25250, Huh? My Family Has Zombies!

"Snap."

"Snap."

"Snap, snap, snap, snap."

"Ah--"

"Hello, is this 110? Come quickly, there's a zombie in our house..."

"Hello, please try to stay calm. We will dispatch officers immediately. May I have your address?"

"604, Building 35, Fulu Street Lakeside Residential District... Please hurry, hurry!!!"

Ten minutes later, two police officers huffed and puffed their way up to the sixth floor. Before they could even knock, a middle-aged couple dragged them inside:

"Look, look, it's happening again..." The husband's face was pale, his hair disheveled, and his fingers trembled as he pointed to every corner of the room:

"Black threads everywhere, black threads everywhere! On the walls, on the floor, on the bed, on the cabinets! A zombie is definitely about to come out! Officers, you must find it quickly and drag it out! We can't take it anymore!"

"Now, now, please calm down..." The older officer looked utterly helpless.

"In modern society, there are no such things as zombies. You should consider whether someone is playing a prank on you... Why not install a surveillance camera and watch the footage for a few days?"

"That won't work!" the wife retorted, her voice strained to a shrill pitch:

"Surveillance cameras get hacked all the time! They take videos of people showering, changing clothes, and sell them everywhere! You're already here, just find the zombie!"

"...If not that, I have another suggestion. Do you have any items in your house that have been sitting around for too long? Try clearing them out, throwing them away, or selling them at a low price to see if things improve?"

"That won't work!!!" the husband and wife shouted in unison:

"The old items in this house are valuable; we can't just throw them away!—You've been here five times already, can you really not find a single zombie?"

The police weren't gods... How were they supposed to find a zombie that didn't exist in modern society?!

Downstairs at the Lakeside Residential District, Shen Le looked around, feeling a bit annoyed.

"Hey, Little Copper Fragment, are you getting pickier? You won't eat this, you won't eat that... What exactly do I need to repair to satisfy you?"

In the last ten days or so, besides quickly crafting a new Little Puppet to fulfill an order for the Heavenly Fragrance Restaurant, he had already repaired three pieces of furniture. One was a wobbly, loose Rosewood High-Waisted Three-Curved-Leg Hexagonal Small Table;

One was a Rosewood Single-Leg Three-Tooth Solid-Board Raised-Head Desk with cracked boards, faded finish, and a surface stained with countless tea rings, grease, and paint splatters;

And there was also a Crane and Deer Spring Window Lattice, where the crane's long beak and wing feathers had suffered varying degrees of rot and damage...

He had dismantled and cleaned them, applied glue, reassembled them, drilled holes, cut mortise-and-tenon joints, sanded the surfaces, and repolished and repainted them. He had filled the gaps with wood filler and carved the shapes back in, bit by bit.

Shen Le had become increasingly skilled, his movements fluid and natural. Yet, every time he finished a repair, he felt a tiny bit disappointed:

Repairing these old pieces of furniture brought less and less growth to the Copper Fragment. It wasn't that there was no feedback; every time he finished a piece, a faint, misty cyan light would indeed extend along the fragment, and it seemed as if a new stroke was bulging out just a tiny bit. But it was too little, far too little...

Repairing one piece of furniture only raised a tiny dot; repairing three in a row, the three dots combined didn't even amount to half a stroke. As for the feedback the Copper Fragment gave him?

Sorry, aside from the guided practice of the Five Animal Frolics and the nameless technique that enhanced his vision and hearing, no new functions had appeared.

"You gave me a new function when I repaired that screen last time, so why won't you give me anything for the same kind of furniture now? Is it that these pieces aren't old enough, or are you just being picky, waiting for something to become sentient like the Little Puppet before you're satisfied?"

The Copper Fragment remained silent, neither heating up nor humming. Shen Le poked it, pinched it, and shook it, but there was no reaction. He had no choice but to tuck the fragment back into his collar and head out to find food—

Although the Heavenly Fragrance Restaurant covered his three meals a day, he was getting a bit tired of mutton noodles, mutton soup, and mutton rice every single day. If he could change his palate, he wanted to!

He strolled out of the mansion, left the Old Street, and after a few turns, arrived at Fulu Street. On both sides of the main road, the branches of the plane trees stretched out and met in the middle, shrouding the entire street in shade. Even in the sweltering heat, he didn't need an umbrella to enjoy a bit of coolness. He looked left and right, his gaze sweeping over the signs of the shops at the base of the Lakeside Residential District:

Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Pot, Ziyan Flavored Chicken, Qianlixiang Wonton King, Zhenjiang Pot-Cover Noodles, Longjiang Pork Trotter Rice, BaBi Buns, Vegetable Rice with Bone Soup...

He didn't want any of it. Could he have something refreshing? He was sick of every one of these common roadside snack shops...

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Clatter, crash, clink..."

A series of boxes, cabinets, and chests were carried down. At the entrance of the residential complex, a scrap collector and a middle-aged couple were arguing incessantly, spittle flying:

"This camphor wood chest is 20 at most!"

"A chest this good is at least 100! Look here, here, and here—the six panels are all solid wood! 100 is absolutely fair!"

"30 at most! I have to refurbish it, paint it, and it takes up space—everything costs money, and I don't know when I'll sell it! 30, not a penny more!"

"50! Take it or leave it!"

"80 for the whole lot, including that cabinet!"

"No way! That wardrobe is also camphor wood, at least 100 to start!"

The three of them haggled over every single item. By the end, almost all the furniture had been moved onto the scrap collector's tricycle, leaving only a wooden box on the ground:

"One yuan per jin for this, throw it in!"

"These are carpenter's tools! The old man saved these his whole life! Selling them by the jin? Are you joking?"

"Everything is done by machine now, who still uses these old tools?" The scrap collector sneered, rolled up his sleeves, and yanked open the lid of the wooden box:

"Even if I take them, they're just scrap metal! The wood is inlaid with iron, I have to dismantle the iron just to sell it as scrap, and the waste wood isn't worth anything!—Scrap iron is two yuan a jin, waste wood is free, and considering my labor, one yuan a jin is very fair!"

"Iron is so much heavier than wood! Two-thirds of this is iron, one yuan a jin is way too cheap! At least one-fifty!"

"Just one! Not a cent more! Are you selling or not? If not, I'm leaving, and you can figure out how to deal with this yourself!"

"This..."

The middle-aged couple exchanged a look, both clearly pained. The box was heavy, weighing several dozen catties; the difference between one yuan and one-fifty meant a gap of twenty yuan or so. Yet, if they didn't agree, they would have to continue struggling with that ink line, and they truly didn't dare to haul this box back again. Should they try to haggle once more?

"One-twenty?"

"Just one! I'm leaving if you don't sell!"

Shen Le, squeezed into the crowd, craned his neck to get a look and was already tempted. That box of tools—woodworking knives, planes, Woodworking Chisels, and woodworking compasses—was packed to the brim. Even rarer were the many specialized tools designed for crafting unique shapes.

To an ordinary person, this set might only be worth selling as scrap metal, but to someone like him, who needed to manually restore a house and frequently performed wood carving, it was worth its weight in gold!

"Hey!" He jumped out.

"How about you sell it to me for one hundred yuan?"