The Great Merchant in the Cataclysm

Chapter 98: Era Merchant Shop

When the silver-haired leader caught up with Zhang Mu, Zhang Mu turned around and looked at him. He talked to him as though he was talking to an old friend. There were no hints of the displeasure that happened just now.

“Seems like you are still very eager about it. I thought that you really didn’t care?”

The leader didn’t put Zhang Mu’s mocking in his heart. He felt that the things Zhang Mu portrayed were all very ambiguous. This was why the leader was still guarding against Zhang Mu although he was stronger and more powerful than him. This ambiguous feeling made him very uncomfortable.

Zhang Mu saw his serious face and appeared shocked. He continued, “are you still scared? What is your power for then? If you are so weak fellow, you should just stay in your survival base and enjoy being the most powerful man there. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I have my own judgment. You do not have to play with my emotions and try to confuse me. You should know that such small tricks shouldn’t be used twice. We have been probing each other for so long and nothing came out of it. Why are you still doing this?”

Zhang Mu laughed. He seemed like a different person entirely. He was no longer the calm and composed Zhang Mu but appeared to be a cynical and playful youth. He gave the leader the impression that he was an experienced old man trapped in the body of a youth. He would have thought that Zhang Mu was like him, eating other people’s memory and gaining their experiences if he didn’t know that he was against cannibals.

Actually, he was quite near the truth. Zhang Mu’s existence was an even bigger BUG than him being able to gain people’s power and memory through eating them.

The Zhang Mu before had experienced and been through many things. This caused his mentality to be more mature than his actual age of 28. He wouldn’t say that he had seen through the vanity of the world, but he had no desires besides the few bottom lines that he had in his heart. He just wanted to peacefully finish his mission as an Era Merchant and survived through the hard times after the Cataclysm.

He had to prevent the Era Merchant ring from sucking him dry. However, he was the fifth Era Merchant and was always the last to choose his supplies. Most of the time, there were no good supplies left for him and the distance between them grew. Because of this, Zhang Mu always wished that someone would leave some supplies for him or someone would despise the supplies and leave him a set. That way, he would be able to complete the basic mission of an Era Merchant.

However, in reality, there were no supplies left for him. He would always experience the same hopelessness when the robotic voice told him that all the supplies were gone. Hence, he could only run between the various Era Merchant shops and used quantities to cover up his lack of quality. He had no time to wait for opportunities and this was why he could complete the minimum golden leaves mission every time just before the deadline.

The desire to live and the despair towards the future allowed Zhang Mu to see through many things and he started to hold lesser desires.

When Zhang Mu returned back to his younger body, he realised that he didn’t need to live so tiredly anymore. His body was still young and energetic and this subconsciously changed his way of thinking.

Because of this change, Zhang Mu’s personality and aura was filled with contradiction and harmony, making him hard to understand.

The reply by the silver-haired leader caused both of them to become silent. In the end, it was Zhang Mu who broke the silence.

“What is your name? I can’t be calling you ‘hey’ or ‘silver-hair’ or ‘old man’ all the time. From your looks, I think that you are slightly above 40?” Zhang Mu grinned at him and said to him. The leader was speechless. He felt that he needed to relook at Zhang Mu’s personality again. However, he also thought that what he said made sense and replied to him.

“I don’t have a name. I felt that I have too many people’s memory all combined together. If you didn’t bring it up, I would have forgotten about my name. There was no use for it in the survival base and I can’t use it to talk to the walking dead or the mutated animals either.”

“Why not call me zero then. I didn’t expect you to ask this question and was a bit unprepared for it.”

The leader thought for a while before replying Zhang Mu. He had tried to think about his name before but was confused by the other memories and reached no conclusions.

“Zero. That is a good name.”

Zhang Mu replied and started thinking at the same time. He had captured a piece of important information. This man who named himself ‘zero’ seemed to be in a worse state than he had imagined.

He didn’t have a main conscience. Zhang Mu thought that no matter how much memories Zero consumed, his conscience would be controlled by his main body or identity. However, this didn’t seem to be the case. If he continued to absorb more memories, Zhang Mu predicted that he would become a monster.

Zhang Mu felt a tinge of sorrow. This method of increasing your power was fast, but the consequences were high too. In order to get greater power, Zero was slowly losing himself.

This might be the reason why he wanted to find a stable source of power so urgently.

He must have realized that he didn’t have much time left.

The two men were deep in thought but they didn’t slow down. In the blink of eye, they reached the Era Merchant shop.