Chapter 48 Cleaning Room 201: The Murder Pattern of the Ghost in Room 201...
As soon as it was light, after confirming that all his tenants were safe, Zhou Fangdong went to the second floor of the apartment building.
As expected yesterday, most of the blood and gore in the second-floor hallway had been cleaned up, and the strong smell of blood in the air had also faded considerably, becoming tolerable.
However, Zhou Fangdong discovered that although the flesh and blood had been cleaned up, because there were no cleaners in this section of the corridor, fresh flesh and blood were still sprouting out like mushrooms from the corners of the walls and the gaps between the floor tiles.
If left unchecked, it will eventually become like yesterday.
Following the dark corridor, Zhou Fangdong arrived at the elevator car. Unlike the first floor, where there was a bright and spacious entrance hall in front of the elevator, the second floor elevator was just a short, ordinary corridor.
The layout of the second floor resembles a neat "口" shape, with an elevator car in the middle and two corridors on either side. One corridor is a hallway without doors or windows, while the other leads to the tenants' rooms.
Zhou Fangdong didn't linger in front of the elevator. He quickly walked to the corner ahead and arrived at the location of the room on the second floor.
In this corridor, he found the three janitors with afros.
They have already cleared the area in front of room 201 and are continuing to clear it.
At this rate, by the time they finish cleaning this corridor of tenant rooms, the flesh and blood on the other side of the corridor should have grown back to their original state, and then they'll have to rush off to clean the corridor itself.
It takes three cleaners working together to barely keep up with the rate at which the flesh and blood are growing in the second-floor corridor... If something unexpected happens that prevents one of the cleaners from coming to work, the second-floor corridor will be overrun with flesh and blood again.
Zhou Fangdong didn't know what effect this flesh and blood would have on ordinary people, but he himself utterly loathed these things, and the stench of blood made him very uncomfortable. He dared not gamble that if an ordinary person encountered such a thing, they might be tainted with some kind of malevolent curse, like if they came into contact with a cat-like creature.
To control the spread of this carnage and make it easier for the tenants to move around, we need to find the remaining two cleaners who have disappeared as soon as possible.
Moreover, it's not just that flesh and blood grow back in the corridor; the ghosts on the second-floor corridor are also in a completely different state from those on the first floor.
Yesterday, Zhou Fangdong was so engrossed in the blood and flesh that he didn't notice the ghost on the second floor until today.
On his way to room 201, he witnessed several fights between ghosts.
It's not just a simple fight; it's a bloodbath—tearing each other apart, devouring each other, and not stopping until their souls are scattered. Moreover, the stronger ghosts will eat the weaker ones.
Compared to the battle between the ghosts on the second floor, the fight between the long-tongued ghost and the wedding dress ghost was like children playing house.
Although these ghosts dared not attack him, given their frenzied state, any ordinary person who stepped into this corridor would surely be torn to pieces, just like the weaker ghosts.
If the ghosts he encountered in the first-floor corridor were all like this, Zhou Fangdong wouldn't have dared to turn off the kerosene lamp and walk away on his own... Even knowing they wouldn't attack him, it would still have been terrifying.
Thinking of this, Zhou Fangdong suddenly realized something and called upon the system in his mind:
"System, the yin energy in the corridor on the first floor didn't just stabilize because I rented out my room, right? Was the yin energy in the corridor on the first floor already more stable than on other floors the day I arrived at the apartment?"
I always felt that apartment hallways under normal circumstances should all be on the second floor.
[The first floor is the beginner's area. Before the host arrived, the system did adjust the difficulty, using excess power to stabilize the yin energy in the first-floor corridor. This is because if the beginner's area environment were too harsh, it might cause the host to become overly fearful and stay indoors.]
Zhou Fangdong hesitated, as if he wanted to say something but then stopped.
Although what he said made a lot of sense, he still had the feeling that the system was secretly cursing him.
In this situation, if you want to rent out the second-floor rooms, one thing you need to do is ensure that tenants follow the rules when going up the stairs and don't get swallowed up by the stairs.
Secondly, it is necessary to ensure that tenants are not blocked from moving forward by the flesh and blood in the second-floor corridor, nor are they afraid of the ghosts fighting in the second-floor corridor.
There are two hurdles before you even enter the room, so the second-floor room should never be rented to a low-level tenant like Zhao Dawei who has no resistance to evil spirits.
It would be best to find some mid-level tenants like Hong Zhong or Zhang Qingyang... I wonder if Hong Zhong could introduce some employees from the Paranormal Investigation Department. Professionals like them would definitely be well-suited to this kind of paranormal environment, right?
Zhou Fangdong opened the door to room 201.
The moment the door opened, a series of system pop-ups appeared:
[Beep—Host detected arriving in the second-floor room. Main quest 3 initiated.]
[Main Mission 3: Clean up all the rooms on the second floor to make them available for rent and find tenants to move in]
[Task Rewards: Not displayed at this time]
Side Quest 8: Clean and rent out Room 201
① Clean the room and tidy up the house.
② Discard the damaged 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
The side quests on the second floor offer 200 more Ghost Coins and 1,000 more experience points than those on the first floor... With more rewards, the difficulty must have increased as well.
Zhou Fangdong closed the pop-up windows and entered room 201.
Most of the apartments on the first floor are one-bedroom studios suitable for single people or couples, and Zhou Fangdong's own room is one of these.
The second-floor apartment is much larger, a family room suitable for a family to live in. Upon entering, there is a living room, next to which are the dining room and an open kitchen. Further inside are two bedrooms and a bathroom.
Zhou Fangdong took a walk around room 201 and found that the room was actually very clean. Apart from being a bit dusty and having all the furniture in a damaged state, there was nothing wrong with it.
Moreover, there was no bloody or putrid smell common in haunted houses. There was only a faint medicinal smell in room 201, like the smell of various herbs mixed together when you walk into a Chinese medicine shop.
It has a slightly pungent smell, but it's not unpleasant.
I didn't see the ghost in the room... Where did the ghost go?
After searching around without finding it, Zhou Fangdong didn't waste any time and directly used [Ghost Eye].
This skill can detect fluctuations in supernatural power and predict the movements of low-level ghosts.
Following the supernatural fluctuations, Zhou Fangdong arrived at the open kitchen and saw a small, antique-looking medicine pot on the stove.
It's an ordinary earthenware pot for boiling Chinese medicine. It looks old, and the lid is stained black by the medicinal liquid.
What's a bit strange is that there's no fire under the medicine pot, but the lid is moving on its own, and there's a bubbling sound inside, as if something is being cooked.
As Zhou Fangdong appeared in the kitchen, strange things began to appear out of nowhere in various corners of the kitchen... dead rats, clumps of mud that looked like cat feces, a clump of weeds, rotten oranges, dried lizard tails, bat wings, and so on...
Looking at these things that suddenly appeared, Zhou Fangdong strangely understood what the medicine jar was trying to do.
—This medicine pot seems to be using all sorts of random things to disguise medicinal herbs, trying to get him to throw these things into the pot and boil them.
Zhou Fangdong didn't move, standing aside with his arms crossed, watching the medicine pot performance.
What will happen to the medicine pot if he doesn't boil it? Will a ghost come out of it and grab him?
More and more strange 'medicinal herbs' appeared out of nowhere in the kitchen, and the gurgling sound from the medicine pot grew louder and louder, but the imagined scene of a ghost crawling out of the medicine pot did not appear.
Zhou Fangdong thought for a moment and then used [Soul Absorption] on the medicine pot.
This memory-reading skill is only effective against rational ghosts.
If the skill works, it proves that there is indeed a ghost in the medicine jar; if the skill does not work, then he should search other parts of the room.
The skill worked, the memory reading was successful, there was indeed a ghost in the medicine jar, and this ghost was a former tenant who lived in room 201.
The upgraded mind-reading technology not only requires no physical contact, but also has significantly fewer side effects.
In the past, after using skills to read the memories of ghosts from their previous lives, it felt like a bunch of things were forcibly stuffed into my brain. Under the influence of those obsessive memory fragments, I would feel very tired mentally and experience physical pain.
But the current memory reading is more like watching a short drama from a third-person perspective, with no abnormal physical reaction.
It's unclear whether it's due to skill upgrades or because he's wearing an accessory that increases his spirit bar by 25%.
Moreover, after using the [Soul Absorption] skill, the ghost in the medicine jar offered him 500 ghost coins.
I feel like I'm some kind of thuggish landlord breaking and entering, forcing ghosts to pay protection money or something...
However, this skill is really awesome. The sense of security from being able to pick up ghost coins everywhere makes Zhou Fangdong want to go into the system shop and make a purchase.
The ghost in the medicine jar was a patient suffering from a rare disease in his previous life.
Because this disease is not covered by medical insurance, the patient had exhausted his money after taking the medication for a period of time and could no longer afford the hospitalization fees.
He sold his house to pay for medical treatment and moved into the place with the lowest rent in the city. Then he began to look for all kinds of folk remedies to cure his illness.
The patient had only been living in the Liwan Apartments for a short time when he met a kind-hearted middle-aged man.
This kind person is also a tenant of the apartment, living in room 103.
The middle-aged man gave the patient a medicine pot, which was said to not only produce its own medicine, but also cure all diseases.
Desperate, the patient followed the middle-aged man's advice and drank the medicine from the medicine pot as a last resort.
Surprisingly, it actually worked, and his condition gradually improved.
However, one day, the medicine pot suddenly produced a lot of 'medicine', and the patient had to boil it five times to use up all the 'medicine' that appeared out of nowhere.
In order not to waste the miraculous medicine, he drank all five bowls of it.
The moment the fifth bowl of medicine was finished, the patient died on the spot. After death, he transformed into a sick ghost and merged with the medicine jar, remaining in Room 201 ever since.
When the patient moved into Liwan Apartment, its notorious reputation had already spread throughout Linjiang City. In addition, the patient's death was quite gruesome, with his body covered in festering sores, pus, and blisters, as if he had a contagious disease. As a result, no other tenant moved into room 201 after him.
The sick ghost has never killed anyone, so its killing patterns cannot be known from its past life.
The medicine jar has no reason; it seems to be just an ordinary cursed artifact, and its killing patterns cannot be understood through skills...
Does that mean that as long as I don't touch these 'medicinal herbs' that suddenly appeared in the room, and don't drink the medicine from the medicine pot, I'll be fine?
Normal people wouldn't touch these weird things, right...? Is the murder rule of the ghosts in the second-floor room really that simple?
Zhou Fangdong was still somewhat uneasy.
He suspected that because he was the one who appeared in room 201, the ghost in the room was too afraid to fight back.
From the moment he entered, that sick ghost was avoiding him. After he found it and stole five hundred ghost coins, it was probably even more afraid of him.
After thinking for a moment, Zhou Fangdong left room 201, browsed the system shop, and bought a substitute doll for 500 ghost coins.
Zhou Fangdong stared silently at the doll that had appeared out of thin air in his hand.
The doll's design is rather sloppy; it's basically a ball of cotton covered with a layer of cloth, with a head and limbs bound together with rubber bands, resembling a dried-out white starfish. The face is also drawn very abstractly, just like Old Man Ding... This doll looks like something a primary school student would do to rush through homework and fool their teacher.
Never mind, as long as it works.
There are two ways to use the substitute doll. One way is to keep it in the doll's body after use, and it can protect the user from one fatal attack within 24 hours.
Another method involves dripping a drop of blood onto the doll after use, causing it to transform into the user's appearance. The user can share the doll's perspective and use it to explore dangerous areas for up to five hours.
During the exploration, the doll will act according to the thinking of an ordinary person, and the user can also directly control the doll and manipulate its actions.
Zhou Fangdong planned to have the doll simulate an ordinary person and enter room 201 to test the murder patterns of the medicine jar and the sick ghost.
However, to make the doll resemble you and act accordingly, you need to drip a drop of blood onto it.
Zhou Fangdong looked at his fingers.
What should I use to tie it up? He doesn't seem to have anything sharp on him...
Just as I was thinking this, the system's cold, electronic voice suddenly rang out urgently:
[Host, please don't hurt yourself!!]
Zhou Fangdong was startled by the excited electronic voice.
...What's going on? When did the system become so concerned about me?
[The system failed to update the conditions for using the substitute doll in a timely manner. The conditions have now been updated, and the host will be compensated with 500 Ghost Coins.]
The modified method of using the substitute doll no longer requires dripping blood onto it; it can be controlled simply by thought.
That's good. Although I don't know what happened to the system again, after the modification, he didn't have to prick his finger, and he even got a free scapegoat.
The successfully activated substitute doll transformed into Zhou Fangdong's appearance and entered room 201.
After the substitute doll went inside, a video window appeared in Zhou Fangdong's field of vision. Next to the video window was the doll's status panel, which showed him what kind of damage the doll had suffered.
He didn't immediately control the doll, but let it move freely.
Through the live video broadcast, Zhou Fangdong discovered that as soon as the scapegoat entered room 201, the sick ghost in the medicine jar emerged.
This sick ghost was different from the lurking state Zhou Fangdong had in the room. After crawling out of the medicine jar, it began to pace around the room with its hands behind its back, its expression particularly deep, like a melancholy poet.
A low cough came from the sick ghost's mouth, and at the same time, large patches of pustules began to appear on its bluish-black face.
Because the location where the sick ghost appeared was very close to the substitute doll, all the illnesses that appeared on the sick ghost spread rapidly to the substitute doll like a plague.
The smell of medicine returned to the room, the medicine pot made the sound of boiling medicine, and strange 'medicinal herbs' appeared out of thin air on the kitchen counter.
There were only two kinds of 'medicinal herbs' that appeared this time, not as many as when Zhou Fangdong was in the room.
Driven by its survival instinct, the scapegoat rushed to the kitchen, coughing as it put the medicinal herbs into the medicine pot.
The 'medicinal herbs' had barely been placed in the medicine pot for a few seconds when a bowl of dark, murky medicinal soup appeared out of thin air next to it. The substitute doll drank the soup, and its symptoms vanished instantly, along with the strange herbal smell that had filled the room.
However, a side effect of drinking this medicine was the loss of hearing.
Zhou Fangdong watched the live broadcast video, pondered for a moment, then took control of the doll and manipulated it to approach the sick ghost again.
When the doll came within about two meters of the sick ghost, it was infected again. At the same time, the smell of medicine returned to the room, and the medicine jar began to mutate again.
Following the previous procedure, the child drank the medicine again, this time losing her sense of taste.
Can you get infected by a disease within two meters...?
Zhou Fangdong brought the doll close to the sick ghost again, but this time he chose not to take the medicine.
Five minutes after the infection subsided, the sick ghost, who had been pacing with his hands behind his back, slowly turned his head and looked over.
Those completely black eyes, devoid of any whites, stared intently at the substitute doll. In the next instant, the sick ghost appeared out of thin air in front of the doll and merged with it.
Various terrifying diseases simultaneously erupted in the substitute doll, and the doll eventually died from the torment of the illness.
If you contract a disease from the sick ghost in room 201, it will cause the medicine pot to boil. If you don't take the medicine, you will be killed by the sick ghost. If you take the medicine, you will only randomly lose your five senses...
However, the medicine brewed in this pot cannot be drunk continuously; the sick ghost died after drinking five bowls of medicine in a row.
Therefore, if you want to rent this room, you must stay away from the randomly appearing sick ghosts and drink the medicine immediately after smelling the medicine, otherwise you will be killed by the sick ghosts.
There is a margin for error. Being infected by the disease demon is not necessarily fatal; one can be saved by medicine. The price is the loss of one of the five senses. As long as one does not make five mistakes in a row, there is always hope.
Zhou Fangdong decided to buy another scapegoat doll to try and see if any killing patterns would still be triggered after completely avoiding the sick ghost.
The doll he just bought was essentially a free gift from the system, and he also stole 500 from the sick ghost. Even if he bought another substitute doll, his ghost coin balance would remain unchanged.
The scapegoat doll entered the room again, and this time Zhou Fangdong manipulated the doll to completely avoid the sick ghost.
During this time, he discovered that the appearance of the "sick ghost" was irregular; sometimes it would emerge from the medicine jar after half an hour, and sometimes it would remain silent for an hour. However, the only sign that the sick ghost could identify its presence was a low coughing sound each time it appeared.
The sick ghost would linger and pace around the room for about ten minutes after it appeared.
After the doll completely avoided the sick ghost and was not infected with the disease, the medicine jar did not react.
After a moment of contemplation, Zhou Fangdong suddenly thought of something—what if the tenant wasn't infected by the disease demon, but was already sick or injured when they entered the room?
Thinking of this, Zhou Fangdong manipulated the substitute doll, making it go to the kitchen to find a knife and cut a wound on its hand.
Sure enough, the medicine jar underwent another strange change.
Continue giving the doll the medicine, and after it finished, the cut on its hand that had just been made by the knife healed instantly.
In a sense, this medicine jar is quite a useful treatment tool.
Five hours later, the substitute doll in the room ran out of time and turned back into a roughly shaped rag doll that fell to the ground.
Zhou Fangdong also roughly figured out the murder pattern of the ghost in this room.
If you want to rent a room, you should try to avoid this sick ghost, avoid carrying any injuries or illnesses, and avoid drinking the medicine produced by the medicine pot five times in a row.
Moreover, based on the experiment over the past five hours, Zhou Fangdong discovered that the loss of the five senses caused by drinking the medicine would only disappear when the sick ghost respawned.
Therefore, knowing the location where the sick ghost spawns in time is the most important thing in this room.
Not only does he have to write tenant rules, but to improve the tenants' survival rate, he also seems to need to prepare props for the tenants that can detect the appearance of ghosts... The system shop has many newly unlocked props, let's look for them later.
Hopefully, this item won't cost more than 500 Ghost Coins. You can only get 500 Ghost Coins by completing side quest 8, so anything more than 500 would be a loss.
Sigh... If only the future tenants of room 201 had the ability or tools to sense the presence of ghosts.
Zhou Fangdong re-entered room 201. The sick ghost that had been lingering in the room shrank into the medicine jar as quickly as it had seen a ghost.
The smell of medicine returned to the room, and the medicine pot trembled violently, its lid shaking more and more intensely. The gurgling sound inside the pot was as loud as boiling water. But even in its fear, the medicine pot could not defy its own rules, uncontrollably releasing all sorts of strange 'medicinal herbs' into the kitchen.
Zhou Fangdong felt something was off.
He has no illness or external injuries, so why is the medicine bottle spitting out so much medicine? Does it really want him to drink medicine?
It doesn't matter, anyway, even if he doesn't take the medicine, that sick ghost won't dare to attack him.
Zhou Fangdong bought a mid-level fully automatic cleaning tool worth 80 ghost coins from the mall and used it on the room.
This is a newly unlocked item in the system shop. One intermediate cleaning tool can clean an area of 150 square meters, equivalent to three low-level cleaning tools. However, buying three low-level tools costs 90 Ghost Coins, while buying the intermediate tool directly saves 10 Ghost Coins.
Although Zhou Fangdong is not short of ghost money now, he still needs to save where he can and should cultivate the good habit of being thrifty and managing his household well.
Looking at room 201, which was being cleaned, Zhou Fangdong teleported back to his own room, opened the furniture purchasing app, ordered a batch of furniture, and asked the store manager to deliver it in two hours.
But to his surprise, the furniture store called him right after he placed the order.
This was the first time Zhou Fangdong had received a call since arriving in this world, and he was quite unaccustomed to it at first.
After the call connected, the furniture store manager's voice came through: "Mr. Landlord, are you ordering furniture for the second floor of the apartment?"
"Yes, I remember writing on the order that it was for furniture purchased for room 201."
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone before the store manager finally said cautiously, "I'm sorry, I'm unable to deliver the furniture to the apartment."
Zhou Fangdong was stunned: "Why? Doesn't the furniture store have delivery drivers? I remember Zhao Dawei isn't taking a day off today, is he?"
"It's not the deliveryman's problem..." The store manager paused, then sighed, "It's the problem on the second floor. As a ghost created by the apartment, I can sense that the yin energy in the second-floor corridor isn't very good."
"The reason I trusted you to send the furniture over was because you not only gave me a body again, but also stabilized the yin energy in the first-floor corridor, preventing it from eroding the spirits' sanity. Although the yin energy in the first-floor corridor is not as strong as in the room, it can still nourish the soul."
“After the children return to the apartment from the furniture store, they can not only regain their freedom from the furniture, but also repair themselves by absorbing the yin energy in the first-floor corridor and steadily increase their strength, so I am very at ease.”
At this point, the furniture store manager let out another heavy sigh:
"Most of the children I stuffed into the furniture were unable to adapt to their original apartment environment, which is why I brought them to the furniture store."
"My original intention was to protect these weak ghosts. It's already pitiful enough that they die innocently in the apartment. If their souls are scattered after death, that's really... sigh. In my furniture store, although they will be imprisoned in the furniture and have no freedom, they can maintain their sanity. It's better than leaving them in the apartment to be eaten by other ghosts or becoming mindless monsters due to the yin energy of the apartment."
"Landlord, you must have seen how the ghosts in the second-floor corridor devoured each other, right?"
Zhou Fangdong fell silent.
The scene was indeed cruel and bloody. The monsters on the second floor were constantly fighting, and the corridor was like a bloody arena for fighting for resources.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Landlord, I can't send the children to the apartment until you've resolved the issue in the second-floor hallway, because that would be tantamount to sending them to their deaths." The furniture store manager apologized at the end and then hung up the phone.
Looking at the end-of-call screen on his phone, Zhou Fangdong felt a bit of a headache.
To his utter surprise, the challenge wasn't cleaning the second-floor rooms, but rather cleaning the hallway...
Without furniture, the rooms on the second floor cannot be rented out, which is a real problem.
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