Chapter 81 Cleaning Room 207 (Bonus Chapter at 30,000 words) Room 207...
After pushing open the door to room 207, Zhou Fangdong smelled a mixture of rosin and disinfectant.
A yellowish-white gauze curtain hangs between the entryway and the living room.
Zhou Fangdong lifted the gauze curtain and walked in, but before he could even see the living room clearly, a side quest pop-up appeared.
Side Quest 13: Clean and rent out Room 207
① Clean up the body and tidy up the area.
② Discard all furniture and buy new furniture.
③ Find the ghost hidden in the room and figure out the ghost's killing pattern.
④ Draft a rental agreement and find tenants to move in.
[Side Quest Rewards: 500 Ghost Coins, 2000 Experience Points, 1 Random Skill Point]
Just as Zhou Fangdong was about to close the task pop-up, he suddenly noticed the first one.
The first item used to be cleaning up trash and tidying up, but now it's become cleaning up corpses... Is there a corpse in room 207?
Zhou Fangdong closed the task panel and checked the situation in the living room.
Room 207 is decorated in an American retro style, with olive green wallpaper on the upper half of the walls and dark brown wood paneling on the lower half.
The wooden floor was also dark brown, covered with a thick carpet with an intricate pattern, and a small display stand resembling a long table was placed in the center of the carpet.
There was no body in the living room; it was probably in another room.
Zhou Fangdong used [Ghost Eye]. The ghost in room 207, like the ghost grandma in room 205, showed no intention of hiding. This time, Zhou Fangdong clearly saw the fluctuations of supernatural power.
Following the flow of yin energy, Zhou Fangdong arrived at the long table display stand in the center of the room.
The display stand was filled with violins, making the living room look like a high-end custom music store.
Upon closer inspection, Zhou Fangdong discovered that most of the violins on display were either without strings or had broken strings.
The only thing that was intact was the violin located in the very center of the booth.
The location of this violin is also where the most obvious supernatural fluctuations are observed in the living room.
Even a layman like Zhou Fangdong could tell that this violin was exquisitely crafted, as perfect as a work of art.
The violin strings are not made of metal or nylon, but of a translucent, light yellow material.
Zhou Fangdong had heard that high-end violin strings were made of sheep gut. The strings of this violin seemed to be made of dried gut, but he was not sure if they were made of sheep gut... after all, sheep gut wouldn't have such a strong sense of resentment.
He then looked at the bow placed beside him.
He could recognize the material of the bow at a glance: it was hair, human hair.
...What exactly are the tenants in room 207 doing? Are they using people to make musical instruments?
Zhou Fangdong used [Soul Absorption] on this violin.
The skill didn't work, so it seems the ghost in room 207 isn't on the piano.
Zhou Fangdong turned around and looked at the closed bedroom door.
Another location where paranormal activity is quite evident is the bedroom.
He walked over and pushed open the bedroom door.
The bedroom was the source of the disinfectant smell in the house. As soon as the door was opened, a strong smell of disinfectant mixed with the pungent smell of formaldehyde rushed out of the room.
With such a strong smell of formaldehyde, the formaldehyde levels in this room must be too high. I don't know how the previous tenant put up with it.
After opening the door and letting the smell dissipate for a while until the odor in the room wasn't so pungent, Zhou Fangdong went inside.
Upon entering the bedroom, he found the body in room 207.
On the wall opposite the bedroom door, a naked male corpse was nailed to the wall in a spread-eagle position.
The body appears to have undergone embalming, as there is no sign of decay on it.
His abdomen was completely ripped open, and his skin was turned inside out—someone had meticulously created a human figure puzzle on the wall next to him using his ribs and internal organs, making him look like a fleshy butterfly that had been made into a specimen and pinned to a display board.
The pale skin caused by excessive blood loss, combined with the dark red internal organs, created a bizarre and grotesque beauty that was both chilling and unsettling.
There was no furniture in the bedroom, only a number of internal organ specimens preserved in formalin solution in glass jars placed under the body.
The ghost in room 207 stood inside the glass jars containing the internal organs, staring expressionlessly at the corpse specimens on the wall.
The ghost appeared to be an ordinary middle-aged man, without any of the ferocity of a monster. He wore a gray long gown, held an abacus in one hand and a weight in the other, wore round-framed glasses, and his hair was styled in a side part with hair oil. He looked refined and showed no reaction to Zhou Fangdong's sudden intrusion.
You really can't tell from its appearance that it's a vengeful ghost who likes to use human internal organs to make musical instruments and also likes to nail people to the wall as puzzle books.
Zhou Fangdong directly used [Soul Drain] on the ghost.
Having earned 500 ghost coins and read through the ghost's memories, Zhou Fangdong realized he had misunderstood it.
However, although the ghost in room 207 is not a psychopathic serial killer, all the tenants who have ever lived in room 207 are.
After reading the ghost's memories, Zhou Fangdong had only one thought—it was such a tiring marathon relay race.
Room 207 seems to have some kind of killer certification; most of the wanted criminals in Linjiang City have stayed in this room.
The only one who wasn't the original tenant of room 207 was the one who brought the ghost to room 207.
This tenant was an abacus teacher and one of the first people to move into Liwan Apartments.
After moving into the Liwan Apartment, he bought an abacus that looked quite old from a street stall.
The ghost in room 207 is attached to this abacus.
This is a debt collector; it used to be an accountant.
The accountant died at the hands of the landlord who hired him. At the time, he was asking the landlord for the wages that had been owed for several months for the sake of his seriously ill wife and son, but he happened to witness the landlord forcing his daughter-in-law. The landlord, interrupted from his tryst, beat the accountant to death.
Because of his unjust death, the accountant transformed into a vengeful ghost with deep resentment, attaching himself to his frequently used abacus to demand his life from the landlord.
A person targeted by a debt collector will uncontrollably want to use the abacus that possesses them. Although they may initially obtain what they desire, the more desires they fulfill, the more life debt they owe the debt collector.
When a user's lifespan is insufficient to pay the debt, the debt-collecting ghost will collect all the debts in one go—this ghost will find the next host who can pay the life debt, and have the next host kill the previous user.
This ghost itself has no offensive power; it simply manipulates cause and effect through itself. Therefore, it cannot directly kill humans; it only attracts greedy people, causing them to kill their former masters who cannot repay their debts of life, and then making that person its new master.
The abacus teacher was accidentally killed by a door-to-door salesman after using the abacus.
The fraudster, who was wanted by the police, was attracted by the abacus and used it to successfully steal the identity of the abacus teacher through its supernatural power, and checked into room 207.
Then the fraudster was killed by a human trafficker who was trying to escape police pursuit.
The human trafficker, desperately needing another identity to escape capture, also successfully checked into room 207 using the power of an abacus.
The human trafficker was later killed by a desperate serial killer.
...And so the calculations continued, from the beginning until now, room 207 has housed more than fifty wanted criminals.
However, in the eyes of the other tenants in the apartment, the person living in room 207 was always the same abacus teacher.
The penultimate serial killer renting room 207 was once a renowned violin maker. After his activities of murdering ordinary people to make violin strings were discovered, he fled to the vicinity of the Liwan Apartments. Influenced by the abacus, he killed the previous killer tenant in room 207 and became the new tenant.
The last person to rent a place here was a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast. This jigsaw puzzle enthusiast made a jigsaw puzzle of the musical instrument killer who liked to use human intestines as strings and hung it on the wall.
This puzzle enthusiast was later killed by the fleshy Ganoderma that erupted on the second floor. Because the Liwan Apartment was sealed off, the causal line of room 207 was broken. So this debt collector could only silently guard the puzzle corpse of the musical instrument murderer, waiting for the next tenant to arrive.
After reading about the ghost's complicated history, Zhou Fangdong felt that the 500 ghost coins he had stolen from it were a bit too much to handle.
Could this ghost also be trying to collect a debt from him?
This is such an unsolvable method of killing based on causality. The most important thing to avoid becoming part of the debt relay race is not to use that abacus, nor to owe this debt-collecting ghost anything.
Otherwise, anyone who touches the ghost in this room will die.
Moreover, this debt-collecting ghost is probably a very powerful old ghost because it has existed for a long time. Although the conditions for killing people are complicated, killing ghosts is very simple for it.
According to the debt collector's memories, if any ghost that enters the room dares to attack it, it can unconditionally devour that attacking ghost.
If a ghost that comes in from outside doesn't provoke the debt-collecting ghost and simply stays in the room, the debt-collecting ghost will eventually eat the outsider ghost... Perhaps it's because the debt-collecting ghost has already regarded this room as its own property, and the outsider ghost has stayed in this room without paying rent, so it has become a debtor who owes it something.
“That’s not right…” Zhou Fangdong suddenly remembered something and became very confident. He said to the debt-collecting ghost, “I’m the landlord of this apartment now. You’ve been living in room 207 for so long, and it seems you’ve never paid me rent, have you? How dare you devour other ghosts that break into the room? Do you really consider this room your property?”
Taking advantage of the fact that the ghosts in the apartment rooms don't communicate with each other, Zhou Fangdong said, "After I inherited the Liwan Apartment, I've been active on the first floor and haven't had time to clean room 207, which is why you've occupied it for so long. Let me tell you, all the ghosts living on the second floor pay me 2,000 ghost coins as rent every month."
From the memories he had just seen, Zhou Fangdong knew that this debt collector had never left the house, so he was not worried that the ghost would know that he had inherited the Liwan Apartment less than half a month ago.
And he wasn't lying; the ghost on the second floor did indeed need to give him two thousand ghost coins every month... Although the rooms on the second floor had only been rented out recently, the ghosts who shared the rooms with people would only receive their rent a month later.
Upon hearing this, the debt collector's numb and expressionless face suddenly stiffened for a moment, his gaze slowly shifting away from the human jigsaw puzzle, and he turned his head away from Zhou Fangdong's burning gaze.
Zhou Fangdong pressed his advantage: "How many years have you been living here? How many ghosts in my corridors have you eaten? How much clean yin energy filtered from the rooms have you absorbed? Both the apartment and the ghosts in it belong to me, and you have to pay for it... How about this, until you pay back what you owe me, you're not allowed to ask any future tenants for money, okay?"
The debt collector silently picked up an abacus and, based on the monthly rent of 2,000 ghost coins and the number of years he had lived there, calculated how much he currently owed the landlord.
After fiddling with the abacus beads, his face turned green instantly, and he vanished from the room.
As it disappeared, an old-fashioned abacus also fell to the ground.
Zhou Fangdong picked up the abacus that had fallen to the ground.
...Shouldn't it have agreed by now?
I don't know how much money the ghost finally calculated owed him, but his face turned so ugly.
However, to prevent this ghost from secretly collecting debts from the tenants, the rules for renting room 207 still need to be carefully considered...
Sigh, it feels like there's no solution no matter how I think about it.
Human greed is the most uncontrollable force. You might be attracted to an abacus at any time, use it, and incur a life debt.
Zhou Fangdong looked at the abacus in his hand and sighed softly.
This is tricky. He's thinking of taking the abacus out of room 207 and replacing it with another ghost.
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