"Hey, Brother Chen!"
The moment he walked in, Su Zhou greeted the shop's owner, a man surnamed Chen, like they were old friends.
Behind the counter, a man was propping his head up with one hand, on the verge of falling asleep. He jolted awake at the teenager's greeting. He opened his blurry, watery eyes, looked at Su Zhou, and grumbled, "You little brat! Can't even let your Brother Chen get some decent sleep!"
The man didn't look very old, probably in his early thirties. His clothes and appearance were rather conventional. He sported a trendy slicked-back hairstyle, which made him look less like the owner of a flower and bonsai shop and more like a typical corporate drone.
At this, he wiped his face with a wet wipe, finally waking up completely. "Alright, Azhou, what does your mom want you to buy this time?"
"It's not my mom, it's me. I need to buy an apple tree bonsai. You should have some, right?"
Su Zhou didn't stand on ceremony; he and the owner here were well-acquainted. The owner, named Chen Zhicheng, was thirty-one years old and a neighborhood acquaintance. When Su Zhou was younger, Chen Zhicheng used to love teasing him.
However, that all stopped six years ago, after a certain 25-year-old shop owner was utterly defeated in an arm-wrestling match by a certain 11-year-old elementary schooler, becoming the laughingstock of the neighborhood. He never teased Su Zhou again... Are you kidding me? He nearly pulled a muscle that time. Who would dare challenge this reincarnated behemoth to a contest of strength?!
"A fruit tree bonsai... You'll probably have to wait a bit for that. I have some in my greenhouse, but none in the shop."
Boss Chen thought for a moment and replied, "I can deliver it to you later. By the way, Azhou, since when did you get into bonsai like your mom?"
"No need, I'll carry it back myself later. How much is it?"
Instead of answering the question, Su Zhou opened his Alipay. Boss Chen sent him a QR code. "Fine, with your strength, I guess it's no big deal. As for the price, the expensive ones are several hundred, the cheap ones a few dozen. But I'm guessing you don't want one of those flashy showpieces for rich folks. I'm sending you the code for a quality 55-yuan one—I've already rounded the price down for you. It's guaranteed to live, and the fruit will be big and sweet."
"Really?" Su Zhou asked casually as he paid. Boss Chen laughed. "Would your big brother Chen lie to you? Good luck with your senior year. Planting a bonsai to de-stress is actually a pretty good idea. Make sure you get into a good academy, not like your Brother Chen who's just stuck here running a shop."
Clearly, he'd mistaken Su Zhou's actions for one of the many bizarre stress-relief methods high school seniors employed. Su Zhou glanced at the man's attire and thought to himself, 'Brother Chen must've been on another blind date recently, huh? Looks like it didn't work out.'
Chen Zhicheng's family was well-off, and he wasn't bad-looking, just a bit old-fashioned. But for some reason—perhaps women found running a small shop in a residential area to be a dead-end job, and it was hard work besides—he hadn't been able to find a girlfriend in all these years, and his blind dates always failed.
He himself didn't seem to mind, but his family was constantly nagging him. On a normal day, he'd just play mobile games. And like Su Zhou, he had terrible luck—his waifus would only appear after he'd spent a fortune whaling on them. A truly tragic tale.
After saying goodbye to the owner, Su Zhou left the shop, checked his bearings, and prepared to ride his bike to Shao Qiming's house. It was a journey of about ten kilometers, which would take him thirty or forty minutes at a leisurely pace. Honestly, in a place like Hongcheng, if you hit traffic and red lights, taking a car wasn't necessarily faster than him riding his bike.
However, as Su Zhou was riding down a shopping street, he slowed down, having overheard a few rather concerning words.
"Did you hear? There's been another murder over at Chigu Beach!"
"I heard. My niece and her best friend live over there. A young woman died, and the scene was right at the entrance to their complex. A perfectly good girl, she was. Now they don't dare go out unless there are four or five of them together!"
"Sigh, what a terrible thing!"
This was a conversation between several middle-aged women in a fully automated convenience store.
"Let's get barbecue tonight. What about that place by the river?"
"Maybe we shouldn't go to the river? Haven't you heard they've cordoned off the riverbank recently? Police cars are everywhere, and I heard they put up yellow tape. Someone died."
"Eh, we're just getting some barbecue. We're not going in the water. It'll be fine."
This was a group of young people discussing their plans for the evening.
"It's horrible! Old Li said Ahao's stomach was completely hollowed out! When his mom saw the body, she cried so hard she couldn't breathe. His dad almost had a heart attack. A parent burying their own child... And he has a younger brother who just started at the academy..."
"I heard the state is providing support, so we don't need to worry about that. But you, old man, you should tell your two kids to be careful, you hear?"
"I know, I know..."
This was a conversation between an elderly couple out for a walk.
Su Zhou's ears were filled with nearly every conversation on the entire street. The powerful hearing granted by his Body of Perfection allowed him to effortlessly pick out whatever he wanted to listen to.
'So there are more than just three victims? Don't tell me several more people died just yesterday?'
Su Zhou frowned. He had heard about the serial killings from his dad a few days ago when he got back. He hadn't expected to hear four or five different versions of murder cases from passersby just by stepping out today. Some of it was probably just rumors getting distorted as they spread, but some accounts were so vivid they were very likely true.
Moreover, every murder case shared an extremely obvious and identical characteristic: the victims' bodies were horribly mutilated. A large portion of their flesh and internal organs were missing, making it difficult to even give them a proper burial.
'So blatant... And Spiritual Qi really is returning.'