Chapter 7

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Chapter 7: New "Customer" Arrives

In the following days, Lin Qingliu’s small clinic began to receive a few visitors.

Unfortunately, these people were either too poor or too intelligent; in any case, they did not fit Lin Qingliu’s target audience, leading to him not selling a single baptism package.

With talents unsold, help me unlock the keys!

To be honest, the baptism was not essential for the blessing ceremony, but Lin Qingliu needed to provide his divine persona with a way out.

If you refuse the baptism, then I will grant you superpowers, wouldn’t that make me seem like a needy god?

Moreover, what if that person is a genuine atheist, going around proclaiming their greatness?

His powers would be wasted entirely, and even if he could erase memories and recover the method, it would be a waste of time.

So ultimately, the baptism indeed had the flavor of a compliance test.

Lin Qingliu was not in a hurry about it; after all, the growth of leeks needs time. He could only continue experimenting and developing his abilities while hoping the next leek would be even more impressive.

A change soon occurred.

One midnight a few days later, having already started to rest, Lin Qingliu could not resist the temptation of hunger and had no intention of suppressing the feeling. Instead, he got up to prepare another meat patty as a reward for himself.

With his ability to use the Blood and Flesh pathway, he did not need to worry about gaining weight.

Just as he took the zombie meat from the refrigerator and began preheating the frying pan, he suddenly heard two gunshots from the outside street.

The gunfire shattered the quiet night, causing Lin Qingliu, who had never handled a gun, to pause for a moment.

Then, his innate curiosity kicked in. Lin Qingliu turned the heat down on the pan and activated his enhanced senses to listen intently to the commotion outside.

Although the management of Hope City was quite strict, the outer city always had its own channels.

Thus, while firearms were not overly prevalent, there were still ways to obtain them.

The inner city turned a blind eye to such things, allowing some leeway but not total freedom.

So it was reasonable to expect that the outer city could only manage to acquire handguns.

Several black markets sold handcrafted traditional pistols, and by paying extra, some shady characters could even provide genuine ones with serial numbers filed off.

These firearms are not expensive, but the price of bullets is astonishingly high.

Having been in this world for a week, Lin Qingliu had heard gunfire two or three times, and owing to his [Blood and Flesh] ability, he did not overly concern himself with this danger.

However, today’s situation felt different. Although no further gunshots rang out, the chaotic sounds of footsteps seemed to get closer to his house…

"Oh no," Lin Qingliu thought uneasily, hurrying out of the kitchen and rushing downstairs.

While still on the staircase, he heard the sound of a door opening. Lin Qingliu looked down and saw a boy, probably around twelve or thirteen years old, quietly closing the front door on the ground floor. The boy gripped two bent paperclips turned into thin wires.

He was skilled.

The boy’s face and clothes were smeared with blood, and it was unclear whether it was his own or someone else’s.

He looked messy and disheveled, but upon closer inspection, Lin Qingliu recognized that the boy’s hair was a dull gray.

After shutting the door, the boy pressed his ear softly against it. The ground floor was not lit, allowing his body to blend into the shadows perfectly.

*Cough*

Lin Qingliu cleared his throat and descended the stairs with an air of practiced nonchalance.

The boy, startled, nearly leapt from the floor. He turned to face the young man, who was seven or eight years his senior, his expression pleading but silent.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The steady rhythm of approaching footsteps filled the awkward, eerie silence, yet neither moved.

“Bang, bang, bang.”

A series of urgent knocks was accompanied by a man’s brusque shout:

“Open up, hurry! Is anyone alive in there?”

Lin Qingliu paid no further attention to the gray-haired boy. He walked to the wall, flicked on the light, and with a tone of feigned compliance, opened the door.

Meanwhile, the boy slipped behind the clinic’s reception counter, his eyes wide with fear, peering out from the shadows.

“Click.”

As the mechanical lock clicked open under Lin Qingliu’s hand, a dark gun barrel was thrust against his forehead.

Lin Qingliu’s expression shifted instantly to one of nervous sweat; he stepped back, ushering two men with menacing looks into the room.

“Where’s the brat you’re hiding?”

The gunman demanded, his eyes locked on Lin Qingliu, while the knife-wielding man began to scour the area.

“Haven’t seen him.”

Lin Qingliu rolled his eyes dismissively.

“Who do you think you are, hiding him?”

Enraged, the gunman pressed the barrel harder against Lin Qingliu’s forehead,

“Third, search thoroughly!”

“On it.”

The knife-wielding man shoved Lin Qingliu aside and ventured deeper into the clinic, while the gunman turned back:

“Stupid dog, looking to die, wasting my bullet.”

Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

“Bang!”

The expected scene did not materialize; no blood gushed, no brains scattered, not even the thud of a collapsing body. Instead, there was only a sigh:

“You really can’t make use of an opportunity.”

Ignoring the stunned man before him, Lin Qingliu tapped his forehead a few times, then pinched out a slightly deformed copper bullet with two fingers.

“Next time, I’ll increase the density and thickness of my skull a bit more; it should work even better.”

Lin Qingliu muttered to himself, while the man before him turned ashen.

“Su, superpowered individual?!”

“Why the surprise? Isn’t the awakening rate nearly two in a thousand? It’s not that unusual to encounter one, right?”

The gunman’s mind was in turmoil. A two in a thousand awakening rate among Hope City’s millions wasn’t particularly rare.

But superpowered individuals—especially those impervious to bullets—had limitless potential, whether they sought fortune in the outer city or a career in the military. Why would they hide in a shabby mental health clinic like this?

And to have run into one himself?

What rotten luck!

“Oh, right.”

Lin Qingliu seemed to recall something suddenly, looking at the trembling man:

“Could you help me test my arm after muscle enhancement? Grip gauges are quite expensive and break easily…”

The man glanced slightly to the left, and just then, something flashed by, followed by a whooshing sound that struck his neck. He immediately lost consciousness.

The gunman’s body slumped to the ground, the old-fashioned gun clattering beside him. At that moment, the other man, drawn by the gunfire, peeked out from the inner room on the first floor and saw his partner collapse.

“Second Brother!”

Unaware of what had transpired, the man charged forward, dagger in hand, seemingly devoid of all reason.

He was robust and swift. Before the young man could turn, the dagger was already embedded in his neck.

This strike, honed by over thirty years of street combat, drove the nearly twenty-centimeter blade deep into the man’s neck, even lifting the skin on the opposite side into a peak.

The man intended to thrust a few more times but found his dagger seemingly lodged in the other’s bone.

He tried twice to pull it free but couldn’t budge it, and then the smiling youth slowly turned his head to look at him.

The man released the dagger and stepped back, his face a mask of shock.

The person across from him asked lightly,

“Do you want this?”