After leaving Guan Yinli, I didn’t even dare go home. I took a taxi straight to Luohan Temple, the only place in Yu Jiang where you could burn incense at night. I first bought a 288-yuan peace incense, then stood in the wind before the incense burner for twenty minutes, letting myself be marinated like a radish until thoroughly infused.
When I was little, my sister told me this place housed over five hundred arhat statues. At this point, I obviously couldn’t be concerned about martial ethics—whatever demons and ghosts were in that house, I hoped they could receive a righteous group beating here.
So it goes—cheap things always have ghosts attached, and capitalists are forever capitalists. Ma Yun on Double Eleven isn’t a bodhisattva, and by the same logic, someone renting out a 150-square-meter house for 7,500 yuan wasn’t doing charity—he was conducting an assassination.
Manager Hu said that No. 29 Guan Yinli hadn’t just seen one death. Besides the most recent wrist-slitting suicide, there were also two staircase accidents and one gas poisoning.
Without exception, anyone who rented this house ended up dying inside it. Since No. 29 was converted into a commercial district, four corpses had been carried out in succession, and I had nearly become the fifth.
I could tell Manager Hu had at least some compassion in him. Otherwise, given the typical nature of real estate agents, having four deaths in a property should have been beautified as “rich in historical and cultural heritage.” How else could he drop such a bombshell on me right from the start?
After returning home, the more I thought about it, the more unlucky I felt. While fingering the prayer beads I’d bought at Luohan Temple, I contacted my plastic sister and spent twenty minutes cursing her out for recommending such a haunted place. But when I finished, Bai Liu hit me with: “A haunted house? Isn’t that even better?”
Before I could react, she turned the tables and began berating me for lacking business sense. Her exact words were:
“That’s Guan Yinli! The place with the most idiots in all of Yu Jiang. You can lure people in with any gimmick—heritage brands, petting cats, dogs, alpacas, ‘Yu Jiang’s Little Kyoto,’ ‘Guan Yinli’s Little Greece.’ Are you missing a ’29 Little Zhou Yan’? Those pretty boys and girls aren’t as afraid of death as you. They’d eat a piece of cake for a haunted house day trip, take beautiful photos for social media check-ins—isn’t that enough?”
I refused to accept this and countered with the family card: “But four people have died in that cursed place! Aren’t you afraid I’ll be next? Am I still your real brother or not?”
Bai Liu was obviously still at a drinking party—in the background, some drunk was praising her slim waist and long legs—so half her anger transferred to me. She launched into a tirade: “If you believed in that nonsense, could you have failed at seven investments and still keep opening shops? A haunted house with four deaths might not even be as unlucky as you are, you brat. One sentence: making money is gambling, and you can only win if you dare to bet.”
In this matter, I had to admit my sister clearly had some talent for pyramid schemes. Listening to her words was worth ten years of lessons.
That night after talking with her, I couldn’t sleep. In the first half of the night, I thought: I’ve burned 288 yuan worth of incense and bought 488 yuan prayer beads—if I don’t take this house after all that, wouldn’t it be like buying divine equipment only to quit the game? Then in the second half, my thinking returned to rationality. I thought: I, Bai Yang, am a dignified materialist warrior of the new century. I’ve stubbornly continued after seven failed trendy shops—if I’m not afraid of poverty, why should I fear a few lonely ghosts?
After suffering through the night like this, early the next morning I went to find Manager Hu with huge dark circles under my eyes. After stuffing two packs of cigarettes into his hands, I grabbed his hand and looked into his eyes.
I said sincerely: “Manager Hu, I want to buy that house from yesterday. Could you trouble yourself to give me a more favorable price?”
Two weeks later, one evening, I moved into No. 29 Guan Yinli.
Human nature is essentially hypocritical. Before stepping through the door, I was still an iron-blooded warrior believing man could conquer heaven. But after just half an hour, all the horror movies my sister had forced me to watch since childhood began flashing before my eyes like a slideshow. Unable to bear it any longer, I went out to buy six bottles of beer. The consequences of drinking myself unconscious were obvious—early the next morning, when someone pounded on my rolling shutter door and woke me up, my entire state was like being struck by lightning.
Opening the door, I found a tall, thin middle-aged man with a stern, unsmiling face standing outside. In his white shirt and suit pants, he looked like an insurance salesman at first glance. Without saying a word, he handed me a business card. Before I could react to seeing the words “Zhengyi Daoshi” on it, he had already squeezed past me, casting his gaze toward the staircase hidden behind the kitchen, saying nothing.
Belatedly, I remembered last night’s job posting.
True, I had said “professionally qualified,” but I meant I hoped the applicant could whip cream, not that Lin Zhengying would show up at my door.
My mood became complicated at once. Before I knew how to face him, the Daoist spoke first, his voice as serious as his face: “So this really is a haunted house.”
I hadn’t yet realized how terrifying this statement was and instinctively stammered: “You can tell just by looking?”
The Daoist walked straight to the staircase where two people had reportedly fallen to their deaths. He extended two slender fingers to wipe the wooden handrail, then rubbed them together: “This place isn’t clean. If you want to open a shop without some preparation, something big might happen later.”
I still hadn’t figured out his purpose in coming, but at least in TV dramas, when a Daoist master suddenly passes by your door saying you have fox spirits in your house, you absolutely cannot be negligent. I asked carefully: “Then may I ask who you are…”
“I came because of the job posting. Fully relevant work is rare these days, and cultivating the Dao still requires eating.”
The Daoist nodded calmly, as if he’d just descended from heaven. He pulled out a Mount Mao ordination certificate and showed it to me. Opening it, it looked quite official, with the names of the Chuan Dushi, Bao Jushi, and Jian Dushi written on it. Looking at the date, this person had actually been a Daoist for ten years. His real name was Han Sha, Daoist name Han Sanyi.
He said indifferently: “I looked at the conditions you posted—meals and accommodation included, professionally qualified, strong horoscope. I felt I met the requirements so I came. If you need, I can also tell you about my relevant work experience.”
I don’t know if it was because he spoke with such confidence, but for a moment I actually felt like I was the one looking for work. Before I could speak, suddenly, right above our heads, the second floor that had been completely silent transmitted a clear muffled thump, as if something heavy had fallen to the ground.
What was that sound?
I felt a chill. The source of the sound was clearly the bathroom. The bathroom had no windows, and I hadn’t even bathed in this house last night—my toiletries were still in boxes. What could be moving in that empty room?
The entire interior fell silent. The Daoist and I both froze eerily for several seconds. Then the Daoist uncle suddenly made rapid hand gestures, said “This is bad,” and with his long legs took off up the stairs like flying, heading straight for the second floor!
“Hey!”
Who could have expected a forty-year-old to be so fast? I chased behind but couldn’t keep up. By the time I got upstairs, he was already in the bathroom, standing motionless with his back to me in front of the mirror, softly chanting something.
“What are you doing?”
Thinking that someone had died in that bathroom just three months ago, my heart couldn’t help but skip a beat. Manager Hu hadn’t explained much about this, only saying that when the police arrived, the entire bathtub was red, and the tenant, due to excessive blood loss, was pale white like a plastic mannequin floating and sinking in the water, completely swollen.
The bathroom in an old house naturally wouldn’t have dry-wet separation. The Daoist stood by the wash basin, next to which was the toilet, and further in were the bathtub and shower head.
In other words, the bathtub’s location was absolutely secluded, hidden in the deepest part of this room. From my angle, I couldn’t see what else was in the bathroom at all. I just instinctively felt that the Daoist was talking to “other things” in there.
“I’m asking you, what exactly are you doing?”
When I asked for the second time, not only did the Daoist not answer me, his voice grew louder and more trembling as he chanted. Finally, I made out that his last sentence was: “Creditor enemies, life-claiming spirits, those who encounter curses perish, those who encounter curses die.”
Although I’d been walking under unlucky stars for the first twenty-eight years of my life, I truly hadn’t been unlucky to this degree. My calves trembling, I walked forward two steps, and soon I discovered another chilling thing.
While Han Sha was chanting the incantation, his body was actually slowly turning toward the bathtub. This movement was extremely unnatural. Rather than saying he was moving himself, it was more like someone was pulling him. Although Han Sha was resisting with all his might, keeping his eyes closed throughout, he was still inevitably being pulled bit by bit to face the bathtub’s direction.
Something there was forcing the Daoist to look directly at it.
I was going to die.
I didn’t dare think about what was standing in the bathtub’s direction. Seeing Han Sha’s entire body had been pulled around halfway, I gritted my teeth and steeled myself to rush forward and pull him back. But just at this moment, Han Sha seemed to be suddenly yanked hard toward the bathtub. He stumbled, and his tall, thin figure immediately disappeared to the inner side of the doorway.
Damn!
My brain buzzed.
Living in a haunted house was one thing, but watching it become more haunted was another. You have to understand—before, this was someone else’s house, but now this was my life, every square meter bought with my money!
I rushed forward in one stride. Reaching the bathroom doorway, I heard violent coughing from inside. Han Sha was kneeling beside the bathtub, and while coughing, blood had actually splattered on the white porcelain bathtub’s edge.
My scalp went numb. I went up and grabbed his shoulder to turn him around, discovering Han Sha’s face was covered in nosebleed. He used the noseblood to draw a series of symbols on the bathtub that looked like someone had rolled their face across a keyboard, then shoved me hard: “Go!”
We both stumbled out of the bathroom. The Daoist, not caring that his face was covered in blood, slammed the door shut and removed a red cord from his wrist to tie up the handle, as if something inside wanted to break down the door.
“What exactly was that thing?” I asked him.
But Han Sha had no time to answer me then. In the pitch darkness, the handle he was gripping tightly suddenly shook. I gasped, wanting to help him, but Han Sha bit his teeth and wouldn’t let me. He pressed his body against the door. Like this, after the handle shook four or five times, it finally quieted. Belatedly, I felt my back was completely soaked in cold sweat.
As everything completely returned to calm, the Daoist also relaxed. He panted heavily like he’d lost all strength, leaning against the door and saying: “It should have left.”
I asked: “What thing left?”
Han Sha glanced at me: “You don’t know anything and still dared to buy this house? Are you stupid with too much money?”
“…”
Hard to imagine this person was here for a job interview. I was left speechless by the choking response. Seeing this, the Daoist shook his head: “That room can’t be used temporarily. The door can’t be opened, otherwise the next person who goes in will also see blood. We have to wait for my blood to dry completely, then another two hours before anyone can enter. Let’s go downstairs to talk.”
Since the professional had spoken, I didn’t dare linger on the second floor. Returning downstairs with him, thinking about how haunted this house was made me feel overwhelmed with grief.
Having ghosts act up in front of a Daoist was like playing cards in front of the head teacher, or doing drugs in front of police—it was blatant provocation. Hard to imagine what ghostly things were in this house that chose precisely this moment to storm the tower. They were truly arrogant beyond measure.
After this incident, Han Sha’s white shirt was completely ruined. I helped him stop his nosebleed, and just as I was about to ask what exactly was the situation upstairs, at this worst possible timing, someone suddenly tapped me lightly on the back.