37: Chapter 37 The Targeted Pawn

He sat behind the counter for ten minutes, replaying the conversation from start to finish three times, then stood up and walked over to the Antique Shop's street-facing window.

The curtains were only half drawn, and sunlight filtered through the gap, casting a bright line across the wooden floor.

Yan Zheng did not pull back the curtains; he simply stood at the edge of the window frame and swept a glance at the street view opposite with his peripheral vision.

Across the street, a man in a gray hoodie sat on a bench in front of a bakery, holding a cup of coffee in his hand, his gaze fixed on his phone screen.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˙ ꒳ ˙ )

He had been drinking that same cup of coffee for forty minutes without finishing it, and the phone screen hadn't been scrolled even once since he had started watching.

His gaze shifted to the street corner.

A white van was parked next to a fire hydrant; the body of the vehicle bore the logo of a moving company, but the rear doors were tightly shut, not a single mover had gotten out, and a silhouette could be vaguely seen in the driver's cab.

Yan Zheng retreated behind the counter, opened his phone, and pulled up the surveillance footage of the Antique Shop's back door.

In the back alley, next to the trash cans, there was a blue sedan he hadn't seen before. Its windows were half-open, the air conditioning was on, but no one had entered or exited.

"Three surveillance points."

Yan Zheng put down his phone and rested his hands, folded over each other, on the counter.

"Two at the front door, one at the back. A standard triangular surveillance setup, covering the line of sight for all entrances and exits of the Antique Shop."

He picked up his cold tea and took a sip.

"Mr. Burns has left, but his colleagues have not."

Yan Zheng stood up from behind the counter, untied his apron, folded it, and set it aside, then walked to the hidden door leading to the Underground Room.

He didn't open the hidden door; he just stood there and whispered to the floor beneath his feet.

"Mr. Brute, the plan has changed."

"From now on, you and all the Skeleton Soldiers are to enter a state of deep hibernation. Do not move, do not make any sound, and do not ignite your phosphorus fire."

"Not a single bone is allowed to move."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ͈ ꈊ ˘ ͈ )

He turned and walked back to the front hall, tore the "Inventory Check, Temporarily Closed" sign off the glass door, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the trash can.

Then he opened the shop door, moved the dusty pothos plant from the doorway to the steps to get some Sun, and returned behind the counter to fiddle with those fake antiques—dusting where needed, rearranging where necessary.

Just as a well-behaved, law-abiding small shop owner should look.

May 1st to May 5th, five days.

Yan Zheng did not go down to the Underground Room even once, did not touch the system panel once, and did not go out at night.

He opened the shop during the day, received a few sporadic tourists, and sold a folding fan and two imitation snuff bottles.

At night, he closed the shop, went upstairs to sleep, and turned out the lights at eight o'clock.

The people watching him on surveillance must have been about to fall asleep.

May 6th, 3:00 PM.

Yan Zheng was sitting behind the counter reading a book about Ming Dynasty porcelain appreciation when the doorbell chimed.

The man in the gray hoodie was gone, replaced by a woman in a sports jacket walking her dog in front of the bakery.

The white van had also changed its position, having moved from next to the fire hydrant to half a street away.

The blue sedan in the back alley was still there, but the windows were closed.

"The surveillance intensity is decreasing."

Yan Zheng turned a page of the book.

"Three points reduced to two, and the personnel rotation frequency has changed from once every eight hours to once every twelve hours."

"They are starting to think I'm a dead fish."

Yan Zheng: ( ˊ ᗜ ˋ )

He closed the book, closed his eyes, and leaned back against the chair.

He wasn't resting; he was channeling his Mental Power.

The system panel lit up deep in his consciousness, and he found a functional tab he hadn't used much, gray and tucked away in the very corner of the panel.

[Material Perception (Passive)]

[Description: Continuously consumes a trace amount of Mental Power (0.5 points/hour) to detect the location and approximate material value of dead or dying organisms within the perception range. Perception range is directly proportional to the maximum Mental Power limit. Current coverage radius: approximately 200 meters.]

"Zero point five per hour; running it for a full eight hours at night would only cost four points of Mental Power."

"With an eleven-point limit, minus the three points for Mr. Brute, I still have eight points left—more than enough."

Yan Zheng activated this function in his consciousness.

A faint pulse spread out from the top of his head, like a pebble thrown into a lake, with ripples silently expanding outwards, penetrating the floor, the walls, and all the buildings within two hundred meters of the Antique Shop.

The perceived image was not visual; it was more like a blurred heat map.

Living people were dark red dots of light, densely packed, with at least a hundred of them within the two-hundred-meter range.

Yan Zheng did not care about the living.

He cared about those dots of light that wouldn't move, the ones that were cooling down or about to be extinguished.

The scan lasted about three minutes.

"Within a two-hundred-meter range, there are currently no signals of deceased organisms."

Yan Zheng opened his eyes and checked the time: 3:15 PM.

"It's daytime now, fewer dead people; that's normal."

"I'll turn it on again at night."

At 11:00 PM that night, Yan Zheng lay on the bed on the second floor, closed his eyes, and activated Material Perception.

The pulse spread out once again.

Fifteen minutes later, a faint gray dot of light appeared in the northeast direction of the perception range, about 160 meters away.

The system panel popped up a notification.

[Deceased organism detected. Location: East-northeast, straight-line distance approximately 160 meters. Material assessment: Ordinary human skeleton ×1 (Quality: Average). Time of death: Approximately 2 hours ago.]

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ¬ ᴗ ¬ ˵ )

"In Hell's Kitchen, people die every day."

"I used to have to go out to pick them up, but now I just need to lie in bed and wait for the signal."

He pulled up the map of the underground passages in his consciousness; the location of that gray dot was in a small alley, less than thirty meters from the nearest underground tunnel entrance.

"I'll wait until 3:00 AM, when the surveillance personnel are at their lowest energy, and send a Skeleton Soldier from the Underground Room through the tunnels to retrieve it, then return the same way."

"The entire process will be completed underground; the surveillance on the surface won't capture a thing."

Yan Zheng put his hands behind his head, and the corners of his mouth curved up.

"Mr. Burns, your people are watching my doors and windows."

"But you forgot one thing."

"My Skeleton Soldiers don't use doors."