Chapter 47

  As soon as he stepped into the building, Cheng Zhou couldn't help but feel extremely lucky that it was an old building, because buildings over twenty years old basically didn't have basements.

  But the first floor is dark enough, not only because the sunlight from the back can't shine in, but also because this building itself seems to be floating with a faint black smoke, which is extremely light and can't be seen if you don't look carefully, just blending in with the flying dust.

  Cheng Chou thought he'd dash up to the third floor in one breath.

  But just as he stepped onto the stairs, a loud slamming sound suddenly came from downstairs, followed by someone opening the door again, and then the unpleasant shouting started.

  "Get out! Go find that woman! Don't come back!"

  "Do you think I don't want to leave this family? You and this family make me sick! If it weren't for Xiao Yong, I would have divorced you eight hundred years ago!" A middle-aged man appeared in the corridor, walking while turning his head back to shout loudly.

  "Alright! You've finally said it out loud! I knew you didn't have me in your eyes long ago. If that fox spirit couldn't bear a child, you probably wouldn't have waited until today to say this, would you? Zhang Youshan, can you be worthy of me? Back then, if it weren't for me, you would've been fired by the factory long ago!"

  "How many years ago was it? You're still bringing it up? Are you annoying or what?" the man bellowed.

  The woman cried out loudly: "I'm not angry! You thief! It was you who stole Wang Gong's drawings back then! If it wasn't for me covering up for you, let alone being promoted to engineer, you would have been ruined and imprisoned long ago! How did I blindly choose someone like you? You can steal people's drawings, of course you can also steal people! I curse you and that shameless vixen to be hit by a car as soon as you go out!"

  "That's enough! Shut up!" The man, enraged and humiliated, turned around and grabbed the woman's hair, hitting her.

  The woman let out a shriek and wailed loudly enough for the whole building to hear.

  "Hey! Stop!" Cheng Chou wanted to stop the man's violence, but was pulled back by He Sheng.

  "Don't go, something's not right."

  Cheng Zhou's eyes widened as he saw the middle-aged woman, who had been brutally treated by her husband, pull out a pair of scissors from her bosom and stab them into the man's belly.

  What?! Is it going to be like just now again? Are all these things happening in front of me real or an illusion?

  "Go up, don't stay." Si Tu pushed Cheng Chou forward.

  Chengzhou walked two steps up the stairs and couldn't help but turn his head to look at the couple hurting each other in the first-floor corridor. By the time he reached the fifth step, the couple had vanished.

  "What's going on here?" Cheng Zhou asked as he walked.

  Situ and He Sheng did not answer him, they just looked up at the second floor with a serious gaze.

  On the second floor landing sat a 15 or 16-year-old middle school student, a small boy who looked very experienced at smoking.

  The boy who was spitting clouds and mist saw the three people of Chengzhou, coughed his throat, spat a mouthful of thick phlegm on the ground, and looked at the three with a raised corner of his eyes without looking directly at them.

  "Who are you? What brings you here? How did you get in?"

  "We've come for someone," Cheng Zhou replied.

  Situ's heart skipped a beat as he looked at the boy.

  "Who is it?"

  Yao Fangqing.

  "Oh, you're looking for that woman? I heard she was dumped by her boyfriend recently. Are you here to take over?" The boy deliberately blew a mouthful of smoke at Cheng Zhou.

  Cheng Zhou felt averse to the boy in his heart, but in order to clarify one thing, he still pressed down his disgust and asked: "Is Yao Fangqing married?"

  "Yes, shotgun wedding, get on the bus first and then buy a ticket, that's what her parents said. But I don't believe it, I think she didn't get married at all, just gave birth to a child outside and her parents are saying she got married and lives with her husband for the sake of appearances."

  Chengzhou turned his head and glanced at He Sheng, perhaps this was the real reason why Yao Fangqing "got married" - was it just that her family said so to save face?

  He Sheng also felt that this was probably the case.

  Situ stood behind the two of them, silently observing the boy.

  "Has Yao Fangqing come back in the past two days?" Sutu asked suddenly.

  He Sheng listened to Si Tu's words, making space, standing sideways against the wall root, and Cheng Zhou also stood sideways against the handrail of the stairs. Si Tu faced the boy directly.

  The boy snickered and stretched out his hand, rubbing two fingers together.

  Situ elbowed Cheng Chou slightly with his elbow.

  Cheng Zhou reluctantly pulled out his wallet from his pocket and handed a 20-yuan bill to the boy.

  The boy withdrew his hand, with the corners of his eyes raised even higher. He spat a mouthful of phlegm to the side of Cheng Chou's feet and said, "Are you going to send away this beggar?"

  Chengzhou... replaced twenty with fifty and handed it over.

  The boy took the money and casually stuffed it into his pocket, "Yao Fangqing came back with her child yesterday afternoon, her father opened the door and saw that her face was pale."

  "Did you see it?"

  "Uh, I just live in the house opposite theirs."

  "Did anything happen at Yao Fangqing's home after she came back yesterday? Have you seen her again?" asked Sito.

  The boy didn't speak again and continued to smoke.

  Situ again bumped into Chengzhou.

  Cheng Zhou reluctantly pulled out his wallet again, but after flipping through it for half a day, he didn't see any 50s, only several whole 100s and some loose change of over 40.

  Situ directly pulled out a hundred from his wallet and handed it to the boy.

  The boy gave Sze-to a "you're smart" look, took the banknote and said: "I don't know what happened in their family, but I saw her son playing alone on the stairs. I thought he was pitiful, so I gave him my soccer ball. Damn it! As a result, that old bastard slapped me!"

  Cheng Zhou looked at the boy rubbing his cheeks, and suddenly felt that this behavior, speech were not so uneducated after all.

  "Haven't you left this building from yesterday till now?" Si Tu asked tentatively.

  The boy extinguished the cigarette, lit another one, "No, I wanted to leave, but couldn't get out. During this time, no one could come in either. I called my friends and the police, but none of them could get through, so I'm curious how you guys got in?"

  Situ didn't answer how they got in, but asked: "Didn't you tell your family about this?"

  "I told him, but that old fool in our family didn't believe me at all, he's just lying drunk at home!"

  "Your mom..."

  "He died early, being driven to death by the old bastard in our family! Good people don't live long, and troubles last for a thousand years. After my mom died, I thought that from then on, I wouldn't be a good person anymore. You see, yesterday was the first time I did something good, but as a result, not only was I slapped by that old bastard, but also got trapped in this broken building and couldn't get out! Damn it, why didn't that old bastard die earlier? Why is he still alive while everyone else is dead? Why doesn't he just drink himself to death?" The boy cursed with resentment.

  "You should smoke less." The new father couldn't help but say.

  The boy rolled his eyes again and spat out a mouthful of smoke, "Damn it!"

  Cheng Zhou...... As expected, his own son is still the most lovable! The self who sprayed smoke at his son last time was simply guilty of death! From now on, if he smokes in front of his son again, he will automatically hang himself a hundred times!

  "Has anyone else in the building noticed this situation where you can't get out and can't make phone calls?" He Sheng also asked.

  "...If I tell you, will you take me with you when you leave?"

  He Sheng looked at Situ.

  Situ furrowed his brow. It was clearly not wise to make any promises at this time, lest Yao Fangqing's mother and son or something else refused to let the boy go, they would anger the other party if they answered arbitrarily...

  As a result, the two were still considering when Cheng Chou already readily agreed: "Of course I'll take you with me when I leave, this place is not even suitable for humans to stay."

  Situ and He Sheng looked at Cheng Zhou together.

  Chengzhou was baffled, "What's wrong with you? Is this little devil even human? If he is human, can't just leave him here?"

  "So how do you plan to take him out?" asked Situ with a smile.

  Cheng Zhou realized he might have made a mistake, carefully glanced at Si Tu and then looked at He Sheng, nodded and said: "If I can go out, then he... should also be able to follow me out, right? I, I can discuss it with Yao Fang Qing and her mother."

  "I'm afraid we won't even get to see the mother and son's faces. You... if you don't have that ability, then don't pretend to be a saint, otherwise you'll only cause trouble for others." Si Tu said bluntly.

  He pulled Si Tu suddenly.

  "Sai Toh glared at him, "Someone has to say this. You can't bring yourselves to say it, so I'll be the one to do so. If Sai Shing is really going to join this line of work, things like what happened today won't just happen once. Before he matures, we have to make sure he understands that promises aren't something you can casually make! Ho San, you also know that in our line of work, if you fail to deliver on your promises, the consequences will be severe."

  He Sheng was persuaded by Sito, "You're right, I thought too simply."

  Cheng Zhou felt extremely stifled, but that boy still had the nerve to interrupt and say: "Are you worried that I'll cause trouble for you? Don't worry, I'm absolutely more useful than this old brother. If anything happens, Ren Hua will never hold you back!"

  "...I think you should say thank you to me at this time, little brother!"

  "Thank you." Ren Hua hastily said to Cheng Zhou, then curiously looked at Si Tu and the others, "Right, judging from your tone, it seems like you're here to catch ghosts? So, our building isn't having a magnetic field problem, nor are aliens taking our entire building away for experiments, but rather... there's a ghost in our building?! I knew it, I felt something was off!"

  Situ Cheng looked at Zhang's extremely depressed expression and found it amusing. He actually hadn't really gotten angry with Zhang, he was just pretending to scare him.

  Chengzhou may be a bit incompetent and occasionally unclear in his mind, but you can't deny that having such a companion means at least you don't have to worry about him abandoning you when you're weak or in danger.

  But also because of liking him, he expects more from him. Not to mention the matter of giving him his vital energy, he doesn't want this person to disappear soon either.

  The boy was right, good people sometimes really can't live long. And he has seen enough of this kind of thing!

  Ren Hua, once he was certain that the three were indeed there to resolve the strange occurrences in the building and intended to take him out with them, no longer hid anything and told them everything he had seen and heard over the past two days.

  Chengzhou thought the kid would return the advance payment to him, but unexpectedly, the other party didn't even give him a straight look, let alone return the money on his own initiative.

  Alright, I'm a big man who has just earned 900,000 and is about to earn 3 million, so I shouldn't be too stingy. Let's just consider it as helping the poor and doing a good deed.

  It seems so, but Chengzhou always feels that there is something wrong somewhere in his heart.

  That kid hoped we could take him out, and I agreed. Is that kid asking for it? Shouldn't he be the one paying the bill? How come now he's being asked to pay instead? And on top of that, he was directly ignored by that kid?

  Cheng Zhou looked at the young man with a gloomy expression, who was obviously hugging the legs of both Situ He and Situ He Sheng. Especially when facing Situ, his bad habit of looking down on people also subsided, and he even extinguished his cigarette.

  "Hmm?" Cheng Zhou sniffed his nose and asked the three people, "Do you smell anything? It's as if something is being burned."

  Just after finishing this sentence, a thick smoke suddenly emerged from under the door of a room on the left side of the second floor.

  Ren Hua turned his head and glanced casually, saying calmly: "Oh, Room 205 is on fire again."

  Thanks Maimai dear for the two grenades and rocket launcher^^

  Finally made it after brushing for a whole night~

  The telecommunications company won't start work until after the 8th, and it will take a week to install. Also, I need to see if my current residential area can be installed with fiber optics, waiting for their contact call now.