474 A cell phone
In truth, Ren Xiaosu had come to the tavern because he wanted to listen to stories.
When he got a rough understanding of the rumors surrounding the Anjing House, he suddenly heard an interesting but terrifying saying about how there was no one in this world the Anjing House could not kill.
This was an extremely secretive organization whose members were scattered and acted independently, yet it was also very powerful at the same time.
One of the more interesting stories about the Anjing House spoke about how the heir of a small consortium entrusted the Anjing House to assassinate his biological father in order to inherit the family business earlier.
In the end, after a week, the Anjing House said they had completed the mission. However, the heir realized his father was not dead yet. Hence, he angrily accused the Anjing House of being untrustworthy. He had already paid the fee, but the Anjing House had broken their promise. The fee was equivalent to five or six years of his savings as the heir of the consortium, and it was a huge sum that normal people would never get to see in their lives!
However, the Anjing House calmly replied to that consortium’s heir, “You said you wanted your biological father killed. Your mother’s bodyguard from more than ten years ago, who’s also known to you as Uncle Wang, has been killed. He’s your actual biological father.”
Along with that reply, the Anjing House also sent a DNA paternity test report to the heir.
The heir of the consortium was stunned. What kind of a fucking twist was this? He did not even know when the paternity test was done, much less how the Anjing House could have learned of such a secret.
This heir apparent of the small consortium almost had a mental breakdown.
Ren Xiaosu did not know whether this incident had really happened, but he was very interested in the ability of the Anjing House to find people.
Furthermore, he had a long chat with the lumberjacks who tried to rob him yesterday and found out from them that there was even a rumor among the people that if you helped the Anjing House carry out a mission, you could choose not to be paid monetarily and get them to do something of equal value for you instead.
However, all of this was just hearsay. After all, they were just some rumors the refugees had heard, so Ren Xiaosu understood well that these rumors were most likely fabricated.
For example, there were now even rumors about him, the war hero of Fortress 178, being over two meters tall and not ever taking his eyes off his gun while sleeping. He was even known to be more inclined towards certain subjects.
What the fuck did it mean to be more inclined towards certain subjects?
Ren Xiaosu was perplexed. He could understand the basis of the other rumors, but who the fuck would spread rumors about him being more inclined in certain subjects at school? There was no fucking basis to that rumor at all! And what did that have anything to do with combat?
After the tavern opened for business, he went inside and ordered two dishes. Then he noticed the young woman, who had gone around earlier taking notes as she listened to stories from the Northwest, helping a blind old man towards a chair in the middle of the tavern.
Ren Xiaosu understood now that this young woman was the granddaughter of this storyteller. The reason why she was just now asking people to tell their stories was so she could collect more material for her grandpa.
Ren Xiaosu became even more interested in what tales the storyteller would weave. This was because, when the young woman was listening to the stories earlier, she would occasionally interrupt the middle-aged man to analyze the logic of what he said. Clearly, she was very particular about the veracity of the stories.
When the young woman saw Ren Xiaosu, she greeted him with a smile. Meanwhile, the tale that the storyteller narrated today was about the war in the Southwest, and the main character was Qing Zhen.
In the story, there was also a supernatural being who acted as the Qing Consortium’s spy and helped to bring down the Li Consortium’s Divine Arms Battalion.
Ren Xiaosu smacked his lips in satisfaction. Although he was no longer out there fighting wars, the legend of his deeds was still spreading to many places.
Suddenly, Ren Xiaosu felt that even though he clearly did not wish to get involved in those disputes, it was as though everything that happened in the Northwest and Southwest were somehow related to him.
Ren Xiaosu had come here because he wanted to listen to stories about the Anjing House, but he was not in a hurry to know. If this topic wasn’t touched on today, he was fine with coming back again tomorrow to listen. The storyteller would definitely talk about it someday.
That night, after Ren Xiaosu left the tavern, he went to the grocery store closest to the stronghold to trade his gold for money. When he saw the owner of the grocery store, Ren Xiaosu felt as though he had seen Wang Fugui again. It was just that this owner was not as benevolent as Wang Fugui.
Ren Xiaosu decisively bought a brick house with the money he exchanged for, and it even came with a backyard too! Suddenly, the entire town was abuzz with news that a rich man had arrived.
Every day, Ren Xiaosu did not do anything other than dumping corpses in the morning and going to the tavern to listen to the storyteller from noon until night. The storyteller would only tell two stories a day, while there would also be a preview of what would be talked about in the next session.
The reason for dumping corpses was that his exchanging of gold for money had alarmed some of the ruthless people in town. When they saw that Ren Xiaosu was able to so generously afford a brick house, they started getting ideas to rob him.
There were constantly people climbing over the wall of Ren Xiaosu’s house in the middle of the night. However, all of them would always disappear after that like rocks sinking into the sea.
These people were all very secretive in their actions. A lot of people only realized the ruthless people in town seemed to be lessening after they had been missing for a few days...
At first, nobody thought much of it. Slowly, the atmosphere in town became much more peaceful when the ruthless people who often liked stealing from others started going extinct.
There were also some ruthless people who sensed that something was amiss and decided to run away. They felt like someone was secretly hunting them down in this town.
This rumor was spreading around the town: “Someone is purposely hunting down the ruthless lawbreakers.”
Initially, Ren Xiaosu still had to trade his gold for more cash. But after killing so many of the ruthless people, the money he had on hand started increasing instead of decreasing.
Since Ren Xiaosu was not a good person either, he did not feel bad about spending this ill-gotten gains.
And to his surprise, he found an old cell phone on one of the people.
Although the cell phone was very basic and worn-out, it was not enough to stop Ren Xiaosu’s curiosity for new stuff.
Ren Xiaosu had also seen an instructional manual for a cell phone from before The Cataclysm in the Yang Consortium’s library. However, he had never seen an actual cell phone before and only had experience using a satellite phone.
The cell phone did not have a charger, and there was nowhere in this town where it could be charged. However, this problem did not stump Ren Xiaosu since he had the nanomachines.
As he waited for the cell phone to finish charging to turn it on, a glimmer shone in Ren Xiaosu’s eyes. This was the first time he had come across such a “high tech” daily necessity.
However, after studying it for a long time, Ren Xiaosu realized this device only had the functions of sending and receiving text messages, as well as taking pictures. But who would that refugee be sending messages to? The mailbox was empty, and so was the photo album.
Or could it be that the refugee who had it previously was only holding onto it but had never used it before?
He went outside and asked around. Some refugees said some of the Wang Consortium’s big shots in the stronghold had been using cell phones for a long time now. Ren Xiaosu did not think too much about it and assumed the refugee had gotten it from robbing the escapees.
As the number of people looking for trouble decreased, Ren Xiaosu was finally able to calm down. He started to concentrate on listening to all of the stories that were told, such as the Pyro Company secretly capturing supernatural beings, or the Qinghe Group in the Central Plains that had a method to create supernatural beings. As long as one could complete eight mysterious challenges, they could unlock the genetic code to awaken their power. However, no one in the outside world knew what these eight challenges were.