Mr. Melancholy Wants to Live a Peaceful Life - Chap 40

Zhen Li’s first time getting an invitation to an event, the organizers had offered a good deal of money, much higher than the fee for an ordinary minor internet celebrity. Zhen Li was very excited. He came to the studio at 6 AM to do his makeup in front of the livestream, talking to the early-rising fans watching. He said, “I’m going to Xincheng Mall today to do a sales promotion, fans in the Xuyang District can come see.”

Yuan Luori, kneeling off to the side wiping the floor with a cleaning rag, looked quietly at Zhen Li when he heard about the Xincheng Mall. “Your event is at the Xincheng Mall?”

“Yes, a very well-known mall in the Xuyang District!” Zhen Li said happily. “We’ve got a bit of fame now, too. Do you want to come with me? While they didn’t invite you, you can help me carry my luggage. The mall supplies clothes, but they’re a little ugly, so I’m planning to bring my three favorite outfits.”

Yuan Luori’s gaze fell on the suitcase at Zhen Li’s feet. He couldn’t resist saying, “Bring some cheap ones.”

“How could I do that? The mall is giving me so much money, I have to show good faith. I’m bringing my three favorite outfits.” Zhen Li gave Yuan Luori a brilliant smile. He thought it was really wonderful that he had stayed in this world. He was good-looking, had clothes, and could eat a lot, and there were fans who liked him, and a mall spending money to invite him to participate in an activity.

Yuan Luori looked at his stupid smiling face and remembered that the great master clearer had said that this was a confidential operation and he couldn’t tell Zhen Li. He guiltily broke out in cold sweat. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the cleaning rag. “Go ahead. Director Yu said that as long as no one is here today, he wants me to fulfill the responsibilities of an environmental maintenance director and polish the floor.”

“Huh?” Zhen Li said disappointedly. “If Director Yu ordered it, then there’s nothing to do. I did want to take you along. That way, I could split you off a bit of the money from the mall and call it your cut.”

Zhen Li thought Yuan Luori was very pitiful. 90% of his income was taken away. He was so poor he couldn’t even buy a decent handkerchief and had to wipe his sweat off with a cleaning rag. He’d wanted to share some of the money with him, but Yuan Luori didn’t accept his good intentions.

“He has to wipe the floor. I’ll go with you today.” Yu Hua had heard their dialogue as soon as he walked through the door. He continued, “Have you done your makeup? If you’re ready, we’ll head out.”

Then Yu Hua picked up Zhen Li’s makeup box and suitcase, scaring Zhen Li into leaping out of his chair. “No, no, I won’t trouble you, I’ll carry them myself.”

Yu Hua had only been going through the motions. Seeing that Zhen Li knew his place, he nodded appreciatively.

Seeing the three of them interact, the barrage on the livestream was about to go mad from hilarity:

[This is my first time following a livestream like this. Watch Yuan Luori-xiaogege studying Criminal Law in the middle of the night, get up early and watch President Zhen do his makeup and Director Yuan wipe the floor. Is your studio trying to force your fans into the habit of early rising and diligent study?]

[President Zhen’s makeup is very cheap, can’t the studio get a better makeup company to sponsor them?]

[So your studio’s environmental maintenance director is really a janitor? So what’s the public relations director? Does he hand out flyers in the street?]

[I’m not very clear on what environmental maintenance and public relations directors do, but the human resources director is definitely in charge. After all, President Zhen is going to carry his own bags.]

[I’m dying from laughter. Has anyone else been following the Zhen Li Studio like a daily skit show?]

[Daily skit show +1]

…

[+ID card number.]

To constantly follow the new leveler’s status, Yu Hua had decided to personally go to Xincheng Mall with Zhen Li.

Before leaving, Yu Hua marked down an absence and deduction of wages for Lian Yufan on the attendance sheet. Their studio was rather hard up, and Lian Yufan didn’t rely on the salary from the studio for support himself. Yu Hua could deduct whenever he liked to avoid Lian Yufan getting too much money and going out to buy pants.

At eight-thirty, the two of them arrived half an hour before the mall opened. Yu Hua casually looked around and saw countless familiar faces among the employees.

There was Cen Xiao’s Plain Face Number 1 mask, Lian Yufan’s Plain Face Number 1 mask, and You Zhengping’s handsome uncle mask. The masks and the true identities were all old acquaintances.

Yu Hua hadn’t known before that You Zhengping, Cen Xiao, and the others were Protectors. He hadn’t equated these faces with the people themselves. Naturally he couldn’t have distinguished the identities behind the masks. Now that he had a goal, he compared some particular habits and could tell at once whose face was whose.

Plain Face Number 1 was Cen Xiao; he liked coke, chicken legs, and barbecue. Plain Face Number 3 was Shi Yongfu; he liked instant noodles, hotpot, and hot and spicy skewers. Plain Face Number 4 was You Zhengping’s underling Xiao Ruo; he liked custard tarts, durian layer cake, and half-baked cheeses…

As Yu Hua’s gaze swept over each mask, he recalled a familiar face and a menu. Since he had resigned from his original company, he hadn’t invited Xiao You’s friends to come to their house. When this was over, he would make some good food to reward everyone. They were all brothers who had stuck with You Zhengping in the face of death. As Xiao You’s family member, he had to thank them properly.

“What are you looking at?” Seeing Yu Hua constantly examining the people inside the mall, Zhen Li’s gaze following his. He saw Cen Xiao’s Plain Face Number 1, and the overflowing smile he had worn since early morning instantly froze.

Among all these Protectors’ masks, the one he had the strongest impression of was Plain Face Number 1. After all, at the amusement park, he had desperately eaten bubbles to rescue that face.

Zhen Li took a big stride towards Face No. 1, took out an autograph card, and gave it to Cen Xiao. Looking woebegone, he said, “You must be a fan of mine. I’ll give you an autograph.”

Cen Xiao looked at the meticulously made-up Zhen Li. A wine red suit accompanied by an extraordinarily beautiful face were very eye-catching. He thought that a handsome young man like this was enough to attract the majority of the customers. He took the autograph card and said, “Yes, I’m your fan.”

Hearing Cen Xiao acknowledge with his double meaning that there was an operation today, Zhen Li, looking sorrowful, said, “So it’s your superiors who invited me to do the sales promotion event?”

“Yes.” Cen Xiao nodded remorsefully.

“Will today’s sales promotion be very warm? Will it set fire to the whole audience?” Zhen Li was about to burst into tears.

Cen Xiao remained remorseful. “Yes, there will be many people at the event, and we want to invite a special guest. Maybe there will even be large-scale fireworks.”

Fireworks… Zhen Li instantly understood the meaning behind Cen Xiao’s words. The Protectors wanted to set a trap to capture a Destroyer with extremely strong destructive force and had asked him to be the bait. Zhen Li remembered Yuan Luori’s sympathetic expression this morning. Gritting his teeth, he asked, “Does our environmental maintenance manager know about this?”

Cen Xiao patted Zhen Li on the shoulder and nodded seriously. He took a tissue out of his pocket and wiped away the tears about to drop from Zhen Li’s eyes. Sympathetically, he said, “I think he does know. Don’t cry. You’ll ruin your makeup if you cry, and then you won’t be able to be an appropriately eye-catching figure.”

Zhen Li snatched the tissue out of Cen Xiao’s hand and trotted over to Yu Hua. He quietly said, “Director Yu, did you know about this?”

Yu Hua calmly said, “I only found out this morning that they had invited you.”

The subtext was that he had known the rest!

In the whole world, I’m the only one being kept in the dark! Zhen Li hugged his suitcase inconsolably. How was he going to protect his three favorite outfits?

Soon it was nine o’clock. The customers came into the mall one after another. Zhen Li stood on a stage at the center of the first floor lobby, singing a song according to the script, attracting people’s gazes.

Zhen Li had a good voice. Though he hadn’t been specially trained, his singing still sounded good, and his pitch was accurate. Adding in that he was very good-looking, quite a few customers were lured over. After the opening song, Zhen Li read the contents of today’s event off a card. He said that starting at ten, there would be a lottery drawing every hour on the hour. The customers were asked to write down their cell phone numbers and put them in a box. At ten, he would personally pick three customers who would receive cell phones.

The lottery-drawing could attract at least 90% of the people. The customers excitedly wrote their phone numbers on the slips of paper and threw them into the lottery drawing box. It would soon be ten, and most of the customers who had put down their numbers had stayed on the first floor to watch Zhen Li’s performance. There were only a small number of customers with clear motives who quickly went to specific counters to shop.

A fat middle-aged man put his slip of paper into the lottery drawing box, then left the first floor, headed for the second. He strolled around the second floor, then quickly went to the third.

The group observing behind the scenes was secretly keeping an eye on all the customers. A customer like this middle-aged man, who only strolled without buying anything, attracted the observation group’s notice. The Protection Organization’s irregulars quickly scanned his distinctive facial features and found the middle-aged man’s identity in the internet network’s information.

The middle-aged Chai Mou was fifty-one years old, married, with one son and one daughter and over a hundred million in assets. Last night he had taken a room at a certain five-star hotel with a male employee from a certain house of ill-repute. Only Chai Mou’s information had been recorded. The young man hadn’t put down his information.

“Send someone to the five-star hotel to get last night’s security camera footage,” Director Xiao ordered. He sat at the rear, overseeing and controlling the whole operation.

The special duty group acted very quickly. In less than twenty minutes, they transferred over the hotel’s security recordings. It was still fifteen minutes before ten. Yuan Luori, standing outside the mall, pulled down his cap and went in, planning to go to the sixth-floor movie theater.

The middle-aged Chai Mou was also on the sixth floor at this moment.

“Director, should we arrest him?” Luo Huai’s ability wasn’t suited for combat. He had stayed with the observation group as reserve personnel.

“Not yet,” Director Xiao said, watching the hotel security recordings sped up 32 times. “I think things aren’t so simple. Pause 1! Pause 4!”

Director Xiao called two of the security recording images to a pause. One was an image of a young man helping Chai Mou into a hotel room. The other was a high-definition image of Chai Mou leaving the hotel lobby the next morning.

“When Chai Mou entered the hotel, he didn’t have anything around his neck. But when he left the hotel today, there was something there,” Director Xiao said.

In the screenshot from this morning, Chai Mou’s shirt collar was very tight, but it still faintly revealed a smear of gold, as though he were wearing a gold chain. But last night, the drunken Chai Mou’s shirt collar had been wide open, and there had been nothing on his neck.

“Find a recording of that young man leaving the hotel!” Director Xiao ordered. “Hurry!”

As it got closer and closer to ten, the observation group searched the recordings inside out without finding an image of the young man leaving.

Close to the arranged time, You Zhengping, wearing the handsome uncle’s face, returned to the support group to put on the black cloak. As he put it on, he said, “Either Chai Mou is an ordinary person, last night was too intense, and the young man hasn’t gotten out of bed yet, or the young man jumped from the hotel’s seventeenth floor last night!”

Hearing the word “intense,” Luo Huai quietly turned his head to look at You Zhengping.

“What are you looking at? Watch the security footage!” You Zhengping said angrily.

You Zhengping, wearing the black cloak, was planning to take the elevator inside the movie theater to the sixth floor. The movie theater was under renovation, and the elevator was closed off. Coming from that direction could create the impression of appearing out of thin air.

There was a wireless earbud in his ear under the black cloak. The command post could pass him information any time.

At 9:50, Yuan Luori arrived at the door of the sixth floor movie theater. Because it was being renovated, there were no guests on the sixth floor, only that middle-aged man, Chai Mou.

Yuan Luori stared at the middle-aged man, inwardly analyzing the possibility that this was the new leveler. But just at that moment, the middle-aged man’s steps slowed as he stare at Yuan Luori. He shook his head, patted himself, and said uncertainly, “Where is this? What am I doing here?”

Chai Mou went up to Yuan Luori and lecherously examined his face. Smiling, he said, “Young man, what time is it? Where is this? I…”

“Scram!” Yuan Luori yelled impatiently, having watched Chai Mou’s expression change and felt a sense of danger.

Having run into a snag, Chai Mou wanted to get angry, but Yuan Luori looked ready to fight, so he rubbed his nose and, picking the path of least resistance, quickly went towards the stairs to go down.

Chai Mou saw Xincheng Mall’s logo and clutched at his head. “Weird, why would I be here? Didn’t I find someone to drink with me last night? And then what? Why is it so hot in here?”

His forehead was covered in sweat. He unbuttoned his collar. Director Xiao, closely watching the surveillance footage, had the image enlarged, but saw that the gold item around Chai Mo’s neck had disappeared.

“Destroyer 192 has a special ability. He can control others or switch bodies with them. He uses gold items worn around the neck to control or switch!” Director Xiao said confidently.

“What’s the difference between controlling and switching?” Luo Huai asked.

Director Xiao said, “Based on our understanding of Destroyers, they have many abilities that can only function if they’ve personally touched something. By controlling Chai Mou, he could merely take him hostage. But if he changed bodies with him…”

“Chai Mou just went around the whole mall touching things!” Luo Huai warned. “Everything he touched can be turned into a bomb!”

“But Chai Mou has already left the mall, and the real Destroyer 192 isn’t necessarily inside. If we activate the repulsion field now, he won’t step into the trap!” Director Xiao said, frowning.

“I remember all the place he touched!” Luo Huai quickly opened a plan of the mall on a computer and made several marks showing the places that Chai Mou had touched. “Apart from the lottery drawing box, everything he touched was one of the mall’s major load-bearing walls. If they explode, even if the repulsion field is active, this building will still collapse instantly!”

In their original plan, Destroyer 192 would want to turn the mall into his game space, so he would first have to go into the mall to designate the range. The best outcome was for the Protection Organization to fix on their target while Destroyer 192 was preparing, but they hadn’t expected that Destroyer 192 could casually switch bodies. He was very cautious.

“It’s too dangerous. Should we suspend the plan?” Luo Huai said.

“We can’t suspend it.” You Zhengping’s voice came over his earpiece. He had heard Director Xiao and Luo Huai’s analysis in the command room. “Even if he explodes it, as long as we activate the repulsion field in time, the explosion won’t hurt ordinary people. If the building collapses, that’ll be my loss!”

“The ten o’clock lottery drawing is about to start. Ninety percent of the people are gathered on the first floor. Have Zhen Li draw it out, keep the crowd collected on the first floor. If the repulsion field is concentrated on protecting the customers, it’ll be fine,” Cen Xiao said.

“But Chai Mou put a slip of paper into the lottery drawing box just now. If I were Destroyer 192, I would have put the most powerful bomb inside that box. The more people there are, the more hostages he’ll have!” Luo Huai warned.

“Uh…there’s no need to worry about that, actually.” There was a hint of a laugh in Cen Xiao’s voice over the earpiece. “Zhen Li just went to the restroom and took the opportunity to eat the lottery drawing box and the slips of paper inside it. We’re using the backup lottery drawing box now.”

While Cen Xiao had watched Zhen Li eat all of it, he had been a little worried about his stomach. Zhen Li had said that was it was fine. When a person was extremely hungry, he could eat paper and cardboard boxes. They belonged to the category of food. If it was food, his alternate dimension stomach could tolerate it.

It was just a little choking. Zhen Li had drunk water desperately, pouring the wads of paper into the alternate dimension stomach.

Now, however Destroyer 192 detonated the bomb, the paper box would only explode inside the alternate dimension stomach. Zhen Li wasn’t entirely sure where the alternate dimension stomach sent the food, but at any rate it wouldn’t explode in this world.

“Lian Yufan,” Director Xiao said gravely, “do you know how much a six-story commercial building weighs? The impact of thousands of tons is enough to flatten your pitiful special ability. You’ll have to bear with the pressure from the collapse of the building and the impact of the explosion entirely with your flesh and blood!”

“Director, if Destroyer 192 can change bodies, if we miss this opportunity, he’ll definitely become more vigilant. It’ll be harder for us to catch him. If a person like this hides among the crowd, the outcome will be unthinkable,” Lian Yufan said solemnly. “Don’t worry, the lives of the thousand and more people in the mall are much more important than my life. I’ll definitely be able to bear it. This is the most efficient and most optimal option.”

“I trust that your idea about the number of lives will persist.” Director Xiao ordered, “You Zhengping, move!”

Director Xiao nodded in gratification. After their experience in actual combat last time, the new generation of protectors already possessed an initial ability to alter their plans according to the situation on the battlefield. They would become stronger.

You Zhengping was already hiding behind the door of the movie theater. He had heard everyone over his earpiece and knew that this battle couldn’t be lost. When he received the order, he move rapidly, appearing behind Yuan Luori just like a demon.

As the same time, outside the mall, a little husky with a shining coat, wearing a gold band around its neck, was adorably wagging its tail towards some children.

The three children, on seeing this adorable and well-behaved doggy, couldn’t resist leaving the protection of their parents to chase after.

The little husky went to a place without people and suddenly fell down. The three children surrounded the husky, wanting to see what was wrong with the doggy. Just then, a hand reached out from behind them, and the three children silently fell unconscious.

The young rent boy Xiao Mu walked over, tapped on the three children’s little backpacks, tied the three children together, and put them over his shoulders.

He kicked the unconscious husky at his feet. The dog was dead.

This three-month old little husky had contracted canine parvovirus. Last night it couldn’t hold out any longer and had died. The pet shop had put the little husky’s body outside, and Destroyer 192 had taken notice of it and put a neckband around its neck. This was so he could use the cute little animal to attract children.

He bent down, about to take the neckband from the husky’s neck, then hesitated and let it go.

His ability to switch bodies was limited. It could only be used once a week. He couldn’t use the rich merchant Chai Mou anymore. If he removed the band from the little husky’s neck now, he would have no line of retreat.

Destroyer 192 hid the little husky’s body in a corner. He did a visual estimate of the height of the movie theater. With the three children over his shoulder, he equipped a jumping item and leapt right onto the theater’s window.

Author’s Note
Zhen Li: When I equipped the alternate dimension stomach because I wanted to eat without getting fat, but now it seems to have become an absorption ability.

Cen Xiao: Well done.

Zhen Li: (wildly eating wads of paper) It’s for the sake of my three outfits. If there really is a bomb in the lottery drawing box, I couldn’t protect my suitcase! TAT