Chapter 14

When Hong Zhong saw that familiar figure carrying the kerosene lamp appear at the entrance of Liwan Apartments, he suddenly felt that the texture under his left hand wasn’t quite right.

Turning his head, he saw that the mannequin had somehow transformed into a man with thick eyebrows and large eyes.

This man was being held tightly in his embrace, looking back at him with a face full of confusion.

Hong Zhong scrambled to let go, nearly snorting the functional drink he hadn’t yet swallowed out of his nose.

He stared in shock at the man wearing the blue-and-white store clerk uniform, unable to resist poking the man’s arm again.

It was soft. Real flesh and blood, though the body temperature was a bit low.

The furniture store manager paused his task of smoothing out his clothes, moved his arm away, and said politely to Hong Zhong, “My apologies, but my sexual orientation is female. I am not interested in men.”

Hong Zhong’s facial muscles twitched.

He wasn’t interested in men either!

What he was interested in was why a mannequin would suddenly turn into a living person—even involving supernatural powers, this was simply too incredible.

Hong Zhong looked at the furniture store manager, then at the haunted building before him, his wariness toward Liwan Apartments growing even deeper.

This mannequin had only changed into this form after arriving at Liwan Apartments… which meant that Liwan Apartments was no longer just a haunted building housing countless ghosts; it actually had the power to make ghosts disguise themselves as living humans!

Faced with Hong Zhong’s burning gaze, the furniture store manager remained indifferent.

After smoothing the wrinkles on his clothes, he straightened his hat and strode to the door of Liwan Apartments. He asked with great respect, “Respected Landlord, hello. I am the manager of the Guijia Furniture Store. May I come in?”

Zhou Fangdong nodded.

The manager pushed open the glass doors, entered the apartment, and handed a recruitment flyer to Zhou Fangdong. “I have come to visit today to ask for your help in recruiting a new employee. Our furniture store is in urgent need of a delivery person. No age limit, no gender limit, five days on and two days off, eight-hour shifts, with a monthly salary of 1,000 Ghost Coins.”

“The delivery person doesn’t need to know how to drive; the vehicles in our shop drive themselves. Nor do they need to carry anything; our furniture moves itself.”

“The only requirement is that we hope you can help us recruit a living human… if that human is a tenant here, that would be even better.”

Zhou Fangdong took the recruitment flyer. On the surface, he appeared to be reading the contents, but internally, he was frantically calling out to the system.

“System, System, is this furniture store boss reliable? Can I really send tenants to work for him?”

【Guijia Furniture Store and Liwan Apartments are friendly partners. Human tenants with official residency status at Liwan Apartments can work normally at the furniture store.】

Having received the system’s reply, Zhou Fangdong felt relieved. He handed the flyer to Zhao Dawei. “There happens to be a job opening here. Are you willing to work at the furniture store?”

Zhao Dawei hesitated. “This salary… Mr. Landlord, may I ask what the Ghost Coins in the salary are?”

That was a bit hard to explain… Zhou Fangdong thought for a moment and replied, “You can exchange Ghost Coins with me for money. For 1,000 Ghost Coins, I can give you 3,000 yuan.”

Zhao Dawei’s eyes lit up.

He was all alone now; 3,000 yuan a month was more than enough for him to live on.

“I’m willing!” Zhao Dawei agreed immediately. Then he looked at the furniture store manager and said somewhat sheepishly, “But I still have to go to the Paranormal Affairs Department today to give a statement. I can’t start at the furniture store until tomorrow. Is that okay?”

The manager nodded. “Of course. Please keep this ID badge safe and come to the store at nine tomorrow morning.” As he spoke, he pulled a light blue ID badge from his pocket.

Even though this was clearly their first meeting, the badge already displayed Zhao Dawei’s name and a one-inch ID photo.

Zhao Dawei had seen too many supernatural events over the past two days; he wasn’t frightened by the badge at all and accepted it with a calm expression.

At that moment, Hong Zhong happened to walk in carrying the newly ordered furniture.

Seeing this, the manager said, “There’s no need to struggle with carrying things in the future. When no one is around, the ghosts inside the furniture will help move them to the designated rooms.”

Then he said gratefully to Zhou Fangdong, “Thank you, Landlord, for taking in these children.”

Realizing what the manager was saying, Zhou Fangdong’s scalp suddenly felt a bit numb.

So, the furniture he had ordered over the last two days was entirely infested with ghosts?

It was a known rule that a room in Liwan Apartments could only accommodate one ghost tenant. Since those furniture ghosts couldn’t stay in the rooms, they would surely end up wandering the hallways.

The thought of a dense crowd of ghosts huddled in the shadows, holding “waiting list” numbers and loitering in the corridors, made Zhou Fangdong feel extremely uneasy.

This was a nightmare. He already had enough ghosts here; he really didn’t want to take in the furniture manager’s “children.”

But currently, the only source for buying furniture was this shop. Without furniture, he couldn’t finish decorating the rooms, and without decorating the rooms, he couldn’t complete the side quests or the main quest…

Forget it. Anyway, he never encountered ghosts when he walked the halls with his kerosene lamp. Out of sight, out of mind.

Zhou Fangdong’s mood was incredibly complex, but he maintained a detached expression before the manager, as if he had known about this all along.

Hearing the manager say the furniture would move itself, Hong Zhong didn’t show much emotion. He simply placed the drying rack and the single bed silently at the apartment entrance.

After all, if a mannequin could turn into a living person, nothing else was going to surprise him.

Furthermore, the manager’s words answered a lingering doubt in Hong Zhong’s mind. No wonder the furniture always appeared at the shop’s entrance perfectly packaged; if the furniture could move itself, it could naturally pack itself as well.

After dropping off the furniture, Hong Zhong prepared to leave. He had no intention of meeting with Miao Zheng.

On his way over, he had already received a notification that Miao Zheng had successfully checked in.

Initially, Hong Zhong had been annoyed that Miao Zheng had abandoned him to act alone, but on second thought, it was better if they didn’t appear to know each other.

After all, Miao Zheng had only come because the Paranormal Affairs Department was monitoring the rental forums. If the landlord found out his online activity was being watched twenty-four hours a day, it would likely cause unnecessary misunderstandings.

Before leaving, Hong Zhong looked at the furniture store manager. “Do you still need me to give you a lift back?”

The manager shook his head. “No need. I can take the Liwan Apartments bus back myself.”

“Fine then…” Hong Zhong paused, eventually giving up on trying to be tactful and getting straight to the point. “I’ve finished the delivery. Please take back the reward. I can’t afford the furniture from your shop.”

The furniture store manager wore a strange expression, sneering as if blaming Hong Zhong for not recognizing a good deal. “Fine. It’s not like our furniture is some hard-to-sell junk. Since you don’t want it, I won’t give it to you. Just don’t regret it later.”

Hong Zhong didn’t argue. Once he confirmed that the furniture reward had disappeared from the delivery interface, he turned and left without hesitation.

Zhao Dawei hurried to call out to him, “Captain Hong, are you heading back? Could you give me a ride? I need to go to the Paranormal Affairs Department too.”

Hong Zhong stopped in his tracks and asked with some confusion, “Wasn’t your statement finished yesterday? What are you going back for?”

Zhao Dawei gave a bitter smile. “The statement I gave yesterday was about the case at my home. The one I have to give today is related to my former company… Every executive and employee at that company has met with an accident, except for me. I got a call from the department yesterday; they want me to come in for a statement.”

Hong Zhong’s expression turned serious. “Alright, come with me then. I’ll drop you off.” He really hadn’t known that Zhao Dawei’s former company had also been hit. He had been focused entirely on the Liwan Apartments case for the past two days, leaving other cases to his colleagues.

After the two left, the furniture store manager departed as well, leaving only Zhou Fangdong in the apartment foyer.

Zhou Fangdong looked at the two sets of unpackaged furniture on the floor. Under the dim, yellow light of the kerosene lamp, they looked like ordinary furniture, perfectly still.

The ghosts inside the furniture probably wouldn’t move until he left.

Zhou Fangdong didn’t linger. He turned and walked toward Room 102.

As he pushed open the door to Room 102, a heavy scent of charred burning hit him.

Unlike the other two one-bedroom units that had already been rented out, Room 102—though also roughly fifty square meters—had been remodeled into a two-bedroom, one-living room layout.

The entrance led directly into the living room. The interior was pitch black, covered in the scars of a fire.

Every piece of furniture in the room had been destroyed, severely warped by the heat. The ceiling lamp had crashed onto the coffee table below. Due to the high temperatures, the crystal pendants of the lamp had completely fused with the shattered glass of the table, looking like a piece of abstract installation art.

There wasn’t much actual trash in Room 102, but the floor was covered in a thick layer of black ash. Walking through the room felt like moving through a heavy smog.

Zhou Fangdong covered his nose and mouth as he walked to the center of the living room. Just then, a system task window popped up:

【Side Quest 2: Renovate and Rent Out Room 102】

① Clean the room and remove the black ash.

② Paint the walls or apply new wallpaper.

③ Discard damaged furniture and purchase new furniture.

④ Find the ghost hidden in the room and figure out its killing rules.

⑤ Draft a rental contract and find a tenant to move in.

【Side Quest 2 Rewards: 300 Ghost Coins, 1,000 Experience Points, Random Character Skill x1】

Quickly scanning the window, Zhou Fangdong noted that the rewards for this new side quest were the same as those for Room 109.

He suspected the tasks and rewards for the remaining rooms on the first floor would be much the same.

Zhou Fangdong closed the task window and continued deeper into Room 102.

In a corner of the living room, he found a small, familiar room.

His roleplay task from the previous night had started right here.

This tiny storage room, barely five square meters, was completely different from the living room. It bore no traces of fire. The furniture inside was well-preserved, looking exactly as it had during his roleplay task; there wasn’t even any dust on the bed.

After staying in the small room for a moment, Zhou Fangdong prepared himself mentally. Summoning his courage, he retracted the kerosene lamp.

The room was instantly plunged into darkness.

In Liwan Apartments, the ghosts in the hallways might attack humans at random for no reason, but the ghosts inside the rooms did not attack so easily. They all followed specific killing rules.

As long as one didn’t trigger those rules, they were safe inside the rooms.

This was precisely why Zhou Fangdong had the courage to make contact with the ghost of Room 102.

Shortly after the kerosene lamp went out, a strange change began to occur in the small storage room—a pitch-black shadow crawled out from under the bed.

Once the shadow emerged, it slowly stood up.

It had no human form, no facial features, and its appearance wasn’t particularly bloody or horrific. It looked like four charred lumps of flesh stuck to a larger central mass, forming an irregular, half-human-sized clay figure… like a glob of black play-dough squeezed together by a child.

Translator’s Notes

• one-inch ID photo: In China, a ‘one-inch photo’ (一寸照片) is the standard size for official identification, licenses, and resumes (approx. 25mm x 35mm). The mention of this specific size emphasizes the eerie, bureaucratic precision of the supernatural system, as it has instantly generated a perfectly formatted official ID for a man it just met.

• waiting list numbers: The original text refers to ‘爱的号码牌’ (Number Plate of Love), a popular cultural reference to a song by Tanya Chua. In Chinese internet slang, it is often used humorously to describe a long line of people (or in this case, ghosts) waiting for their turn or seeking attention, as if waiting for their number to be called at a busy restaurant or clinic.

• killing rules: In the ‘infinite flow’ (无限流) or supernatural thriller genre of Chinese web novels, ‘killing rules’ (杀人规律) refers to the specific logic or ‘trigger’ that a ghost follows. A ghost is often an invincible force that cannot be defeated by strength alone; instead, characters must deduce the specific conditions (e.g., answering a question, looking in a mirror, making a sound) that allow the ghost to attack. If the protagonist avoids the trigger, the ghost remains harmless.