“A haunted house?”
He Yu was a little surprised. When he had entered that house earlier, he had indeed sensed some yin-baleful qi gathered inside. But nearly every long-vacant house was like that. Open the windows to let it disperse, let the sunlight bake it out, and once someone lived there for a while and it had some human presence, it would be fine.
Other than that, he hadn’t sensed any ghosts or monsters in the house.
Was it just rumors being distorted as they spread? Or was he not skilled enough with his abilities, and had failed to notice something?
“Didn’t you see that it’s the only house around here that nobody rents?” Granny Sun said seriously. “That house has already gone through quite a few tenants, and not a single family lived there longer than three months.”
“Did something happen to all of them?” He Yu asked.
“Well, no. They all just moved out. They’d rather forfeit the rent than live here.” Granny Sun thought he wasn’t taking it seriously, so she said earnestly, “You young people don’t like believing in these things, but some things don’t stop existing just because you don’t believe in them.”
“Come, sit down, let me tell you!” Granny Sun forcibly pulled him back onto the sofa. “More than one person has died in that house. The earliest was an old man who lived in there alone. He had been dead for two or three days before anyone found him. After that, nobody knows whose hands the house passed into, and it sat empty for over a year.
After that year, an agent brought people to view the house, and guess what happened?
The moment they opened the door, they found the corpse of a child inside!
The police investigated for a long time. Nobody had entered the house in over a year, and the doors, windows, and locks were all intact. No one knew how the child got in. The child had been dead for about half a year, and the body had dried out. They investigated and investigated, and in the end there was no result.
Later on, the house sat empty for a long time again. Then the neighbors nearby suddenly started smelling a stench. It stank for several days, and when they got someone to look into it, they found the smell was coming from inside the house. Once again they called the police and broke the lock, and once again they found a corpse inside.
This time the corpse was a man’s. Again, the doors, windows, and locks were all fine, and no one knew how he got in or how he died in there.
Isn’t that eerie?”
“It is rather strange,” He Yu said.
It wasn’t surprising that a house rented through a shady agent had problems. But He Yu had no ID card, so he could only go to people like them, and besides, he now had some special abilities and wasn’t very afraid of ghosts and monsters, so he had rented it.
If two people had died in that house as victims, then by all logic there should be extremely heavy resentful-baleful qi. But he hadn’t sensed any resentment or malevolence at all. On the contrary, that house had felt rather comfortable to him.
Could it be… that Bronze Mask, as the Vice Chairman of the Seven Parts Association and the number one on the Paranormal Affairs Bureau’s most-wanted list, had an unusual sensory ability, disliking normal environments and preferring yin-baleful qi? After inheriting Bronze Mask’s body, had he also inherited Bronze Mask’s sensory ability?
He Yu pondered this thoughtfully.
He planned to wander through a public cemetery some other day and see.
Granny Sun had no idea what was going on in his head, and was still earnestly and patiently trying to persuade him. “Everyone nearby knows about these events. Afterward, the house couldn’t be sold and couldn’t be rented out. After it had sat empty for a long time and the talk had died down, who knows which unscrupulous agent got hold of the house, specializing in swindling outsiders like you.
“Hurry up and contact the person who rented the house to you. If you can get the money back, get it back. If you can’t, don’t live there anyway. Whatever you do, don’t be greedy for a bargain. If something happens, it’ll be too late!”
“Please don’t worry,” He Yu smiled at her. “I’ll stay a couple of days first and see. Didn’t those previous tenants all turn out fine?”
He was quite satisfied with the house. When he got back, he would look into it carefully. If there really were ghosts or monsters, then after all this time, someone from the Paranormal Affairs Bureau should have come to deal with it long ago. But the house hadn’t been sealed off, which meant the problem probably wasn’t serious. Perhaps the yin qi was just a little heavy, something ordinary people couldn’t handle.
Granny Sun tried her best to persuade him but couldn’t move him, and sighed behind his back.
This young man seemed kind-hearted and rather cheerful. Why on earth didn’t he believe in the supernatural?
She still felt uneasy. Fortunately, they lived close to each other. She planned that once her foot healed, she would go by his shop every day to check on him.
……
Shadow Ghost Xie and Puppeteer Zhao were leading a team to clear out a certain ghost domain.
Cold, eerie winds blew through the ghost domain, which was full of terrifying monsters that looked like skinless people.
Shadow Ghost Xie held a lamp. The moment a skinless person came near, its shadow was cast, and then it was devoured by its own shadow.
Nightmare-inducing horrors kept surging forward one after another, while Shadow Ghost Xie stood among the horde of monsters with a melancholy expression.
In his expectations, after completing an important task like delivering the secret letter, he should have gained Lord Bronze Mask’s trust and regard, and from then on been closely involved in Lord Bronze Mask’s plans and become his confidant, rather than doing petty cleanup missions like this.
But after the Chairman received the secret letter, he had canceled the long-term undercover mission at Happiness Residential Complex. Lord Bronze Mask’s whereabouts were also unknown, and so Shadow Ghost Xie’s lofty ambitions were left with nothing to hold on to.
When Puppeteer Zhao came over in high heels and saw him looking depressed and unappreciated, she urged him. “What are you thinking about? The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go back. You may not mind the exhaustion, but I’m bored!”
Shadow Ghost Xie sighed mournfully. “There’s no news of Lord Bronze Mask, and the undercover mission has been disbanded. Why is that?”
Puppeteer Zhao picked at her nails. “All the various factions have been making moves lately. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“The tides are about to turn.”
Just as she was speaking, a few ghost puppets led over Xiao Liu, who had been playing the office worker, along with a group of other Seven Parts Association employees.
The employees were in a sorry state, every one of them. The skinless people that Puppeteer Zhao and Shadow Ghost Xie could dispose of with ease were still extremely dangerous to them. After all, these two were both figures ranked within the top fifty on the Paranormal Affairs Bureau’s most-wanted list.
Puppeteer Zhao and Shadow Ghost Xie wouldn’t protect them the whole way. They had brought this group along to train them, not to babysit them.
When Xiao Liu came over, he faintly overheard them mentioning Lord Bronze Mask. He was capable and was Puppeteer Zhao’s confidant, and was much bolder than the others. He asked curiously, “Two Lords, is Lord Bronze Mask very frightening?”
Shadow Ghost Xie gave a mirthless laugh. “Number one on the Paranormal Affairs Bureau’s most-wanted list. What do you think, is he frightening or not?”
Xiao Liu said, “But Lord Bronze Mask doesn’t attack his own people.”
He also held Lord Bronze Mask in awe, but he didn’t understand why Puppeteer Zhao and Shadow Ghost Xie were so afraid of Lord Bronze Mask. Xiao Liu had looked over Lord Bronze Mask’s combat records, and they were indeed extremely brutal. It was precisely out of admiration for Lord Bronze Mask that Xiao Liu had joined the Seven Parts Association.
Lord Bronze Mask never got involved in affairs and rarely paid attention to anyone. He seemed arrogant and aloof, but he also gave people a sense of security.
Once, he had made a mistake and unluckily been caught by Lord Bronze Mask, and he had thought he was finished. But Lord Bronze Mask hadn’t even glanced at him and had simply walked right past.
Puppeteer Zhao and Shadow Ghost Xie both fell silent.
After a moment, Puppeteer Zhao said, “A word of warning for you all: no matter when, if you ever see Lord Bronze Mask sleeping, never disturb him.”
Xiao Liu understood. “Does Lord Bronze Mask get cranky when woken up?”
The kind who explodes at the slightest poke?
Puppeteer Zhao and Shadow Ghost Xie exchanged a glance. Recalling that scene, both of them shuddered.
……
Before going out, He Yu had opened all the windows to air the place out, and now the air in the house had improved a great deal. He tested the utilities and found that both water and electricity were working.
He wasn’t in a hurry to clean. First he walked through each room again, one by one. There had been some old furniture piled up in the rooms earlier, and there were some corners he hadn’t looked at carefully.
After checking through again, he found an old-fashioned red switchboard telephone in the living room, and in the backyard an old, worn tennis ball. Together with the cloth doll he had picked up earlier, the auras of these three items felt somewhat special to him, but he didn’t sense any danger from them.
He Yu took the cloth doll and the tennis ball and placed them in front of the switchboard telephone, and started staring at them.
Apart from their auras being somewhat special, there was nothing else unusual.
Unfortunately, all the materials Jiang Xian had given him were text versions, and this kind of sensory perception was hard to match up and identify using words alone.
He Yu thought for a moment, then said to himself, “I only want to be an ordinary person and live a peaceful, stable life.”
If there really were ghosts, consider this his greeting. Coexisting peacefully would be best, and if that wasn’t possible… well, he wasn’t going to give up a house he had spent money to rent anyway!
He Yu put the old tennis ball back in the yard and set the cloth doll on the table, then started tidying up the rooms.
There was no bed in the master bedroom. After tidying up, He Yu spread the newly bought bedding on the floor, planning to make do for one night. Once everything was in place, he picked up the cloth doll.
When he had been buying things, he had seen needle and thread and picked some up on impulse.
He Yu re-sewed the cloth doll’s eyes and set it on the table. “Be good. Someday I’ll wash you clean.”
After all this fuss, it was already dusk. He Yu stood at the window and stretched. The newly hung curtains brushed against his face, and the overgrown, weedy yard took on a certain tranquil beauty in the setting sun.
He Yu drew the curtains and lay down on the bedding. The room was very empty and dimly lit, and the bedding was soft. He Yu nuzzled the pillow and closed his eyes.
This was nice. He had a home of his own now.
He Yu fell asleep very quickly. Ever since transmigrating into Bronze Mask, he had been extremely sleepy. He basically slept at nine and woke at seven every day, needing ten hours of sleep to get enough.
Suddenly, the sound of things being smashed came from upstairs, followed immediately by a child’s scream.
He Yu felt as though he had only just lain down. He opened his eyes, lay on the bed expressionless, staring at the ceiling, dazed. He stayed dazed for ten minutes, while upstairs was still noisy.
He Yu turned his head to look at the clock. Ten-thirty.
He sat up, his eyes like two bottomless wells. Just as those eyes were growing ever deeper and more terrifying, angry footsteps sounded in the stairwell as other people came storming up. The footsteps stopped at the door upstairs, followed by loud banging on the door.
“Are you ever going to stop?! Addicted to beating your kid in the middle of the night, are you?!”
Upstairs fell silent, and the angry footsteps left.
He Yu lay back down again, turned over, and pulled the blanket over his head.
Sleep first! Everything else could wait until tomorrow.
The night grew deeper.
The old tennis ball in the weeds of the backyard suddenly moved. In the moonlight, a shadow seemed to appear. The shadow swayed the weeds and gradually approached the wall of the house, paused for a moment at the base of the wall, and then suddenly appeared on the windowsill.
The bedroom curtains began to sway gently, as though something had passed through the glass and was peering inside through the gap in the curtains.
The night was very quiet. He Yu was still asleep, curled up on his side in the blanket, his brow furrowed uneasily.
Drip.
A drop of water fell from the kitchen faucet. After a while, another drop.
The dripping grew more and more frequent, as if the faucet were slowly opening by itself.
The dripping grew louder and louder, as if the place where the drops were landing was gradually drawing nearer.
Suddenly a mark left by a falling drop appeared on the kitchen sink countertop.
Drip.
The water mark fell to the edge of the countertop.
Drip.
The next drop landed on the floor.
Drip, drip, drip.
The trail of water drops gradually approached the kitchen doorway, then left the kitchen, like a series of strange footprints.
As the trail of water marks crossed the living room, the telephone cord swayed twice, the dripping paused for a moment, and the telephone cord stopped moving. The water drops then resumed moving.
In the silent depths of the night, drop by drop, the water gradually drew near the bedroom, passed through the bedroom door out of thin air, and finally stopped beside the bedding spread on the floor.
The person wrapped in the blanket was still sleeping soundly. His shoulder seemed to sense something and shifted uneasily, but he never woke, unaware of the danger gradually drawing closer in reality.
He Yu was dreaming.
At first it was fine, but somehow later he began dreaming that a faucet had been left running.
He tried to turn it off for a long time, but no matter how he twisted it, it wouldn’t shut. He began to feel irritated. But the sound of dripping only grew louder and closer.
Later, as he listened and listened, he felt the dripping was coming from below. This faucet that he couldn’t turn off no matter what was under his bed.
Under the bed.
He was sleeping directly on the floor. There was no under the bed.
He Yu opened his eyes, his expression fierce.