Chapter 91 "The House-Viewing Man" Evil people always have their own evil aunts.
Currently, the 15th floor of the Jiali Building is uninhabited year-round. Jian Dieda accidentally stumbled upon it and heard someone singing, which was very unusual. However, he then thought that the system's data stated that there were record companies on the four floors below. So, could the sound not be coming from a person, but from a cassette tape?
Everyone in Hong Kong knows that PolyGram is frequented by celebrities. Jane Die Da wasn't the protagonist in the original story, so he couldn't tell who sang the song. He just felt that the voice was very magnetic and unique, not inferior to many superstars and kings of pop music. He also felt like he had heard it before.
"Ah-Xiang—where are you!! Ah-Xiang!!" Liao Xinjie's voice, as she ran up to look for him, echoed throughout the building. The girl sounded very worried about her junior brother. Jian Dieda quickly took out his phone to send a message, but found that the signal bars had dropped to zero.
Following the usual pattern, he had already arrived in a parallel world, and the next step was to encounter real ghosts. However, before the ghosts, what entered his mind first was an inserted background story. In the expansion pack on the gray-white cartridge, he saw a familiar man in a suit meeting a woman wearing sunglasses and designer clothes at a Western restaurant in Central. This man was clearly himself, and when the other woman sat down and took off her sunglasses, the face revealed was also one that had appeared on the character card.
Because she is none other than Ding Xirong, the female ghost who died in the Jiali Building.
"Mike, I heard you have access to the best properties. When are you free to take me to see some apartments in the Carrie Building?"
"Amanda, there needs to be a process for house hunting. You also said that properties are hard to find, so let's agree on one thing first when you go house hunting with me."
"What's wrong? What's wrong?"
"Prepare a red dress, the redder the better. Wear it in that day, and I'll take you to see the best apartment on the seventh floor. No one but me, Jian Xiang, can guarantee that."
This storyline was titled "Cause and Effect" on the information card. This seemed to hint at something and also carried a hint of an unexpected twist. So Jian Dieda continued to watch Ding Xirong's last images before her death. He discovered that in order to squeeze into high society and then marry the legendary father of her child, the woman had actually bought a red dress and came to Jian Xiang to look at high-quality properties.
As she entered the building's memory, the two seemed to share sight and hearing. Ding Xirong felt uncomfortable all over while in the elevator. She also saw someone burning incense in the building diagonally opposite. Soon, the two went up to the seventh floor, where the supernatural phenomena increased. The apartment that the so-called high-end real estate agent showed her inexplicably emitted a rotten smell, and the light bulb kept flickering. She also saw a headless doll painted on a bedroom door.
She asked "Jian Xiang" if the house in front of her had bad feng shui, and immediately heard the man in the suit laugh mockingly. Ding Xirong didn't understand what he meant, but she saw the house in front of her gradually blurring. Her hallucinations grew stronger. Jian Xiang's glasses gleamed with an eerie light. He stepped out of the house, locked the iron door, and lit a cigarette with his gloved right hand from outside. "...Amanda, since you're so stupid, just stay here. Actually, I forgot to tell you, besides introducing properties to people, I also have a group of clients that I need to appease regularly, otherwise they will become disobedient and turn against me, preventing me from making money. So please help me, wear this red dress and stay here with your baby, okay?"
"Ahhh!! What do you mean! Mike!! Don't scare me! Don't lock the door!! I'm pregnant, he's so small, please don't hurt him... We're just small fry from the walled city, please save me..."
Not to mention Ding Xirong, even Jian Dieda was terrified by the muttering voice of this little devil. Jian Xiang was such a bad person! The pregnant young woman was so frightened that she fell to the ground and crawled step by step towards the iron gate. Before Jian Dieda could even utter a sound, Jian Xiang had already decided to leave her in this cold, dark building forever. Jian Dieda saw "himself" take a deep breath, wearing a professional smile, showing off his mobile banking account balance while radiating pride in his self-realization.
"No, Ding Xirong, we're different. You're a promiscuous woman. If it weren't for your baby, you wouldn't have been chosen by me. Do you know who you've really offended with your gossipy mouth? If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be qualified to be a special listing in the Jiali Building. Of course, your coming here... also helped me. I'll miss you, miss your red dress... miss how you're being welcomed as a newcomer by the locals right now—"
"Aaaaaaah!!! No!!!"
A woman screamed from inside. Jian Dieda couldn't see what was through the peephole, but he heard a terrifying sound like a bear gnawing on a bone. Soon after, the incense at the door burned out, and the sound of an ambulance came from downstairs. Jian Xiang walked back into the house from the doorway. His first step was to pull back the curtains. Hmm, the energy field inside the house seemed clean. A flash of understanding crossed Jian Dieda's eyes.
But soon, another emotion filled his eyes.
He coldly watched the real Jian Xiang in the story, this little man who looked just like Jian Dieda, holding a "special housing" document and making a phone call. There was a new message on his phone from Grandma Zhu.
“Hey, grandma, prepare a shrine for me again this time. Ding Xirong jumped off a building, and the client asked me to make sure she never goes to hell. So I have to keep an eye on both her soul and body. Heh, yes, don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of Officer Liu from the police station later.”
At this point, the whispers, footsteps, and the sounds of doors opening and closing automatically in the scene all ended.
When Jian Dieda opened his eyes, he was back in the real world, still squatting at the elevator entrance. Only this elevator seemed to have returned to its apparent normalcy—yes, only its appearance.
Since that's the case, he decided to look around.
He retreated into the elevator with a bad feeling, and drops of water fell from above his head.
Is it leaking?
He tentatively raised his semi-numb left hand, and his palm immediately went numb. In the traditional Hong Kong Buddhist lineage, experienced practitioners have summarized their experience, saying that the stronger the ghost, the stronger the body's reaction. Jian Dieda was already reacting, and when he continued to lightly touch his damp head, his almost frozen palm then came into contact with a sticky, terrifying sensation. His hand turned red. Jian Dieda had just seen a memory of a female ghost, and now his entire body went numb to the soles of his feet. His heart, suddenly overwhelmed with fear, felt as if it had been electrocuted by a fishing net, and goosebumps rose all over his scalp.
"Hiss." The light bulb that could help with psychic abilities was still flickering. The light from the elevator entrance was already shining on his back. He was looking at his phone on one side, and behind him was a woman wearing a white dress with her head down. Her stomach was covered in "paint" as if she were doing some kind of performance art.
Jane's glasses, stuck to his nose by sweat, slid down... but he was already quite calm. If Ah Zhi were here, he'd probably be so scared he'd poop on the spot. But he really wanted to say, "Ah Zhi, you old man, you actually believed whatever you said about the red-clothed female ghost coming. God really is right, it's so annoying."
The woman slowly approached. The dim light elongated the legs and neck of the man in the suit selling houses, making him look somewhat like a hanged ghost double. His enemy was still calling his English name, "McClub—McClub—"
On his deathbed, his phone rang once, then rang three times before going to voicemail. The other end of the line was hoarse, but Jian Dieda recognized her voice as Granny Zhu from the walled city. Yet, thanks to that one phone call from the living world, that woman's aura vanished.
"So being called back on the verge of death really does have an effect?"
After the thought flashed through his mind, Jian Dieda picked up his phone to see what Grandma Zhu had said.
After the phone beeped, the sound slowly reached Jian Dieda's ears.
He also found it a bit strange; how could the old woman have such strong psychic abilities? How could she still get through to this building at this hour?
Grandma Zhu's voice on the phone was intermittent; she coughed and called the younger man "Mike," telling Jian Dieda to leave immediately and not to lose the amulet. Having been partners for so long, the old woman genuinely didn't want to be without clients to help her find business partners later.
"Jian Xiang, your birth chart has an aura of death. Our 'goods' have targeted you. If you don't leave, you'll suffer a bloody disaster..."
"...Didn't I tell you last time that Ding Xirong has a lot of karma? She drinks with men every day to seduce them, and she's been pregnant multiple times but has miscarried. In the end, she went to hell with the souls of her babies because of all the abortions. If you go to talk to her, she and those eleven little devils will only drag you to the hungry ghost realm. Those little devils love to eat blood, flesh, and intestines, cough cough cough..."
After explaining the situation over the phone, the old woman hung up. Surprisingly, she didn't offer any solutions. Jian Dieda thought about the reason and concluded that she probably didn't want to share the consequences.
Just as Jian Dieda silently recited "May everything go smoothly, may all taboos be lifted, and may evil spirits be banished" a hundred times, the light bulb started acting up again, and then the elevator stopped behind him.
A scream came from the bottom of the dark well, which only maintenance workers could access.
Jian Dieda grabbed one side of the door, turned his head and looked back at the white mist inside the building that symbolized the presence of evil spirits. He really saw it: hanging on the swaying iron lock was a huge Ding Xirong crawling up to him, and she was still uttering vicious curses at Jian Dieda.
"Jian Xiang!!! Ahhh...!! Ahhh, I died so tragically!!! I'll make sure you get your revenge!! I'll haunt you even as a ghost!!"
He was almost about to see the female ghost. It seemed that Jian Dieda was destined to take the blame this time, but things hadn't gotten to the worst point yet because Liao Xinjie appeared behind him.
This fierce woman was also wearing a helmet. Her first move was to retaliate with a baseball bat, which caused the ghost on the rope to fall back to the bottom.
After his senior sister led him out, she took off her motorcycle helmet. Her face and baseball bat were covered in blood, making her look like a female warrior in an elevator. Jian Dieda couldn't help but say, "Senior sister, I'll take you to the hospital!"
Thanks to Liao Xinjie, their job today was worthwhile. However, Ah Zhi seemed to be too frightened, and Sun Guofu ran to the fifteenth floor after learning that Ah Zhi had gone to the seventh floor. His expression was also extremely unpleasant.
Sun Guofu said, "Let's take this kid downstairs to find a doctor first, but Xinjie, you must call and tell Brother Wen about what happened today."
Jian Dieda knew Liao Xinjie wouldn't call, so after thinking for a moment, he stood downstairs and made a phone call after the call ended. As expected, Liao Wen started by swearing. Jian Dieda didn't want to talk back, as he still needed to reconstruct the case based on the clues, so he cooperated and endured the scolding before informing Wen Ge of what had happened inside the building.
Jian Dieda apologized, "Brother Wen, I also have my reasons. I won't trouble my senior sister for help anymore. Don't worry, since my mother died, you two are the few remaining relatives I have."
Liao Wen paused for a moment, then replied with a tone full of disgust, "You'd better watch yourself. If there's any further trouble, that's your retribution. Don't come looking for anyone from the walled city again."
Then the phone call ended. Senior Sister and Ah Zhi were picked up by their families, leaving Jian Dieda alone to face the first ghost-hunting videotape of the day.
Strangely enough, no fire broke out at the Carrie Building that night. Their boss, Paul, thought they had subdued the female ghost and sent a text message praising them.
Inside the apartment building, Jane is embarking on a mind-bending puzzle-solving adventure.
After his senior left, he immediately went to quickly find the background information of every property listing on the computer. There were so many of them that he sat at home until late at night. Gradually, the cigarette in his hand burned out completely, and he knew in his heart that something... was coming to an end.
"Jian Xiang, you really deserve to go to hell." Jian Dieda wanted to punch the pretty face of that rotten man in the mirror. They looked alike, but Jian Xiang was really not a good person, not a man, and not even a human being. This guy was worse than a pig or a dog.
Thinking this, Jian Dieda got up again to check the doors and windows for security. To prevent certain secrets from being leaked, the doors to the house were closed, but Jian Dieda was still reeling from a part of the truth; his hands, gripping the documents, were white with shock. Because he… felt that his life might very well be over…
Why? Because initially, he was brought here thinking he was there to catch ghosts. However, while investigating, he discovered that the unscrupulous Jian Xiang had committed the sin of being a "haunted house agent." This scoundrel used clients' lifespans to appease the bound spirits in the building, and even dragged him, the transmigrator, into it. There's currently no way to seek help from the outside world. Since no one knows Jian Dieda has taken over the original owner's account, the current situation is equivalent to him officially taking over the causes Jian Xiang committed and bearing the consequences. Even the ghosts don't know he's not human; they've directly warned him that if he doesn't want to suffer the retribution of a violent death by jumping off a building, he can only continue to act as a haunted house agent for the strongest bound spirits in the Jiali Building, helping them choose their targets.
"Jian Xiang!!! Ahhh...!! Ahhh, I died so tragically!!! I'll make sure you get your revenge!! I'll haunt you even as a ghost!!"
The small apartment was dark all around. With his eyes closed, Jane Dieda's mind was filled with images of the Carrie Building.
The more he tried to forget the scene inside the building, the more he couldn't forget the madwoman ghost's bloodied and mangled mouth.
"Cold...so cold...help me..."
Jian Dieda was trapped in the elevator during the day. The ghost had drained most of his yang energy, leaving him in a state of extreme weakness. He had no energy left to reply to emails or talk to clients, and could only lie weakly back on the bed. To make matters worse, his computer kept reminding him of his work and house viewing schedule for tomorrow morning. Jian began to vaguely understand the despair of a Hong Kong office worker: work, overtime, overtime… He felt like he was being raped to death by work. However, he had committed a fundamental error in the fourth world, and the little system couldn't violate the rules to help him now; otherwise, he wouldn't have almost died in the elevator shaft.
"Zhong Yu, where are you? I miss you so much."
The player's traumatized brain contained only the name of his deceased best friend. Like a goldfish starving to death, he sank vividly to the bottom of the water. Soon after, his body, suddenly chilled and hypothermic in the latter half of the night, was covered by the savory, sinister shadow of a man.
It was another night of nightmares. It seemed the original owner was cursed by his former female client, as the scenes from the daytime were replaying in his dreams within this wretched body.
The hallway light bulb continued to flicker wildly. A red light, binding the ghost, shone on the crawling red thing. The first distinguishing feature was its skeletal frame growing on the flesh of a prematurely abrupted fetus. Its only human-like feature was its head. Sadly, there were twelve such skeletal skulls stacked on top of each other. The largest head at the bottom had long hair, like a mother. The other eleven were undeveloped infants, like children crying, or perhaps the words of the evil spirit Ding Xirong were true.
"Jian Xiang!! Go to hell!!! I'll be in the Yama's Hell, in the six realms of reincarnation! I curse you to die a horrible death!"
Jane saw her collapse from the floor in front of the bed, unable to move.
Just then, a Buddhist chant suddenly rang out from the very small house.
Then a swastika appeared on the ceiling, and yellow talismans with cinnabar dots flew out one by one from the tape recorder on the table. The female ghost Ding Xirong was surrounded by talismans in the room, screamed and cried bitterly.
"I don't want to leave—I want to kill him—why doesn't he get his just deserts? I refuse to accept this—"
A man spoke from inside the wall: "The one who killed you was from the 7th floor. Why are you looking for him? People bully the weak and the new, and ghosts do the same."
"...Who are you!" Ding Xirong asked him sharply.
"Hey beautiful, I've lived in the Carrie Building for years too. We're neighbors, let's talk nicely. You might have even bought one of my records before. By the way, do you need an autograph?"
The unseen man spoke as if singing a Cantonese song, with a lazy, laughing tone at the end. But when Jian Dieda saw Ding Xirong in front of him, she was like a rudimentary evil spirit; she was almost instantly swept away by those talismans.
Jian Dieda wondered if he hadn't locked his door, how come all the evil spirits were just coming in like that? Of course, if this ghost was really kind-hearted and saved him, he would go burn incense and make a vow to repay the debt tomorrow.
But the man didn't care about the incense offerings promised by ordinary people. Like the other male head of the household, he walked towards the corporate slave in a suit lying on the bed.
Jian Dieda was unable to move.
The other person slowly walked over, and the first thing they did was to pinch his chin, bringing their heads together. The faint smell of tobacco on the other person's breath was refreshing, like a minty women's menthol capsule. As it passed through their lungs, a line appeared at the corner of their mouths, as if they had been French kissing many times.
"Is there anything urgent? Should I sing you a nursery rhyme to wake you up, little one?"
Jane was at his mercy, but at the same time she remembered who this pervert was. Wasn't this the lecherous man who caused the sleep paralysis last time? How come it's him again?
The man fiddled with the cigarette case, and seeing that the young man had remembered, he became even more unrestrained and lewd. He took out four coffin nails and a bundle of copper coins and red rope from his pocket, and wrapped them around the black-haired youth's hands and feet. Jian Dieda was immediately bound and unable to move. He tried to resist but to no avail. Soon, his hands were tied behind his back, and his legs were half-kneeling on the bed. The most indescribable thing was that... his shirt was still on his body and tied with the rope in a crisscrossed M shape.
This is basically a blatant way of playing. His crooked glasses look so masochistic that the man admires them and then asks him to open his mouth and bite his tie for him to see.
Jian Dieda wanted to knock this mentally ill dead man's head off with one punch, but the dead man, relying on his heroic rescue of the damsel in distress, raised an eyebrow and asked with a smile, touching the back of his foot, "Madam, your husband is not here again today, so how about having an affair this time?"
Jian Dieda hid her face under the pillow, not wanting him to see her flushed cheeks, but drool was uncontrollably dripping from the corner of her mouth: "Get out of here... get out... I have a husband... I don't need a male mistress... My husband will be back soon..."
"Oh, is that so? Then why are you so lonely and empty... Your husband doesn't satisfy you, and you're going crazy thinking about him. It seems you're a lovesick woman, this married lady..."
The man seemed mocking everything, his joking tone suggesting he was helpless against this dissolute, repressed man in a suit. Of course, he was a civilized man, and he wanted to put out the fire the man had started, but this filthy, morally bankrupt scoundrel was too stubborn, making the game less and less fun for him.
"Man in the suit, get this straight. I'm the one who saved you. To you, I'm the master. Now... listen to my instructions and call me husband."
This damn cheating game! Even when Jane was struck by lightning and her soul left her body, it couldn't stop his mouth from opening, which was controlled by the earthbound spirit.
"Old...uh—"
The man hit him from behind with a cigarette pack: "Honey."
"husband!"
The man licked his lips in a perverted manner, and couldn't help but smile at a certain scoundrel. He grabbed the man in the suit's head, revealing his pitiful, blushing face, as if he were crying and begging for air.
"Oh, you're obedient. So what were you thinking about before you had that dream?" The man's kissing skills were excellent. His tongue was cool and wet, and the scent of his deep kisses was like eating the ash from a shrine that had been forced to cool down after the rain.
"Thinking...thinking...um!...uh!" Jane Dieda was so kissed that she couldn't speak clearly.
"Uh-huh, what are you thinking about?" The man mischievously stopped what he was doing.
"Thinking of you..." The aloof man in the suit sniffed his red nose like a small animal. The expression looked quite good to him; it didn't disgust the ghost at all, but rather made him look cute.
He reminded the male ghost of a saying: "Evil people have their own evil mothers, and even male bitches have their innocent moments."
"Baby, why are you suddenly missing me? Do you miss me or your husband? If you don't tell me, I'm leaving again!" the man asked in an exaggerated tone. Suddenly, the man in the suit grabbed her strong waist and hugged her tightly, and then they fell down.
In the eerie darkness, the man could only hear Jane Dieda's strange, blush-inducing panting. The two men's chests heaved violently. Only a tape recorder was playing in the room. If a man in a suit turned on the light, he would find that there was no one else in the apartment in the mirror. He was just hugging a ball of air and calling out "husband."
"I don't know. I just want my husband to hug me... There's no other way, my husband... right now it's you."
As Jian Dieda spoke, he obediently accepted the male ghost's advances. The man noticed his promiscuity and laughed out loud, pretending to put his hand on Jian Dieda's belt buckle: "Alright, but I'm afraid even if the police came now, they wouldn't believe that I was the one who started the harassment. This is clearly a married woman who took the initiative to have an affair, right?"
After saying that, they didn't say anything else. Jian Dieda was extremely excited, like he had just smoked the strongest cigarette. His mind went completely blank, and he lost all his memories. His mind was filled with a hazy sense of weightlessness and relief. He felt like he had been turned into a cheap humanoid toy by someone he felt very familiar with. He was very happy and decadent, but he felt no guilt about cheating or betraying her.
Bang!
Several hours later, the man put his pants back on, cleaned up the scene, stood up, closed the door, and temporarily took Ding Xirong away.
Jane Dieda woke up to a series of knocks on the door. When he opened his eyes, he found himself still wearing yesterday's shirt and suit pants, but for some reason, the zipper was open.
He touched his collarbone again; there were several red and purple mosquito bites on his skin. The man in the suit, who was covering his face with his left hand, began to turn pale, looking inexplicably sinister and furious. He wanted to ask a Taoist priest to exorcise the pervert.
"Ah Xiang? Are you there! I've brought you breakfast." Luckily, it was his senior sister outside. He didn't want to scare anyone by looking like he was being bullied, so he changed into normal clothes before opening the door to greet her.
When the senior sister saw him leaning against the door frame, her eyes were red behind his glasses, which always exuded an air of sophistication. He looked like a wilted lily, and she was immediately startled.
"Ah Xiang? Did you cry last night? What happened to your neck?"
Liao Xinjie herself is a woman, but she felt that her junior brother at this moment inexplicably resembled a vulnerable group who needed comforting.
Jian Dieda adjusted his glasses and shook his head weakly: "I'm fine, just having insomnia. Senior sister, did Brother Wen say anything to you yesterday?"
Liao Xinjie replied, "No, don't worry, haha."
But they spoke too soon. They had only just begun discussing the case. Early the next morning, a new development in Day 4 unfolded: Ah-Zhi's sister called, saying that her brother had suddenly developed a high fever and was vomiting uncontrollably the previous night, and had been arrested by the community police early this morning for acting out.
Everything has come true as Brother Wen said. What they did yesterday was a sign of mortals' disrespect for ghosts, gods, and hell, and they will surely be punished in the future.
Ah-Zhi's sister is a divorced woman who also has a habit of believing in Jesus. She is currently looking for a priest to exorcise her brother, and at the same time, she hopes that Jian Dieda will stop looking for her brother and hurting her, a vulnerable middle-aged woman.
His sister cried and begged him, "I told him before that you were a treacherous person, but he didn't believe me. He said that when you were in junior high school, you were his only older brother and you bought him a lot of things that even our dad wouldn't buy for him. He wanted to treat you like his own brother. Well, now he has repaid his debt with his life. But Ah Xiang, do you really think that heaven is watching what people do?"
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Author's Note: "Evil People Have Their Own Evil Mothers," "Only Jianzi Is Taking the Blame."
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