Chapter 41: Chang Street Slaughterhouse
Just by looking at the waiting preview, several questions possibly related to the mission appeared in Lu Jinzhao’s mind.
But everything still needed to wait until entering the platform for analysis.
After the train arrived, Lu Jinzhao’s movements for boarding and ticket inspection were already practiced and smooth.
After boarding, the life-buying money on her train ticket had reached 1500.
“Like this, it’s still far from enough to buy a fate.”
She naturally didn’t think she would just happen to obtain a fate this time on the platform; she only knew from the forum that the price for buying a fate was unusually expensive. If she encountered a good fate but didn’t have enough life-buying money, it would be a waste.
No one specified the exact price clearly, only that different fates had different prices, with the lowest starting at two thousand.
However, if she didn’t spend much life-buying money on this platform, by the end, the accumulated money could reach the minimum price.
As the train headed to the destination, the passengers on board chatted with people they knew, and occasionally some tried to socialize with unfamiliar passengers, since they would face the platform mission together next.
Wei Ling quietly leaned close to Lu Jinzhao’s ear and told her about a few passengers she knew. Among the other 10 passengers, two were people Wei Ling knew; they had completed a platform mission together before.
Wei Ling briefly described the two’s personalities, then added: “At that time, none of us had supernatural items, and we were all half-baked newcomers. I don’t know if they have supernatural items now.”
“Personalities might have some slight differences, but intelligence won’t change much.”
Even if someone went through major changes and their temperament altered drastically, it was impossible to go from a pig brain to a genius.
Those two people had survived with Wei Ling from the Class D Platform until now, so they naturally weren’t pig brains, but in Wei Ling’s eyes, they weren’t particularly intelligent either.
Those two had briefly chatted with Wei Ling after boarding, but there was too much probing in their words, and their reminiscing felt too deliberate. Lu Jinzhao was too lazy to even listen to what they talked about.
She also realized that if one survived enough times on the platform, unfamiliar passengers would become fewer and fewer.
Because as levels increased, higher-level passengers became scarcer. Perhaps at Class A level, an entire train would be filled with acquaintances.
But Lu Jinzhao thought about her survival rates from the previous two platforms.
“If the parchment doesn’t cause trouble.” She silently added in her heart.
Soon, amid the passengers’ chatter, the train arrived at the station.
The train doors opened, and Wei Ling suddenly said: “It can’t be that we’re getting off into some room again this time, right?”
Lu Jinzhao was just about to say it couldn’t be, but for some reason she didn’t speak. When she stepped off the train door, looked up, and found herself standing inside a house, the corner of her mouth twitched slightly despite herself.
“Wei Ling, you crow’s mouth!”
Clearly, for the two of them, starting in a house wasn’t a pleasant memory.
But the current situation was even worse.
Because she was the only one in this house.
Lu Jinzhao didn’t rush; instead, she first observed the room.
This seemed like an ordinary room from a town in the last century. The furniture style was very outdated, with no television, only a radio. The wooden table was covered with a plastic tablecloth, next to it was a red kettle, and a calendar hung on the wall, but it seemed expired, long unturned, and somewhat dirty.
It looked like this was a “home”.
From the layout, this was the living room. The door toward the back was closed; inside was the bedroom. As Lu Jinzhao approached, she heard weak coughing from within.
“.Cough cough.”
“Cough”
Someone?
Her footsteps paused, and the muscles in her body tensed up.
After a few seconds, a frail, elderly voice came from inside: “.Come, come in.”
Lu Jinzhao thought for just two seconds before stepping forward to open the door.
With no information at all now, and the room inside completely unrelated to “Butcher” or “Slaughterhouse”, she had to actively gather information, even if it meant stepping into a trap.
The door opened, and a faint stench wafted from inside. Compared to the living room, the light in this bedroom was especially dim, but she could roughly make out an old man lying on the bed.
Facing the door, upon seeing Lu Jinzhao, a delighted smile appeared on that wrinkled, aged, somewhat deformed face: “Good child, you’re back. Is it a holiday?”
It seemed that in this platform, players were assigned identities?
Lu Jinzhao nodded along with the old man’s words: “Yes.”
“Great, now that you’re back, you can help me go buy meat.”
As soon as the old man finished speaking, Lu Jinzhao knew opening this door was right.
A clue for the slaughterhouse—here it was.
As the old man spoke, she opened her mouth, revealing bare gums inside; her teeth had long fallen out. Even so, she still wanted to buy meat to eat?
Just as Lu Jinzhao wanted to ask something, the radio in the living room suddenly turned on.
—Zzzzt
First came some static, then a rough male voice emerged from it.
“Damn rats!”
“Rats have sneaked in, they want to steal meat! Before sunset today, catch them and bring them to me. I want to slaughter them!”
The man roared angrily, his voice sounding extremely furious.
After hearing the broadcast, the old man’s turbid eyes suddenly lit up with vigor, and she spoke in a trembling voice:
“Quick, quick, take my ticket to the slaughterhouse. There’s new meat to eat, new meat!”
The old man’s skinny hand stretched out from the bed. Her five fingers had only a layer of wrinkled skin without flesh, looking especially terrifying. In her fingers, she clutched a meat ticket.
Lu Jinzhao endured the stench and walked a few steps closer, taking the meat ticket from the old man’s twisted smile, but she didn’t let go immediately. Instead, she suddenly looked up, staring at Lu Jinzhao’s face, and slowly opened her toothless mouth:
“Good child, you’ll bring the meat back for me, right?”
Lu Jinzhao showed no sign of fear. Even though the atmosphere in the room was truly off, she just nodded calmly: “Yes.”
After she spoke, the old man on the bed smiled again and released her grip on the meat ticket.
“Good, go on. Come back before dark.”
The light in the room was too dim, plus the stench and the strange old man on the bed—Lu Jinzhao didn’t want to stay longer. She took the meat ticket and quickly left the room.
Outside, she carefully examined the meat ticket and noticed something that caught her attention.
The meat ticket said [Chang Street Slaughterhouse], but no specific amount or exchange quantity was written. It had a red stamp, not words, but an ox head.
“.Looks like this is one of the clues too.”
