Chapter 105: Master Fu Is Missing
“What are you two doing?” Aunt Peng asked, utterly bewildered by the sudden smiles on Song Yuqing and Sister Qin’s faces.
“Yeah, why are you laughing at such a tragic story?” Liu Xiaona added, looking thoroughly unamused.
“You dummy! This means that every time someone is swallowed by the void and lands in a parallel world, it triggers a lightning strike!” Sister Qin explained, playfully punching Liu Xiaona on the arm.
“Wait, really…?” Aunt Peng was still trying to wrap her head around the situation.
Song Yuqing gently patted the back of Aunt Peng’s hand. “Aunt Peng, how about we take you back home with us tonight?”
Aunt Peng’s eyes immediately lit up. “Yes! Let’s go back so I can find my daughter!”
Song Yuqing offered a soft smile but didn’t correct her. From what they had gathered, Aunt Peng’s daughter had either mutated into a high-level zombie or completely lost her humanity. Whichever it was, it was probably safer if they didn’t actively seek her out.
“Alright! You guys head back first,” Sister Qin said, brimming with confidence. “I’ll keep a sharp eye on this sector. The exact second a random bolt of lightning strikes, I’ll go hunt down whoever dropped in!”
“Perfect! Take care, Sister Qin. See you on the next jump!” Liu Xiaona said, bumping her fist playfully against Sister Qin’s arm.
Song Yuqing let out a massive breath of relief. This excursion had turned out to be incredibly fruitful.
By the time Song Yuqing and her staff stepped back through the threshold into God’s Supermarket, the sky outside was already pitch-black. Zhang Hua was slumped by the front window, staring blankly into the dark.
“You’re finally back!” The moment he spotted them, he leaped out of his chair. He had been waiting for hours!
“Wait, isn’t that…?” Zhang Hua stared at Aunt Peng in utter bewilderment. “Sister Peng? Didn’t you sneak out of the base and disappear?”
Aunt Peng awkwardly brushed a stray lock of white hair behind her ear, looking sheepish. “Well… things got a bit complicated.”
Song Yuqing pulled out her phone to fire off a text to Nanjiao. She wanted to let him know she had secured some incredible high-tech assets that needed to be dispatched to Base Zero for immediate research.
Zhang Hua nervously stepped closer to the counter, clearing his throat. “Um, Manager Song, I successfully processed every single online and walk-in transaction today while you were gone.”
Song Yuqing looked up, offering him a genuine, appreciative smile. “Thank you so much.”
She lowered her head to finish typing the message, but Zhang Hua remained anchored right next to her, completely refusing to budge.
“You’ve been pulling sentinel duty all day, you must be exhausted,” Liu Xiaona noted considerately. “You should head next door and get some sleep.”
“No, no, no! I’m completely fine, not a bit sleepy!” Zhang Hua replied, offering a tight, forced smile.
“Oh, alright then.” Liu Xiaona slipped behind the cash register to audit the day’s transaction log.
Zhang Hua nervously gripped the hem of his jacket, gritting his teeth before finally plucking up the courage to speak. “Well… as you can see, I’m actually pretty useful around here. Any chance you could officially hire me as a store clerk?”
Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, Gaha, and Little Meat Bun all stopped what they were doing to stare at him in unison. Zhang Hua’s face instantly flushed bright crimson.
When Song Yuqing had initially asked if he wanted to join her staff, he had bluntly turned her down. But now, after managing the floor for a single day, he desperately wanted to stay!
“I’ll have to consult my supervisor first,” Song Yuqing replied, choosing not to give an immediate answer. Mentally, she called out to Master Fu.
A long, agonizing silence fell over the supermarket.
Zhang Hua’s Internal Monologue: You’re the store manager! Who exactly do you need to consult? Why aren’t you saying anything? Why are you just staring into space?
Aunt Peng’s Internal Monologue: Oh dear, I suppose she doesn’t want to hire the poor boy…
The Staff’s Internal Monologue: Why hasn’t Master Fu responded yet?
Song Yuqing’s Internal Monologue: Where is he? Where the hell is Master Fu? We literally cleared two of his massive doomsday objectives on this single jump, and he hasn’t even shown up to gloat or praise us?
“Ahem,” Zhang Hua cleared his throat, trying to break the suffocating tension. “Look, if it’s a hassle, just forget it. Pretend I never asked.”
Song Yuqing cursed the system up and down in her mind, but maintained a flawless, serene smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Zhang Hua. We simply aren’t expanding our staff matrix at the moment.”
She didn’t dare greenlight his employment without authorization. For starters, God’s Supermarket lacked additional staff quarters to house a new recruit. Furthermore, the high-stakes objectives assigned by Master Fu were still hanging over their heads; no one could guarantee whether the store would even exist in three months, let alone what would become of them if it dissolved. And most importantly, the supermarket ultimately belonged to Master Fu—any hiring decisions required his explicit approval.
If anyone was to blame, it was simply Zhang Hua for missing his initial window.
“I’m going to head to bed,” Aunt Peng murmured, hastily excusing herself to escape the awkward atmosphere. She needed to figure out how she was going to apologize to her squad leaders tomorrow morning anyway; after all, she had secretly auto-thefted one of their primary scouting vehicles and completely lost it in a parallel dimension.
Dejected, Zhang Hua turned to follow her out the door.
Liu Xiaona couldn’t bear to see him look so defeated, calling out over the counter, “Hey! The exact second God’s Supermarket opens up another slot, you’ll be the very first person I recruit!”
Zhang Hua paused, turning back to throw her an incredibly grateful, re-energized grin.
Once the two neighbors had safely departed, Song Yuqing’s phone finally buzzed with a reply from Nanjiao.
[Understood. I’ll dispatch a carrier pigeon to your coordinates tomorrow morning. How is Gaha holding up?]
Song Yuqing stared at the text.
[Gaha is doing great. You should make time to come back and visit her whenever your schedule clears up.]
[Will do.]
Song Yuqing frowned, gesturing for Liu Xiaona to come over and read the screen. “Does Nanjiao’s tone feel completely off to you? Since when does he text this formally?”
“Maybe he’s just incredibly overwhelmed with the network installation?” Liu Xiaona guessed, though she had to admit the brief, clipped responses felt cold. Those few sparse words carried an unsettling aura of heavy weariness, as if he had aged years overnight.
Before they could analyze it further, a piercing, agonizing sizzle of raw static detonated directly inside Song Yuqing’s ears. She instantly clapped her hands over her head, wincing from the pain. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed she wasn’t the only one suffering—Gaha, Liu Xiaona, and Little Meat Bun had all dropped to their knees, tightly covering their ears.
“Ugh! What is this?! Is Master Fu playing some kind of twisted prank on us?” Liu Xiaona groaned, the high-frequency vibration rattling straight through her chest.
“Master Fu!” Song Yuqing screamed into her mind.
But the system remained completely unresponsive.
After what felt like an eternity, the violent current abruptly cut out, plunging the world back into a sudden, suffocating quiet.
“Hello…?” Liu Xiaona tested her voice out loud, desperately trying to prove to herself that her eardrums hadn’t ruptured.
“Master Fu? Master Fu, answer me!” Song Yuqing called out internally, her face pale with mounting dread.
A terrible premonition gripped her chest. Could Master Fu have actually vanished?
No, that made no sense. He was the supreme architect behind God’s Supermarket. He was the one who had dropped those doomsday tasks on her, and she hadn’t even finished the final objective yet.
“Manager…?” Seeing the sheer gravity written across her boss’s face, Liu Xiaona swallowed her complaints, her voice dropping to a whisper.
Song Yuqing snapped out of her daze. “Quick! Go check the upper levels! See if the second and third floors are still anchored to the structure!”
The second the command left her mouth, Gaha and Little Meat Bun bolted up the stairs. Song Yuqing and Liu Xiaona hurried right after them.
They systematically checked every room: the kitchen was intact, the bathrooms were clear, the staff dormitories remained standing, the stairwells were solid, the second-floor cafe was perfectly normal, and the third-floor Future Cognition cinema sat quietly in the dark.
The store manager and her three non-human employees were all present and accounted for.
“See? Everything is completely fine,” Liu Xiaona offered casually, trying to soothe the tension. “Master Fu probably just went offline for maintenance. I’m sure he’ll chime in tomorrow morning.”
“Gaha, gaha!” Gaha nodded rapidly in agreement.
Little Meat Bun also gestured, suggesting that the system had likely just fallen into a deep sleep cycle and simply hadn’t heard their call.
But Song Yuqing’s raw intuition screamed that things were far more complicated than a simple system lag. “Let’s just turn in for the night and see how the layout looks tomorrow morning.”
Just as she reached out to secure the main locks and close down for the night, a monstrous crack of thunder detonated directly overhead. A barrage of jagged lightning bolts slammed into the pavement right outside the supermarket entrance, flooding the interior with a blinding illumination that turned midnight into Day.
A torrential downpour instantly unleashed from the heavens. Outside, the dense stalks of bamboo flanking the alley violently tore free from the frozen soil, the heavy winds whipping them straight toward the porch steps. The normally vibrant, emerald leaves looked suddenly cloaked in a thick, grim layer of grey dust.
Even the massive Chinese tallow tree in the courtyard wasn’t spared; the sheer force of the storm stripped countless crimson leaves from its branches, sending them swirling into the mud.
“Man… we haven’t even enjoyed a single week of peace yet,” Liu Xiaona muttered, her lip twitching as she watched the deluge.
Song Yuqing stared into the raging storm through the glass. “I want to know how long this weather anomaly is going to last.”
Right before her eyes, the ancient brick wall lining the narrow alley, thoroughly oversaturated by the sudden influx of water, gave way with a deafening, hollow boom, collapsing entirely into a heap of rubble.
