149: Chapter 149 Hardcore Conman

Jiang Feng stared at the task panel in his mind.

Blind box divination, five coins, a large bowl.

He cursed the system's ancestors for eighteen generations in his heart.

It never cared whether he lived or died when issuing tasks.

Now he was in a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but air at his fingertips.

Jiang Feng reached into his pockets, pulling out three five-mao coins from the left and two from the right.

Five coins, worth two point five yuan in total—not even enough to buy a starch sausage in the Location.

The quantity was barely enough.

Where was he supposed to find a bowl?

Jiang Feng looked up.

His gaze swept across the gray, hazy street.

Fifty meters to the south stood a low building.

A hand-painted wooden sign hung at the entrance: Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

The red paint on the wooden board had long peeled off, and several broken cardboard boxes and miscellaneous items were piled messily on the open ground outside.

The threshold was extremely high, a hallmark of old-fashioned architecture.

An auntie sat on the steps, stocky in build, wearing a floral cloth jacket of an indiscernible era, holding an enamel mug in her hand, munching on melon seeds.

Crunch.

She spat the shell onto the ground.

The auntie looked up, her gaze circling Jiang Feng.

There was no curiosity or hostility, just the look one might give a blind man about to jump off a cliff.

Jiang Feng ignored her and walked straight to the pile of junk, kicking open a broken cardboard box; rotten rope ends and broken bamboo poles scattered everywhere.

Something was pressed at the very bottom of the pile.

Jiang Feng bent down and picked it up.

A white porcelain bowl.

A large chunk of the glaze along the rim was chipped away, the thumb-sized gap quite striking.

The bottom of the bowl, however, was intact, more than enough to cover five coins.

Jiang Feng rubbed the bottom of the bowl with his sleeve, dusting it off, though stubborn, years-old tea stains remained stuck to it.

He didn't care.

He was using it for divination, not for eating.

He carried the broken bowl to the entrance of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

A large blue stone lay horizontally on the open ground, its surface worn very smooth, its height just reaching his knees.

An excellent stall location.

Jiang Feng dropped the five coins directly into the bowl.

He flipped the broken bowl onto the blue stone, bottom facing up.

Clink.

The crisp sound of metal colliding echoed across the empty street.

He found a piece of chalk by his feet, squatted down beside the stone, and scrawled a line of large characters.

"Blind Box Divination."

"One divination for one clue, or an equivalent item."

"No bargaining."

Jiang Feng stood up and brushed the chalk dust off his hands.

The setup was ready, the props were complete, and he was open for business.

The auntie on the threshold of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative stopped munching on melon seeds.

Her gaze fell on the chalk writing on the ground.

She curled her lip downward.

She shifted her enamel mug to the other side and continued munching.

Jiang Feng sat on the blue stone and slapped the bottom of the broken bowl.

"Divination here! Don't miss out if you're passing by!"

He roared at the top of his lungs.

"A master from the Location is setting up a stall for a limited time! If I don't get it right, I'll pay you two packs of Hongtashan cigarettes!"

His voice had great penetrating power, but the gray, dusty street didn't even echo back.

The argument between the Pre-Qin auntie and the youth in the Lenin suit at the corner of the street was abruptly cut short.

Both turned their heads in unison to look over.

A wooden window of a small building across the street pushed open a gap half a palm wide.

Half a face pressed against the glass, peering out.

Several people emerged one after another from the depths of the alley.

Some wore coarse cloth clothes, some wrapped in old military uniforms, others in modern hoodies.

They slowly approached and stopped five or six meters away.

Not a single person came forward; they were all watching.

Someone in the crowd muttered in a low voice.

"Who is this? Setting up a stall at the entrance of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative the moment he enters the town? Is he tired of living?"

"It's the one who confronted Sister Sui and Captain Gu in the alley earlier."

"Tsk. He's got guts."

Jiang Feng heard it clearly.

He looked up and scanned the surrounding crowd; the perception gained from the Metaphysics skill took effect.

Various auras floated above the heads of the crowd, the vast majority of which were gray, exactly like the auntie from the Supply and Marketing Cooperative and the youth in the Lenin suit.

Occasionally, a few slightly brighter ones were mixed in.

But they weren't particularly bright either.

A circle of onlookers stood by.

Not a single person came for a divination.

Jiang Feng knew exactly what was going on.

These people had been locked in this broken town for decades, and now an outsider had popped up to set up a divination stall; no one wanted to be the first to stick their neck out.

Someone had to break the ice.

Jiang Feng raised his hand and slapped the bowl twice more.

"What are you all looking at? Watching a show is free, but divination costs money! Come on, someone! Whoever comes will know!"

Street hawking tactics like these would get him chased three blocks away by Location inspectors in the Location.

But in this stagnant Wuyin Town, the lethality was doubled.

The melon seed shells in the fat auntie's enamel mug spilled all over the ground, and she re-examined Jiang Feng with the kind of look one gives a salesman selling urns.

The crowd was still looking at each other, and no one was willing to take a step forward.

Jiang Feng's peripheral vision caught the outskirts of the crowd, where two military-green coats were huddled in the shadows of the eaves across the street.

Gu Yuanshan's people.

A man in a windbreaker leaned against the entrance of the alley, playing with a Phillips screwdriver, his eyes glued to Jiang Feng.

Zhou Sui's scouts.

Both factions had arrived.

They were all waiting for Jiang Feng to stumble on this large blue stone.

Jiang Feng scoffed out loud.

"Hongtashan! Two packs! If I don't get it right, I'll give them to you for free! Is there a better deal than this?"

He slapped his palm repeatedly.

The coins in the broken bowl clattered and jumped.

The sound grew crisper.

The crowd finally stirred.

The human wall on the outskirts was forced open by brute force, and a figure squeezed out from the crowd.

An old man, so old that his face was full of wrinkles, with a scruffy tuft of beard on his chin.

His cheeks were smudged with several charred black marks, whether from smoke or from falling into a charcoal brazier, it was hard to tell.

He was wrapped in a loose, large Pre-Qin deep robe, with the sleeves rolled up three layers, revealing wrists as withered as tree bark.

The old man tightly clutched a large object in his arms.

It was square, a full size larger than a shoebox, with a mottled, off-white metal shell and a circular glass window embedded in the front.

A piece of a broken electric wire dragged behind it, the copper wires all exposed, with a few rounds of black electrical tape wrapped haphazardly around the joint.

The old man stepped forward and slammed the thing in his arms down onto the bluestone slab.

"Diviner!"

The old man gasped for air, his voice weathered but full of vigor.

"You've come at the right time! Hurry and help this old man see what is wrong with this magical treasure!"

Jiang Feng didn't even raise his eyelids, his gaze falling on this square, boxy object.

He stared at it for a full three seconds.

A microwave.

Panasonic brand, pure mechanical knob model.

It was an old item that had been phased out at least fifteen years ago.

The glass viewing window was smeared with obvious scorch marks, the inner wall was pitch black with grease, and the knob was twisted to the maximum power setting, stuck in that position.

An Old Daoist Priest wearing a Pre-Qin long robe, holding a second-hand microwave he'd scavenged from some unlucky soul, had run over to him in a panic to ask for a divination.

Jiang Feng looked at the charcoal soot on the old man's face, then at the charred black viewing window that matched the microwave, and the air in his lungs rushed toward his throat.

He bit his back molars, forcibly swallowing the wild laughter that had reached his lips.