Chapter 7

While Hong Zhong was cleaning Room 109, Zhou Fangdong sat in his own room, scrolling through the system’s rental interface.

In addition to Room 101, there was now a temporary preview window for another room.

Although Room 109 had not been formally rented out yet, the employment relationship with the cleaner allowed Zhou Fangdong to observe the status of both Hong Zhong and the room.

The display was a top-down view of the room where Hong Zhong appeared as a little pixel sprite. Though the finer details were blurry, his general actions were clear enough to follow.

The pixel sprite opened a black plastic bag, and a severed human head trailing a spinal cord crawled out.

The pixel sprite blew its head off with a single shot. The pixel sprite pulled out a body bag. The pixel sprite stuffed the severed head inside.

Zhou Fangdong couldn’t help but applaud.

Professional. Truly professional. He had dealt with a Fierce Ghost with such ease; no wonder the man commanded an hourly rate of fifty thousand.

Hong Zhong wiped the cold sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Looking at Room 109, which remained virtually unchanged, he felt his scalp go numb.

He had just opened four black plastic bags. Each one contained a different body part, and every single one had transformed into a highly aggressive C-rank Fierce Ghost.

Each ghost was more ferocious than the last. The first had only required one shot, but by the fourth, Hong Zhong had to empty an entire magazine to fully neutralize it.

Furthermore, once he placed the remains into the specially treated body bags, the bags simply transformed back into new black plastic bags.

Despite his frantic efforts, the number of ghosts in the room hadn’t decreased at all.

The ghost in this room was wrong. It certainly wasn’t some low-level entity that could be exorcised through brute force alone.

He couldn’t keep this up. His ammunition was running low. If he continued tearing open plastic bags, he would be worn down and killed right here.

Hong Zhong scanned his surroundings. Room 109 was filled with nothing but black plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and various piles of trash.

The boxes and plastic bags were the most frequent sights. Hong Zhong tried rummaging through a cardboard box.

Most of the boxes near him were empty. Moving or opening them didn’t seem to provoke the supernatural entities.

Seeing this, Hong Zhong pushed aside the boxes blocking his path and began searching for clues.

To clear a troublesome ghost like this, one first had to identify its killing logic. Once the logic was understood, one could find a point of equilibrium to coexist with it, and then finally contain it. Having worked for the Paranormal Affairs Department for years, Hong Zhong was intimately familiar with this procedure.

While searching the room, Hong Zhong discovered peeling wallpaper and blood splatter on the walls.

Following the trail of the spray, he found a saw hidden beneath a cardboard box.

This was likely the murder weapon used for the dismemberment. To avoid triggering any further incidents, he refrained from touching it.

Looking at the traces, clues, and the weapon he had uncovered, Hong Zhong felt a sense of nagging familiarity, as if he had seen this somewhere before.

When he first joined the department, Hong Zhong had organized the archives for the Liwan Apartments. He still held some vague memories of the homicides that had occurred here.

He needed to verify a few things to determine exactly how the Fierce Ghost in this room had manifested.

Hong Zhong pulled out his phone, intending to access the internal database. However, upon turning it on, he realized there was no internet connection.

He walked around the room holding the phone aloft, but still couldn’t find a signal. He even pulled out a satellite phone, but it remained unable to establish a connection with the outside world.

Faced with this, Hong Zhong had no choice but to speak aloud: “Mr. Landlord, are you watching? I need assistance.”

Zhou Fangdong had been focused on the rental preview interface. When he saw a speech bubble pop up over the pixel sprite’s head, he grabbed his Kerosene Lamp and immediately teleported to Room 109.

“What’s the matter?”

Hong Zhong jumped, startled by Zhou Fangdong’s instantaneous appearance beside him.

The landlord had appeared the very second he finished speaking. Had the man never left? Had he been hiding in the shadows, watching him this whole time?

Hong Zhong calmed his nerves and said softly, “I need a phone with internet access.”

Zhou Fangdong opened his mouth to speak but hesitated.

So, calling him out was just a way to ask for money…

Mobile data was expensive, costing 30 Ghost Coins a month. If the system hadn’t made it mandatory, Zhou Fangdong wouldn’t have been willing to pay for it himself.

Even if he were willing to provide data for Hong Zhong, he couldn’t. He currently had a measly 3 Ghost Coins to his name.

After a moment of silence, Zhou Fangdong decided to ask for the reason first. “Does cleaning require an internet connection?”

Hong Zhong answered honestly, “I need to look up the case files related to Room 109. I need to determine how the ghosts here were formed so I can deduce their killing logic. This is vital to whether or not I can continue the cleaning process.”

A look of realization dawned on Zhou Fangdong’s face.

So there was a shortcut like that. If they did it this way, they wouldn’t have to risk their lives to gather intel on the Fierce Ghost.

He hadn’t expected a cleaner to be able to look up old murder cases from the Liwan Apartments. No wonder he cost fifty thousand an hour; he was worth every penny.

“Alright, let me think about it.” Despite his words, Zhou Fangdong felt uncertain.

He genuinely wanted to help. After all, to rent out the room, he needed to establish House Rules based on the ghost’s killing logic. If they could determine how the ghost in Room 109 came to be, it would be a massive help when he drafted the Rental Contract.

But where was he supposed to get a phone with internet? Should he lend his own phone to Hong Zhong?

The moment the thought crossed his mind, the system’s voice rang out:

【The phone is bound to the Host. If handed to another person, it will be destroyed immediately.】

“How about this, System? Look, I have 3 Ghost Coins. Why don’t you use those 3 coins to give Hong Zhong data for a single day?”

【…There is no one-day data package in the system.】

“Don’t be so rigid. Look, your 30-coin monthly plan averages out to 1 Ghost Coin a day. I’m offering 3 coins for one day of service. You’re actually making a 2-coin profit.”

【There is no one-day data package in the system.】

“Is that the only sentence you know? Come on, help me out. You’re not losing anything on this deal.”

Zhou Fangdong spent a long time haggling with the system in his mind before it finally, begrudgingly, agreed to provide three hours of data for Hong Zhong’s phone in exchange for 3 Ghost Coins.

What a ripoff. This system was a total profiteer.

Seeing Zhou Fangdong remain silent for so long, Hong Zhong couldn’t help but grow nervous as well.

“Give me your phone. I’ll get you connected,” Zhou Fangdong said, reaching out his hand.

Hong Zhong breathed a sigh of relief and respectfully handed over his device.

Following the system’s instructions, Zhou Fangdong turned on a hotspot on his own phone and connected Hong Zhong’s device to it.

“You only have three hours,” Zhou Fangdong said as he handed the phone back.

Hong Zhong nodded to show he understood. He maintained a calm facade as he took the phone, but his heart was reeling.

He had only intended to test the waters and gauge Zhou Fangdong’s capabilities, but he hadn’t expected this landlord to actually pull it off.

Even if it was only for three hours, the feat was staggering.

This proved that the young man claiming to be the landlord of Liwan Apartments possessed power greater than all the ghosts in the building combined. He could easily pierce through the building’s chaotic magnetic field and maintain stability for three hours.

His strength was truly terrifying.

Hong Zhong quietly adjusted his strategy for dealing with the man.

To uncover the anomalies of Liwan Apartments, he absolutely could not be too aggressive. He had to be even more submissive. With the landlord’s horrifying power, even if the entire Bureau of Paranormal Oversight showed up, they would likely be walking to their deaths.

Knowing his every move was being watched by this unfathomable landlord, Hong Zhong didn’t attempt any tricks after connecting to the internet. Instead, he went straight to the Paranormal Affairs Department’s internal network to search for the files related to Room 109.

Twelve deaths had occurred in Room 109: three suicides and nine homicides.

Among the homicides, the victims involved in a dismemberment case were a married couple. They were also the last tenants to live in Room 109 before Liwan Apartments was sealed off.

After reviewing the files, Hong Zhong confirmed that the ghost currently inhabiting Room 109 was the wife.

Although both the husband and wife had been dismembered, the killers were not the same person.

The wife died first. She had been beaten to death by her husband in an act of domestic violence, then dismembered and discarded in black plastic bags.

According to the case records, the husband was a chronic alcoholic. Although he frequently brutalized his wife while drunk, he maintained the image of a “Mr. Nice Guy” in public. Neighbors believed him to be a devoted husband who loved his wife dearly. His colleagues also saw him as humble, polite, and a hardworking, indispensable employee.

The wife had no living relatives, so her body wasn’t discovered by a fisherman until six months after her death.

After the husband was arrested, many people spoke up for him because he had marketed his public persona so well. His friends fabricated baseless accusations against the wife, leading netizens to criticize her and question her marital fidelity. Thus, six months after her passing, the wife suffered a second death online.

Under the pressure of public opinion and because the husband was diagnosed with a mental illness, he was only sentenced to life imprisonment and granted medical parole.

The husband died shortly after the sentencing. He had suddenly vanished from where he was supposed to be, and when he was finally found, he had been turned into a pile of shredded meat scattered across the floor of Room 109.

Returning to Room 109 along with the husband’s remains were over a dozen black plastic bags that had once held the wife’s body.

After the husband’s death, the case was taken over by the Paranormal Affairs Department.

Later investigations confirmed that the one who dismembered the husband was the wife, who had transformed into a vengeful spirit.

After her death, she gained the power of curses and the ability to replicate her form. She was extremely aggressive and had been officially classified as a B-rank ghost.

Because the entirety of Liwan Apartments was later sealed, the ghost was never dealt with. It remained buried in the suburbs along with the building.

After seeing the B-rank classification, a wave of lingering fear washed over Hong Zhong.

Thank goodness he hadn’t been arrogant enough to keep tearing those black plastic bags, or he really might have died here.

Having finished the files, Hong Zhong now had a rough plan for cleaning the room.

He looked at Zhou Fangdong and said respectfully, “Based on the characteristics of the entity in Room 109, I cannot clean the bloodstains on the walls, the black plastic bags on the floor, or the blood-stained saw. These are all proof of the vengeful spirit’s existence. The fact that it moved its own remains and the murder weapon from the disposal site back to this room suggests it wants to be seen. It has been ignored for a long time and doesn’t want to be overlooked anymore.”

After a pause, Hong Zhong summoned his courage and continued, “The cleaning order didn’t require me to clear out paranormal entities. For the sake of my own safety, I won’t touch those items, but I will clean up all the other trash.”

Zhou Fangdong was looking at his own phone and replied without raising his head, “Understandable. Just clean it as you said. Also, once the trash is cleared, I’ll need you to help me move out that broken furniture. Nothing in Room 109 is usable anymore.”

Since Hong Zhong was using Ghost Coins to access the internet via Zhou Fangdong’s hotspot, everything he saw was being transmitted in real-time to Zhou Fangdong’s phone by the system.

By the time Hong Zhong finished the files, Zhou Fangdong had finished them as well.

The files contained photos of the crime scene. When the wife’s body was first discovered, the furniture in Room 109 was still intact.

But when the husband’s remains and the black bags appeared in the room, the furniture had been destroyed. The wardrobe, in particular, was severely damaged, completely dismantled until only the doors remained.

This broken furniture had been left in Room 109 to rot, merging with the stench of death, blood, dust, and mold. It was completely beyond salvage.

The cleaner could handle the trash and the broken furniture, but what about buying new pieces? He couldn’t leave Liwan Apartments.

Just as Zhou Fangdong was wondering how to go about shopping for furniture, a blue furniture-shopping app slowly materialized on his phone’s home screen.

So, he went ahead and ordered some furniture through this new app.

However, after completing the purchase, Zhou Fangdong realized that this furniture store didn’t actually offer delivery services.

He couldn’t help but complain, “Ordering furniture and they don’t even deliver to your door? There isn’t even a refund option. This store’s service is terrible.”

They were absolute scammers, just as cold-hearted as the system. Even though his money had essentially fallen into his lap, he couldn’t just throw it away; he had to find a way to get this furniture back home.