Chapter 152 Countdown: One Week

Chapter 152: Countdown: One Week

Qing Lan drafted quickly, but her painting habits demanded a quieter environment and more time to perfect her work. Moreover, the client's unique demands had Qing Lan, or rather the *Evil Ghost Puzzle* within her, in a surge of inspiration. This rare passion might actually prolong the completion time.

Therefore, during the one-week period Su Bai promised the client, he would likely remain in the shop's break room to continue painting. After all, Su Bai's shop was perhaps the only place in all of Fog City where he could truly feel at ease.

This was also the primary reason Su Bai needed to find a new shop assistant after Meng Wei's departure.

In truth, before Meng Wei revealed his true intentions, Su Bai had considered him a good employee. He quickly grasped the shop's inventory, kept meticulous records, and showed patience with elderly customers. As the boss, Su Bai might have offered Meng Wei some small advice, doing his best as an ordinary general store owner to help him escape the players who were coercing him.

But the moment undisguised hatred flashed in Meng Wei's eyes as he looked at Su Bai, Su Bai instantly abandoned that idea. He finally saw that despite the young assistant's naive facade, he was fundamentally no different from those so-called coercers. In Meng Wei's eyes, Su Bai and the other Fog City residents were merely insignificant prey, not meant to resist the "noble" players.

Su Bai wasn't surprised or disappointed by his misjudgment. No matter how peaceful and comfortable life on Fifth Street became, Su Bai would never truly be an ordinary general store owner. No matter how much Fog City, shrouded in mist, resembled a microcosm of the real world, it couldn't change the fact that he was still trapped in a nightmare. Even if the city's fog obscured the red moon, the deceit, betrayal, schemes, and strangeness beneath that moon never diminished.

Even now, Su Bai's seemingly kind decision to keep Qiu Lei was primarily because she appeared precisely when the Mist Shop was short-staffed, and the shop's free-roaming black kitten had recently grown fond of her.

Furthermore, whether it was Meng Wei, Qiu Lei, or even the supposedly more powerful players lurking in the shadows, none could inflict any real damage on the Mist Shop.

So, while hiring Qiu Lei appeared to be a benevolent act, for Su Bai, it was simply a mutually beneficial arrangement, free of complications.

Su Bai gained a suitable assistant, and Qiu Lei secured the means to support herself in the entirely unfamiliar Fog City, even finding affordable housing. Both parties obtained what they urgently needed, and this temporary contract was formed without hesitation.

With Qiu Lei minding the shop, Su Bai sequestered himself in the Mist Shop's break room, calling it "seclusion."

Although the break room had become significantly more spacious and convenient than it once was, now even boasting an independent bathroom, it had only two doors and no other windows or vents. For an ordinary person, such an environment might feel more suffocating than a cramped attic, but for Su Bai, it was a perfectly quiet and ideal space for meditation.

Previous experiences had revealed the many benefits of meditation to Su Bai. Even when he didn't need to sort through the power flowing normally within his body, he could still converse with the various entities within the *Evil Ghost Puzzle* during his meditations.

More importantly, Su Bai needed a quiet, solitary opportunity to properly organize the somewhat chaotic fragments of memory in his mind. While he could clearly recall much information related to his previous life, he still couldn't remember what happened in the period just before his rebirth. Moreover, while sifting through his memory fragments, he had discovered some that were too shattered to reassemble.

These problematic memories seemed crucial to Su Bai, yet the fragments were like a puzzle missing key pieces. Even if all the remaining pieces were perfectly assembled, the missing parts prevented Su Bai from recalling the full scope of those memories.

To uncover what he had forgotten, Su Bai needed to diligently search for all potentially problematic memories during meditation, sorting and even categorizing them to pinpoint the issue more accurately!

Since the fragment named "Qing Lan" within Su Bai's body was the one skilled and deeply obsessed with painting, even if Su Bai's own spirit was immersed in meditation, his right arm could continue working on the artwork.

However, these arrangements were not foolproof. Even though Su Bai enjoyed quiet solitude, he knew Meng Wei's departure wouldn't completely deter the malicious intentions of the players behind him. At least before Su Bai entered the break room for "seclusion," players would occasionally appear near the Mist Shop—perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps... the so-called more powerful players behind Meng Wei hadn't given up on seizing assets from Su Bai.

Considering Qiu Lei was still an inexperienced novice player, Su Bai still needed to periodically monitor the surroundings of the Mist Shop.

And not long ago, Su Bai had crafted a tool that could prove quite useful.

It was during his time at the Rainbow Scholar Tree Ghost School that Su Bai captured a black shadow from the school's projection room. This black shadow became a catalyst and medium, causing all the black shadows formed by the students' lingering desires in the Rainbow Scholar Tree Ghost School to enter the string of beads where Su Bai collected power, forming a considerable amount of energy.

Su Bai inserted this power into a small projector he retrieved from the warehouse, as the power's original source was the school's projection room. After combining the ordinary projector with the power of the black shadows, the projector could display the situation within a certain range around Su Bai on its screen, even manifesting things Su Bai wished to see based on his thoughts.

Although it was unclear why these shadows yearning for freedom possessed such a "teacher-approved" ability, this tool could be described as both impractical yet terrifying.

Its impracticality lay in the fact that using the projector required a white screen or white wall to project onto. Its terror lay in how it involved too much information and even the privacy of people. After all, even if the Fog City residents appearing in the projection were merely "fake humans" in the administrator's words, each of them seemed vivid to Su Bai, even haggling for ages to save a few yuan at checkout.

So, Su Bai had decided from the outset that this projector would temporarily remain within the Mist Shop. Even when Su Bai used it to observe the shop's surroundings, he was extremely cautious.

During Su Bai's first two days in seclusion, the projector did indeed track some individuals with the power of the red moon within them. These individuals had been keeping a close watch on the Mist Shop, behaving furtively, hardly looking like innocent players just passing by.

However, perhaps after waiting for two or three days without seeing Su Bai leave the general store, those furtive figures gradually disappeared from the vicinity of the Mist Shop.

When the projector next tracked players near the Mist Shop, Su Bai looked up from his easel to see a boy about Qiu Lei's age. Instead of hiding and peeking at the shop, he walked in openly, conversing with Qiu Lei as if they were familiar, seemingly an acquaintance of hers.

Over the next two days, the boy appeared in the shop each time, buying some items and lingering at the counter to talk with Qiu Lei. Although it was unclear what they discussed face-to-face, their expressions grew increasingly troubled, as if they were discussing something serious.

Until one day, during meditation, Su Bai heard a sound from the projector and looked up at its screen again.

In the image displayed on the wall, the now somewhat familiar boy rushed into the shop anxiously and said something to Qiu Lei. Su Bai saw Qiu Lei's expression immediately turn panicked. She emerged from behind the counter, intending to knock on the break room door, but perhaps remembering Su Bai's instruction not to be disturbed, Qiu Lei eventually returned to the counter, hurriedly writing something on a note. Then, with a serious expression, she told the boy to stay behind the counter and prepared to leave the Mist Shop alone.

The boy clearly disagreed with Qiu Lei's arrangement, but when he tried to follow her out, Qiu Lei firmly refused, ultimately turning and leaving alone.

The boy looked at the note Qiu Lei left on the counter, but unlike the diligent Qiu Lei, he glanced at Qiu Lei disappearing into the distance outside and, without hesitation, went to the break room door, rapping heavily on it twice.

This time, Su Bai, who had been observing this silent drama, heard the knocking.