Chapter 311 Nothing to Lose

Most of the people in the audience seats were waiters, maids, cooks, cleaners and other permanent staff of the theater. They had no idea what was happening in the theater, but they just followed their boss’ instructions and put down their work to gather here. A few guests with unhappy faces were talking to Fusolus in the front row, trying to find out why he closed the opera house.

Several young girls in white dresses sat in front of the audience, some with fear on their faces, some with lifeless eyes, and many with their heads down weeping silently. They were not considered human beings with full citizenship rights, but were merely displayed here as exquisite and priceless objects.

“Nianjun?” Ning Zhe called softly, his eyes sweeping across the crowded auditorium and the empty dance floor, but received no response.

The bright red figure that had been haunting him like a ghost ever since he left Hejia Village had indeed disappeared, without a trace or sign of her.

Was He Nianjun also targeted by the ghost? If so, why?
Ning Zhe had never considered the figure of the girl in the wedding dress as a “person”. He felt that He Nianjun’s existence was more like an extension of the Snake God’s rules, just like the moving stone statues in Zanju Town, or the ghosts wandering around in Vanessa Castle, and so on.

And now, He Nianjun, who was holding the almanac, was chosen as a target by the ghost, just like a mentally ill murderer stabbed a knife into the mirror in order to kill himself, and the fragments were scattered all over the floor.

“You, you are…”

On the sofa, driver Bayer looked at Ning Zhe’s back and suddenly felt inexplicably familiar. The identity Ning Zhe used to buy his life just now was a stranger to him, and now he has changed back to his appearance as Van Dyke.

Ning Zhe turned around and changed back to his previous appearance and came in front of Bayer. Now his switching between different identities was smoother than Sichuan Opera, like flowing water without any sense of stagnation.

“Sir?” Bayer felt something was wrong. The gentleman in front of him seemed to have become a different person.

“Give me a hand, we need to tie him up.” Ning Zhe said in Chinese.

Bayer was confused when he heard this, and his panic became even greater. He was about to get up and run away, but when he looked up, he saw the muzzle of a gun pointed at his forehead, and he immediately dared not move.

Xia Yubing took out two pairs of handcuffs from his bosom, handcuffed Bayer’s hands and feet behind his back, and then used two thin leather belts to reinforce his forearms and calves. Finally, he rolled up a handkerchief and stuffed it into his mouth, then put a gag on it and tied it tightly to prevent it from making any noise and attracting other people’s attention.

After doing all this, Xia Yubing threw the tied-up Bayer behind the sofa. Ning Zhe handed the revolver back to her and asked, “Where did you get so many strange things? You actually carry them with you.”

“…Stop interfering in girls’ affairs.”

“alright.”

Ning Zhe was too lazy to ask more questions and went straight back to stand No. 6 where Diesel’s body was. The waiter who stayed there had already checked the surveillance in the corridor. Ning Zhe went over to take a look but found no useful new information.

From the perspective of the surveillance camera, Ning Zhe witnessed again the scene where Bayer disappeared out of thin air at the wall of the corridor and reappeared more than ten seconds later.

According to Bayer’s own description, during the ten seconds of “disappearance”, he encountered a ghost and was killed by it after physical contact with the ghost.

Now He Nianjun has also disappeared, and with her has disappeared the almanac that carries the rules of Zhao You. Does this mean that at this moment, the ghost in the theater is coming into contact with ‘Zhao You’?
Will the snake god be killed by it? Or is He Nianjun considered an independent individual in the judgment of that ghost?
Xia Yubing stood beside Ning Zhe, looked down at the surveillance video playing back on the screen and then looked up at the calm expression on Ning Zhe’s face. Suddenly, she saw his expression change slightly, and there was a bit more surprise and relief in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Xia Yubing asked.

“Nothing.” Ning Zhe shook his head. In the center of his vision, a flash of crimson suddenly appeared silently across the table. It was He Nianjun who had disappeared for a long time.

She was still wearing the red wedding dress embroidered with gold thread, and still had a blank face without any facial features. Her skin was as pale as paper, and her hands were still as delicate and slender as scallions, but the old almanac was no longer in her hands.

The almanac disappeared. “What happened?” Ning Zhe frowned slightly.

He was clearly prepared to be killed by the ghost here.

In the final analysis, He Nianjun was just an illusion left after the destruction of Hejia Village. Like the almanac in her hand, she was a product of the rules of the Snake God’s summons. It seemed that it was He Nianjun who disappeared, but in fact, it was the Snake God who was chosen as the target by the ghost.

Selected, disappeared, died.

This is a complete process.

From the drunk body found at the toilet door to Diesel and Bayer who died one after another in the opera house, all the known deaths so far should have followed this process, and the snake god is no exception.

After all – the rules are absolute.

But the snake god named ‘Zhao You’ has long been stamped with the thought of ‘I am Ning Zhe’. If the snake god is killed by a ghost, then according to Taiyi’s rules, Ning Zhe will pay the price of death in place of the snake god. He has made preparations for this.

However, the actual situation was not so. The snake god was not killed. He Nianjun appeared in Ning Zhe’s sight again, but he lost the almanac in his hand.

“Why? What went wrong?”

“According to the rules summarized before, the person chosen by the ghost will see the ghost, then have some kind of contact with the ghost, and finally die… But why is it that after He Nianjun was chosen by the ghost, he was not killed like other people, but lost the almanac?”

Could it be that being chosen by a ghost does not necessarily mean death, but may also mean ‘losing’ something?
Or to put it another way, ‘death’ can actually be understood as ‘loss of life’?
——For example, the “Wutong” who is called the God of Wealth, he actually does not have a rule of immediate death for killing people directly, but only forced buying and selling. Anyone who meets the God of Wealth will be forced to do business with him, either buy or sell, there is no third choice.

Rich people can spend money and sell their lives to drive the God of Wealth away, while poor people can only sell their lives in exchange for copper coins and die on the spot, making it look as if they were killed by the God of Wealth.

and so……

The God of Wealth did not kill anyone, he just forced his customers to sell their lives.

The ghost in the theater may not have killed anyone, but being chosen by it means you will “lose” something.

Diesel and other victims lost their lives, and He Nianjun lost the almanac.

“There must be some connection between them…”

Ning Zhe’s eyes became subtle, and he pondered: “Both were ‘chosen by the ghost’, why did Diesel and Bayer lose their lives, while He Nianjun lost the almanac that carried the rules of summoning? What caused these two different results?”

Suddenly, a loud noise came from the direction of the audience seats, interrupting his thoughts. Ning Zhe hurried to the guardrail with Xia Yubing and looked down. They saw that several rows of seats that were originally full of people were now empty.

“1, 2…5?”

Ning Zhe counted again to confirm that he was not mistaken, but that it was a fact that had already happened – just now, 5 people disappeared at the same time.

(End of this chapter)