I felt a bit puzzled. The address Grandfather had given me for Third Uncle was clearly that place, so why was this driver saying no one lived there? What was going on? Even so, I pleaded, "Driver, please help me out. At least drop me off at the entrance of Qianhun Lu. You don't have to go in—I'll walk in myself." "Young man, it's not that I don't want to take you, but there are surveillance cameras everywhere. If I take you in and you end up dead in there, I won't be able to clear my name either. Especially that Number Forty-Four you're going to—that's the most cursed house of all. I advise you not to go. If you must go, wait until daytime." "Driver, please—" "Alright, alright, I'm about to end my shift anyway. Get out of the car now." The driver said impatiently. I looked at his expression, sighed, and opened the door to get out. Just as I stepped out, a young man in a cap walked over—he looked to be around twenty or so. "Little brother, do you need a cab?" I nodded and said, "Yes, do you have a car, big brother?" "I do. Where are you headed?" "Qianhun Lu, Number Forty-Four. Can you take me there?" I said directly, already prepared for this person to refuse me as well. But this man agreed without hesitation: "Sure, come with me. My car is over there." "How much?" I was taken aback, not expecting him to agree so readily. I thought to myself that maybe he was young and didn't know about the things on Qianhun Lu. "Five hundred." "That expensive?" I asked in surprise. "That place is cursed—haunted. Ordinary people don't dare go there. My car has been blessed at a temple, so I dare to go. Charging you five hundred is definitely a fair price." The young man said without any hesitation. I was anxious to see Third Uncle as soon as possible, so I didn't think too much and said, "Fine, five hundred it is. Let's go." "Little brother, you're straightforward. Come on, pay first, and we'll leave right away." The man said happily. "I'll pay when we get there. You're not worried I'll stiff you, are you?" I said casually, vaguely feeling that this smooth-talker was a con artist. His car was blessed? Who was he trying to fool? To my surprise again, the man chuckled and said, "Fine, I'll accommodate you this once. You'll accommodate me next time." "Accommodate what?" I asked, confused. "Come on, get on and I'll explain." The man said mysteriously. Five minutes later, I pointed at a beat-up motorcycle and said to the man who had already mounted it, "This is your car?" The broken motorcycle was not only old and shabby, but it didn't even have a license plate. "Yeah. I accommodated you just now, so now you accommodate me. We're even. Little brother, let me tell you—besides me, no one else really dares to go to that place." The man said firmly. It was only then that I realized I'd been played. But whatever—as long as I got there, it was fine. A motorcycle or a car made no difference to me. Without saying a word, I climbed onto the motorcycle with a grim face, placed the box between us and held onto it, saying, "Let's go." "Alright! Hold on tight, sir!" The man shouted, stomping down hard with his foot, acting no different from a lunatic. "Rumble" "Rumble~~" "……" He stomped at least a dozen times but still couldn't get the engine started. Just as I was about to lose my temper, he said directly, "Don't rush. My blessed motorcycle needs to pay respects to the gods first, so it's a bit harder to start. But it will definitely start."
I sighed and stopped paying him any attention. At this point, I was already on a sinking ship—the priority was to see Uncle San as soon as possible and find out how to help Zhao Yixian. A full five minutes passed, and that piece-of-junk motorcycle was nearly stomped apart by him before the engine finally turned over. The harsh, grating sound gave me a headache. "See? I told you it would start," he said, then twisted the throttle and shot forward, the massive inertia nearly flinging me off the bike. "Hey, can you slow down a bit?" I said, exasperated. "Can't do that. We've already wasted too much time—any more delays and we'll miss the livestream," the man shouted back as the motorcycle weaved through the bustling traffic. He rode at breakneck speed, like he was racing to his own funeral. On the uneven stretches of road, if I hadn't clamped my legs tightly around the seat, I'd have been thrown off a dozen times over. After nearly half an hour of riding, the surrounding vehicles thinned out. The area was desolate, with even the streetlights few and far between. "Little brother, don't worry—just a few more minutes and we'll be there," the man said as he rode, the motorcycle's piercing roar echoing through the quiet road like a lion's bellow. Soon, the bike turned onto a road with a cracked, worn surface. He pulled to a stop. Both sides of the road were lined with single-story houses, streetlights present but unlit. It was only just past eight in the evening, yet not a single house had its lights on—lifeless and still. Just as the taxi driver had said, this place was indeed uninhabited. "This is Qianhun Lu. I'll take you to number forty-four now. Try not to say anything—just pay me when we get there. Oh, by the way, my name is Zhuge Wu. Just call me Brother Wu. Here's my number. If you get haunted by a ghost or hit with some evil curse, give me a call—I know a thing or two about exorcising spirits and catching demons." Zhuge Wu kept on with his tall tales and handed me a card. I took the card, nodded, and said, "Thanks. I'll pay you upfront." I pulled out my wallet, took out five hundred-yuan bills, and handed them straight to him. He pocketed the money with a grin and said, "Little brother, you're quick and generous. Number forty-four isn't far—we'll be there in no time." The moment he finished speaking, the motorcycle suddenly lurched forward. This time I wasn't prepared—my hands were still putting away my wallet and the card—and I was flung off, suitcase and all. "Damn it! Do you even know how to ride?!" I couldn't hold back a curse. What made it even more infuriating was that, because of the motorcycle's deafening noise, this Zhuge Wu didn't seem to notice I'd been thrown off. He just rode his clunker straight into Qianhun Lu. "Shit!" I picked up my suitcase and cursed again. If I ever see that bastard again, it'll be too soon. Since I'd already made it to the destination, I didn't bother complaining further. Qianhun Lu was here, and number forty-four shouldn't be too hard to find. I dragged my suitcase into Qianhun Lu. The place was truly desolate—trash scattered everywhere, looking like it hadn't been swept in decades. The ornamental trees lining the street were all withered and yellow. The surrounding shops were dilapidated, some lightboxes hanging loose or fallen off entirely. Most of the storefronts and doors were wide open, their interiors pitch black. Under the moonlight, they looked like gaping, dark mouths, the atmosphere deeply unsettling. I let out a heavy breath, pulled out a flashlight, and shone it on the door numbers. The left side had odd numbers, the right side even ones. By that logic, number forty-four should be on the right. I walked along the right-side sidewalk—2, 4, 6, 8… searching door by door. The deeper I went, the more my skin crawled. Around me, there was nothing but the sound of my own footsteps and the scraping of my suitcase. No other noise at all. That feeling was far from good.
Of course, I wasn't so scared that I dared not continue forward. The graveyard hill was far more terrifying than this place—I was only twelve back then. As I walked along, at the entrance of shop number fourteen, the corner of my eye caught a dark shadow. This shadow seemed to have no feet, just floating about ten meters directly ahead of me, and under the moonlight, it cast no shadow at all. Ever since Zhao Yixian broke my extreme yin fate, my yin-yang eyes had been opened, allowing me to occasionally see things others couldn't. At first, I was quite unaccustomed to it, but now I had grown used to it. Grandfather told me that if I saw something, pretending not to see it would keep me safe, so I didn't panic and continued walking forward as if nothing was wrong. Since I had to pretend not to see it, I could only steel myself and keep going. I had been walking along the sidewalk the whole time—if I suddenly changed direction, it would definitely know I had seen it. And if it knew I could see it, it would likely cause me trouble. When I walked past it, I felt a chill all around me, a bone-piercing coldness. I couldn't help but shiver. Though I kept walking, I couldn't resist stealing a glance at it, and that single look nearly scared the soul out of me. I had seen ghosts before—more than a dozen terrifying female ghosts—but this dark shadow was not only terrifying to the extreme, it also made me want to vomit. It wasn't that its feet weren't touching the ground; it was that it had no soles. Its ankles looked as if they had been bitten off by a wild beast, dripping with blood. It wore a tattered black robe, revealing large patches of deathly pale skin that had rotted to a severe degree, with maggots crawling all over it. What made me even more terrified was that its head had been sliced off at an angle—a small portion from the eyebrows back to the top of the skull behind the ear at the back of the head was missing. From the half of its pale face flowed nauseating deep yellow pus mixed with dark red blood. Its two hollow eye sockets stared straight at me, the eyeballs entirely white. I don't know why, but when I didn't look closely at a ghost, it was just a blurry shadow, but when I focused my attention and examined it carefully, I could see it clearly—even at night with only moonlight, I could see it with perfect clarity, as if the ghost were illuminated by spotlights from all directions. "Hehehe… you can actually see me?" The cracked-head ghost suddenly spoke, and as it opened its mouth, several rats crawled out from inside. The moment they fell, they scattered away with squeaks. "Damn it!" I cursed inwardly. This time I was truly disgusted, almost vomiting. I quickly averted my gaze, pretending not to see it, and dragged my suitcase forward quickly. But after just a few steps, I noticed my suitcase suddenly became very heavy—at least twice as heavy as before. I turned to look, and the cracked-head ghost had vanished. I didn't think much of it at the time. Grandfather had told me that if a ghost knew I had seen it and then disappeared, there were two possibilities: first, it didn't want to cause me trouble and had simply left on its own; second, it had hidden itself and latched onto me. My yin-yang eyes were still in their infancy, so I couldn't see ghosts that deliberately concealed themselves. Connecting this to the sudden heaviness of my suitcase, I guessed that the cracked-head ghost was sitting on top of my luggage, just invisible to me. At that thought, a chill ran down my spine. Perhaps it was psychological, but I even faintly caught a nauseating stench of rotting flesh.