The world has turned into Hell's Game, why should I stay human?
Chapter 181 Not Necessarily Heaven When Surrounded by Bikinis

Chapter 181: Chapter 181 Not Necessarily Heaven When Surrounded by Bikinis

"Then wait a second."

The proprietor said helplessly.

Then he squatted down and searched for a long time, finally finding a corn sausage.

"Do you want it grilled?"

asked the shopkeeper.

"No need, just hand it over to me."

Liu Zheng said generously.

He took the corn sausage, but no item description popped up.

"It doesn’t even count as a miscellaneous item."

He pursed his lips.

Forget it, you can’t expect too much from free stuff.

"Let’s get started then."

Liu Zheng peeled off the entire corn sausage and swallowed it down in a few bites.

"Now, come on in."

The proprietor opened the door to the newsstand.

"You’re not planning to shut the door and beat the dog, are you?"

He said cautiously.

"I don’t need to shut the door, I can blow your dog head off right now."

The shopkeeper raised his double-barreled shotgun again.

"If I die, don’t even think you can live."

Liu Zheng said calmly.

"Death it is then, do you think I live comfortably guarding this newsstand?"

The shop owner scoffed.

"At least, you’re a sole proprietor, much better than us wage workers."

He consoled in return.

"Heh, you’ll find out in a bit."

The proprietor couldn’t be bothered to explain and beckoned him to hurry inside.

Liu Zheng pulled out a teething stick and held it in his hand before he entered the newsstand.

The shopkeeper noticed, but didn’t care about his small movement.

Once inside the newsstand, it was a whole different world.

Although it wasn’t as extravagant as Si Xue’s cave, it was the size of an ordinary bookstore.

Books, magazines, and pamphlets were densely arranged on the shelves, and various posters plastered the walls and sides of the bookshelves.

The books for sale were just as blurry as those outside, but the posters were very clear and uncensored.

The first thing Liu Zheng saw was a pink starfish striking a provocative pose at him.

Its head was a lantern fish, and its tail was a starfish.

Or perhaps the tail was a lantern fish, and the head was a starfish.

The lantern fish’s head didn’t have a lantern but a thick, curved piece of flesh instead, with a button-sized bulge at the end of the flesh.

The center of the starfish wasn’t a slit but a tight round hole fringed with many wrinkles.

Liu Zheng opened his mouth as if to speak, hesitated, then fell silent, hesitated, then fell silent again...

"You see it, don’t you?"

The shopkeeper, walking over, raised his eyebrows.

"I’m not, I didn’t, don’t talk nonsense."

He quickly denied.

"That’s right, this is the latest popular..."

"No! Don’t say it out loud!"

Liu Zheng cried out in despair.

"A unisex self-comforter, and it’s the male leather swallow special edition too."

Of course, the shopkeeper didn’t heed his plea and said it anyway.

"I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you, I haven’t heard anything."

Liu Zheng covered his ear holes, desperately hypnotizing himself.

Joking aside, if he accepted the existence of such a heretical toy, how could he look his own collection in the eye after returning to reality?

Those were collections he had spent a lot of money and effort on.

"You can’t take it already, and here I thought you were human."

The shop owner said contemptuously.

"You... hmm, you’re really not."

Liu Zheng commented as he glanced at the proprietor.

Underneath the loose leather jacket, there was no torso or legs, just a huge pure meat sausage.

On the surface of the meat sausage were some black spots, probably black pepper.

"That grilled sausage you just handed me..."

He suddenly made a connection.

"Right, do you know how expensive it is to purchase takeout?"

The shopkeeper said as if it were obvious.

"Phew, that was close."

He was relieved he didn’t like pure meat sausages and had the proprietor change it to one with starch.

"By the way, don’t you have some misunderstanding about humans? We humans have conservatives too, you know."

Liu Zheng felt the need to defend his species.

"Sure, but conservative humans either work at City Hall or in the factories. The kind like you, wandering around Metropolis—if you were a conservative, you’d be dead long ago."

The shopkeeper remarked.

He, who had been guarding the newsstand, saw many odd customers come and go; he was quite well-informed.

"Psh."

Liu Zheng found he couldn’t refute.

Considering the things he had done to survive, though he couldn’t be said to be utterly unprincipled, he could be considered to lack integrity, so radical that even other radicals would think it extreme.

"Come this way."

The shop owner led him into a small room inside.

The cramped room was dark except for the glow of the screen of an old-fashioned bulky TV.

The screen was not displaying any images but the classic colorful "big circular disc" pattern.

Liu Zheng didn’t know what it was when he was younger, but later, out of boredom, he looked it up online and learned.

It’s called "television test pattern," and the various colors and lines indicated diverse parameters for the TV’s cathode-ray tube, reflecting the differences in color, brightness, and horizontal lines of the TV display, to give repairmen a convenient understanding.

Beneath the color TV was a DVD player that looked to be not much younger than him.

Believe it or not, Liu Zheng actually missed the days when he would scout around for DVDs.

Especially when he found a DVD he shouldn’t have and watched it at a friend’s house, leading to that friend being tag-teamed by his parents, with him gleefully watching the calamity—it was something he recalled vividly even now.

"Didn’t you come for a book? Why have me watch a DVD?"

Liu Zheng dropped his mischievous smile and asked.

"Who said that a DVD can’t contain a book?"

The shopkeeper looked at him as if he were a country bumpkin.

"...Fine."

Don’t ask; if you ask, it’s just Metropolis’s signature black technology.

The store owner took out a cardboard box from under the DVD player, stacked with a bunch of books wrapped in greasy paper covers.

The covers had no content, just some suspicious white stains mixed with red.

"Here, take these. Put them in the DVD player, and they’ll play automatically. After you finish one, I can sell you a magazine. After three, I’ll give you a fifty percent discount. After five, I can sell you those non-sale items."

"What if I finish them all?"

Liu Zheng asked.

Although he wasn’t sure how many he could read, he still needed to negotiate the terms first.

"If you can finish them all, I’ll give you a big treasure."

The store owner said.

"You’re not talking about that Starfish, are you?"

Liu Zheng asked with a roll of his eyes.

"I don’t even have stock of that, it’s so popular. As soon as it comes in, it’s all reserved."

The store owner explained.

"So what is it? Show me the goods first, or I won’t watch."

He demanded.

With the stuff sold in this newsstand, he found it hard to feel any anticipation.

"Look at how suspicious you are, truly a human."

The store owner expressed contempt once again.

Liu Zheng remained unfazed.

Contempt, whatever. Since entering this world, he had been scorned by no less than nine or ten others; one more wouldn’t make a difference.

"Wait."

Seeing his resolute attitude, the store owner acquiesced.

He squatted down again and rummaged under the DVD player, eventually finding a CD case.

"Here."

He handed the CD to Liu Zheng.

Liu Zheng opened the case and found a CD that was only half a disc with no markings on it.

"What is this?"

He inquired.

"Security Bureau’s temporary worker skill training CD."

The store owner replied.

"Why is it only half?"

"Nonsense, could I sell a complete one, and would you dare to buy it?"

The store owner rolled his eyes.

Liu Zheng pursed his lips and said nothing.

Who’s being underestimated here?

If he had guts, he’d sell him a complete disc in ten days; not just a disc, even if the Security Bureau were up for grabs, he’d take it.

"So what skill is inside?"

He questioned.

It better not be something like "fast typing" or "quick stamping" or that would be a joke.

"Don’t know, but it should be something offensive."

The store owner shook his head.

"How many skills?"

"No idea, with this kind of junk you’re just taking a chance, but you’re guaranteed at least one."

The store owner informed him.

"Alright then."

Liu Zheng reluctantly agreed.

The overwhelming reputation of the Security Bureau was not lost on him; although he had only been caught once by the guys in green vests, that was only because the Bloody Restaurant had his back.

Otherwise, during the sewer incident, he would have been taken by the Security Bureau for some major memory restoration technique.

The skills used by the Security Bureau to train temporary workers couldn’t be too bad.

Besides, Liu Zheng was indeed in need of some offensive skills.

"You still have complaints? Do you know how hard it is to get this CD? If it weren’t that this batch of goods is indeed important, I wouldn’t be using it as a reward."

"Oh. Then let’s begin."

He stated.

"Then go ahead and play it."

"You play it for me."

Liu Zheng retorted.

"Why should I?"

"Such a tough job; I need to conserve my strength."

He declared confidently.

"Just a matter of lifting a finger, and you talk about conserving strength."

The store owner scorned for the third time.

But with no choice, he eventually took a book and inserted it into the DVD player.

"Watch the screen."

The store owner instructed, then closed his eyes.

Liu Zheng wanted to close his too, but bound by his word, he had to fix his gaze on the color TV.

A stream of electronic music filled with static noise started playing, as two colorful butterflies fluttered down from the top left corner of the screen.

As their wings flapped, highly contrasting vivid landscape patterns extended from them across the entire screen.

The gold letters of "Mao Zhenduo Films" appeared in the center of the screen and then suddenly flew out from the screen, hitting Liu Zheng right on the forehead.

His vision went black in an instant, and when he came to, he found himself in the middle of a square.

White Roman columns stood around the square, but the distance was filled with stilted houses showcasing the charm of the southwestern ethnic minorities.

Just as Liu Zheng prepared to take a closer look, a burst of passionate and dynamic music suddenly began to play.

The moment the music started, he lost control of his own body, twisting and turning in rhythm.

At the same time, the square filled with dozens of bikini-clad dance partners who joined in the dance.

However, Liu Zheng couldn’t feel happy at all.

Because those in bikinis were not human, but grossly overweight poison bugs.

Each one looked different yet exactly alike.

Because all of their features were randomly combined from over a dozen types of poisonous creatures like centipedes, silkworms, earthworms, spiders, venomous snakes, toads, and more.

Watching their wiggling limbs, and then looking at the distant stilted houses, Liu Zheng inevitably thought of a legendary existence.

Gu Worm.

As the music played on, the bikini-clad Gu Worms drew closer until they completely surrounded him.

Then, as the intro finally ended, a high and clear human voice suddenly erupted.

"Fake cigarettes, fake alcohol, fake friends, fake friends..."

Upon hearing this lyric, the bikini-clad Gu Worms reached out their forelimbs, those without forelimbs squatting down and extending their mouthparts.

"Shit!"

Liu Zheng only had time to curse once before being mobbed from below.

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