"Clap."
"Clap."
"Clap-clap-clap-clap."
"Ah—"
"Hello, 110? Hurry, come over! There are zombies in our house..."
"Hello, please try to stay calm. We'll send someone over right away. What's your address?"
"Building 35, Apartment 604, Fulu Street Lakeside Residential District... Hurry, hurry!!!"
Ten minutes later, two police officers puffed and panted their way up to the sixth floor. They didn't even have to knock before a middle-aged couple dragged them into the house.
"Look, look, it's happening again..." The husband's face was ashen, his hair disheveled, and his trembling finger pointed at every corner of the room.
"Black lines everywhere, black lines everywhere! On the walls, the floor, the bed, the cabinets! A zombie is definitely about to come out! Officers, you have to find it quickly and catch it! We really can't take it anymore!"
"Please, both of you, calm down..." The older officer looked utterly helpless.
"Zombies don't exist in modern society. You should be considering whether someone's playing a prank on you... How about installing a security camera and keeping an eye on things yourselves for a few days?"
"No way!" the wife objected, her voice strained and shrill.
"People hack security cameras these days. They even steal videos of people bathing and changing clothes and sell them! You're here now, aren't you? Find that zombie!"
"...Well, I have another suggestion. Do you have anything at home that's been sitting around for too long? Get rid of all of it—throw it out or sell it cheap—and see if that helps."
"Absolutely not!!!" the husband and wife objected in unison.
"The old things in our house are valuable. We can't just throw them away! You've been here five times already. Can't you really find one zombie?"
The police weren't gods... Zombies didn't exist in the modern world. How were they supposed to find one?!
Downstairs at Lakeside Residential District, Shen Le looked around, troubled.
"Hey, little copper fragment, are you getting pickier and pickier? You won't eat this or that... What do I have to repair to satisfy you?"
Over the past ten days or so, apart from quickly making a new Puppet and delivering it to Heavenly Fragrance Restaurant, he'd repaired three pieces of furniture. One was a wobbly, slightly loose Rosewood High-Waisted Three-Curved-Leg Hexagonal Small Table;
another was a one-legged, three-apron, solid-board raised-head desk made of rosewood. Its wooden top was cracked and slightly faded, and stained with countless tea marks, grease stains, and paint;
and the last was a Crane and Deer Spring Window Lattice. The crane's long beak and wing feathers had suffered varying degrees of rot and damage...
He took them apart and cleaned them, applied glue, and put them back together; drilled holes and cut mortises, sanded the surfaces, then repolished and painted them; he filled the gaps with woodworking powder, then carved the shapes back out piece by piece.
Shen Le was becoming more and more skilled, working with effortless fluidity. But every time he repaired something, he felt a little disappointed.
The gains the copper fragment gave him for repairing old furniture were getting smaller and smaller. It wasn't that there was no feedback. Every time he finished a repair, a little misty blue-green light definitely extended across the copper fragment, as if a new stroke were just beginning to rise from its surface. But the progress was tiny—far too tiny...
After one piece of furniture, only a tiny dot had risen. After three in a row, the three dots together didn't even amount to half a stroke. And as for what the copper fragment gave him in return?
Sorry, aside from the Five Animal Frolics training and the nameless technique training that enhanced his sight and hearing, it hadn't developed any new functions for now.
"I clearly got a new function after repairing a screen last time. Why won't you give me one for repairing the same kind of furniture now? Is this furniture just not old enough, or are you getting picky? Do you want it to become a spirit like Little Puppet before you'll be satisfied?"
The copper fragment stayed silent. It neither grew hot nor hummed. Shen Le poked it, squeezed it, and shook it, but got no response. He had no choice but to tuck it back into his collar and go out to look for food—
Although Heavenly Fragrance Restaurant provided him with three meals a day, lamb noodle soup, lamb soup, and lamb rice every day were getting a little tiresome. If he could change things up, he might as well!
He ambled out of the big house, left Old Street, and turned this way and that until he reached Fulu Street. The plane trees lining both sides of the street spread their branches until they met overhead, casting shade over the entire road. Even on a scorching day, the trees provided a little relief without the need for an umbrella. He glanced around, his eyes passing over the shop signs beneath the Lakeside Residential District apartments:
Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Pot, Ziyan Deli, Qianlixiang Wonton King, Zhenjiang Pot-Covered Noodles, Longjiang Pork Knuckle Rice, Babi Steamed Buns, and Vegetable Rice with Pork Bone Soup...
He didn't feel like eating any of them. Couldn't he have something more invigorating? He'd eaten at every one of these common roadside snack shops until he couldn't stand the sight of them...
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
"Crash, clatter..."
One box after another, along with cabinets and chests, was carried downstairs. At the entrance to the residential complex, a scrap collector and a middle-aged couple were haggling back and forth, spittle flying.
"This camphorwood chest is worth twenty at most!"
"A chest this nice is worth at least a hundred! Look here, here, and here. All six panels are made from solid boards. A hundred is absolutely fair!"
"Thirty at most! I'll have to refurbish it and paint it, and it'll take up space. All of that costs money, and who knows when I'll sell it! Thirty, not a cent more!"
"Fifty! Take it or leave it!"
"Eighty for the chest and that cabinet together!"
"No way! That wardrobe is camphorwood too. It's worth at least a hundred!"
The three of them haggled over every item, quibbling over each one. By the end, almost all the furniture had been loaded onto the scrap collector's tricycle. Only a wooden box remained on the ground.
"This one's a yuan a jin. Take it too!"
"These are woodworking tools! The old man spent his whole life collecting them! You can't sell them by weight. Are you kidding?"
"Everyone uses machines now. Who still uses old tools like these?" The scrap collector sneered, rolled up his sleeves, and flipped open the wooden box.
"It's all scrap metal! Even if I take it, I'll have to pull the iron out of the wood before I can sell it as scrap. The scrap wood's worth nothing. At a yuan a jin, I'm being very fair, considering the labor!"
"Iron weighs a lot more than wood! Two-thirds of this box is iron. A yuan a jin is too cheap! At least one and a half!"
"One yuan, take it or leave it! I'm not paying a cent more. If you won't sell, I'm leaving, and you'll have to figure out what to do with it yourself!"
"Well..."
The middle-aged couple looked at each other, both pained by the thought. The box was heavy, weighing dozens of jin. The difference between one yuan and one and a half came to ten or twenty yuan. But if they refused, they'd have to go through all that trouble with the Ink Line again. They were too exhausted to carry the box home a second time. Perhaps they could haggle a little more?
"One yuan twenty?"
"One yuan! I'm leaving if you won't sell!"
Shen Le squeezed through the crowd and took a few peeks. He was already tempted. The box was packed full of tools: woodworking knives, planes, chisels, woodworking compasses, and all sorts of other things. Even rarer, it contained many oddly shaped tools made for working on special forms.
To an ordinary person, this set of tools was probably only good for being broken down and sold as scrap metal. But to someone like him, who had to repair a whole house by hand and often needed to carve wood, it was priceless!
"Hey!" He stepped forward.
"How about selling it to me for a hundred yuan?"