The auction of the haunted house will begin soon.

A man in a black suit and a red tie walked up to the auction platform with an old, shiny wooden hammer in his hand. He glanced at the eager crowd below and said in a long tone, "The auction begins."

"Everyone knows that Sunshine City has five districts, A, B, C, D, and E. District A has the best real estate resources. You are lucky. Two houses in District A are being auctioned today."

"I believe everyone has seen all the houses to be auctioned today, so I won't introduce them in detail. The first one is in Area A, 18 square meters, fully decorated, ready to move in, and a suitable house for a family of four. Unfortunately, this family of four just jumped out of this house the day before yesterday."

"Before we start the auction, let's follow the customary practice of thanking these departing homeowners for paying part of the house price for everyone, so that you can pick up the cheap A-zone houses here, and please bow your heads and pray that they can ascend to heaven after they die."

The auctioneer pretended to lead everyone in putting their hands together in silence.

"The starting price for this house is --" After praying, the auctioneer slammed the hammer down and raised his eyelids: " -- 3 million."

As soon as the words fell, Yuan Guang and Shi Qian in the crowd were stunned for a moment: "18 square meters, what's the starting price?!"

But before they could react, the price quickly went up, and the people around them rushed to raise their cards and bid with red faces:

"3.1 million!"

"3.18 million!"

The price was called out more than ten times in just three minutes, and it quickly soared to four million. The scene was so lively that it didn't seem like a house robbery.

Yuan Guang dazedly stopped his hand as he was about to raise the sign that showed the amount of money was one million. He looked in a trance at the people next to him who were about to fight over the 18-square-meter haunted house where a family of four had just died.

"Okay." The auctioneer dropped the hammer indifferently and raised his hand to a man who looked haggard and thin, and looked like he was going to die of weight in the next second. "Congratulations to Mr. Li for winning the house at a price of 4.76 million."

The man raised his hands and shouted ecstatically, almost crazy with joy: "I have a house! Haha! I have a house!"

"Please come up, Mr. Li, to receive his property certificate, express your feelings about winning the house, and encourage all the Sunshine City residents who have not yet got a house," said the auctioneer.

The skinny Mr. Li climbed up the auction platform with a gasp for breath, and with the help of the auctioneer, he received the property certificate. He smiled at the residents below who were waiting for the next house to be auctioned as if he had won the whole world:

“From the day I started working at the age of 16, my goal was to own a house in Sunshine City.”

"Full payment!" Mr. Li's eyes flashed with a strange and passionate light, "I am determined not to be a house slave! I want to be a first-class citizen of Sunshine City!"

"To achieve this goal, I only ate one piece of instant noodles every day, rewarded myself with a cup of soup with seasoning packets every two days, worked six to ten odd jobs every day, and slept in the company toilet to save land use fees. After thrifting for 30 years, I finally saved NT$4.76 million."

Mr. Li cried with joy. He raised the property certificate in his hand like a trophy: "Finally, today, I bought an 18-square-meter house with full payment!"

There was a halfhearted, thunderous applause from the audience, as well as some sporadic laughter:

"Tsk, I don't know what you're so proud of. You only work ten jobs. I used to work twelve, okay? What's there to brag about?"

"It took him 30 years to save 4.76 million? He must have been lucky to get this apartment. If it were in District A, it would be impossible for someone like him to live there..."

"It's so annoying. Can you please come down? Are you still waiting to bid for the second house? You talk as if everyone saves money to buy a house this way."

Mr. Li seemed to know that what he had done was insignificant, and he came down with the property certificate in his hand, looking a little ashamed.

Yuan Guang stared at Mr. Li's departing back numbly: "...I feel like my mental state has been severely impacted."

Shi Qian nodded slowly: "Me too."

Another group of outsiders who are still going through the formalities have also been severely impacted.

Mu Sicheng was already dumbfounded: "This Mr. Li looks like a skeleton, will he die suddenly on the day he moves in..."

"Then this haunted house will be taken back and auctioned again." Bai Liu looked at the auctioneer with interest, "It seems that there are new ways of setting up honey traps."

Mu Sicheng swallowed nervously and took two steps away from Bai Liu: "Bai Liu, why do I feel like you are very aggressive in this instance?"

"That's normal." Liu Jiayi, who had been silent the whole time, glanced at Bai Liu and said calmly, "He was also very aggressive towards the foremen in Rose. In the end, almost all the foremen were killed by him. Bai Liu hated this kind of superior who exploited him. He didn't like Mu Ke back then either."

Mu Ke took a deep breath.

Bai Liu naturally spread his hands: "It's natural for people to dislike the class that takes away their interests, right? No one likes to be a leek."

Tang Er couldn't help but look at Bai Liu.

Bai Liu smiled instantly: "Captain Tang, I'm just letting off steam in the game, I won't bring it into real life."

As he spoke, Bai Liu placed the property certificates he had obtained in Tang Erda's hands: "Captain Tang, as the most orderly and combat-capable member of our team, I have temporarily decided to put all the property certificates we have obtained in your name, is that okay?"

Tang Erda took the property certificate and said, "Okay."

"So our current strategy is to kill people and seize the room?" At this point, Tang Erda frowned a little uncomfortably. He was not used to this method.

"Of course not." Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked at the hot auction house over there. "Killing people to seize houses is too inefficient."

Tang Erda was stunned: "Too low efficiency?"

You can get a house by killing one person. Is there a more efficient way to steal a house than this?

"Well, I killed the recruiter just to verify two theories, that is, this game should be passed through unconventional channels, and that people in Sunshine City will become ghosts after death. I didn't want to achieve the goal by killing people and stealing houses." Bai Liu narrated slowly, "Killing people and stealing houses is unlikely to get five buildings in seven days."

Tang Erda frowned and asked hesitantly, "As long as... I kill the owners of five buildings, I can pass the level. Why not?"

Liu Jiayi replied coldly: "Because we can't tell who the owner is, how can we kill him?"

"Yes." Bai Liu nodded. "There are tens of millions of people in this city. Only a few of them own their homes outright. Most of them are house slaves and temporary residents. We can't get complete proof of their property rights if we kill them. And these people look like ordinary people. It's too inefficient to screen who is a homeowner or a house slave one by one."

"We can just go upstairs and kill them." Mu Sicheng stroked his chin and suggested, "The people living in the building are probably the owners, right?"

"There are also house slaves." Mu Ke retorted calmly, "Moreover, a building here has thirty or forty floors, with five to six households on each floor. The quality of the doors, valves, windows and doors is also very good. If we round it up, we will break into and kill more than 150 households in one night."

Mu Sicheng fell into deep thought: "One hundred and fifty households a night is not too bad, right?"

"Of course I can kill people—" Bai Liu opened his eyelids, "but the people here will turn into ghosts after they die, have you forgotten?"

Liu Jiayi thought for a moment and asked, "But Bai Liu, I think there is something strange about this."

"You killed the recruiter before, and the system said that after his death, he would turn into a ghost and stay in the house to attack anyone who entered. According to this rule, people have died in these haunted houses, so these dead people should also turn into ghosts and stay in the house to attack the residents who enter."

"The rules of the game can't possibly deceive us." Liu Jiayi's brows furrowed, "Then why are these people still alive and well in haunted houses?"

"They're not living well either." Mu Ke recalled what the job seekers had said before, "Some people who bought haunted houses also had accidents after living in them for a while."

Liu Jiayi glanced at the bustling auction market behind her: "But it cannot be denied that there should be a considerable number of people living in haunted houses who are still alive and well, otherwise the market would not be so hot."

Bai Liu lowered his eyes and looked at her: "I thought of this, but have you noticed that there is a clear difference between these haunted houses and the haunted houses we took over after killing people?"

Mu Si pondered: "Aren't they all haunted houses where people died unjustly? What's the difference?"

Liu Jiayi paused, then quickly looked at the property certificate in Tang Erda's hand: "It's a property rights issue."

"The recruiter we killed was very rich. He owned the full title to a house and was the owner. These murder houses that were auctioned off were repossessed by real estate companies, which means that the people who died in them were basically mortgage slaves who were still paying off their mortgages."

Bai Liu smiled and said, "That's right, and this also means that the house slave does not completely own the house."

"So I guess that only ghosts who own a house can stay in their own house. Ghosts who don't completely own their own house can't stay in their own house all the time. They can only stay in the house occasionally, and most of the time they have to wander around."

Liu Jiayi quickly followed up: "That's why our haunted houses have to deal with the ghosts of the owners immediately, and some of the haunted houses that were auctioned had problems, while others were fine."

Bai Liu's smile deepened. "Not only that, do you remember what the auctioneer said? The dead paid off part of your loan. I guess not only humans here, but also ghosts own part of the property rights of the house."

Mu Ke couldn't help but pause when he heard this. He slowly raised his head:

"Bai Liu, you mean that not only the living here have to abide by the rules set by the real estate developers in Sunshine City, but even when people die and become ghosts, these ghosts must also abide by the rules of the real estate developers here. So the ghosts here have to pay the house price before they can live in the house. Even the property rights of ghosts can be controlled, so doesn't this mean..."

Bai Liu lowered his eyes and said, "Yes, I suspect that the five major real estate developers here may not be alive."