After a series of urgent knocks, no one in the house opened the door.
"Damn it, he wasn't home."
Yin Zhu raised his voice and cursed. Considering that the building probably wasn't specially soundproofed, Yin Zhu's loud voice could be heard on both the upper and lower floors.
The house was empty. Yin Zhu, supporting herself on her arm, went to the next door: "Is anyone home? Can I borrow some money?"
This time there was a response, but it seemed the sender was hostile:
"Get lost!"
Yin Zhu pressed her ear to the door to listen, shook her head with some regret, and started knocking on the next door, her voice just as loud: "Is anyone home? Can I borrow some money?"
After knocking on three doors, someone finally opened one. A small figure peeked out from the crack in the door. The girl inside looked Yin Zhu up and down warily before asking in a childish voice, "Big sister, what's wrong?"
"I injured my arm, can you lend me some money to get it treated?"
Yin Zhu held up her bandaged arm to show her, "If this arm is ruined, my benevolent spirit will be in a lot of trouble because of it."
In terms of wording, Yin Zhu tried to use vague terms to avoid her statements contradicting the common sense of this world: Initially, Yin Zhu wanted to say "buy medicine," but considering that the technology in the cyber world is generally more advanced, maybe she wouldn't need medicine and could just have surgery to get better, or there might be some cure methods beyond her understanding. In short, to avoid any complications, it was more accurate to say "treatment."
"Oh... big sister, my family has no money..." The little girl didn't doubt Yin Zhu's words at all. Although she didn't see Yin Zhu's benevolent spirit, this lie was enough to fool the child.
Yin Zhu really likes children, mainly because children are easier to fool than adults.
The little girl was visibly frustrated because she couldn't help Yin Zhu, but she quickly cheered up, clenched her two pink little fists, opened the door a little wider, and tiptoed to Yin Zhu's side to whisper, "But you can ask the big brother who lives at the very back of the fifth floor, maybe he can help you."
Can the older brother on the fifth floor help me?
Yin Zhu combined the lie she had made up on the spot and roughly understood that the person was probably a good person in this world who could help people with treatment for free.
On Earth, aside from the Dragon Kingdom, doctors in most countries belong to the elite class. Their salaries are very high, and their social status is the envy of many. Even in the Dragon Kingdom, although doctors' salaries are not very high, it still requires five years of undergraduate study, three more years if you take the postgraduate entrance exam, and finally three more years of training and internship in the workforce before you can be considered to have made it.
So much so that many people in China jokingly say, "Advising someone to study medicine is like being struck by lightning," mocking the disproportionate rewards and hardships a doctor endures. Even so, the medical profession remains highly respected.
In this context, looking at this cheap doctor hidden in a poor man's apartment becomes rather intriguing.
To put it simply, he might just be a barefoot doctor without a medical license, only knowing some shoddy medical skills, which is why he can't make money or achieve anything, and can only end up living in this kind of dilapidated apartment.
If you think about it in a more complex way, Yin Zhu could write you a 2000-word story of love, hate, and grudges among high-ranking officials on the spot.
Having a general idea of what was going on, Yin Zhu didn't go over directly. Instead, she gently patted the little girl's head and said, "Little sister, thank you. But don't open the door for strangers like that in the future. It's dangerous."
After all, there's no rule in this apartment building that forbids internal strife.
While it's possible that the "New Regulations on Comprehensive Social Security Management in Vina City" might contain relevant provisions, at least Yin Zhu doesn't know about them yet, which means they don't exist.
The little girl smiled sweetly, said "thank you" to her, and then closed the door and went back inside.
After saying goodbye to the little girl, Yin Zhu didn't go straight to the fifth floor. Instead, she went around to the other floors and knocked on several doors. Not only was no one willing to lend her money, but many people didn't even open the door and started cursing.
The most outrageous thing was a tenant on the second floor. When Yin Zhu's footsteps approached his door, Yin Zhu heard a lot of profanity coming from inside, which needed to be muted and censored in the live stream. As a result, Yin Zhu did not stop at his door at all, but went directly to the next place.
The people in that room were also tough; they kept cursing until Yin Zhu knocked on the next door before they stopped. During that time, they used a variety of profanities without repeating themselves, and it was all personal attacks.
Yin Zhu's brows furrowed into knots, and her eyes widened like two small balls.
Don't give me a chance, or I'll definitely kill you, you narcissistic bastard.
After the smoke bombs had been spread enough, Yin Zhu finally stepped onto the fifth floor for the first time. The fifth floor was the top floor of the poor people's apartment building, where four tenants lived. However, it was obvious that none of the four of them were germaphobes, so not only were there cobwebs hanging in the corners of the ceiling, but the corridor was also piled with a lot of dusty clutter.
Before Yin Zhu came up, there was actually a person who liked to smoke squatting in the corridor on the fifth floor. The two looked at each other for a second, then the person threw the cigarette butt on the ground, stomped on it hard, and went straight back to his room.
"I'm really annoying," Yin Zhu said, scratching his head, probably knowing why.
From the very beginning, Yin Zhu deliberately raised her voice to draw attention to the "borrowing money" topic, thereby concealing her true purpose.
This is a completely illogical and misleading statement. Imagine if someone couldn't let others see their benevolent spirit, making them very easy to report, what would they do? Would they be cautious or try to create another one?
Without a doubt, whichever option you choose, you won't choose the third one—boldly knocking on everyone's doors.
In almost everyone's preconceived notion, a person without a benevolent spirit officer would be very passive and panicked, and might even hide in their house and not go out, for fear of being discovered that they do not have a benevolent spirit officer.
However, they will not take the opportunity to expand their social circle, because the more people they know, the easier it is to expose the fact that they lack this important thing, which will bring them terrible consequences.
Yin Zhu had precisely grasped this mentality of the indigenous people, which is why she arrogantly banged on all the neighbors' doors and spoke so loudly that almost everyone could hear her. Although Yin Zhu didn't have a knack for understanding human nature, she was still able to grasp the habitual thinking logic of most people and used this to her advantage while excluding those she didn't want to talk to.
Yin Zhu wanted to "borrow money," but the people living there were exactly short of money, so naturally they wouldn't lend her any.
These indigenous people would also make wrong judgments because of Yin Zhu's illogical behavior, and believe her lies. Even if she didn't open the door, they would still think that she really had that thing, which is why they dared to borrow money from their neighbors so directly, without being afraid of being discovered.
As long as they don't think there's a problem, even if some tenants open the door, their eyes won't linger on Yin Zhu's bandaged, fake injured hand, and they won't notice anything amiss.
After checking everyone and excluding those who hadn't returned, Yin Zhu could basically conclude that the tenant at the deepest part of the fifth floor was indeed an important person. However, how much help they could provide to Yin Zhu and Hirano Shan remained unknown.
Anyway, something is better than nothing.
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