Did he cook himself?
Looking at the tender, mushy slices of meat in the hot pot, I suddenly lost my appetite.
"Cook yourself up? That's insane."
"Absolutely!"
Huang Tao picked up a piece of meat and was about to eat it when he suddenly remembered something and put his chopsticks down.
I quickly lit a cigarette for him.
Huang Tao took a deep breath and said, "After returning from Rabbit Ear Village, he became somewhat mentally unstable. He would shout and scream every night, and he was terrified of women. He would act as if he had seen a ghost whenever he saw a woman."
"Afraid of women?"
Huang Tao flicked his cigarette ash: "One night, my wife went downstairs to throw out the trash and saw a dark figure in the garbage room. She thought it was a cat, but when she got closer, she realized it was Niu Hongsheng."
“He was eating rats and his face was covered in blood. When he saw my wife, he was so scared that he kept shouting, ‘It wasn’t me! It’s not my fault!’ He kept kowtowing and apologizing to my wife, which scared her so much that she almost fainted.”
This reminds me of what Huang Xiangu once told me.
She said she saw a group of people bullying the bride, and Niu Hongsheng might be one of them.
I asked, "Did he tell you what happened in Rabbit Ear Village? Or did he mention a woman named Bai Su, uh... someone with the surname Shen is fine too."
Huang Tao stubbed out his cigarette: "He didn't say anything. He locked himself in his house during the day and wouldn't answer his phone. The last time we heard from him was when his father called to say he was dead and warned us not to go to his funeral."
"As for Bai Su and the guy surnamed Shen, I've never heard of them. Although we're childhood friends, we don't hang out in the same circle. You'd know more about him than you would ask me."
As we were talking, he suddenly realized something was wrong and asked me what I was investigating.
I made up some excuse to brush it off.
I then asked him for Niu Hongsheng's father's current address.
Huang Tao said that after Niu Hongsheng died, his father went back to his hometown, a small county town, and seemed to be living near Bincheng Building. He said he would have to go back and check the chat history for the exact address.
He just got a new phone and didn't copy the chat history over, so he needs to go back and get another phone to look for it.
I told him I'd go first and ask him to send me the exact address once he found it.
Before leaving, I gave him 500 yuan, saying that since I couldn't visit my sister-in-law in the hospital, I wanted him to buy some supplements as a token of my appreciation.
Actually, I felt that I had brought them bad luck, so I wanted to express my gratitude, but Huang Tao refused to accept anything.
I shoved it into his pocket and jumped into a taxi and drove away.
Because there is no high-speed rail to the small county, it took me a full five and a half hours by bus to get there.
As soon as I stepped out of the bus station, many taxi drivers surrounded me and asked if I needed a ride.
But whenever I mention going to Bincheng Building, they all turn up their noses and say they won't go.
Even when I offered to pay more, they all waved their hands impatiently and said they wouldn't go no matter how much money I offered.
"Young man, are you going to Bincheng Building?"
Just as I was about to ask the next question, a man in his fifties came over.
I nodded and asked him how much it cost.
"I won't rip you off since you're from out of town. No meter, just a flat price of two hundred!" The man grinned, revealing teeth stained yellow from smoking, his face full of honesty.
Is this considered not a scam?
I heard Huang Tao say that taking a taxi from the bus station to Bincheng Building would cost around 20 yuan, and taking a motorcycle would cost about 8 yuan.
Seeing my hesitation, my older brother spoke again: "Besides me, no one else will take you to Bincheng Building. Think about it?"
It was already past ten o'clock.
Master Jin said that I have a lot of yin energy, and not only Bai Su and that water ghost will come looking for me, but also some wandering ghosts. He told me to try not to linger outside after midnight.
I gritted my teeth and said okay, let's drive.
On the way, I sent Huang Tao a message, asking him if he had found the exact address of Niu Hongsheng's father.
He quickly sent me an address.
[Room 201, Unit 4, Building 3, Xingfuli Residential Complex]
I quickly told the driver, "Brother, let's not go to Bincheng Building, let's go to Xingfuli Community instead."
"It's all the same, just a few dozen meters apart, separated by a road."
After saying that, he added, "At first I thought you were going to Bincheng Building, which startled me."
I put away my phone and asked him, "Brother, has something happened at Bincheng Building? I asked a lot of people before, and they all refused to give me a ride as soon as they heard about this place."
The older brother chuckled: "If it weren't for your accent, I wouldn't have even given you a ride, let alone offered you a ride! That place is haunted; even ghosts wouldn't dare go there. If I weren't planning to buy myself a villa, I wouldn't have offered you a ride either."
This guy's way of speaking is quite interesting.
Even ghosts don't want to go to haunted places? What's causing that disturbance?
You think you can buy a villa just because you earn two hundred yuan by soliciting customers?
I handed him a cigarette: "It must be really scary, right? Otherwise, why are you all so afraid?"
The older brother took the cigarette, said that smoking was not allowed in his car, and then continued.
"Absolutely, it was really fierce. A dozen people hanged themselves together in the office. Isn't that fierce?"
I said, what does it have to do with you if an employee hangs himself? Why can't you even live with him?
The older brother said, "It's weird, what else could it be? Just a while ago, a taxi driver didn't believe in ghosts and, too lazy to take a detour, parked his car in the parking lot of Bincheng Building, intending to go across the street to buy a loaf of bread."
"He had just stepped into the middle of the road when he heard someone calling him from behind. As soon as he turned around, he was hit and killed by a truck. His head was crushed."
He seemed to have opened a floodgate of words and continued, "The Xingfuli community you went to used to have several thousand residents, but now it's pitch black at night, and only three or four families in need live there. They can't sell their houses, and the shops downstairs are opening one and closing one after another."
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