Rule Strange: Urban Legends That Don't Exist

Chapter 21 Blood-burning cigarettes, nonexistent corner girls, and [undead] Jack Bardo
"It was a rainy night, sir."

William folded the paring knife and put it in his trouser pocket.

"It was two months ago."

The blizzard blew into his neckline and clung to his skin, but William didn't feel the cold, as if due to high tension.

"About two months ago, I hadn't lost my previous job... I was a tobacco dealer. You know, many young people like me do this. It's simple, the money comes in quickly, and it's relatively free... "

He was incoherent from nervousness.

"It was raining lightly that day, and Yanan City always has a lot of weather like this..."

He rubbed his hands, his words didn't match up, and his teeth collided involuntarily.

He was nervous.

"Any cigarettes, sir?"

The third uncle touched his leather jacket subconsciously, and soon showed a disappointed expression.

"No, damn it, you'd better finish your sentence, or you'll never get another cigarette in your life!"

William took a deep breath, his voice blocked within the station by the blizzard.

About two months ago, Yanan City had not yet entered winter, but the weather was getting colder every day, and many houses had already burned coal.

Whenever the empire enters winter, the coal consumption of the entire city will increase,

A large amount of smog permeates the city, causing a lot of strange scenes of "you can't see the opposite street across the road".

On such a street corner, William met a strange customer.

The customer usually came before the sun went down. He wore a hood and had a strange accent. He seemed to be a stranger from nowhere.

Customers come to William every night to buy cigarettes, but never fire.

How can there be people who buy cigarettes but not fire?

Could it be that the customer bought cigarettes from him and went to another place to buy fire?

Impossible, that would be very troublesome, not to mention that his matches were already the lowest price in the whole Yanan City, customers could not be stupid enough to buy fire elsewhere.

William thought so, but he couldn't ask,

This customer was one of his few steady ones, and he couldn't let his curiosity drive them away.

After going on like this for a while.

On a rainy day, the customer still came to buy cigarettes with an umbrella at the same time.

William sold him cigarettes as usual.

But William didn't hold back his curiosity as usual.

He followed the customer around the corner, through the dark alley of some bar, and stopped outside the house of some "corner girl."

The door was ajar.

He heard the hoarse voice of the customer.

"fire Fire……"

The customer's voice was very strange, like the undisputed raving of a fool.

Even stranger, he's asking a corner girl for fire.

Corner girl fire...better than normal matches?

Or... is there another meaning?
Then came the voice of a girl.

"Damn it, Jack, I've said it before, and it's the last time!"

Customers are still repeating.

"fire Fire……"

The corner girl swears obscenities about the genitals of family members, and there is a sound of jars being knocked in the house, and they seem to have an argument.

There were bad noises in the house.

William couldn't hold back, and looked into the house through the half-closed door.

A coolly dressed girl sits on a high chair,
The heel of a high-heeled shoe on one foot is stuck on the shoulder of a customer named "Jack".

The high-heeled shoes were obviously extremely thin, and they were almost completely pierced into Jack's flesh, but Jack didn't seem to feel any pain—he knelt down in front of the girl with a cigarette in his hand and begged:

"fire Fire!"

William moved closer, but saw no blood on the ground.

The girl's face was full of impatience, and she stared at Jack with vicious eyes, and the sound in her throat was like a low growl of some kind of beast.

"Jack Baldo."

She called his name.

Then he raised his hand and slapped the customer on the face!

"Snapped!"

The clear slap almost hurt William's eardrums!

A horrifying scene appeared for William - under the power of a slap, Jack's head was turned half a circle, and his face was facing the door.

His face is no longer that of a normal person—the whole face has been rotten to the point of dryness, like a dried corpse, with only the whites of his eyes, like a dead spirit in some fairy tales of the choral group...

William was so stunned that he forgot to move at this moment.

Jack's pale eyes were staring at him like that, and William felt that he could even smell a rotten smell like a mummified corpse...

The next moment, Jack turned his head away—his neck turned in a contorted configuration, facing the girl again.

"fire Fire……"

When William came to his senses, he broke out in a cold sweat and realized at the same time that Jack, who had turned into a mummy, had lost his consciousness.

"fire……"

He longs for girls.

William was very nervous, but he didn't flinch from it.
His great curiosity made him stay, and he moved his face further into the crack of the door, trying to get a wider view.

"Jack Baldo..."

The girl stomped on Jack's chest with her stilettos, and William even saw the dry, dry flesh.

"Jack Baldo!"

The woman's high-pitched voice expressed her current anger...and helplessness.

"It's the last time!"

She gritted her teeth and said this, and picked up a needle on the table beside her.

She took a deep breath and stuck the needle into the back of her hand.

Then the mandrel of the needle tube is withdrawn.

Even though it was only pulled by less than 1mm, the girl's complexion was aging at a speed visible to the naked eye.

William watched as at least three additional lines formed on her forehead.

The girl quickly pulled out the needle, and said condescendingly to Jack: "Now, Jack Baldo, welcome to your gift."

Jack was on his knees, cigarette in both hands, mouth gaping open.

The girl pushed the plunger and dripped the pitiful few drops of blood in the needle onto the cigarette.

The cigarette burns.

William's eyes widened.

Cigarettes lit with blood!

Trembling, Jack put the cigarette ignited by blood in front of his nose, which was already two black holes without flesh and blood.

He smelled the smell of burning cigarettes, and his whole body trembled violently.

His flesh and blood recovered at a speed visible to the naked eye, first his nasal cavity, then his face...

In a few breaths, Jack already had a normal appearance.

But he was still greedily sucking on the cigarette ignited by blood.

The girl glared at Jack fiercely, leaned down, and whispered in his ear:
"Jack Baldo, this is the last time. From now on, this street belongs to the powder keg gang, and my blood will also become the powder keg gang's personal belongings."

William heard the name.

Powder Keg Gang.

It was one of the notorious gangsters in the lower part of Yanan City, not only did they sell addictive herbs, but they also controlled most of the corner girls and made money from those poor women.

What the girl said next was completely incomprehensible to William.

"Don't come again, the powder keg gang hunters don't welcome the undead...

Unless you want to die completely, Jack Baldo,

Don't think that you are really immortal. The Powder Keg Gang has their own means. There are too many things in this world that are more painful than death, and they happen to have mastered a few of them. "

"Go back to your own undead land, Jack Baldo, go back to..."

The girl was about to say the name, but her voice was too low for William to hear.

Curiosity ignited the eagerness in his heart, and he moved closer—the next moment he bumped into the door of the room.

"Squeak-"

The door was knocked open by him!
Tremendous fear enveloped William. At this moment, his brain went blank and his nerves were completely disconnected!

Fear made him forget to control his body, so he lost his balance and fell into the door.

He raised his head in great terror, ready for his own judgment, but froze.

In the room before him, the figures of the girl and Jack Baldo had disappeared.

Disappeared without a trace, as if it never existed.

William froze, he didn't know what happened.

Soon he got up and rushed out the door, even forgetting to open the umbrella.

Braving the heavy rain, he turned around suddenly and looked into the door with wide eyes.

Two figures flashed through the door.

It's those two people!
His brain was cramping, and he rushed into the house again like going crazy.

But there was no one in the house!
An indescribable sense of fear fell on him, causing him to rush out the door desperately and run wildly.

It was already evening—it was an autumn evening, and the sky was already half dark.

That night, under certain mixed moods, William returned to that dark alley again with a fellow gangster and a rifle loaded with magazines.

But the house was gone.

-

-

"The old wooden door is gone, and the corner room under the wall is gone...

Nothing is gone, nothing seems to have ever existed...

But that is obviously true!Obviously existed! "

Right now,

In the blizzard, under the platform.

William rubbed his fingers vigorously, whether it was because of nervousness or the cold.

The third uncle glanced at the missionary, then turned to look at William.

"Such a scene, such a strange scene, I have indeed met before, Mr. Liang."

William no longer looked at Third Uncle.

He stared intently at the phone booth.

"I'm sure that this phone booth is the one we've seen before."

"I'm sure that the person named Chen Yan is in this phone booth."

(End of this chapter)