“Come, have a taste of the new version of Sour Plum Juice.”

Xu Qinglang placed a glass on Zhou Ze's counter. The color of this sour plum juice looked richer than before. He held it in his hand and shook it, as if holding a glass of wine.

“What’s different?” Zhou Ze asked without drinking it first.

“The taste is richer, a bit like aged rice wine. The kick is in the back, so you don’t have to wolf down your food like before. It improves your life happiness index.”

“Heh, adultery…”

The female corpse arranging the bookshelves on the side said sourly.

Zhou Ze took a sip. Unlike the sour plum juice he had drunk before, this time it was a bit refreshing, with a sweet aftertaste. The taste was very good.

However, this didn't seem to be the feeling he wanted.

Before he had savored it for long, Zhou Ze felt a burst of acidity in his stomach.

“Hiss…”

His body couldn’t help but tremble.

That lingering sourness…

So domineering.

Zhou Ze's fingers curled slightly, then slowly opened. He nodded, very satisfied.

“You put your heart into it,” Zhou Ze said.

“You’re welcome.” Xu Qinglang smiled slightly, “I plan to use this as one of my signature side dishes. It’s just a pity that there probably aren’t many people who like this kind of flavor.”

“Mm.” Zhou Ze agreed with this.

“Creak.”

The bookstore door was pushed open, and a group of students walked in. There were quite a few of them, seven or eight, and they all looked like "goody-goody" types.

“Boss, what’s the wifi password?” a girl asked.

Zhou Ze pointed to the wall, where it was written.

“Hoo…”

The students all found plastic stools to sit on, and then the girl took out some homework from her backpack, distributing it for the others to copy.

The winter vacation was coming to an end, so this could be considered a normal scene.

Zhou Ze naturally wouldn’t be bored enough to run over and lecture these kids about the meaning of learning and the evils of copying other people’s homework. He tapped on the counter, and the female corpse understood, walking over to pour Zhou Ze a glass of warm water.

The girl who took the lead walked to the bookshelf and casually flipped through the books, choosing a few before walking to Zhou Ze. “How much?”

“Ninety-five,” Zhou Ze replied.

“Here, keep the change.”

The girl was very generous, throwing out a hundred-yuan bill.

Zhou Ze took the money and didn’t say anything more.

When it was after five o’clock in the afternoon, this group of students had finished copying their homework and left, and the bookstore returned to its usual desolation.

Xu Qinglang wasn’t in the store; he had gone to customize a signboard. Of course, he wouldn’t customize the kind Zhou Ze had suggested,

“People eat dirt their whole lives, dirt eats people once” kind of signboard,

because anyone with a normal brain could see that this signboard wasn’t suitable for hanging in a place to eat, but rather on either side of a grave.

The female corpse was quite efficient in her work. Today, she had cleaned both the first and second floors. Aside from occasionally striking poses to show off her charm, she basically had no other flaws.

She didn’t say where she was going, and Zhou Ze didn’t ask.

Of course, Zhou Ze remembered Madam Bai’s reminder: “The next Cold Clothes Festival, burn the corpse with bamboo and wood.”

Zhou Ze wasn’t sure if Madam Bai knew that her corpse had long since developed sentience.

If she knew, but still entrusted it to him, and at the same time, told him the method and time to burn her, what did that mean?

Last night, the female corpse had also admitted that even if Zhou Ze killed her, she wouldn’t self-destruct to prevent her baleful aura from leaking and affecting innocents, causing Madam Bai in hell to be implicated,

However,

Madam Bai seemed to just want to cleanly get rid of this trouble of hers.

From this perspective,

this female corpse that he treated as a maid,

was actually also a pitiful person.

“What’s your name?” Zhou Ze asked.

“My surname is Bai,” the female corpse replied.

“Bai what?”

“Bai Yingying.”

“Bai Yingying?”

Zhou Ze nodded. This name was a bit strange.

“Actually, you don’t have to eat so laboriously,” the female corpse stretched lazily, accentuating her voluptuous figure. “It’s like how you can sleep soundly with me.

Your soul is tainted with the aura of hell, but your body is still that of a living person.

You need to sleep and eat to replenish your physical body, but your soul doesn’t need these things, so it instinctively feels repulsed and rejects them.”

“Continue.”

“I can feed you in the future.” The female corpse smiled shyly. “When food passes through my mouth, carrying my fluids,

it’s equivalent to being imbued with the aura of a ghost. When you eat it again, you won’t feel so uncomfortable.”

Zhou Ze suddenly understood why he had found that glass of water somewhat sweet last time. It wasn’t that the female corpse’s mouth was sweet, but because of this reason.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A man in a leather jacket walked in outside the shop door. The man's clothing was a little rustic, his hair was a little messy, and his face was red, he must have just been drinking.

The other party turned around outside twice, and finally pushed the door open and walked into the bookstore.

At first, Zhou Ze didn’t pay attention, but soon, Zhou Ze’s gaze narrowed slightly.

He knew this man.

Sun Tao, his former assistant, a… very promising young doctor.

The female corpse also narrowed her eyes slightly. She reached out and gently poked Zhou Ze’s waist, saying in a soft voice:

“Master, um, can I eat it?”

Eat people?

Zhou Ze frowned slightly.

“Master, didn’t you notice it, on that person’s back.”

After such a reminder, Zhou Ze stood up and looked at the man's back, only to see a dark thing hanging there.

Ordinary people might not know what this was, because it did look a bit abstract, somewhat like a black worm, but with some special humanoid characteristics.

But because of Zhou Ze’s previous profession, he recognized what it was at a glance—a premature infant.

“Wuu wuu wuu… wuu wuu wuu…”

Seemingly because Zhou Ze had noticed him, the infant let out a soft cry.

This sound was a bit familiar. Zhou Ze began to search his memories for the source of familiarity. Finally, he found it.

Nurse Chen.

To be precise, it was the sound that had once come from Nurse Chen’s belly, although only Zhou Ze could hear it at that time.

Zhou Ze didn’t feel any secret joy that he could still do “paternity tests.”

What welled up in his heart was only sorrow.

That child, he still couldn’t keep it?

The female corpse said she wanted to eat him, not referring to the person, but to the infant’s soul.

Zhou Ze glared at her. The female corpse pouted, not daring to say anything more. She could only swallow her saliva in the side unwillingly, and at the same time, she reached out very aggrievedly to support the heaviness in front of her chest:

“I don’t eat the food of living people. Every night, I have to be plucked of my baleful aura like a furnace top.

If I don’t replenish myself, these will all deflate. Then you won’t be able to peek at me while I’m working.”

Zhou Ze was momentarily stunned. She had been paying attention to his gaze the whole time?

“You devil,” the female corpse said coquettishly.

“Boss, do you have wine?” Sun Tao shouted.

“Go next door,” Zhou Ze replied, but still stood up and poured him a glass of water.

After all, he was a junior he had trained before. He had grown up in an orphanage, and Sun Tao had grown up in a single-parent family. Back then, he had been blind to even admirers like Doctor Lin, but he had taken great care of this junior named Sun Tao.

For no other reason than that the two were very similar in character. Their childhood experiences made them understand the meaning of struggle and effort, and they both wanted to live and fight to prove themselves.

“Pfft… Hahahaha…” Sun Tao took the water, took a big sip, and then laughed loudly. “Boss, why are you looking at me like that? I’m not interested in men.”

“Oh,” Zhou Ze responded.

There’s such a beautiful man living next door, I wouldn’t be interested in you.

Sun Tao sat down on the plastic stool, bit his lip, and then shook his head.

“Boss, do you have children?”

“We’re not ready yet, he thinks I’m too young,” the female corpse interjected from the side, desperately adding drama for herself.

Sun Tao looked up at the female corpse. Although the female corpse was very full-figured and tall, she looked to be only a high school student in age. Immediately, he laughed:

“You are indeed still young.”

The female corpse turned her face away unhappily, and then swallowed another mouthful of saliva.

“I originally had children,” Sun Tao said with some emotion.

Zhou Ze really wanted to say, you do have a child, that child is hanging on your back.

With the development of modern medicine and the "modernization" of people's thinking, abortion and induced abortion are no longer such dazzling words, but few people are clear that the resentment of unborn babies is actually the greatest.

These kinds of stillborn infants are also the easiest to transform into ghosts. Of course, their ability to take revenge is actually very weak.

At most, they will be bound by their so-called parents for a period of time due to resentment, and then they will disperse on their own.

The female corpse said she wanted to eat him, because these kinds of infants haven’t been completely born, so they are like seeds that haven’t sprouted. For existences like the female corpse, they have extremely high "nutritional value."

“What’s going on?” Zhou Ze asked. “Your girlfriend didn’t agree?”

Zhou Ze remembered that although Nurse Chen was very uneasy and surprised at the time, she said she wanted to keep the child.

“No, she was willing, but I wasn’t. I chickened out. I made her get an abortion.”

For some reason, Sun Tao really wanted to talk to this bookstore owner. In this bookstore owner, he found a familiar feeling of an old big brother.

And that old big brother had passed away more than half a year ago.

“Chickened out?” Zhou Ze asked.

“Her parents originally looked down on me. Heh, their family is very well-off.” Sun Tao raised his head, seemingly trying to suppress his tears.

“But what’s done is done,” Zhou Ze said.

“But I didn’t want to use this kind of thing to blackmail their family. I didn’t want my colleagues, my friends, to think that I entered their family by this kind of means;

I didn’t want others to think that I was a phoenix man.

I don’t covet their family’s money, nor do I covet anything else.

I don’t want a pair of in-laws who look down on me, and even their group of relatives, on my head after I get married.

I grew up in a single-parent family, so I understand even better that dignity is earned by oneself.”

“Even if she was willing?”

“Her being willing is her being willing, but I’m not willing. I want to live with dignity.

Heh, when I first started out, an old big brother told me that dignity and others’ attitudes toward you are earned by your own two hands. I haven’t achieved anything yet, so I don’t want to…”

Zhou Ze took a deep breath and then asked, “Did that big brother tell you another sentence?”

“What?” Sun Tao asked in surprise.

“That is, when you’re having fun, don’t forget to wear a condom.”

After saying that, Zhou Ze directly swung his fist and smashed it into Sun Tao’s face.

“Bang!”

Sun Tao inexplicably took a heavy punch and fell to the ground, looking dazed.

“Don’t make excuses, don’t talk about dignity, don’t say anything else,

You’re just selfish, completely selfish.”

After saying that,

Zhou Ze kicked Sun Tao, who was lying on the ground, again.

“Bang!”

Sun Tao curled up his body. He was in great pain and also drunk, but he still shouted angrily:

“Are you crazy, hitting people!”

“Yeah, I’m crazy. I was fucking blind back then, and I was still thinking about training you and giving you a hand!”

Just at this moment,

The lump originally hanging on Sun Tao’s shoulder crawled to Zhou Ze’s feet,

making a “squeak squeak squeak” sound from its mouth,

The female corpse heard it,

Zhou Ze also heard it,

But Sun Tao couldn’t hear it,

His unborn child, who hadn’t truly seen this world with its own eyes,

at this time was baring its teeth,

and making an angry cry

at the person who was hitting his father…