Chapter 2: 2. Chapter 2: Situation

Chapter 2: The Situation

Thump, thump, thump!

Zhou Mingrui was so frightened by the sight before him that he retreated several steps. It felt as if the person in the full-length mirror was not himself, but a dried corpse.

How could someone with such a severe wound still be alive!

In disbelief, he turned his head to check the other side. Even from a distance, with the light dim, he could still clearly see the penetrating wound and the deep red bloodstains.

"This..."

Zhou Mingrui took a breath, struggling to calm himself down.

He reached out and pressed his hand against the left side of his chest, feeling his heart beating violently, rapidly, and with vibrant life.

He touched his exposed skin; beneath the slight chill, he could feel the warmth of blood flowing.

He crouched down, verified that his knees could still bend, and then stood back up, no longer as panicked as before.

"What is going on?" he whispered, frowning, intending to examine the wound on his head more carefully.

He took two steps forward but suddenly stopped. The light of the blood moon outside the window was relatively dim, insufficient to support a "careful examination."

A fragment of memory surfaced instinctively. Zhou Mingrui turned his head to look at the wall-mounted lamp next to the desk, which was surrounded by gray-white pipes and a metal grid.

This was the current mainstream gas lamp; the flame was stable, and the lighting effect was excellent.

Under Klein Moretti’s family circumstances, let alone a gas lamp, he shouldn't even have hoped for a kerosene lamp; using candles would have been more in line with his status. But four years ago, when he was staying up late studying and struggling for the Hoy University entrance exam, his older brother Benson believed this was a matter of great importance for the family's future and insisted on creating good conditions for him, even if it meant going into debt.

Of course, Benson, who had been literate and working for several years, was definitely not a reckless person lacking in methods or foresight. He had used the excuse that "installing gas pipes would increase the apartment's grade and help with future rentals" to trick the landlord into paying for the basic renovation. He himself, taking advantage of his position at an import-export company, had obtained the new type of gas lamp at nearly cost price. From start to finish, he had only used his savings and hadn't borrowed a cent from anyone.

As the memory fragment flickered by, Zhou Mingrui returned to the desk, opened the pipe valve, and twisted the gas lamp switch.

*Da, da, da.* The sound of friction ignition rang out repeatedly, but the light did not descend as Zhou Mingrui had expected.

*Da, da, da!* He twisted it a few more times, but the gas lamp remained dim.

"Hmm..." He pulled his hand back, pressed his left temple, and squeezed his memory fragments, searching for the reason.

After a few seconds, he turned around and walked toward the door, arriving at a mechanical device also embedded in the wall and connected by the same gray-white pipes.

This was a gas meter!

Glancing at the slightly exposed gears and bearings, Zhou Mingrui took a coin from his trouser pocket.

It was yellowish in color, shimmering with a copper luster. The obverse was engraved with the head of a man wearing a crown, and the reverse featured wheat ears surrounding the number "1."

Zhou Mingrui knew this was the most basic currency of the Loen Kingdom, called a copper penny. The actual purchasing power of 1 penny was roughly equivalent to three or four yuan before he transmigrated. There were also 5-penny, half-penny, and quarter-penny coins, but they still weren't precise enough, and in daily life, one still had to round up to buy items from time to time.

After letting the copper penny—issued only when King George III ascended the throne—flip between his fingertips a few times, Zhou Mingrui pinched it and inserted it into the narrow, vertical "mouth" of the gas meter.

*Cling, clang!*

As the penny fell to the bottom inside the meter, the *click-clack* sound of rotating gears immediately rang out, playing a short and wonderful mechanical melody.

Zhou Mingrui stared for a few seconds, then returned to the natural-wood-colored desk and reached out to twist the gas lamp switch.

*Da, da, da, snap!*

A cluster of flames ignited and quickly grew larger. The bright light first occupied the interior of the wall lamp, then passed through the transparent glass, casting a warm color over the room.

The darkness suddenly retreated, the crimson light faded from the window, and Zhou Mingrui felt inexplicably more at ease. He walked quickly to the full-length mirror.

This time, he scrutinized the temple area, not missing a single detail.

After several comparisons, he discovered that apart from the initial bloodstains, the gruesome wound was no longer oozing fluid, as if it had received the best possible hemostasis and bandaging. The slowly wriggling gray-white brain matter and the flesh growing at a speed visible to the naked eye signaled that healing was underway. Perhaps in thirty or forty minutes, or maybe two or three hours, only a faint scar would remain.

"A healing effect brought by the transmigration?" Zhou Mingrui curled the right corner of his mouth and whispered silently.

Then, he let out a long breath. No matter the reason, at least he was still a living person!

Settling his mind, he pulled open a drawer, took out a small piece of soap, grabbed one of the old towels hanging next to the cupboard, and opened the door to head toward the communal washroom for tenants on the second floor.

Well, the bloodstains on his head had to be dealt with, lest he always look like a crime scene. It didn't matter if he scared himself, but if he scared his younger sister Melissa, who had to get up early tomorrow, that would be hard to explain!

The corridor outside was pitch black, with only the crimson moonlight spilling in from the window at the end, barely outlining the contours of objects, making them look like pairs of monster eyes silently watching the living in the deep night.

Zhou Mingrui lightened his footsteps and walked toward the washroom, feeling quite terrified.

Once inside, the moonlight was brighter, and everything became clear. Zhou Mingrui stood before the washbasin and turned on the tap.

*Whoosh, whoosh.* As the sound of water reached his ears, he suddenly thought of the landlord, Mr. Frank.

Because the water bill was included in the rent, this gentleman—who wore a top hat, a vest inside, a black formal suit outside, and was short and thin—was always actively patrolling the washrooms, eavesdropping on the sound of running water inside.

If the splashing was too loud, Mr. Frank would disregard his gentlemanly demeanor, fiercely brandish his cane, strike the washroom door, and shout, "Damn thief!" "Waste is a shameful thing!" "I've got my eye on you!" "Let me see you do it again, and you can get out with your filthy luggage!" "Believe me, this is the most cost-effective apartment in all of Tingen; you'll never find a more generous landlord than me!"

Pulling back his thoughts, Zhou Mingrui wetted the towel and washed the bloodstains off his face, over and over again.

After looking into the tattered mirror of the washroom and confirming that only the gruesome wound and a pale face remained, Zhou Mingrui felt much more relaxed. He then took off his linen shirt and used the soap to scrub away the blood spots.

Just then, his brow furrowed as he remembered there might be another problem

The wound was exaggerated, and there was a lot of blood. Besides his own body, there should be traces left in the room!

A few minutes later, Zhou Mingrui finished dealing with the linen shirt and hurried back home with the wet towel. He first wiped away the bloody handprint on the desk, then, relying on the light of the gas lamp, searched for other remnants.

Upon searching, he immediately discovered quite a few blood spatters on the floor and the bottom of the desk, and by the wall on the left, there was a gleaming yellow bullet casing.

"...Used a revolver against the temple and fired a shot?" As the clues connected, Zhou Mingrui roughly understood the cause of Klein's death.

He didn't rush to verify it. Instead, he carefully wiped away the bloodstains and cleaned up the "scene." Only then did he pick up the bullet casing, return to the desk, open the revolver's cylinder to the left, and dump out the bullets inside.

*Clatter, clatter, clatter.* A total of five bullets and one shell casing, all flowing with a brass luster.

"As expected..." Zhou Mingrui glanced at the empty shell casing and nodded slightly while putting the bullets back into the cylinder one by one.

His gaze shifted to the left, looking at the sentence written on the open notebook: "Everyone will die, including me." More doubts surged in his heart.

Where did the gun come from?

Suicide, or was it staged as a suicide?

What kind of trouble could a history graduate from a commoner background get into?

Why did this method of suicide leave so little blood? Was it because I transmigrated in time and came with a healing perk?

After pondering for a moment, Zhou Mingrui changed into another linen shirt, sat in the chair, and thought about more important matters.

Klein's encounter was not his primary concern at the moment; the real issue was figuring out why he had transmigrated and whether he could go back!

Parents, relatives, best friends, buddies, the colorful internet world, all kinds of delicious food... these were the reasons for his urgent desire to return!

*Snap, snap, snap...* Zhou Mingrui’s right hand unconsciously flicked the revolver cylinder out and snapped it back in, over and over again.

"Hmm, this period of time hasn't been much different from the past, just a bit unluckier. How could I have transmigrated for no reason?"

"Unlucky... wait, I performed a luck-enhancement ritual before dinner tonight!"

A bolt of lightning flashed through Zhou Mingrui's mind, illuminating his memory, which had been obscured by fog.

As a qualified keyboard politician, keyboard historian, keyboard economist, keyboard biologist, and keyboard folklorist, he had always claimed to "know a little bit about everything." Of course, his best friends often mocked him, saying he "only knew a little bit about everything."

And occultism was one of those things.

Last year, when he returned to his hometown, he found a thread-bound, vertical-text book titled "Summary of Secret Qin and Han Occult Arts" at a used book stall. It looked quite interesting, and he thought it would help him show off online, so he bought it. Unfortunately, his interest came and went quickly; the vertical text made it very difficult to read, and he only flipped through the beginning before tossing the book into a corner.

It wasn't until the last month, when he had been consistently unlucky—losing his phone, clients backing out, work mistakes, bad things happening one after another—that he accidentally remembered there was a luck-enhancement ritual at the beginning of the "Summary of Secret Occult Arts," and the requirements were extremely simple, requiring no foundation whatsoever.

Holding the mentality that it didn't cost anything anyway, he dug out the book and followed the requirements to perform it before dinner. However, nothing happened at the time.

Who would have thought that in the middle of the night, he would actually transmigrate!

Transmigrated!

"There's a certain possibility it was that luck-enhancement ritual... Hmm, I'll try it here tomorrow. If it really is because of that, then I have hope of transmigrating back!" Zhou Mingrui stopped flicking the revolver and sat up straight.

No matter what, he had to try!

He had to treat a dead horse as if it were a living one!

PS: Three chapters tomorrow to make up for the missed chapter from the previous book (manual funny). The first one will be at midnight tonight, the second at 12:30 PM, and the third at 7:00 PM.

(End of chapter)