Chapter 70 The Ghost in Room 205 (Bonus Chapter 24,000) The Ghost's Life...
Upon opening the door to room 205, the first thing you see is the warm-toned living room.
The living room is covered with strips of dark red wooden flooring, the edges of which have faded to a light brown, making the gaps between the planks very noticeable. However, because the floor is very clean and has been waxed, it doesn't look dilapidated at all; instead, it has a deliberately aged, antique beauty.
The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was covered with a ruffled lampshade, and a chain of crystal beads dangled along the edge of the lampshade. The warm yellow light shone through the glittering beads, casting tiny, dreamlike spots of light on the wall.
Zhou Fangdong stood at the door, looking at the spotless and cozy room, then looked down at the semi-circular hand-woven rug at his feet in the entryway. After a moment of silence, he stepped out and carefully checked the door number.
Yes, it is room 205.
He was certain he had never cleaned the room.
When Zhou Fangdong pushed open the door just now, he was momentarily dazed, as if he had mistakenly entered someone's house, and even had an urge to change his shoes.
So, is he at Liwan Apartments now?
Zhou Fangdong looked at the densely packed, quiet, and well-behaved ghosts in the second-floor corridor and confirmed that he was indeed in this haunted building.
It's quite unbelievable that such a clean room still exists in the Liwan Apartments, which has been abandoned for so many years.
Zhou Fangdong pushed open the door again, and this time he didn't hesitate at the door and went straight in.
The window directly opposite the door was completely blocked by a checkered curtain. Zhou Fangdong lifted the curtain and found that the windows underneath were the same type as those in every room, boarded up with wooden planks. He was finally relieved.
The one in this room is probably a tidy ghost.
Zhou Fangdong turned around and looked around the living room.
Below the window is an old mahogany five-drawer chest, on which sits an enamel mug and an old photograph in a frame.
The faces in the photo are all blurry, but judging from the figures, it should be a mother with two daughters.
A light blue floral sofa sits against the wall by the window, its backrest covered with a hand-crocheted white openwork dust cover. Above the sofa hangs an old calendar and a mural of a welcoming pine tree with slightly curled edges.
The room's former owner was probably a crochet enthusiast. Zhou Fangdong noticed that not only were the sofa backs and armrests covered with hand-crocheted white dust covers, but even the furniture legs were covered with white cotton crocheted...leg covers?
Should this be called a leg cover or a foot pad? In any case, its purpose is to prevent tables and chairs from making noise when moved on the floor, or to prevent stool legs from scratching the floor.
Zhou Fangdong walked to the coffee table opposite the sofa.
He discovered several black and white photos under the glass of the coffee table. The faces in the photos were the same as those in the frame on the dresser; it was a woman with two children, their faces blurred and indistinct as if melting.
Women all have the same body shape, but girls have different body shapes... The children in these photos posing with women don't all look like the same person.
Aside from these eerie photos, the room is too cozy and normal. It doesn't look abandoned at all, nor does it resemble a haunted house in a ghost building. It feels no different from an ordinary family home.
"It's just too quiet, which makes it seem a bit eerie," Zhou Fangdong muttered to himself.
No sooner had he finished speaking than a sizzling sound came from the kitchen, followed by the clanging of a spatula against a wok.
On the mahogany five-drawer cabinet below the window, next to the picture frame, an alarm clock had appeared out of nowhere, its second hand ticking rhythmically.
A giant, old-fashioned television suddenly appeared across the coffee table, and the screen began playing old-fashioned advertisements.
Zhou Fangdong paused for a moment, then continued to complain, "All you can hear is the sound of cooking, but there's no aroma of stir-fried food."
As soon as he finished speaking, a rich aroma of food filled the air.
Zhou Fangdong stopped teasing the ghost and went straight into the kitchen.
To his surprise, the ghost didn't hide from him and stood openly in front of the stove.
The ghost was depicted as an old woman, wearing a faded gray shirt with a red wool cardigan over it. She was slightly bent over, intently stirring the vegetables in the pot.
She had snow-white hair, which was styled with hair oil and neatly coiled into a bun at the back of her head.
When Zhou Fangdong came in, she noticed him and turned to look at him. A warm and kind smile appeared on her wrinkled face: "You're back. The food will be ready soon."
She is like that female elder in everyone's memory; you can always see her busy figure when you go back to your hometown.
She was like the heart of the family; she was never seen idle. With her around, the room was always neat and cozy. She tirelessly took care of everything for her family, doing unseen, unappreciated chores, never having a moment's rest.
Zhou Fangdong looked at the ghost without replying and directly used [Soul Absorption] on it.
This was the first time he had encountered such a cooperative ghost on the second floor, so he immediately used his skill to find out her conditions for killing him as soon as possible, otherwise it would be troublesome if she hid later.
After successfully obtaining 500 ghost coins, Zhou Fangdong learned about the ghost's past life.
This old ghost has long forgotten her own name. When she was a child, she was Wang Er Ya; when she grew up, she was Jianguo's wife and Xiao Hua's mother; and when she got old, she was Li's mother-in-law, Li's grandmother, and Old Li's wife.
The old woman's eldest daughter, Xiaohua, lived to be eleven years old, and her second daughter, Xiaocao, lived to be five years old. The unborn child, whose gender was unknown, turned into a pool of blood at three months old because of the gender-changing pill.
Later, she lost her fertility, and her husband, in order to prevent the family line from dying out, "brought" a boy from outside.
Even after losing three children, the old woman never complained, and she didn't take a single day off during her postpartum confinement. She was like a wound-up robot, always perfectly playing the roles of mother, wife, and daughter-in-law.
Her hair was always neatly combed, the stove was always spotless, the floor was always dust-free, and her 'son', husband, and in-laws' clothes were always clean and tidy.
She wanted to prove something through her competence.
But no matter what she did, all she got in return was a sense of entitlement.
A clean home, delicious meals, and neat clothes are all things she is expected to do. However, her husband, son, and in-laws only give her cold indifference and endless demands in return.
During her lifetime, she desperately longed to be needed, to have some weight in her existence, and to be seen by someone... not just to see what she did, but to see her as a person.
But she never said any of this out loud.
The old ghost grandmother eventually died on a quiet afternoon, her death as silent as her life.
She lived a whole life, yet it was as if she had never truly lived.
Her life, like her always slicked-back hair, was smooth on the surface but contained endless pain and repression inside.
She died peacefully in her old age, without any illness or pain, but afterwards became a vengeful ghost filled with resentment.
The emotions suppressed throughout her life all turned into twisted obsessions after her death... The ghost grandma longed to be needed, and longed to have a home after death, a home that could reciprocate her emotions and 'love'.
After her death, in the Liwan Apartment, in room 205, the ghost grandmother raised many daughters and had many families.
She took meticulous care of each girl's life and then drew the emotions she needed from them.
She would prepare a feast, and when her daughter was full and radiating satisfaction, she would also feel full.
She is the best listener, listening to all her daughter's grievances and sadness. Her daughter will become more and more dependent on her, find it harder and harder to get out of the pain, and be unable to bear the slightest setback.
She gave her daughter all the love she needed, and gradually her daughter only wanted to stay in the emotional comfort zone she created, unwilling to contact the outside world, becoming a caged bird kept by her in room 205.
The more affection the ghost granny gives, the more she demands in return.
The old woman never killed the tenants in room 205; all the tenants in room 205 committed suicide... The more you depend on someone, the harder it is to break free; the more you depend on someone, the more painful it becomes.
When they could no longer generate emotions, all the girls confined to room 205, filled with emptiness and pain, chose suicide without exception.
Even after death, the old ghost becomes an emotional exploiter. She weaves cages with gentle threads, drawing on the emotions of the living to fill the emotional black hole that she can never fill, forever cycling between satiation and emptiness, never finding liberation.
After reading about the haunted old woman in room 205's life and the conditions under which she committed murder, Zhou Fangdong fell silent.
This murder condition is unsolvable... How are tenant rules supposed to be made like this?
Are you suggesting we let Hou San move in, so he and the old woman can steal each other's emotions? You steal my negative emotions, I steal your positive emotions, and so on...
While Zhou Fangdong was deep in thought, the old woman had already prepared the meal and put it on the table.
She still wore that kind smile, unlike other ghosts who were afraid of Zhou Fangdong, and she wasn't angry because Zhou Fangdong had just stolen her ghost coins.
She spoke softly, like the gentlest of elders, "The food is ready, come and eat."
Zhou Fangdong snapped out of his daze, glanced at her, and used [Soul Absorption] on her again.
He seems to have just seen a clip that interests him and wants to confirm it.
After being robbed of another 500 ghost coins and subjected to continued emotional abuse, the old woman's expression finally changed.
Her originally kind and gentle face suddenly turned ashen, like a corpse, with a faint bluish-purple tinge, and her clear black and white eyes were gradually filled with scarlet blood vessels.
She glared at Zhou Fangdong with hatred, but clearly mindful of something, she didn't attack and simply disappeared.
Zhou Fangdong didn't care about the ghost old woman's disappearance. He was still quickly flipping through the ghost old woman's memories after her death, and finally found the fragment that he cared about in the ghost's memories.
The last female tenant living in room 205 did not commit suicide; she was the tenant who lived with the ghost granny the longest, until the fleshy fungus erupted in the second-floor corridor. She ran out of room 205, and her fate is unknown.
Although this tenant also relied on the ghost old woman, she did not rely on her completely.
Although she also liked the food the ghost grandma made and praised it every day, she would also offer some suggestions for improvement, such as "this dish might taste better with less salt" or "blanching this dish beforehand would remove its bitterness." This was probably her way of releasing her emotions and giving back to the ghost grandma so that she could absorb them, but she would also nitpick and interrupt her when she was drawing on more of her emotions.
Moreover, this female tenant didn't just wait to eat; if she got off work early, she would cook for the old woman and always made sure to wash the dishes afterward.
If you help the ghost granny while she's cooking, because the meal isn't entirely made by her, she'll derive less satisfaction from living people.
She and the old ghost took turns cleaning the room.
The tenant would also confide her emotions to the ghost old woman, but she didn't just confide those painful emotions; she would also share some trivial things with her.
Sometimes, this tenant would also guide the ghost grandma to pay attention to other 'second-hand' emotions... such as watching TV dramas with the ghost grandma, the kind of TV dramas with plots that make people's emotions fluctuate a lot, or sharing the gossip that they heard at work during the day.
While the ghost grandmother was taking care of her, she was also taking care of the ghost grandmother. She acted as if she needed the ghost grandmother, but she wasn't completely dependent on her.
Interdependence, coexistence... To live in this room with the ghost granny for a long time, there needs to be interaction, not just simple dependence, so as to become pure emotional nourishment for the ghost granny.
After reading about this tenant's experience, Zhou Fangdong roughly knew how to formulate the rules for renting room 205.
Zhou Fangdong left room X205, intending to go back and write the rental rules, and then hand out flyers to find tenants.
However, before leaving the second floor, he wanted to go back into the hallway and take another look at the hidden room on the second floor.
Coincidentally, as soon as he pushed open the door to room 205, he saw a cleaner mopping the floor outside.
It's a paper-headed cleaner; I don't know which of the three of them it is.
Zhou Fangdong stepped forward and asked directly, "Do you know where the hidden room on the second floor is? Take me there."
The cleaner paused, and the next moment, the paper head he was holding fell to the ground in fright.
He hurriedly picked up his head and placed it back on his neck, then stammered, "Landlord, you should ask Quan Wuming or Ming Wuqian to open the door... I... I'm a little hesitant."
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