Ch 65: My Multiverse Supermarket

“Mingde School has villagers from Dawn Village!?” An Yixiao’s tone hovered somewhere between questioning Zhou Li and talking to herself.

Zhou Li couldn’t tell, so she didn’t answer—instead, she asked, “Do you want to take a shower?”

An Yixiao blinked, then started to say thanks, but Zhou Li added, “Ten yuan per use. If you need shampoo and body wash, that’s an extra five.”

System: …

You really never miss a chance to charge someone.

An Yixiao: …

After a moment, she couldn’t help but laugh. “Do I pay with my membership card?”

“Cash, please.”

An Yixiao handed over fifteen game coins. “But… I thought you didn’t take game coins?”

Zhou Li had nearly forgotten that in this world, the main currency was game coins. But since she’d already said it, she decided not to backtrack.

She accepted the coins and pointed to the restroom. “Bathroom’s over there. You can grab the shampoo and body wash yourself.”

While An Yixiao went to shower, Zhang Pu arrived at the supermarket.

He walked straight to the farming tools section and picked up a hoe and a shovel.

“How much?”

“Thirty-five for the hoe, twenty for the shovel.”

Zhou Li had originally bought these to help refugees from the ancient-world plane farm, but since the population there was small, the market had long been saturated.

Unless Gong Qiongxian from the Dayue dynasty suddenly remembered her “supporting agriculture” policies, those tools were going to sit in storage forever.

Still, Zhou Li hadn’t expected to actually sell two farming tools here in a dungeon.

Zhang Pu took out a card to pay, but the system flashed an alert: “Membership card cannot be used by anyone other than the registered owner.”

Zhou Li then remembered—Zhang Pu had never signed up for a card. Every time he’d wanted to buy something, it was Wang Hui who paid.

Zhang Pu’s expression darkened. “Why can’t I use it?”

“That card belongs to Wang Hui,” Zhou Li said firmly.

“He told me I could use it.”

“Then have him come use it himself.”

“Fine, then I’ll register my own card and transfer his points to me. That’s allowed, right?”

“No.”

Zhou Li’s refusal was crisp and final.

Zhang Pu glared, his face shifting into that hideous blue-skinned, tusked form.

Zhou Li said evenly, “I don’t care if you shapeshift or throw a tantrum. No means no.”

Unable to do anything to her, Zhang Pu left, seething with frustration.

“He didn’t even put the tools back,” Zhou Li muttered under her breath.

Then An Yixiao’s voice came from right behind her. “I’ll buy them.”

Zhou Li jumped and immediately made up a new rule on the spot: “All customers are forbidden from appearing directly behind me!”

System: “That rule doesn’t exist.”

Zhou Li: “I don’t expect you to enforce it. It’s for my mental health.”

An Yixiao, unaware Zhou Li was just being abstract, felt a flicker of awe.

Could it be… the mysterious super-S-rank shopkeeper’s ability was “words become law”?

She bought the tools, tucked them neatly into her “Elementary School Backpack,” and said, “Thank you, shopkeeper.”

Zhou Li squinted at her. “Thank me for what? Don’t tell me you—”

An Yixiao was just about to nod, about to say she’d received the supermarket’s protection—

When Zhou Li interrupted, “—don’t tell me you used up extra shampoo and body wash?”

An Yixiao: …

Zhou Li chuckled. “Just kidding. Go do what you need to do.”

Realizing the joke, An Yixiao smiled faintly and left.

Moments later, although it had been broad daylight outside, Dawn Village was suddenly swallowed by darkness.

At first Zhou Li thought night had fallen—but then she looked closer. The sky wasn’t dark; it was choked with a thick cloud of resentment.

A gust of wind blew a sheet of paper against the supermarket door.

Zhou Li picked it up. It was an official red-headed notice declaring that Dawn Village had been selected as a “Five Beauties Village.” The two characters for “Five Beauties” gleamed red, as if written in blood.

Trying to sound serious, Zhou Li asked, “System, what do you make of this?”

System: “I’m not part of the game .”

Zhou Li: “Then what’s your expert opinion?”

System: “…What’s your expert opinion?”

“This village has two worlds.”

System sighed. “I thought you had something new. Isn’t that just An Yixiao’s theory?”

“My version’s a little different,” Zhou Li said. “She thinks day and night are two separate worlds—which is true—but I think it’s more precise to say this place is like Silent Hill: a world with surface and underside layers.”

System: “So the daytime is the surface world, and the nighttime is the inner one?”

“Something like that—but almost the reverse,” Zhou Li said. “In Silent Hill (A real horror game), the inner world represents the deepest, darkest side of the subconscious. But do you really feel like the nights in Dawn Village are negative?”

*

Dawn Village – Vegetable Greenhouse.

An Yixiao wiped the blood from her forehead with a handkerchief and said calmly, “No staying out past curfew… Dawn Village competing for the Five Beauties award… every villager kind, every household happy and harmonious. This is the ‘beautiful’ façade the village shows at night—but it’s a false one. Rather than the real world, it’s more like a dream of what someone wishes to make real.”

Why did the villagers become faceless monsters at night?

Because it was like when you see someone’s face clearly in a dream—but when you wake up, no matter how hard you try, you can’t recall what they looked like.

And yet, if that dream concerns a specific person—then their face appears.

Proof of this came when the aberration chased her into the Good Life Supermarket: the shopkeeper made “Zhang Xiulan” reveal her face to match her membership card, and at that moment, the faceless monster became Zhang Xiulan.

“As for why there’s a rule against staying out overnight…”

Surrounded by aberrations, An Yixiao turned her gaze toward Wang Hui, who stood silently behind her. “Because one day, you went out—and never made it back home before curfew. Your family searched all night, praying you’d return.”

Her voice softened, half like a murmur to herself. “And why did that happen? Because you were murdered. The killers were Zhang Pu… and his helping changgui.”

She drew out the shovel she had bought from the supermarket not long ago.

Wang Hui’s face suddenly changed.

All the aberrations ripped through the already tattered greenhouse walls and lunged viciously at An Yixiao.

An Yixiao threw aside her bloodstained handkerchief and murmured a spell under her breath: “Forbidden Zone.”

The handkerchief burst into flame and turned to ash. In an instant, a crimson circle spread outward from her feet.

Every aberration that stepped into the circle froze in place—motionless.

Until Wang Hui entered.

His face was no longer human, though his left eye remained intact. That dark eye fixed unblinkingly on An Yixiao. He uttered a single word: “Illusion.”

The red circle beneath them began to fade, and the aberrations moved again.

As their claws were about to reach her, An Yixiao remained calm.

She drove the shovel straight into the soil.

The ground split open, releasing a violent surge of black resentment that shot skyward.

Wang Hui let out a piercing, inhuman scream.

Seizing the moment, An Yixiao drew her long blade and sliced through the surrounding aberrations as easily as tofu.

They had been bound to Wang Hui’s will; once he faltered, they offered no real resistance and fell swiftly under her strikes.

When the rage and miasma dispersed, a pit appeared in the garden bed. At the bottom lay Wang Hui’s mangled body.

An Yixiao looked down—and suddenly realized the ghostly Wang Hui had vanished.

Her instincts screamed. She swung her blade behind her just in time for a pair of claws to punch through the sword and pierce her heart from behind.

*

Good Life Supermarket.

“There are so many high-level aberrations. Why do you think Wang Hui created the inner world?” the system asked.

Zhou Li said, “Because you can tell—he didn’t die naturally. He was murdered. And the killer was that Zhang Pu.”

She hadn’t gone out herself to investigate, but piecing together all the clues that had come to her, it wasn’t hard to see that Zhang Pu and Wang Hui had never been friends at all.

Zhang Pu had bullied Wang Hui.

If they really had been friends, Wang Hui wouldn’t have always been the one treating him and his two lackeys to snacks. Even if they couldn’t pay him back, they’d at least share something of their own.

But all Zhou Li had ever seen was Wang Hui giving, and the others taking.

The system objected. “That doesn’t fit—they let him copy their homework, didn’t they?”

“Don’t forget,” Zhou Li said, “the surface world and the inner world aren’t the same. If Wang Hui created the inner world, then someone—or something—else must have created the surface world, or at least set its rules. In the surface world, Wang Hui appears to be friendly—offering them snacks, putting his arm around Zhang Pu’s shoulder, looking like they’re close friends. But what if that’s just the illusion seen through someone else’s eyes?”

The system had no response.

“And another thing,” Zhou Li continued. “Wang Hui’s real appearance looks like how he died. Zhang Pu’s form, though—blue face, tusks—that’s the shape of an evil ghost in our folklore. Which means that, in the subconscious mind of whoever created the inner world, Zhang Pu is a demon. Why? Because he inflicted violence on others.”

The system asked, “Then who do you think created the surface world?”

“It might not be any specific person,” Zhou Li said thoughtfully. “It feels more like… maybe the dungeon itself.”

She couldn’t quite describe it—being an outsider who hadn’t actually entered the dungeon, she lacked the right vocabulary.

“Ugh, I really don’t read enough,” she muttered, pulling out a workbook and starting to do practice problems.

System: …

Do you not notice how the atmosphere outside is thick with dread right now?

Zhou Li stayed focused on her workbook—until she heard a faint squirming sound from below.

She looked around. No aberrations in sight.

But the noise was coming from under the floor.

She stood up and peered past the counter—

“Ahhh!”

An Yixiao flipped over and lay sprawled on the floor. “Did I scare you?”

“You got my floor dirty!” Zhou Li said indignantly.

An Yixiao gave a faint laugh. “That’s so you.”

Zhou Li grabbed her first-aid kit, wanting to help, but didn’t know where to start.

An Yixiao’s body was riddled with wounds—holes, bones visible. Anyone else would’ve gone into shock long ago.

“Do you have any healing items left?” Zhou Li asked.

“No.”

An Yixiao took out a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Smoking fee: fifty.”

An Yixiao pulled out a pile of game coins. “Count fifty yourself.”

Zhou Li handed her a lighter with one hand and began counting coins with the other.

“Do you know An Fengxuan?” An Yixiao asked.

“I do. Why?”

“Can you pass on a final message for me? You’re the only one here who knows her.”

Zhou Li opened her phone and hit record. “Go ahead.”

What An Yixiao said wasn’t sentimental—it was the full strategy guide to clearing the [Dawn Village] dungeon.

Only after paying such a terrible price had she uncovered the dungeon’s secret.

Zhou Li asked, “You really trust me that much? What if I keep the guide for myself?”

“You’re not a player. It’d be useless to you anyway,” An Yixiao said firmly.

“Maybe. But I’m a businesswoman—I could sell it.”

An Yixiao’s voice stayed calm. “Then that’s fine too.”

The system murmured, “Actually, as long as you carry it out of the dungeon and give it to someone—anyone—her goal’s achieved.”

Zhou Li didn’t reply.

An Yixiao lit the cigarette between her fingers, tried to take a drag—but her arm wouldn’t lift. She gave up and let it hang loosely.

Zhou Li poked her lightly. “An Yixiao, my shop’s hiring. Want a job here?”

【Author’s Note】

Boss Zhou: I recruited someone in both the previous worlds, so how could I not hire anyone in this one? Time to make the overbearing guild leader work for me. [dog emoji]

…

☢️☢️☢️