Chapter 1 Midnight Street

Midnight on the streets,
Streetlights glow yellow,
People wander in fear,
The weather is cold, with wind like knives.

Zhou Ze also felt cold.
He didn't know where he was again,
But he knew one thing:
This was... the human world.

He was dead, but he had returned.
He didn't know what he should do,
He could only mechanically and numbly continue walking forward.
He didn't have the energy to think about too many other things right now,
Like the place he had just been,
Like the old man he had saved before the car accident,
Like the faceless woman in a red dress in the pool,
Like... his fingernails.

He had returned; it should have been a joyous thing. But even when people occasionally walked by, even when he greeted them as loudly as he could, no one could see him or hear him.

He was ostracized and isolated by this world.
Those who haven't experienced being in "solitary confinement" won't understand the pain of being completely isolated. And for Zhou Ze, the whole world was now his prison, covered with a layer of black cloth.

No one could see him,
And no one could communicate with him.
He couldn't pick up anything solid.
Even,
The wind could easily blow right through him.

He was so weak,
The term "frail" was not an exaggeration at all.
And what shocked and horrified Zhou Ze the most was that,
He could see faint specks of light constantly flowing out of his body.
In other words,
His body was slowly fading away.

Perhaps in another quarter of an hour, he would completely disappear, erased without a trace.
He didn't know how all this had happened, but he knew that his time was truly running out.

In the Eight Immortals, Tieguai Li (Iron-Crutch Li) entered the body of a person who had starved to death, which became the image passed down.
Zhou Ze had also heard stories about ghosts "borrowing a corpse to return the soul." He also wanted to borrow a corpse to return his soul. He was cold and flustered. He needed a body to cling to.

He didn't even care who that person was.
People are always selfish at this time, and Zhou Ze was no exception. Moreover, he really couldn't take it anymore.

However, every time he prepared to approach someone, flames would appear above that person's head and shoulders, preventing him from getting close and even harming him, accelerating his "evaporation."

He was tired and numb,
He was waiting for his end,
Waiting for his demise.

As someone who had already died once, facing death again made him more calm.
Moreover, in Zhou Ze's current situation, staying here longer meant enduring more torture.

"Creak..."

Ahead, there was a shop with its lights on, seemingly a bookstore, as rows of bookshelves could be seen through the glass door.

Someone pushed the door open and walked out. It was a man wearing a hoodie. The man was wearing a hat, obscuring his face. He looked around for a moment and then hurriedly left.

Of course, the man couldn't see Zhou Ze standing less than five meters away.

Originally, Zhou Ze didn't feel anything was amiss, but soon after the man left, Zhou Ze suddenly sensed a warm aura from the bookstore.

Yes,
A warm aura.

This warmth confused Zhou Ze, but he was like someone about to freeze to death suddenly finding a box of matches. Even if he knew the matches couldn't save his life, he would still strike them to feel the last bit of warmth before dying.

Zhou Ze walked towards the bookstore. His body passed directly through the glass door and continued inward, reaching the back of the bookshelves.

Behind the bookshelves,
Laying there was a person,
A handsome young man, probably around twenty-three or twenty-four years old. Because the store had air conditioning, he wasn't wearing many clothes, just a long-sleeved shirt and a thin jacket.

He was lying on the ground, but Zhou Ze sensed a feeling of warmth from him, like a poor man finding a bag of gold coins on the street at night.

This attraction was irresistible, and Zhou Ze had no right to refuse it!

Zhou Ze walked over and crouched down in front of the young man.
He didn't know how to enter the other person's body, but he knew how to touch the warmth he needed.

He reached out and placed his hand on the other person's chest.
Zhou Ze saw his fingernails slowly embed themselves into the other person's body.

It was a strange feeling, different from the "breeze" that had blown through his body when he was walking on the street. This was a fusion, a fusion using his fingernails as a medium.

Slowly, Zhou Ze began to enter the other person's body, and the two began to merge.

………………

"Xu Le! Wake up, wake up!"

Zhou Ze was woken up by a series of shoves—no, more accurately, he was "stirred." He opened his eyes and found himself sitting behind the bookstore counter, with his hands pillowed on top of it.

"Hey, wake up!"

The woman's voice was sharp and shrill, with an air of command.

Lifting his head, Zhou Ze looked at the woman in front of him—no, more accurately, a girl. She was probably a high school student, still a bit immature despite being a big girl.

"Hey, Xu Le, what do you mean by this? You've got some nerve, haven't you? You want to make my parents and my sister look bad, right? You dared to not come home last night!

Who gave you the guts!"

Xu Le?
Who was that?

Zhou Ze spread his hands out blankly, finding them very smooth. His own hands used to have calluses from practicing surgery instruments for a long time, but these hands didn't.

"Hey, I'm talking to you!"

The girl slapped the counter, her momentum fierce.

Zhou Ze frowned slightly, stood up, and walked to the glass mirror by the door. He saw his reflection, an unfamiliar face—no, he had seen this face before, the face he had seen last night.

This body,
Is mine now?

"Hey, what do you mean? My parents are angry, and my mom is still throwing a fit at home. Let me tell you, everything you eat, drink, and use now is from my family. What right does a live-in son-in-law like you have to put on airs in my house?

Who are you trying to impress!

If you dare not come home again tonight, believe me, I'll come over and smack you!"

The girl raised her palm as if to strike, but she suddenly realized that the man in front of her, her "brother-in-law," wasn't dodging and begging for forgiveness as usual. Instead, the look in his eyes made her feel a little scared.

At that moment, she looked at the time and realized it was already 7:30.

"Hmph, I'm going to school now. I'll settle the score with you tonight!"

The girl stomped off in anger.

Zhou Ze slowly sat back down in his chair behind the counter. There was an old laptop here, and next to the laptop was a cell phone.

Even now, he still hadn't adjusted to the transition of his identity.
He was Zhou Ze, a famous young surgeon in Tongcheng, and he was an orphan.

But now,
He had become this person.
What did that girl just say?
I am... a live-in son-in-law?

Have a wife?
And a mother-in-law and father-in-law?

And judging by the attitude and tone of his little sister-in-law just now, this "brother-in-law" of his really fit the fine traditions of ancient times.

A live-in son-in-law, commonly known as a door-to-door son-in-law, was not only looked down upon by his wife's family but also by everyone around him in ancient times. His status was almost the same as that of a criminal. During the Han and Tang dynasties, those who were forced to garrison the borders often included live-in sons-in-law.

Picking up the phone, he didn't set a password, and Zhou Ze didn't know if he was lazy or didn't dare to set a password. At least, at this time, it made it easy for Zhou Ze to open his WeChat and QQ.

There were very few people on the QQ list, just some junior high school classmates, high school classmates, and college classmates, and then there was a family list with only one person, noted as "Wife."

He opened the chat history with her on QQ, but it was empty.
Okay,

Zhou Ze opened WeChat and tried searching. He found the woman noted as "Wife." There were replies here. Basically, Xu Le was asking things, such as what to eat tonight, what to prepare tonight, how much money was needed for goods, how much the bookstore had sold recently, and how his body was doing.

And the other party's replies were often very perfunctory and aloof,
Using:
"Oh"
"Yeah"
"Okay"
To replace everything.

Zhou Ze threw the phone aside. This relationship was a bit complicated. He suddenly looked at his palm. His fingernails were no different from ordinary people.

But in the events of saving the old man who pinched him before the car accident, freeing himself from the faceless woman, and entering this guy's body, his fingernails played a crucial role.

Thinking of something,
Just then,
Zhou Ze found that his fingernails were slowly lengthening and becoming pitch-black and translucent. There was even a faint black mist lingering on the fingernails.

"Hoo..."

He breathed a sigh of relief,
Closed his eyes,
And when he opened them again,
His fingernails returned to normal.

From morning to noon, Zhou Ze sat there trying to adapt to his new identity and smoothing over the discomfort brought about by the change in identity. He didn't eat lunch, and Zhou Ze didn't know if he forgot or simply didn't feel hungry.

This was still Tongcheng. Zhou Ze's previous home was in Chongchuan District, while he was now in Gangzha District, not far away.

It wasn't until the afternoon that Zhou Ze sighed and silently stood up, "Since I'm here, I might as well settle down."

He began to try to clean the bookshelves, trying to find something to do first.
The old man who strangled him before his death had said "he was discovered," and the faceless woman in hell had said "you will be caught sooner or later," causing Zhou Ze to feel a sense of crisis.

His current state could be considered "barely surviving." Being resurrected from the dead was a lucky thing, so he cherished it. At least, before he fully understood the situation and grasped enough clues, he had to assume this identity and try not to cause too much abnormality, so as not to attract the attention of those "who wanted to catch him."

The business of this store was really bad. The decline of the traditional book market was nothing new, and this wasn't on the golden street at the entrance of a school either.

It could only be said that whether that "Xu Le" could break even by choosing to open a bookstore here was a question.

It wasn't until three o'clock in the afternoon that the first customer of the day walked in.
The customer wandered around the children's books section for a long time.

Zhou Ze waited for a while and finally walked over and asked, "What kind of subject matter are you looking for?"
Although, Zhou Ze didn't understand either.

"Just looking around," the other party replied.

"Okay," Zhou Ze said, then stopped paying attention. He hadn't yet integrated into the role of "bookstore owner."
But just then,
The other party suddenly walked behind him and said quietly:
"You really don't recognize me anymore?"

"What?" Zhou Ze asked.
"Last night I hit you on the head with a baseball bat and robbed you of your money.
And I even went to check,
You clearly didn't have any breath at that time."