In the blink of an eye, it was already a few days later.
Late at night, in Liuhua Hutong, inside Chen Hai's courtyard.
"Ah..." a scream.
Aunt Liu looked pale and woke up from her sleep.
She jumped out of bed and turned on the light on the side.
The bright light illuminated the bedroom as bright as day, but she was panting and still a little shaken.
In the past two days, she didn't know what was going on, but she always felt a little uneasy.
When she was lying in bed sleeping at night, she kept feeling that something was pressing on her.
She seemed to be awake and could feel everything happening clearly, but she could not see, speak, or move her body.
Facing this weird scene, she was like an outsider. She couldn't do anything except that her mind could function.
Just tonight, the powerless feeling of being pressed down by an unknown existence started from the moment she lay on the bed and closed her eyes, and lasted until now. A full two or three hours had passed.
Only now, after the unknown existence seemed to have left and stopped pressing on her, did she finally open her eyes and scream out.
"Lao Fang, Lao Fang..."
After calling a few times tentatively, Aunt Liu slapped her forehead.
She suddenly remembered that her husband, Lao Fang, kept saying that there was a snake scurrying around on the bed last night, which scared him so much that he didn't sleep all night and sat in the room with the light on all night.
After a busy day during the day, Lao Fang, who was still worried, said he went to a fellow villager's house to play cards and didn't come back all night.
It’s already passed the ninth day of September. How can there be snakes running around in this season?
A big man could be so cowardly, but Aunt Liu despised him severely.
Last night, when she slept here, she didn't see any snakes at all. When she slept in a daze, she only felt something pressing on her.
In the middle of the night, she took a kitchen knife and put it on the bedside. Nothing happened, she was peaceful and had a peaceful sleep.
"What's going on today? Is the ghost on the bed again?"
"Why is this ghost place so evil these past two days..."
After confirming that her husband, Lao Fang, had not come back tonight, Aunt Liu, who was still a little frightened, picked up the kitchen knife from the bedside.
She spoke harshly, cursed, and walked around the room several times holding a kitchen knife.
After doing all this, Aunt Liu felt much more at peace.
However, she had just been frightened to wake up, but she didn't have much sleepiness anymore.
Turning on the light, she sat down in front of the somewhat worn dressing table not far from the bed.
Looking at herself in the mirror, with her hair as messy as a henhouse, Aunt Liu took the comb on one side and began to comb her hair.
"I haven't slept well in the past two days. My complexion looks a lot worse. Even the crow's feet at the corners of my eyes are obviously much more numerous."
"Our old man, Fang, doesn't dislike me a little, right?"
"She deliberately made an excuse not to go home. Could it be that she went to live with Widow Wang in the same village?"
"Don't think I don't know. That Widow Wang came to Kyoto half a year ago and works as a nanny for a family a few miles away!"
…
Looking at herself in the mirror, Aunt Liu unconsciously began to think wildly and mutter to herself.
But suddenly, she found herself in the mirror with a strange smile on her face.
Then, her face in the mirror gradually became blurry.
Right under her eyes, her eyes, ears, mouth and nose in the mirror had disappeared, leaving only a blank face in front of her.
"ah……"
Louder than before, Aunt Liu screamed again.
She was wearing shorts and a tank top. She didn't even have time to put on a coat, so she walked out of the room.
She ran out of the room and out of the yard. It wasn't until she ran into the alley outside that she finally regained her breath.
In this season, there are no stars anymore, only a crescent moon hangs in the sky.
There were no street lights in the alley outside the yard. Under the moonlight, the entire alley was hazy.
Only a few meters away from the entrance of the courtyard, near the corner of the alley, a black shadow squatted there, and a little fire flickered at the corner of his mouth.
"Who..." Aunt Liu, who had just been frightened and ran out of the yard, was already in a state of shock. When she suddenly saw the black shadow, she screamed again.
"Aunt Liu, what the hell are you yelling at? It's me, Shoemaker Wu!"
The man who was squatting by the wall and smoking a cigarette stood up. He was weak and responded to Aunt Liu angrily.
"Old Wu? You're not sleeping in the house in the middle of the night. You're squatting in the alley outside the yard. What tricks are you doing?"
"If you scare people, you will scare them to death!"
"I have already picked up all the bricks. If you hadn't spoken out in time, I would have smashed this brick down!"
With a dissatisfied look on her face, Aunt Liu muttered.
She always likes to go to the ground, roll around, howl and act, so among women, she is a very tough one.
At this moment, she was screaming in surprise, but just as she said, she had picked up half of the remaining bricks from the ground.
When she saw that the person squatting by the wall was Lao Wu, a shoe repairman who lived in the same yard as her, the remaining brick in her hand had been discarded carelessly.
"Aunt Liu, didn't you yourself even have time to put on a coat, so you panicked and ran into the alley outside the yard?"
"You ask me what I am doing? I also want to ask you, what are you doing?"
After looking Aunt Liu up and down, Old Wu responded smoothly.
"What? Lao Wu, the house you live in is very evil at night?" After being stunned, Aunt Liu tentatively asked.
"Well! Two days ago, when I was asleep, I just saw a woman in a theatrical robe singing a big opera in my bedroom."
"But tonight, not long after I fell asleep, I turned over and suddenly saw the woman in opera robes with a green face and fangs lying next to me."
"I don't know what happened. At that time, my brain got hot, so I took out a hatchet from under the bed and prepared to chop off the head of the woman in opera robe next to me."
"But who knows, the one I want to chop is not the woman in the opera robe, but my wife."
"Fortunately, my wife didn't know what she was dreaming about. She suddenly screamed and woke me up."
"Otherwise, my knife would really fall on my wife's head."
"Aunt Liu, you said, in this situation, if I don't squat here, how dare I go to my own house to sleep?"
With the half of the cigarette in his mouth, Old Wu stamped it out with a few fierce kicks. He looked bitter and sighed deeply.
"Ah...Old Wu, the situation over there is so serious..."
Aunt Liu was shocked and confused. Relatively speaking, the situation she faced was much better than that of Old Wu.
"Yeah!" Old Wu nodded: "I don't know what's going on in our place. There's been a lot of evil in the past two days."
"It's not just the two of us, the family of Old Man Li and Butcher Zhang is also like this."
"At night, strange things always happen and I see some strange things."
"I can't stay in this place any longer. I will move out tomorrow..."
After hearing what Lao Wu said, Aunt Liu suddenly became dissatisfied.
"Old Wu, what you are doing is unethical. Two days ago, when we were discussing how to deal with the new landlord, we agreed that we would all advance and retreat together."
"As long as we unite as one, that boy named Chen will compromise sooner or later."
"At that time, he will either agree to let us continue to live there, or he will pay a compensation of 10,000 to 8,000 yuan per household and let us move out."
"You're just moving away now without saying a word? You won't get any compensation or anything."
"Don't you think that if you do this, you will end up in grandma's house?"
After giving the shoemaker Old Wu a hard look, Aunt Liu snorted coldly and complained.
"You want a shitty amount of compensation. This courtyard is like this now. If you continue to live in it, everyone might be gone!"
"If you want to continue to stay here, you and Old Man Li will just continue to stay."
"I just said I would move out tomorrow, and I didn't ask you to move out with me!"
Taking out another cigarette and lighting it for himself, Old Wu shouted.
What happened tonight really scared him.
If his wife hadn't suddenly woken up and screamed, their entire family would have been completely destroyed!
"Ah..." While the two were talking, there were several more screams in the yard.
Immediately afterwards, Old Man Li and his wife trotted out of the yard with panicked faces and hurried steps.
…
Inside a restaurant near Kyoto University of Political Science and Law.
With a few side dishes and a few bottles of wine, Chen Hai and Bai Xiaohang went east, drinking, eating and chatting.
"Boss, the things you told us to do are really amazing!"
"It has only been three days. In the morning, Dongzi and I were wandering around the area and saw the shoemaker named Wu in your yard, dragging his family with him and preparing to move out!"
"When we met Dongzi and I, Shoemaker Wu actually asked us whether your promise to subsidize their rent for one month as long as they moved out still counts."
"He wanted to eat his shit. Dongzi and I sprayed him in the face on the spot."
"Although he was a little disappointed when he heard that there was no subsidy available, he still honestly moved out of the compound with his family in despair."
…
After toasting Chen Hai with a glass of wine, Bai Xiaohang said with a smile.
After completing what Chen Hai asked them to do, he and Xiang Dong liked to hang out there for the past two days whenever they had something to do.
Of course, their activity time is generally from day to dusk.
In the middle of the night, they didn't go there.
Otherwise, he and Xiang Dong will definitely see more exciting shows.
"Three days have passed and only Wu Shoemaker's family has moved out?"
"Have you noticed the reactions of Aunt Liu, Butcher Zhang, and Old Man Li in the past two days?"
After taking a bite of the side dish and putting it into his mouth, Chen Hai frowned slightly and asked.