Fortunately, the business on the 29th was nearing its end, and the commotion in the kitchen ultimately didn’t escalate. I managed to appease the visitor with a hotpot meal. After closing, I took the entire staff to a nearby old hotpot restaurant, where we began pitifully eating beef slices in the tiny mushroom soup section of a dual-compartment pot.
As the old saying goes, in Yu Jiang, you don’t hit someone who’s eating hotpot.
Even the person who looked ready to beat me up half an hour ago now appeared much more benevolent under the soothing influence of the beef tallow broth. He introduced himself somewhat stiffly: “My name is Yang Ping. I’m the younger brother of Yang Juan, the previous tenant of No. 29 Guan Yinli… I came here after seeing the short video online.”
Although I had anticipated this, hearing him say it still made me feel guilty. I immediately added two more plates of beef for him and said with a bitter smile: “I’m sorry about what happened to your sister… We originally didn’t want to publicize it particularly, but this house is indeed rather strange. I had no choice, so I even hired a Daoist priest to preside over it. That day, the ritual was filmed by someone, which is why it became such a big deal.”
Hearing this, Han Sha, sitting beside me, also interjected indifferently: “I’m very sorry… If that day’s ritual gave you a bad impression, that’s indeed our fault. My intention was to help the deceased at No. 29 achieve proper rebirth, and I hope your sister can rest in peace.”
…
It’s really hard to imagine that this guy with his compassionate expression is the same capitalist who said “houses where people died can still squeeze out profit” just two days ago.
I have to say Han Sha’s acting skills are truly breathtaking—winning a Golden Rooster Award would be beneath his talents.
I suppressed my urge to roll my eyes and pushed a plate of beef toward Yang Ping, who was obviously an honest man, softening my voice to ask: “Actually, I don’t know much about what happened to your sister before… Would it be convenient for you to tell us about it?”
As soon as I showed weakness, Song Nanshi and He Jian, sitting on either side of Yang Ping, were very perceptive—one poured water while the other offered watermelon, almost ready to give him a shoulder massage. Finally, under our table-full of fawning tactics, Yang Ping’s shoulders relaxed, and he began telling us about Yang Juan’s story.
Five months ago, Yang Ping’s sister Yang Juan decided to move from the suburbs of Yu Jiang to the city center to do business, planning to expand her already successful noodle shop.
Although Yang Ping, who was working elsewhere, wholeheartedly supported his sister’s decision, given his less-than-ideal financial situation, he naturally had his own concerns.
It was true that his sister had made some money from running the noodle shop, but as a municipality directly under the central government, land in Yu Jiang’s city center was extremely expensive. Yang Ping could hardly imagine what kind of good storefront Yang Juan could find in the city center with the little money she had in her pocket.
However, contrary to Yang Ping’s expectations, in less than half a month, Yang Juan found a storefront in Guan Yinli with a monthly rent of only 10,000 yuan. It had two floors totaling 150 square meters, working out to just over 60 yuan per square meter.
You have to know that even Yang Juan’s original relatively remote storefront had a monthly rent of 50 yuan per square meter. Now, spending just a little more money, she could rent an entire independent two-story building in Guan Yinli for her shop—this was something they had never dared to dream of before.
Understandably, under the temptation of such a price, Yang Juan, eager to reopen her noodle shop, quickly signed a contract with the property manager. In just over a week, she had moved into No. 29.
In her initial plan, Yang Juan intended to do some minor renovations to No. 29 and then immediately open for business. After all, rent waits for no one, and even at such a cheap rate, every day of delay would require selling more than ten bowls of noodles to earn back.
A week before the incident, Yang Juan had asked Yang Ping to come to No. 29 to discuss renovation matters. Yang Ping still remembers to this day the feeling he had when he first stepped into No. 29 Guan Yinli.
It was still March then, and Yu Jiang’s temperature hovered around 15-16 degrees Celsius. Logically, it should have been just jacket weather. However, the moment he stepped through the front door of No. 29, Yang Ping instantly felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up one by one.
So cold.
Yang Ping had to wrap his clothes tighter around himself to resist this chill. When he asked Yang Juan about it, she only said it was due to the cold rain that had been falling in Yu Jiang these past few days. No. 29’s previous tenant was from two years ago, and without regular maintenance, it was inevitable that some renovations were inadequate, making it poorly insulated.
At that time, Yang Juan confidently told Yang Ping that she wanted to renovate the second floor into private dining rooms. After all, she would hire at most one more helper in the future, so having so many rooms would be useless—better to utilize them to increase customer flow.
Looking back afterward, Yang Ping only remembered that his sister was very happy that day, constantly discussing renovation details with him. She didn’t even tell him that something bad had happened in this house before, only saying that being able to rent such a good storefront in Guan Yinli was due to her good luck. If business took off later, Yang Ping wouldn’t need to continue working for others anymore and could come help her directly.
At that time, Yang Ping never could have imagined that just one week later, he would receive a phone call from the Guan Yinli police station.
His sister was dead.
“My sister, she could never have committed suicide.”
Even though several months had passed, Yang Ping couldn’t help but tear up when mentioning his sister.
At this moment, Han Sha pinched me under the table and whispered: “Boss, you’re going to have to spend some money.”
Before I could react, Han Sha had already called the waiter: “Excuse me, bring us a bottle of Wuliangye.”
“…”
Big brother, are you treating?
I glared at Han Sha, but the waiter had already run off happily. Han Sha quickly sent me a message: “Since we’re doing business with a haunted house, there might be other victims’ family members coming later. We need to do good public relations work to prevent your dear father from finding loopholes later.”
Then he added another line: “Also, don’t you want to know what exactly happened with the previous deceased tenant?”
Meeting Han Sha’s all-seeing gaze, I reluctantly gritted my teeth. Indeed, now that I was using the haunted house for business, this was also a secondary injury to the families of those who had died in No. 29 before. No matter what, giving them an explanation was appropriate.
Thinking of this, I resignedly sighed: “Let’s drink a bit. I also have a sister, and if something like this suddenly happened to the family, it would definitely be hard to accept, right?”
Yang Ping was already desperately suppressing his emotions, and with what I said, tears immediately streamed down his cheeks. He broke down: “My sister had just gotten divorced at the end of last year! She finally… finally could open her own shop, and the money she earned wouldn’t be taken by others anymore. How could she encounter such a thing? The police said she committed suicide, but she had just started living her own life and still had to support my little niece. How could she possibly commit suicide!”
Yang Ping handed over a photo of Yang Juan with her daughter.
In the photo, the woman was plump with a somewhat simple and honest face. Holding an ice cream, she was embracing her daughter and smiling brilliantly at the camera.
If nothing unexpected had happened, this would be what the big sister in the second-floor bathroom originally looked like.
Thinking that Yang Juan had ultimately ended up miserably in the bathtub, I suddenly understood a bit what Xiao He meant when she said the other party didn’t want me to leave and hoped I would find the truth about No. 29.
She was originally just an ordinary person who yearned for a happy life… just like Mom.
Thinking of this, I immediately became emotional. Since the money was already spent, when the waiter brought the Wuliangye, I filled both my glass and Yang Ping’s without hesitation and said: “Don’t worry, I will definitely take your sister’s matter to heart. If there really are demons and ghosts in No. 29 that killed her, I will definitely find a way to escort them to Luohan Temple to face justice!”
After saying this, before Han Sha could stop me, I had already downed the entire glass.
Using the alcohol rushing to my head, I asked: “Before your sister’s accident, didn’t she ever tell you about any strange things happening at No. 29?”
Also having downed a glass of alcohol, Yang Ping seemed to have completely let down his guard with us, choking up: “Before the accident, I was working elsewhere and didn’t have time to come over. She kept sending me WeChat messages, all about renovation matters… Only once in between did she tell me about strange things happening at home.”
“She also experienced strange things?”
He Jian, who was pouring wine for us, paused in his movements.
Yang Ping didn’t hesitate to drink another glass of alcohol, saying in extreme pain: “She… she said there seemed to be mice in the house. Sometimes when she was upstairs, she would hear noises downstairs. But at that time, I thought it wasn’t strange for a house that had been unoccupied for so long to have noises, so I didn’t pay attention.”
At this point, Han Sha had given up trying to stop me from drinking and squinted his eyes to ask: “Did she check? Were there really mice in the house?”
Yang Ping drank while tears flowed down his face: “She… she didn’t say. I later told the police about this too, but they only said there were no traces of other people in the house. Plus the property owner also said that No. 29 indeed had a mouse problem, so this matter was left unresolved.”
Hearing this, Song Nanshi said thoughtfully: “I did often hear noises in my room before… Could it really be mice?”
I thought of that thing under Song Nanshi’s bed earlier. If I hadn’t seen it, I could even comfort myself that it was a mouse delivering newspapers. However, I had seen that face with my own eyes—if there were mice in this world that looked like that, humans should have gone extinct long ago.
Afterward, Yang Ping rambled on recalling many things about Yang Juan, even showing us the WeChat messages Yang Juan had sent him before her death. They were either inquiring about her daughter’s situation or discussing the interior decoration of No. 29 with Yang Ping.
From those Taobao links Yang Juan had sent, it wasn’t difficult to see that besides wanting to convert the second floor into private dining rooms, she also wanted to renovate the second-floor bathroom, even having already selected replacement washbasins and mirrors.
This dinner ultimately ended with both Yang Ping and me drinking ourselves under the table.
My consciousness cut out at Han Sha using my face to pay the bill. After that, I only vaguely heard Han Sha saying he would take Yang Ping to a nearby budget hotel before completely losing my wits. When I woke up again, I was already on He Jian’s back.
“From this perspective, in your Bai family, your sister is indeed more suitable for business.”
In the night, Han Sha walked beside He Jian. In the 31-degree weather, his Chinese-style jacket was on me, making me temporarily unable to figure out whether he wanted to harm me or care for me.
Seeing I was awake, Han Sha said neither warmly nor coldly: “I told you to buy alcohol to extract information from the other party. This is the first time I’ve seen someone get themselves drunk first during business entertainment… You’re really something, boss. If this were my previous workplace, after drinking like that, you’d lose at least one of your kidney or chastity.”
I barely regained some rationality and rolled my eyes: “Did you just grab my hair and use my face to pay the bill?”
Han Sha looked at me with amusement: “Anyway, all the alcohol was drunk by you, so it’s natural and right for you to pay for your own drinks.”
I couldn’t be bothered to deal with him and turned to the other side. Song Nanshi was walking beside me carrying the leftover food and Wuliangye. Seeing I was awake, she said anxiously: “Boss, are you alright? If I had known you couldn’t drink so much… I would have helped you drink.”
I thought that in my place, there was no reason to let a beautiful girl block drinks for me, so I smiled: “If a girl like you got drunk, wouldn’t that be even worse?”
“When I was in school, the rooms for preserving cadavers were very cold. To ward off the chill, I often drank alcohol and could drink nearly two jin at most.”
Song Nanshi looked at me with concern: “Boss, you only drank at most four liang today.”
“…”
I was stunned speechless. Before I could say anything, suddenly He Jian stumbled, nearly causing me to fall off his back.
“Sorry, boss! The steps at our door are a bit difficult to walk on. The house is indeed old.”
He Jian hurriedly apologized to me, but this jolt had sobered me up considerably. A night breeze blew past, and for some reason, I suddenly remembered what my sister had told me last time.
No. 29 had bad feng shui, the stairs were too steep, the second floor was too yin, and needed renovation.
And that day I was standing in this exact position—at the entrance of No. 29—chatting with my sister on WeChat about renovation.
Then, I immediately saw the figure on the first floor.
Renovation… haunting.
My heart skipped a beat.
Yang Juan was preparing to renovate before her death, but she died before she could implement it.
Could it be that the thing in No. 29 actually doesn’t want outsiders to change the arrangement here?