Chapter 5026 — The Female Neighbor
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
The old man and the buzz-cut youth tumbled from the fifth floor down to the fourth. The moment they scrambled to their feet and heard Wei Zhao's door close, sheer terror seized them again; their legs gave way, and they rolled helplessly from the fourth floor down to the third.
Credit where it was due—the two of them were in decent shape. After tumbling down two full flights, they could still get up, and they limped and hobbled frantically down and out of the building. Only when they reached the well-lit entrance of the residential compound did they stagger to a halt and collapse, utterly bedraggled, onto the ground.
"Master, we're lucky to be alive after getting out of there this time. I swear on my life I'm never coming back to this place—not for any amount of money," the buzz-cut youth panted, still shaken to the core.
"Let's go back to the countryside. Starting today, we never set foot in Xima City again. We'll move somewhere else. It's too dangerous here." The old man was equally rattled.
"Yes, yes, never again!" The buzz-cut youth nodded vigorously, caught his breath, and suddenly asked, "Master, that thing just now—that was a ghost, wasn't it?"
"Of course it was! You think it could've been a person?" The old man was utterly convinced.
"But then what about what we ran into during the day? Broad daylight—that couldn't have been a ghost either, could it?" The youth hunched his neck as he spoke.
"Who can say with ghosts? Maybe they can come out and do harm in broad daylight too." The old man curled his lip. Then a thought struck him and he started. "The money on us—it just vanished for no reason. That ghost must've been behind it. You don't think it's latched onto us, do you?"
"My god! Master, don't scare me like that!" The buzz-cut youth hadn't even gotten his breath back before he leapt up in fright again.
"Go, go, go—we have to get out of here right now. Not another minute in this place. We need to find a Taoist priest to help us. If that thing really has latched onto us, neither of us will survive!" The more the old man thought, the more terrified he became. Ignoring the aches all over his body, he scrambled up and set off.
"But what about Boss Huang?" the youth asked, hurrying after him.
"Who cares about him! If he's got the skill, let him exorcise the ghost himself. Let him chew on that headache!" the old man snapped irritably.
The Boss Huang they spoke of was a small-time operator in the area and the landlord of Wei Zhao's apartment, a loafer who lived for idleness and good food. One day a wild idea had struck him: a surefire scheme to swindle people—by faking a haunting.
Sure, the tenants paid only modest rent, but that hardly mattered when one came and one fled. From that single apartment he could pull in over ten thousand a month. What business under the sun could be easier?
But scaring people off quickly couldn't be done on rumor alone—the place had to genuinely seem haunted from time to time. And so Boss Huang hired these two cheats.
Over the past six months, this little fake-haunting racket had flourished. The money skimmed off each time wasn't much—eight hundred or a thousand here and there—but added together it was no small sum.
"Why haven't those two called yet?" Boss Huang had been waiting for the call since early morning; that was the arrangement he had with the two cheats. The moment they scared off a tenant, he wired them their money. In the past they had always been eager, but today it was nearly noon and still not a peep.
At last Boss Huang could wait no longer and called the two cheats himself. What do you know—both phones were off.