Can’t Save the World by Pretending to be Dead
Chapter 2:
The old dormitory building of the fan factory had only one room and one living room, and the dining table was leaning against the corner of the kitchen.
A dim lamp hung from the ceiling, and without wind, the lamp creaked and moved.
“What made you think of living here, little old pal?”
The middle-aged man asked, cackling.
He continued to drink the wine.
The middle-aged man looked at Lian Xi with a smirk, the red and white eyeballs rolling shakily in their bloody sockets, a gust of chilly wind came without starting, and the temperature in the room plummeted.
However, Lian Xi acted as if he didn’t notice, he looked down at the pot of black drenched braised pork on the table, and after a moment of silence, his right hand slowly touched his left wrist.
He wore a red string on his left wrist.
It was the kind of thin string that could be seen everywhere, casually tied with an adjustable rope buckle. It seemed rather strange for a man to have only a thin red string tied around his hand, but upon fixing his eyes on it, there was a small bronze-coloured bell strung on that red string.
Not a traditional Chinese bell, but a Western Christmas bell look-alike.
It was like a scaled down version of a bronze bell.
Lian Xi had been wearing this bell on his wrist since the beginning, but perhaps there was no metal pill placed inside, his hand kept shaking and the bell never rang.
Lian Xi gently touched the bell and looked at the middle-aged man.
The blood in his eyes continued to seep down, and soon, the man’s face was already all covered in blood.
“It’s cheap here.”
The middle-aged man nodded: “That’s right, old houses, they are all cheap.”
Lian Xi: “Then why do you live here?”
The middle-aged man froze: “Why do I live here?” As if he heard some big joke, “This is my house, why don’t I live here.”
Lian Xi: “…”
Well said and reasonable.
Perhaps the topic was too awkward, and the room fell into dead silence again.
The corners of the middle-aged man’s mouth hooked strangely, his eyes stared dead at Lian Xi, but his head slowly lowered. Lower and lower, lower and lower. Finally, his eyes landed on the pot of braised pork on the table. Suddenly, his eyeballs trembled violently, his throat let out a sharp roar, and the whole house shook, all the furniture in the house thumped and trembled violently after him.
“Ahhhhhh!!!”
Lian Xi’s gaze sank as he steadied his body that was shaking along with him and squeezed the bell on his left wrist.
The house was still trembling, the middle-aged man’s piercing whistling causing the glass to tremble to the extreme.
Seeing that the plates on the dining table were about to be shaken under the table by his horrifying whistling that didn’t sound like a human voice, Lian Xi’s face went cold to the extreme. His fingers pinched the bronze bell until they turned white, and a dim light flashed across that bell.
At that moment, suddenly, the door slammed.
In a flash, some returned to calm.
The middle-aged man’s whistling suddenly subsided, and the furniture in the room was no longer moving.
Lian Xi asked softly.
As if the middle-aged man was possessed and soulless, he sat dumbly on the chair, looking at the pot of braised meat on the table, and did not say anything.
Lian Xi sighed, he got up intending to open the door. The bell on his wrist shook twice, as if chiding him for suddenly giving up.
Lian Xi: “Stop it.” Saying this, he pressed the bell, which would not ring, and walked towards the door.
“Who is it?”
“Little Lian, it’s me.”
Lian Xi pulled open the door.
Under the bright and clear moonlight, the gatekeeper uncle wearing glasses looked at him and laughed, asking, “I just passed by from downstairs, and heard a bit of commotion in your house, so I came up to take a look. What’s wrong?” While saying this, he also quietly looked into the house.
Elderly people often have this problem, like to see the bustle of other people’s homes. However, this time he was disappointed, there was no woman in Lian Xi’s house, not to mention women, not even a man.
The doorman was disappointed and remembered what his colleague had said during the day about the “live broadcast”.
But Lian Xi was fully dressed and opened the door quite fast.
It seems that there is really nothing interesting to see!
At that moment, his nose twitched: “What a nice smell, did you cook meat?”
Lian Xi’s gaze lurched as he looked down at the short, lean old man, and after a few seconds, nodded: “Hn, braised meat.”
“The young man’s craftsmanship is good, ah.”
“Want to have a taste?”
“May I?”
“I can’t eat it all by myself.”
Lian Xi sidestepped and let the doorman uncle in.
Walking over to the dining table, the doorman looked at the pulled out chairs and the glass of wine on the table that no one had ever drank, froze, and asked, “Xiao Lian, do you have another guest?”
Lian Xi: “No, it’s for the dead.”
Uncle Doorman: “….”
Lian Xi: “My dad died of drink driving.”
Doorman: “Oh, oh, oh,so like this, I am sorry.”
Dare I say that people are paying tribute to their dad!
The doorman’s uncle went round to the other side of the dining table then sat down.
He was already excited to dig into the delicious food and rubbed his hands together. When Lian Xi brought him chopsticks, he immediately excitedly grabbed a piece of meat and put it in his mouth.
“Mmm, delicious! Little Lian, your skills really can’t be faulted. If you have this kind of skill, why do I still see you buying takeaways every day.”
“Takeaway is more convenient.”
“Ha ha, you should just marry a wife and let her cook for you everyday! Most convenient! Why don’t you eat?”
“I’m full, you just eat.”
The gatekeeper uncle’s mouth was full of oil, he was no longer in the mood to care about Lian Xi, and soon, he was wolfing down his food like a wolf and tiger.
Lian Xi took a sip of water and looked at the other side of the table without moving.
On the chair for “paying tribute to his alcoholic father”, there was a “person” who was invisible to the doorman.
The middle-aged man was still sitting there stupidly, looking down at the pot of meat.
The doorman ate frantically, bite by bite, as if he had never eaten such a mountain delicacy in his life, ate until his eyes were red and his hands and feet were trembling.
When the last piece of meat was also eaten, the gatekeeper uncle was paralysed in his chair like a fool, his face covered with oil.
After a long time, he burped a meat-flavoured burp and wiped his face, finally coming to his senses.
His eyes slid over the spattered brown blood on the wall, his lips opening and closing. After a long time, he looked at Lian Xi and asked in a hoarse voice, “Xiao Lian ah….”
“You live in a murderous mansion, aren’t you afraid?”
Lian Xi: “There is a disease that is scarier than ghosts.”
“What disease?”
“The disease of poverty.”
The doorman’s uncle laughed twice as he took off his glasses, “You’re so humorous.”
There was silence for two seconds.
“Do you know about the murder case in the fan factory dormitory building back then?”
“I Know, I was just born that year.”
“Come to think of it, it’s been twenty-three years.”
“How did you come up with the idea of coming here to work as a doorman?”
The doorman’s uncle turned his head to look at Lian Xi, “Come here to be a doorman?”
Lian Xi poured himself a glass of white water, he held the glass, the bell and red rope on his wrist swaying gently. He looked at the other party, his expression calm, his voice soft: “Well, the salary is not high, and it seems that it doesn’t include food and accommodation. Half a year ago it was said to be demolished. By the way, you seem to be the one who came to work as a doorman half a year ago?”
The doorman’s uncle slowly smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, with a hint of meat in the gap: “There are not that many reasons ah.”
Lian Xi nodded, “That’s also right.”
Seemingly not expecting Lian Xi to be convinced so quickly, the gatekeeper uncle froze for a moment. He digressed, “By the way, I noticed that when you go home, you often stop for a few seconds in this corridor outside. You’re the only one who lives in our building, ha ha, what, did you hit a ghost?”
Lian Xi: “Uncle, you are observing so carefully.”
The doorman’s uncle explained, “So many people died here, and you’re a youngster living alone in this kind of place, how can I rest assured?” He lamented, “But you’re really bold, I heard from Old Liu that you’re the only one who’s rented the fourth floor of Building 4 for more than twenty years since that case. Anyone else would not dare to live on the fourth floor even if they were bold.”
His eyes flickered, pointing at the blood on the wall, “See, this is the blood of the old woman who died in this house at that time.”
Lian Xi brushed his eyes up and looked at him.
The corners of the doorman uncle’s mouth began to ooze a trace of weird oil, but he didn’t seem to notice, saying intoxicatedly, “That old woman, she came out in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. She just came out of the toilet and died. Collapsed right here on this table, right here on this table.”
“That’s right, and the young couple 401 next to the stairs. The young couple ate and slept in their beds, the sound of the cannonballs outside was so loud, they slept like pigs, hey, one cut a …”
“403 that, only a kid at home, his parents are downstairs to set off firecrackers. Pry opens this door and hides in their cupboard …”
…
“Oh yeah, 404, 404 ….”
“Still 404!”
He seemed to be possessed, the more he talked, the crazier he got, and his mouth began to flow madly with oil, which flowed all over his body. Gradually the oil stopped flowing, but it turned into bright red blood, drenching him all over.
But he couldn’t see anything at all.
He was still talking.
He looked mad.
Like possessed by a demon.
“404 that woman, walking down the street in a white dress, how pretty she looked. I just touched it, and she glared at me. That touch, that wink …”
“Hey hey hey hey …”
“Hey hey hey hey…”
On one side of the dining table, the doorkeeper uncle, with blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, laughed madly with excitement.
On the other side of the table, the middle-aged man was still foolishly looking down at the empty pot of meat. He seemed to have heard the uncle’s words, but also seemed not to have heard them.
There was a click sound.
Both the doorkeeper uncle and the middle-aged man came to their senses.
They turned their heads together and looked at Lian Xi.
Lian Xi put the drinking glass on the dining table, he touched the bronze bell on his left wrist, his voice was low and slow, as if it came from the distant past (ancient times), reverberating lazily.
It was quiet and went straight to the heart.
He looked down at the glass on the table.
“Unusually, no ghost would stay in the mortal world for twenty-three years and remain undetected.”
“I moved here a year ago, and you only appeared out of nowhere six months ago.”
“Have you ever wondered why you suddenly appeared? All of a sudden, you went from being a resentful wandering soul with no consciousness to what you are now.”
The middle-aged man slowly opened his mouth wide.
The doorman uncle seemed to have been hit on the head, as if waking up from a dream, and he only now suddenly realized what he had just said. He sucked in a breath of cool air and looked at Lian Xi in horror. Immediately, his eyes turned cold, glaring at him like a venomous snake.
Uncle Doorman clenched his teeth, and his vicious gaze darted around the kitchen, all of a sudden turning to the kitchen knife hanging in the corner.
Lian Xi was still talking.
“Your wife is dead, your daughter is dead.”
“You’re dead too.”
“The murderer killed them in front of you.”
“You hated, you resented, you refused to leave. They all reincarnated, only you refused to go.”
“But you had long forgotten all that, you didn’t know who you were, you wandered the world in a muddle.”
“Until suddenly one day …”
“He came back.”
“Your obsession woke up before you did, and your soul recognised him, but you still don’t remember.”
The doorkeeper’s uncle stumbled into the kitchen and yanked down the knife hanging on the wall. His triangular eyes, which had been hidden behind lenses all day, revealed a murderous glint as he sneered and took a step towards Lian Xi. But Lian Xi still didn’t turn around, he just sat there, speaking calmly word by word.
“Twenty-three years, and he’s standing right in front of you.”
Lian Xi raised his head and looked towards the trembling middle-aged male ghost, he shook his wrist forcefully, and abruptly, the bronze bell emitted a deafening and clear ringing sound (so loud that even the deaf could hear).
Buzz!
“Chen Jianjun, you still can’t recognise him?”
“Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!”
“Ah ah ah, you, go to hell!!!”
The doorman’s uncle waved his kitchen knife and slashed at the back of Lian Xi’s head, but before he could move his hand, a face full of blood brushed against him and rushed in front of him, sticking to his face!
The doorman’s uncle’s eyes
widened in horror.
“You killed Fang Ling!”
“You killed Tingting!”
“You killed my wife, you killed
my girl!”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
“I want you to pay it with your life, I want you to pay it with your life!!!”
“Ghost!!!”
The kitchen knife clattered to the ground.
Oooohh this is interesting letss gooo
Thnx ya for the chappiiee~