Chapter Ten: The Lonely Soul on a Rainy Night

  I made a cup of tea for each of them, then brought it over and sat down. Old Zhao is a very affable person, so we easily hit it off. That guy named Zeng Huan saw me coming and hastily invited me to sit down, saying: "Today's bill is on me, whatever you want, just put it on my tab."

  Mr. Zhu, the factory director, smiled and said: "I didn't know that Mr. Jiang was also a master of mysticism on the mountain, and he even understood the art of physiognomy. He's so young and yet so accurate, he will definitely achieve great things in the future."

  I thought to myself, "Of course you don't know, I'm still a beginner on the mountain, but I have a good talent and can quickly become proficient in just a few days. With my current skills, opening a martial arts school would also be absolutely profitable. I have even more confidence in my future now." Old Zhao suddenly pinched me from below, and I looked at him with some difference, but he didn't say anything.

  "Mr. Jiang, Mr. Zhao, let me tell you about my family's situation. Originally, I also believed in these mystical arts and had a feng shui master inspect the land before building this house. At first, I felt great living here, but unexpectedly, my daughter became depressed and wouldn't get out of bed. My wife and I started to have more conflicts, and we even got into a few fights. Later, family members also fell ill with strange diseases. These things weren't too bad, but what happened next was truly terrifying." Zeng Huan said this, shaking his head in frustration, took a sip of tea, and continued the core of his story.

  "Actually, when I encountered such a thing, I also thought that my luck had been bad recently and I was in a bad mood at home. But I didn't expect that one night I would really get into trouble. That day, I happened to have just closed a deal and didn't have any dinner appointments, so I had plenty of time and was feeling happy. I even specially instructed the nanny to make two good dishes, thinking I'd drink a cup."

  I still remember that day when it was drizzling and the sky had already turned completely dark. We have a garden outside for comfortable living, with some distance between the main gate and the outer door of the garden. Suddenly, the sound of the doorbell came from the outer door of the garden. At that time, I was wondering who could be visiting us, but you also know that as a businessman like me, it's not impossible to have someone coming at midnight sometimes. So I instructed the nanny to go and open the door. Not long after, the nanny came back and told me there was no one outside. Because my house is in the suburbs, except for our family, there are usually no people around, let alone anyone who would play a prank like that.

  I was on high alert at the time, of course I didn't think about ghosts or gods, what I feared was that there were rivals in the business world who would send people to deal with me, or thieves and robbers, so I asked the nanny to lock the doors and windows tightly. We have a brother in our family who is very close to me and has good martial arts skills, I asked him to help check if there was anything unusual in the garden.

  He went out with an umbrella, and soon he came back in a puzzled manner. He told me that there was no sign of anyone entering the garden, but suddenly all the lights exploded at the same time. One or two exploding might be understandable, but it was all the light bulbs that exploded simultaneously, not a single one was spared from upstairs to downstairs in our house. At that moment, everyone in our family was frightened.

  That day it was drizzling outside, and it was also pitch black, but there was no thunder. However, we could still make out what the outside looked like. Everyone in our house, including the nanny, saw a huge black shadow appear outside. The shadow was over two meters tall and resembled a person. I couldn't see its face clearly, but I felt it staring at me intensely. My brother, being braver, turned on his flashlight, and just like an illusion, the shadow disappeared.

  The next day, I invited the Feng Shui master who had previously told me about the geomancy to come and take a look. After he looked at it, he set up an altar, burned gold paper and spirit money, and finally came back to tell me that he could have taken my money and left, but felt too guilty, so he told me that this matter was not something he could handle, and that I should go find a Buddhist monk or Taoist priest, as he only knew how to read geomancy and fortune-tell, and didn't understand the method of driving out ghosts and monsters.

  I couldn't find a way to invite several Taoist priests at the same time, but none of them had any effect. My daughter was still taken out of bed, and my husband's face turned worse and worse. We often had nightmares too. I knew this matter wasn't easy to solve. I have some distant relative relationship with Director Zhu, so when I mentioned this to him, he introduced me here and asked the two masters for help. The money doesn't matter, we won't owe you anything."

  I and Old Zhao looked at each other, this thing sounds a bit evil. I wanted to make money and had just mastered two tricks, but I always felt that things were not so easy. In the end, I thought about it and decided to leave some leeway for this matter, don't say anything too definite. I said to Zeng Huang: "Director Zeng, this thing, I need to go to the scene to see it clearly, how about this weekend Old Zhao and I come to your place to stay overnight and help you take a look?"

  "Alright, I'll send a car to pick you up at that time." He then took out two red envelopes from his briefcase and handed them over to us with a smile, saying: "I'm in a hurry, this is just a small gift, not enough to show my respect, please accept it, masters."

  I really didn't expect the money to come so quickly, I thought I would have to take a risk. Of course, I also knew that once I took it, it was like a down payment, and if anything happened later, I wouldn't be able to refuse. Just as I was at a loss for what to do, Old Zhao pushed the red envelope over and said: "Director Zeng, no pay without work, we haven't done anything yet, how can we deserve this? You should take it back."

  "Hey, don't be like that, we're all family. What's with the fuss about whether to accept it or not? Even if this matter doesn't work out, there will be many more things to rely on you two masters in the future. This small thing I know can't even enter your eyes, Master. If you don't accept it, it's just that you think I gave too little. I wasn't prepared this time, but next time I'll definitely wrap up something bigger for you. How about that?" Once Zeng Huan said those official words, Old Zhao didn't know what to do anymore.

  "Two masters, this time Zhu was also relying on you two, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to come back. Please don't refuse this kindness, and consider it as today's tea money. Give me some face, you must accept it." As he said that, he took the red envelope from Zeng Huang's hand and placed it on the tea table, then turned around with Zeng and left.

  I and Old Zhao stared at each other, and after a while we sat down to look at the remaining tea water and the red envelopes on the table. By this time it was already noon, and there were no people in the other seats, only the four of us knew about all this. I said to Old Zhao: "Forget it, he's left them here, let's take a look, anyway you guys are also in urgent need of money, and we didn't do anything bad for him."

  Old Zhao, who was usually gentle, seemed to be somewhat indignant, grabbing my hand and saying: "Old Jiang, do you know or not, if what he said is true, we two may not be able to cope with it. And aren't you good at reading faces? Haven't you noticed that the man named Zeng Huan has a dark cloud covering his forehead and no light in his eyes? Do you know or not, if we don't accept this, we can decline politely later on. Now, taking someone's hand is short, eating someone's food makes one's mouth soft - don't you understand this principle?"

  "What? He's going to die soon? I can see that his lifespan is short, but I'm not good at fortune-telling. How could I have known that he was on the verge of death?"

  "Lao Jiang, you've only been learning the trade for a few days, don't show off everywhere. You know how many catties and taels you have in your hands, I think there's no need for me to say more?" Lao Zhao said with disdain, turning his face away and ignoring me.

  I was also infuriated by his words: "You, Zhao Xian Ge, have a kind of ability, and you didn't decline earlier when it wasn't your turn to receive the money. Now you're blaming me after walking away? Moreover, Old Wang is lying in the hospital, neither of you has a job, and your family situations are not good. You're relying on us to send money back home. We're university students, can't find work, and have to rely on our families to support us? I'm indifferent, I'm alone and carefree, my master is even more so, he just put down his burden and left. Wasn't it all for your sake? The 10,000 yuan earlier was used for Old Wang's medical treatment, not a single cent was taken by me." He spoke until I was panting with rage, and I stood up completely.

  "I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming myself. We don't have much social experience, and those two old foxes pushed and pulled us around. How would we know that kind of hurtful trick? Never mind, never mind, let's just do our best next time and learn from the lesson. Let's go eat and not let this matter affect our brotherly relationship." Old Zhao didn't argue with me, shook his head helplessly, stood up and patted my shoulder.

  I was also a bit speechless, didn't know what to say, and could only nod my head. Then I sat down with Old Zhao, opened the two red envelopes, counted them clearly, and found that one guy had put 5,000 yuan in one envelope and 4,900 yuan in the other.

  At first, I thought the guy had miscounted and was secretly laughing, but after looking at the two red envelopes for a while, they were packaged completely differently. After touching the tickets again, each one was brand new and consecutive numbers. Suddenly, it dawned on me that he didn't trust me before, but couldn't bear to say it directly, so he simply wrapped two sets, one for each person. However, in order not to arouse Old Zhao's dissatisfaction, he specially added 100 yuan more. The money wasn't a lot, but enough to balance Old Zhao's psychology and also satisfy me.

  And just now, because I suddenly showed one hand, he was embarrassed to be short of that one, and didn't have time to change it, so he deliberately let Director Zhu play a trick on us, putting them on the table for us. This way, whoever got more or less would take their share separately, even if we hadn't declined, he would still put two red envelopes together, and when we took them over, we would definitely take them together, this way no one would be in trouble. If I hadn't shown one hand earlier, it would have been two hands, each person handing one over.

  This person is really too formidable, no wonder he can make the company big, this is the real eight sides of cleverness, who can't afford to offend anyone, and can calculate everything well, adapt to changing circumstances. We two silly kids were played by him like a fool, still thinking we're right. I whispered to Old Zhao's ear, telling him what I thought.

  Old Zhao exclaimed: "So that's it! I was wondering why there was a difference. I thought he had miscounted."

  "He's a businessman, extremely sensitive about money. If he can't even get this small amount right, that's just ridiculous. And look at these new banknotes, you can tell they're freshly withdrawn from the bank. He'd make mistakes with those? Don't be silly."

  "We don't understand human feelings, now this matter really has to be done with all one's might, and can't be declined anymore, alas." Old Zhao let out a long sigh and shook his head helplessly.

  I patted him on the shoulder in comfort, and in my heart, I could only sigh helplessly like Old Zhao.

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