. See you next time.”

The girl came quickly and left quickly.

Zhou Ze picked up his coffee, took a sip, and continued to pick up the newspaper, but found a dark shadow appearing beside him.

Zhou Ze turned his head and looked out the glass window. An old woman was standing there, gaunt and expressionless.

She reached out and knocked on the window glass. The other party turned her head and looked over.

Still ignorant.

“Hey, are you done yet?”

Zhou Ze shouted at Tang Shi and the old Daoist over there.

They were also coming to an end. The old Daoist was panting and collapsed on the ground. Tang Shi was no longer laughing or crying.

Zhou Ze signaled Tang Shi to look outside his window. Tang Shi understood, walked out, and soon the old woman was forcibly driven into the shop.

“Can you send her to hell?” Zhou Ze asked.

He was a little weak now and couldn’t open the Gates of Hell.

“The kind that makes her soul fly away and scatter?”

Tang Shi asked.

“Forget it.”

Zhou Ze looked at the old woman and found that her eyes were dull. Except for looking at people at the beginning, she just stared blankly in one direction at other times.

Following her gaze, Zhou Ze found that she was staring at the clock hanging on the wall.

A customer came;

he was not feeling well now and was inconvenient to receive her,

but he couldn’t drive the customer out.

“Leave her in the shop. When my body recovers some vitality tomorrow, I’ll see if I can open the Gates of Hell and send her down.”

Every little bit helps. Zhou Ze didn’t dislike it, and he wouldn’t let it go.

“Who will watch her?”

Tang Shi asked.

Counting everyone, there were only four people in the bookstore who could watch a ghost.

Zhou Ze, Xu Qinglang, Tang Shi, Bai Yingying, and the old Daoist, who was only half-baked, didn’t count.

But Xu Qinglang had returned to his hometown today and was not here.

Zhou Ze’s body was weak and he couldn’t watch.

That left Tang Shi and Bai Yingying. Miss Tang meant, ‘you call your maid who’s playing games upstairs down here to watch the ghost.’ She didn’t have the leisure to help him with chores.

But Bai Yingying had just gone upstairs to play games, and Zhou Ze couldn’t bear to call her down again at this time.

This silly girl had pawned off her funerary objects to open a bookstore for him, and she was usually busy inside and out,

serving him to bathe and sleeping with him,

and he was really embarrassed to deprive her of her hobby time.

“Okay, just leave her here. It looks like she won’t run away.” Zhou Ze could only shrug.

“Heh, the ghosts around will be attracted because of you, but they will soon realize what this place is, and then they will start to fear, start to avoid, and finally, they will slip away when you are not paying attention.

Greed and fear of death are human nature, and ghosts are no exception.”

Zhou Ze pointed to the old woman, who was still staring at the clock, and said:

“I always feel like there’s something wrong with her brain. Do ghosts also get Alzheimer’s?”

“Haven’t done any research on that.”

“Forget it, if she leaves, she leaves. If I can’t send her directly to hell, I can’t just smash her to pieces today, right? I’m a courier station here, not a slaughterhouse.”

“As you wish.” Tang Shi prepared to go upstairs.

“Hey.” Zhou Ze called out to her.

Tang Shi didn’t stop and walked even faster.

Obviously, she knew what Zhou Ze wanted to say, something she was even more unwilling to do than watching a ghost!

“Boss, that was so awesome!”

The old Daoist climbed up. He had already closed the livestream, and the monkey also put down his phone and ran to the bar to find something to eat.

“Old Daoist, did you enjoy yourself?” Zhou Ze asked.

“I enjoyed it, I haven’t enjoyed myself like this in a long time.”

The old Daoist was so simple that Zhou Ze couldn’t bear it.

But Zhou Ze still said, “Clean up the place.”

“…………” The old Daoist.

Perhaps it was really because Tang Shi and the old Daoist made too much noise at night, but in short, for the rest of the night, apart from the old woman, no other customers came.

Zhou Ze leaned on the sofa, played with his phone for a while, and then looked at the newspaper. He was just an injured person now, and it was not very convenient to move around, so he could only obediently recuperate.

The old Daoist spent more than two hours cleaning up the shop, then sat down in front of Zhou Ze,捶着腰 (chuí zhe yāo, pounding his lower back), 呻、、、吟道 (shēn, yín dào, moaning):

“My back, it’s about to break.”

“Anyway, you’re already so old, it doesn’t matter if your back is bad.” Zhou Ze joked.

The old Daoist said aggrievedly: “I am old, but 春蚕到死丝方尽蜡炬成灰泪始干 (chūn cán dào sǐ sī fāng jìn là jù chéng huī lèi shǐ gān, the silkworm spins silk until its death, and the candle burns until it turns to ashes), at my age, I can help a few fallen women if I can.

People, living in this world, need to help each other.”

Zhou Ze was too lazy to pay attention to the old Daoist’s dirty talk. He turned his head, twisted his neck, and found that the old woman was still standing there.

The old Daoist couldn’t see her because he didn’t smear 牛眼泪 (niú yǎn lèi, bull’s tears), so the old Daoist didn’t know that a strange ghost had been standing in the shop all along.

And Zhou Ze, to be honest, was just distracted. After experiencing the Qing Yi Niangniang (Green-Clothed Goddess) temple god and the grand scene of that problem ghost official, Zhou Ze really couldn’t pay much attention to these small fish and shrimp.

However, this old woman was still here after several hours.

She was still standing in her original position, motionless, just staring at the clock.

Could it be that this old lady was in the clock business when she was alive?

But that’s not right either,

Zhou Ze’s clock cost a few hundred yuan, a cheap product, not an antique collectible, so is it worth looking at for so long?

At this time, Bai Yingying came down. She was done playing the game and looked very happy, she must have gotten a chicken dinner.

“Boss, let’s go upstairs and sleep?”

The silly girl was always so straightforward.

The old Daoist looked at Zhou Ze with some envy.

He suddenly felt strange in his heart. Was it that male ghosts who climbed out of hell all had this kind of good fortune?

When his previous boss opened a underworld shop in Rongcheng, every night beautiful women would actively come to sleep with him on time, which really made him and Xiaoqiang envious.

Xiaoqiang,

the old Daoist sighed.

“Yo, there’s still someone standing here.”

Bai Yingying saw the old woman, walked to the old woman, and waved her hand. The old woman remained unmoved and continued to stare at the time.

“Hey, hey, hey, look at me, if you don’t look at me, I’ll eat you.”

Bai Yingying leaned in front of the old woman, but the old woman still didn’t react.

“Boss, did you or that Miss Tang beat her stupid?”

“She’s been like this since she came in.”

Zhou Ze braced himself to get up and walked over with Bai Yingying’s support.

Just then,

the hour hand pointed to six o’clock,

“Dong… Dong… Dong… Dong… Dong… Dong!”

The clock began to ring,

The old woman, who had been looking dull, suddenly opened her arms and let out a hysterical laugh. The laughter startled Zhou Ze.

Not scared by the ghost,

purely the feeling of someone suddenly shouting at you from behind when you are walking on the road.

“Hahahaha, it’s time, it’s time!

I can die,

I can die,

I can finally die!”

The old woman jumped up and down excitedly,

as if she had been liberated,

happy, like a child in her seventies.

“Grandma, are you out of your mind?” Bai Yingying said inexplicably, “You’ve been dead for a long time, your soul has been out for a long time.”

The old woman heard the words,

suddenly stunned,

looked around in disbelief,

she should have realized that this was not her home,

this was a strange place,

a strange bookstore.

The old woman pointed to her face and looked at Bai Yingying in confusion:

“I died a long time ago?”

“Yes.” Bai Yingying said as a matter of course.

The old woman suddenly趴在了地上 (pā zài le dì shang, collapsed on the ground),

and cried loudly,

“I died too early, it’s over, it’s over!

I died too early, I died too early,

it’s completely over,

it’s all over…………”