First Chapter 8: Senior Management
The first house we bought after that was a new one. The people who lived in it had only lived there for a few months, and everything was normal before that. This is a high-rise building with 28 floors. The house I'm talking about is on the 20th floor, which is considered very high.
It was bizarre. At first, a thief fell to his death. The reason for the thief's fall was also coincidental. He didn't know how he climbed to the window of the 20th floor. He probably wanted to climb into a high-rise house to steal. As a result, the resident on the 20th floor opened the window and pushed him down accidentally. After the police came, they determined that this was a thief who wanted to steal, so the matter was left unresolved and the family did not bear any responsibility.
It is worth mentioning that the family was not aware of the thief's fall. According to my guess, the thief was frightened when the male owner suddenly opened the window. It was winter and the weather was cold, and people's limbs were stiff, so he might have slipped. The next morning, someone went downstairs and saw the thief's body, which was already horribly broken. According to the residents on the ground floor of the building later, if they didn't look carefully, they would have thought it was a broken watermelon.
But not long after the incident, the man hanged himself strangely, and there was no sign before his death. Most importantly, he chose to hang himself on the day of the Chinese New Year's Eve when the whole family was happy. It is said that he told his family that he had something to do while watching the Spring Festival Gala, and was about to change his clothes and go out, but he ended up hanging himself in the bedroom.
However, the incident did not stop there. Every day, the man's wife and a younger daughter claimed to hear the man knocking on the door when he came back. I believe many people have had this feeling: you can hear the footsteps of a familiar person, and you can hear the car of a good friend of yours passing by your house. So the man's wife and daughter always concluded that it was the man who was knocking on the door.
The knocking continued for several days. The man's wife and daughter were not afraid at first, but missed him even more. In the beginning, they would open the door every time, hoping to see the man's ghost, but they saw nothing. Later, the two could only cry silently when they heard the knocking. Later, the man's wife and children gradually lost their sadness, and they began to be afraid, so they moved to her mother's house, and the house became empty. Because the rumor that the man would knock on the door every night had spread, no one dared to rent it.
Qin Yiheng and I rushed over as soon as we received Yuan Zhen's message. This house is not very close, but because it is a newly built high-rise residential building, it has great appreciation space and potential, and we are both very tempted. Although the journey is far, there are direct flights, so when we go there, it only increases the travel cost and does not waste much time.
We contacted the host's wife through the contact information Yuan Zhen gave us. She was a charming young woman who spoke very little. She simply mentioned the price and then lowered her head to listen to me talking nonsense.
I didn't want to be a chatterbox, but bargaining was necessary. In order to maximize my profits, I could only keep talking about how scary and dangerous this house was. But she didn't respond, so I had to shut up and go see the house with Qin Yiheng before making any plans.
This house is not small, and the decoration is very stylish. It is about 140 square meters, with balconies in front and back. However, it has been unoccupied for a long time, and it has accumulated a lot of dust. Qin Yiheng went to check what was inside the house as usual, and I stood there chatting with the hostess. Usually, Qin Yiheng only takes ten to eight minutes to go around the house after entering it, but this time it was very abnormal. It took almost twenty minutes and he still hadn't finished.
I kept winking at him, but he looked at me and just pouted. Finally, I couldn't help it anymore, so I found an excuse to pull him into another room and asked him what was going on.
Qin Yiheng frowned and said to me, "This house has been moved."
I was also suspicious after hearing this. Has it been moved? After all, I have been following him in this business for some time, and I have begun to understand the jargon he uses. Has it been moved? This means that the feng shui layout of this house has been deliberately changed.
To put it bluntly, Qin Yiheng didn't have a deep understanding of Feng Shui, he only had a superficial understanding, but not being able to drive doesn't mean he doesn't recognize car logos, so when he said that the house had been moved, I didn't have any doubts, but now the house couldn't be settled for the time being. Qin Yiheng suggested that we go back and discuss it first, anyway, basically no one dared to buy this house.
I thought to myself: "It's better to be safe." I made up an excuse to the hostess and we went back to the hotel. When we got to the hotel, Qin Yiheng was thinking while smoking, very absorbed. I just watched from the side and couldn't help, so I could only smoke with him. Qin Yiheng thought for a long time, but still shook his head and said he still didn't understand, we need to find an expert to take a look.
I said, we are already here, and there is no place to find an expert.
Qin Yiheng thought about it again and said, "Then the only way is to sleep in there for a night and see what comes at night." After saying that, he looked at me with ill intent.
I was scared by the look on my face. What he meant was, he wanted me to block the bullet hole. Fortunately, Qin Yiheng said, "He will go with me tonight, but we need to prepare a lot of things before that."
For the whole afternoon, I followed Qin Yiheng to prepare things for the evening. There were many kinds of things. We first bought a lot of soybeans from the supermarket, and then killed a chicken to bleed it. We soaked each soybean in the chicken blood and put it away. Then we prepared some common items such as incense, candles, and paper money (they are called common items, but the chances of using them are actually very small, just to be prepared). Qin Yiheng also took a bottle of white wine and several kinds of braised food. I always thought he bought these to offer to someone, but when I asked him, he said he would eat them at night, otherwise it would be boring to sit there.
What surprised me the most was that Qin Yiheng also went to the pet store and spent more than 1,000 yuan to buy a half-grown sheepdog, which he tied with a red rope. This really puzzled me. His explanation was very simple. Dogs have yin and yang eyes, and having a dog at night is like having an extra helper. Then he told me in detail: Many people who have raised dogs have experienced this, especially when walking their dogs at night, dogs often bark at a dark void or in a direction where no one is, which is a sign that the dog has seen something dirty. In some villages, usually after a dog barks first, all the dogs in the village will follow suit. It is said that this is the ghosts of the underworld escorting the wronged souls. Soybeans are positive and can ward off evil spirits. Not to mention chicken blood, which has been a common prop in exorcism since ancient times.
Although these preparations seemed absurd, they were all well-founded. But what made me laugh the most was that the last item Qin Yiheng prepared was to pay 500 yuan for each of our phone calls. I couldn't understand this at all, and he didn't explain much, just saying that I would know when the time came.
In the evening, we went to the hostess to get the key, saying that we wanted to go and see the house again in the evening. The hostess just gave us the key and didn't want to follow us. I'm afraid she knew that we wouldn't dare to do anything rash in such a house.
After everything was ready, we led the dog and carried the bag to the house. To be honest, although I was unsure, I was not afraid. First of all, Qin Yiheng was there and we had made preparations in advance. Secondly, the building was very new and almost full of people, so it didn't feel eerie or scary inside. We got into the elevator and went straight to the 20th floor. After pushing the door and entering, Qin Yiheng began to decorate the house. I couldn't understand what was going on, so I could only smoke and play with the dog.
After about ten minutes of preparation, Qin Yiheng even laid out the food and drinks. We sat on the floor, eating and waiting. Everything was just as I expected, calm and peaceful, and there was no movement until almost 10 o'clock in the evening. We were both afraid of drinking too much, so we were very restrained. In addition, we had already eaten in the evening, so we basically fed the braised food to the dog.
Although I knew there would be a knock on the door, I was still very uneasy waiting. The sheepdog had eaten too much and soon found a corner to lie down and fell asleep. I said to Qin Yiheng, "The dog you bought is not reliable." He shook his head and said, "It's not time yet." He called me with his cell phone, and after I answered, he put my phone in the bedroom where the male owner committed suicide. Then he turned on the speakerphone of his phone and put it on the floor in front of us.
I finally understood why he paid so much for the phone before he came, but I didn't understand what he meant. He explained, "This is a double insurance. To put it bluntly, many things are advancing with the times. There are many ways to find dirty things, and you don't have to follow the old routine. Usually, the radio waves of the phone are quite sensitive. In such a quiet house, you can hear the slightest noise. If neither we nor the dog noticed that thing coming, at least there is something to remind us."
I don't know if what he said has any reasonable basis, but after hearing what he said, my attention was all shifted to the phone. The phone was very quiet, and it seemed that the sound of our conversation could be heard. I began to calm down, hold my breath, and listen carefully. Qin Yiheng also began to remain silent, thinking in front of the glowing phone screen. In an instant, the room became silent.
