A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 228 CST Monday UTC+8: 2:33 PM

Beach-based wholesale market.

In 1999, most second- and third-tier cities in China still retained the traditional market model. Farmers in the suburbs would pay five or ten yuan for a stall fee and bring their own fruits and vegetables to sell. Meat, eggs, and poultry would be sold further inside, and there were also many fisherwomen selling their catch.

If there's anything special about this market, it's that you can see Zhuang ethnic minority stalls selling local wine, mutton offal soup, bean curd wrapped rice, cloth, and antiques.
A small shop is located under a low wall in a corner of the market. The shop owners, a husband and wife, are looking at their parrot.

"Hey, what did you feed it this morning?" the boss asked his wife.

"Just like before, millet."

"Why is it making such a scary noise? It used to only say 'Fuck you, you male turtle,' but now it's babbling like it's speaking a foreign language."

"Not only that—" the wife said fearfully, "It roared, just like a real tiger! Could it have entered the room?"

"Don't talk nonsense!" The boss glared at his wife. In Zhuang language, "house" means "ghost," which is a very taboo word.

The parrot wasn't kept in a cage; instead, it was tied to a long, straight branch with a red rope.

It can fly freely in the store, but it can't fly far because its feet are tethered by a rope.

The parrot is extremely beautiful. It has pure black feathers, without a single other color, like a mountain god carved from black crystal.

Many people had offered to buy the bird, but the owner refused to sell it. He was a member of the Bu'ao tribe, who revered black and believed that the pure black parrot would bring him good luck.

Just as the couple were whispering to each other, someone knocked on the stall in front of the shop.

"Did the sound just now come from here?"

The shopkeeper took a closer look and immediately put on a smile. He recognized the visitor; he was a policeman, and not just any auxiliary policeman, but someone even the manager of the Tansan Market had to toast.

"Oh! It's my parrot making noise. Haha, it might be a bit noisy, it's probably hungry."

The owner tried to catch the parrot, but the usually docile parrot suddenly flapped its wings and flew away, darting around in the sky, looking extremely unwilling to be caught.

The shopkeeper chuckled awkwardly, "It's acting a little strange today."

The policeman's eyes narrowed slowly as he carefully examined the parrot, which had nowhere to escape.

"Hey, this little darling is really something. Can I buy it from you?"

"Hiss," the boss said awkwardly, "This...this..."

He would have refused most people, but as a small business owner in the market, he really didn't dare to offend the person in front of him—shops in the city market were in high demand, and if they didn't want to do it, there were plenty of others who would.

The policeman crossed his arms and said in an unquestionable tone, "My kid likes birds."

The boss gritted his teeth, ready to refuse, but his wife secretly slapped him, slapped his chin, and winked, implying that something was wrong with the parrot and they should just sell it.

The shop owner wavered, but after taking one last, reluctant look at the parrot, he made his decision—even if he had to stop doing business here, he couldn't sell the parrot.

Perhaps it was his obsession with feudal superstition, or perhaps this beautiful little creature possessed some quality that deeply fascinated him.

"I'm sorry, the parrot really isn't..." The boss's words suddenly caught in his throat.

Suddenly, the policeman in front of them unbuttoned his shirt.

It was a man who showed a small patch of his chest muscle to the boss. It was hard to imagine that a man would shave his body hair so cleanly, and his skin was fair and smooth. As if by some kind of magic, he firmly attracted the boss's gaze, who was also male.

"Please, brother." The policeman's voice had completely changed.

She becomes delicate, alluring, and fragile, making one's bones melt and unable to resist.

"Could you please support me? I really need this parrot~ Please, please~"

The boss looked up and met the policeman's eyes; a fleeting, alluring pink glint flashed in his gaze.

His breathing suddenly quickened, and his face, weathered by life, flushed slightly. He seemed a bit tipsy, and in a moment of inspiration, he made the decision to let the parrot return to society to create value.

"Hey! Don't say you're selling it, I'll give it to you if you like it!!"

The policeman smiled and said, "Thank you. Well then..."

"However!" The shopkeeper changed his tone, forcibly pulling a policeman to squat at the shop entrance. He pulled an embroidered pouch from the pile of handicrafts and promoted it, "I also have other good things here—"

The large hand that was holding the policeman wasn't clean. Taking advantage of the two squatting down, he thoroughly examined the bottom line of public servants.

Suppressing her nausea, the policeman asked in a coquettish voice, like a young girl, "How much?"

"This is from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Qianlong Emperor. He passed through our Guangxi region on his way to the south and met a Zhuang princess." The shopkeeper rambled on, wanting to touch her a little longer.

He had never been this excited, not even on his wedding night; it felt like a fire was burning inside him.

As the policeman listened to his ramblings, he kept a close eye on the parrot observing him. A flicker of alertness and wit shone in the parrot's dark eyes. "Last week, right? You just said how much?"

"100." The boss patted his finger, as if he had been persuaded by a hostess at a karaoke bar to spend a month's salary on a bottle of cheap champagne and had to make a quick buck.

"One hundred? Oh dear, you..."

"Hey, hey, hey, just kidding! You get a 20% discount, that's 98% off! Let's haggle slowly! How will you know the bottom price if you don't haggle with me?" the shopkeeper said with a lewd grin.

Excuse me, excuse me for a moment.

Just as the two were struggling in the damp, dark place, a passerby carrying groceries walked by.

The market's already narrow aisles were completely blocked by the goods extending from each stall. Since stall fees had already been paid, people had to occupy as much space as possible, which resulted in passersby accidentally bumping into police officers squatting on the ground with their shopping bags.

The bag was huge, and the stench was so foul it almost made the policeman faint. A few drops of some kind of sticky liquid even spilled out of the bag and splashed onto his face.
Excuse me, excuse me—excuse me!

As soon as the policeman's face was covered, the shop owner seemed to snap out of his daze, and listened in bewilderment as his wife exclaimed, "Wow! Such fresh pork intestines! Can you still buy such high-quality stuff at this hour?"

"Add half a pound of briefcase oil, a little salt and ginger, bring to a boil, then turn off the heat, oh my!"

The policeman wiped the sticky substance off his face, his expression dark; it stank horribly, and he didn't want to tempt the boss anymore.

"100 it is! Stop talking nonsense, give me that parrot, or get out of the Beibu Gulf."

The policeman looked up suddenly, and before he could even wipe his face after being jostled by the vegetable bag, the parrot had vanished.
Following the policeman's gaze, the shop owner yelled, "You son of a bitch! Thief! Why are you even stealing tree branches?!"

The place in the shop where the tree branch used to be was now empty. The black-feathered parrot and the long, straight branch had vanished, leaving only two severed hemp ropes.

The police initially stared intently at the couple inside the shop, but then realized it couldn't be them. Only then did they turn back to look for the passerby who had blocked their view with the pig sausage.

There were hardly any passersby in the market in the afternoon.
The aisle was empty; he only saw bored shopkeepers swatting away flies.

"Hey! Have you guys seen someone carrying a sausage and a parrot—"

No.

"No no."

He asked around, and his expression gradually turned strange.

Finally, he returned to the shop entrance, but neither the owner nor his wife noticed what the man looked like.

After a moment's hesitation, the police abandoned their plan to give chase.

He then picked up the walkie-talkie at his waist and connected to a channel that did not belong to any police station.

"Hey, I found a pig at the Tansan market. It was probably an arcane mage; it had a familiar with it."

A series of static noises came from the other end of the walkie-talkie, and after a moment, someone replied:

"Prioritize completing the ceremony. Ignore it."

"why?"

“Grindelwald has gone mad for some reason, sending a bunch of people into the first and second levels to besiege them before they could call for cross-depth support. If it's an arcane mage, then you've most likely run into the Academy. Anyone who dares to enter the Abyss is at least a professor-level. The priest isn't at this depth, so we can't deal with him.”

"Understood." The policeman said with lingering fear, thankful that he hadn't chased after them earlier. While cautiously observing his surroundings, he whispered into the walkie-talkie, "I'm about to surface at dawn. The ceremony is progressing normally."

"Received. I will use Mr. Q's email network to warn people in other blocks about what kind of familiar it is?" came the question over the walkie-talkie.

"Dragon-speaking parrot. A pure black parrot whose ability should be to mimic various sounds. If it is Professor Grindelwald's familiar, it is possible that it can chant arcane spells, but apart from being able to mimic all sounds, it has no other strange abilities."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I'm a hunter, you know. You can see them occasionally in the mountains. They scare away predators by imitating the roars of wild beasts. A single dragon-speaking parrot's vocal cords can sell for 50 gold pounds."

The police officer turned off the walkie-talkie and was about to leave when he saw the boss's wife rushing out. Not wanting to alert the suspect, he quickly called out to her, "Don't chase after her. It's just a broken parrot; I'll pay you back."

"Oh, I'm going to buy pork intestines! Such good quality stuff is a steal!"

The policeman laughed in exasperation; he genuinely believed that the people of the Abyss World were mentally unstable.

Five minutes later, on the fifth floor of the hotel next to the market.

After confirming several times that no one was following him, Quinn took advantage of the darkness and returned to his room.

He placed the extra-long branch he had stolen from a market shop on the bedside table, and then carefully took the nearly suffocating little parrot out of his leather jacket and placed it under the air conditioner to let it cool down.

"Yo yo yo, isn't this Amamiya Nene? She's gotten so sloppy in just a few hours!" Quinn chuckled.

(End of this chapter)