“What are you yelling about?” Su Yuqing strode over and, without a shred of courtesy, kicked him twice in the backside, sending him sprawling into the corner by the wall.
“Mmph, mmph…”
Su Hongqing’s forehead hit the wall. He let out two muffled groans, then fell silent.
Taking advantage of the moment, Su Yuqing kicked him a few more times.
The little brat used the fact that he was a boy to act like the king of the house. He’d bullied the original owner plenty of times, and sometimes even made her take the blame for things he’d done himself.
As a result, the original owner was constantly scolded and had even been beaten by Su Dawei.
Looking at the house—truly stripped bare—Su Yuqing felt absolutely elated.
She turned and went back to her own room, which had been emptied just as thoroughly, then slipped into the space.
She’d thought she would have to sort everything herself, but the moment she went in, she discovered that the space seemed to have an automatic organizing function.
All the furniture and belongings had been neatly stacked to one side, even more orderly than the displays in a big-box store.
“Beautiful~” Su Yuqing clapped her hands in satisfaction and left the house feeling refreshed.
With rumors of the Su family’s haunting spreading wildly over the past two days, the villagers even went out of their way to avoid passing the front of the house.
Su Yuqing walked all the way out without seeing a soul, and left without a hitch.
……
The sun was high overhead, and it was nearly noon.
“Master, take it easy. We’re almost there…”
Su Dawei and Zhu Chunjuan were drenched in sweat and panting with exhaustion as they finally made it back to the village with the spirit medium they’d had such a hard time persuading to come.
The woman was not easy to hire; she was terribly high and mighty.
The couple had not only spent the last of their good cigarettes and liquor, but had also pleaded and cajoled until their mouths were practically blistered before she’d grudgingly agreed to come and take a look.
“This is the place, Master. Please have a look…” Su Dawei bowed and scraped ahead of her, like an old eunuch attending the Empress Dowager.
The spirit medium wore a greasy, dark-red robe and clutched a string of black beads of some unknown material. She stopped outside the gate.
“Hss—” She narrowed her eyes and pretended to peer up at the Su family’s roof. Her expression immediately darkened, and she sucked in a sharp breath. “Dawei, your house is shrouded in a thick black cloud. The yin qi is overwhelming! It seems whatever’s latched onto your family is… a tough one to deal with!”
“My guardian angel!” Zhu Chunjuan’s heart skipped a beat at those words. She forced a smile so wide the creases in her face nearly froze, then hurried over to ingratiate herself.
“Of course we had to go to such lengths to bring you here, Master! If you use your great powers to save my son, we’ll give you a mountain of gold and silver—we’ll sell everything we own to pay you!”
Afraid the spirit medium might run off, Zhu Chunjuan hurried ahead and frantically pushed the gate open.
“Please, come in! Take a look at my son first and see what’s wrong with him…”
Creak—
As the gate swung open, Zhu Chunjuan stepped into the courtyard and instinctively looked toward the kitchen-cum-entryway directly opposite the gate.
The instant she saw it, her mind went blank. She froze on the spot.
Even Su Dawei, right behind her, was dumbstruck. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
Was this… still their home?
The stove, where the two big iron pots should have been, was now nothing but a bare earthen hollow.
Where were the pots?
And the big wooden cupboard for the bowls and chopsticks?
Even the string of dried chilies that had been hanging in the corner was gone!
“Huh?” Zhu Chunjuan’s mind had ground to a halt. She thought she’d been so flustered she’d walked into the wrong house.
She immediately stepped outside, shut the gate, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then she yanked it open again—
Empty!
Still completely empty.
There wasn’t a thing left, and even the air felt desolate, swept through by a cold draft.
“Th-this…” Su Dawei went nearly mad. He scrambled out of the gate and stared hard at the number on the wall again and again, trembling as he muttered, “This is my house… How did it end up like this?”
Zhu Chunjuan shuddered, coming back to herself, and let out a shriek like a slaughtered pig.
If the kitchen had been stripped bare, what about the inner rooms…?
She dashed into the main room and the bedrooms.
The sight before her shattered the last shred of her reason.
No tables, no chairs, no wardrobe, no bedding…
Even the bed boards were gone!
The whole house was so empty that a single word would echo.
Only Su Hongqing, trussed up like a caterpillar, lay spread-eagled on the cold, dusty floor, letting out weak “mmph” sounds.
“Good heavens!”
Zhu Chunjuan’s legs gave way, and she slumped to the ground with a thump. She beat her thighs wildly with both hands as tears and snot poured down her face, wailing at the top of her lungs.
“What a calamity! What on earth happened? Where are my things? Where are all my belongings? Damn thieves—may you die a horrible death!”
Her heart-rending wails were so loud they seemed to shake the earth, immediately drawing the neighbors who had been too afraid to come near.
When they saw a spirit medium in a red robe standing in the courtyard, they grew bolder. One after another, they craned their necks and crowded in to watch.
The moment they saw the scene, they all sucked in a sharp breath.
“My dear sweet auntie! How did they steal every last thing—not even leaving a single hair behind?”
The crowd fell silent for a second, then erupted into a clamor.
One middle-aged woman went pale and lowered her voice, speaking with absolute certainty. “I’m telling you, Zhu Xiuxiu definitely did this! Just think how deep her resentment must be. She means to wipe out the whole family—she won’t be satisfied until she’s cleaned them out, too!”
“But that doesn’t make sense… Why would she target only Dawei’s family? She hasn’t gone after her own family or her younger brother. What terrible thing did Zhu Chunjuan do?”
As the villagers’ rumors grew wilder by the minute, the spirit medium standing at the gate felt the muscles in her face twitching uncontrollably.
She’d spent more than half her life swindling people—no, traveling far and wide—and when had she ever seen anything like this?!
What kind of resentful ghost was this?
This ghost was way too formidable!
It could torment people in broad daylight and, in the blink of an eye, steal every stick of furniture, pot, bowl, and ladle?
With power like that, even the Ten Kings of Hell would have to offer it a cigarette…
With her own half-baked skills, limited to drawing a couple of crude talismans, going up against a fierce ghost of this caliber—
That’d be like an old man on his birthday eating arsenic: asking for death!
And more importantly…
The spirit medium’s shrewd, triangular eyes swept over the empty house.
The place had been cleared out, and the family had less in their pockets than on their faces. Even if she risked her life here, could the Su family still scrape together half a copper coin to pay her?!
“Not worth tangling with, not worth tangling with…”
The spirit medium swallowed. While Su Dawei and Zhu Chunjuan were still crying on the ground and the villagers were still talking over one another, she quietly and gingerly took two steps backward.
The moment her heel cleared the threshold, the old woman spun around. Her soles seemed slick with oil.
She didn’t even bother fingering the black beads she usually used to put on airs. She took off running on both legs, faster than a rabbit chased by a dog, and vanished in a blur.