Chapter Fifteen: The Third Floor of the Villa

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The cigarette butt slipped from Ledong’s fingers, the ember tracing a fiery orange arc against the night sky. Su Juanjuan stood silently there, her wedding dress fluttering gently in the night breeze. She slowly lifted her mangled face, the gums where her lips once were curling slightly, as if giving Ledong a sinister smile.

“Damn it.”

Ledong’s gaze was fixed on the red figure on the neighboring balcony. The prolonged torment and entanglement had stripped away any trace of fear from his pupils.

“Hey, bro, how are you?”

A voice suddenly sounded behind him, making Ledong flinch. He spun around sharply and almost collided with the bespectacled young man—Xiao Zhang—who had appeared unnoticed behind him.

“Uh, n-not much. When did you come up here…” Ledong’s voice was awkward. His peripheral vision involuntarily flicked back to the neighboring balcony, but it was empty now—no ghost in sight.

Xiao Zhang pushed up his glasses and offered a shy smile. “I just got up here and saw you smoking alone.” Following Ledong’s gaze, he looked toward the other balcony. “Bro, what are you looking at?”

“N-nothing.” Ledong took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He pulled out a cigarette from the pack and handed one to Xiao Zhang. “Were you also recruited by Butler Ma?”

Xiao Zhang took the cigarette and clumsily lit it. “Yeah, I saw the job posting online. It said you could earn a hundred thousand a week.” He smiled sheepishly. “I just got into college, but my family’s not well off…”

Ledong nodded knowingly, scrutinizing the young man. He looked no older than twenty, his slight frame swallowed by a clearly oversized T-shirt. Behind the glasses, his eyes were clear and innocent, like a high school student.

He couldn’t fathom why someone so young would take on this kind of work.

“Aren’t you scared doing this kind of job?” Ledong couldn’t help but ask.

Xiao Zhang exhaled a puff of smoke but immediately began coughing. “Cough, cough… a little, but seeing you guys here made me less afraid, hehe.” He looked at Ledong with curiosity. “Bro, what did you do before this?”

“Electronics factory,” Ledong replied tersely.

“Ah, I worked at an electronics factory during summer breaks too!” Xiao Zhang’s eyes lit up. “Assembly lines are exhausting—twelve hours on your feet…”

Ledong’s lips twitched. Looking at the innocent youth before him, he couldn’t help but offer some advice:

“Though it’s tough… it’s just tiring. Try to avoid gigs like this in the future.”

“Bro, I get it. Actually, besides this, I have another part-time job!”

Ledong nodded indifferently, unwilling to get tangled up with this overly familiar kid. But Xiao Zhang seemed to have opened the floodgates, biting on his cigarette as he pulled out his phone with a grin:

“Bro, look, I even write novels on Tomato.”

Hearing this, Ledong’s steps faltered. Remembering his own hobby, he sighed without turning back:

“Just practice your writing. Don’t expect to make money…”

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Their conversation drifted on half-heartedly, but Ledong’s focus remained elusive.

He kept glancing toward the neighboring balcony. It was quiet now, as if everything he had seen earlier was an illusion—but that faint, lingering stench of decay refused to dissipate, reminding him that what he saw was no hallucination.

This only deepened Ledong’s anxiety as he searched desperately for the source.

Only after night had fully fallen did the two return to their room.

Xiao Zhang seemed discouraged, holding his head while pondering whether to continue his novel. Ledong, however, had no time to console him. After his earlier reflections, he resolved to act sooner rather than later—tonight he would visit Master Zhao’s room on the third floor to find the source.

With this thought, he unlocked his phone to message Cai Kun: “Going to check the third floor tonight.” But the small cross on the signal bar told him the message hadn’t sent.

Strange. How could there be no signal?

He was surprised—such a high-end residence shouldn’t have such a basic flaw, yet reality left him helpless.

“Damn it…” Ledong cursed under his breath, hoping Cai Kun would come to the same conclusion.

After feigning sleep on his bed for a while, Xiao Zhang finally stopped overthinking and fell asleep, his breathing steady.

Ledong stayed still, waiting for the villa to become completely silent.

By midnight, he rose quietly, confirming Xiao Zhang was still asleep before tiptoeing to the door.

The corridor was pitch black. With the neighbors supposedly dead, he instinctively held his breath and crept toward the staircase.

The stairwell to the third floor was right next to Old Master Hu’s “mourning room.” As Ledong tiptoed past the room plastered with talismans, he suddenly heard a faint “squeak-squeak” sound, like something scratching at the door.

His breath caught and he stopped, closing his eyes to hasten past.

“Creak… creak…”

But the sound persisted, accompanied by a faint wheezing like an old man coughing, causing Ledong’s hairs to stand on end. He recalled Cai Kun’s words in the car earlier; his palms grew sweaty.

“Dongzi?” A low voice suddenly came from behind. Ledong nearly shouted. He turned to see Cai Kun’s plump figure sneaking toward him.

“You scared the hell out of me!” Ledong hissed.

Cai Kun grinned foolishly and gestured for silence, pointing upstairs. The two nodded silently and crept toward the third floor.

The third floor’s layout was almost identical to the second—three rooms.

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Ledong recalled the second floor’s arrangement—the room they stayed in and Old Hu Dawei’s corpse room were relatively small, ruling out the middle and left rooms for Boss Hu’s location.

That left two remaining rooms.

“Let’s check the left one first,” Ledong whispered, thinking briefly before giving the order.

They reached the leftmost door. Ledong carefully twisted the doorknob—it was locked.

He swallowed hard and tried the middle door. This time, the knob turned.

“It’s open,” Cai Kun whispered, slowly pushing the door.

The room was pitch black, with only a sliver of moonlight filtering through the curtains. Ledong felt along the wall and stepped inside.

“Use your phone,” Ledong said, pulling out his phone and lowering the brightness, using the faint screen glow to scan the room.

It was a typical bedroom—a large bed, a wardrobe, and a desk. Ledong’s eyes were drawn to a black training suit hanging behind the door—it was definitely Master Zhao’s room.

“Damn it, it really is that old bastard’s room.”

“Shh, be quiet. Let’s see if there’s anything suspicious.” Ledong glanced at the deep-sleeping Master Zhao on the bed and muttered under his breath, then began searching the pockets of the training suit.

Cai Kun nodded and moved toward the wardrobe, gently pulling open a drawer.

Suddenly, a “click” came from outside—the sound of someone opening the adjacent door.

Both froze, holding their breath. Footsteps approached and stopped right outside Master Zhao’s door...

“Did you just try to open my door?” A deep voice rang outside. Ledong immediately recognized it as Butler Ma’s.

Cai Kun looked at Ledong in panic. Ledong made a silent shushing gesture and crouched low, eyes fixed on Master Zhao, fearing he might suddenly get up.

But then another unexpected voice picked up the conversation outside.

“Can you not make a noise downstairs…”