Otherworldly Merchant

I took a deep breath then gently knocked on the door.

No one answered.

I gave Li Mazi a meaningful glance. Li Mazi got the hint and yelled, “Express delivery!”

Seeing him improvise gave me a cold sweat. Even if we wanted them to open the door, we shouldn’t have used such a pathetic excuse. If someone was inside, they would definitely mistake us for bad people!

Still, no one opened the door for us.

Since lives were at stake, I decided to break the door.

I reached to turn the knob, but the door was opened from the inside. It seemed someone was at home.

I exhaled in relief and quickly said, “Hello, we’re from the Police Department. We need to ask you something.”

However, the door only opened a tiny bit before stopping. The interior was pit-black; we couldn’t see anything inside.

“Is anybody home?” I called one more time. Still, no one answered.

I asked the others to step back. Then, I switched the flashlight on and carefully pushed the door wide open.

If no one was at home, the one that had just opened the door must have been…

When the door was completely pushed open, I quietly turned on the lights of the room.

“AHHH!”

The moment the light switched on, Ru Xue and Yin Xinyue screamed and ran away. I was also scared, my legs turning to jelly. I quickly retreated and leaned against the wall to stop myself from stumbling.

A person stood in front of us.

However, his posture was really strange. He looked like some extreme street dancer as his legs and arms were bent at a shocking angle. His eye sockets were bleeding as both of his eyeballs had been scooped out. He was hung by a red-and-white fabric rope. His body swayed back and forth like a suspended bell.

“It’s all right, it’s all right.” Although I was terrified, I quickly calmed myself down. It was just a corpse, and he couldn’t hurt anybody.

I immediately ran to comfort Ru Xue and Yin Xinyue. The two were panic-stricken. They covered their eyes and crouched on the ground.

Li Mazi had already taken his phone out to call Lin Zhongcheng.

Since Ru Xue and Yin Xinyue were scared out of their wits, I took them to the emergency staircase and walked down with them. We then waited for the police under a street light.

Soon after, Lin Zhongcheng arrived with his men. I asked Ru Xue and Yin Xinyue to wait in the police car while I followed Lin Zhongcheng upstairs.

When Lin Zhongcheng saw the strange dead body, he was also frightened. His face turned pale, and his hands shivered as he held his gun.

“I’ve seen a lot of corpses, with some of them being even more gory. But it’s my first time seeing such a strange death. I would rather deal with those gory corpses than seeing another case like this one.”

Let alone Lin Zhongcheng, even the members of his team were horrified. After all, the entire third floor was empty as no one wanted to live there, and it was common knowledge that this floor was haunted.

Under my request, the police hurried to lower the body.

“Lin Zhongcheng, did the victim live in this apartment?” I asked.

Lin Zhongcheng looked at me in puzzlement. “You didn’t recognize him?”

I was confused and said, “Should I know him?” “You watched the surveillance recordings of the elevator’s camera, didn’t you?” Lin Zhongcheng asked.

My heart skipped a beat. “Are you saying that he’s the express delivery guy?”

Lin Zhongcheng nodded.

Shoot. I cursed under my breath.

I actually saw a ghost earlier. When the elevator stopped on the third floor, this guy stood in front of me with a smile on his face.

At the time, the delivery guy was already dead.

The police sealed the apartment and called the forensic team to perform an autopsy. Soon after, we got the autopsy results. The corpse’s legs, arms, and eyes were damaged by an external force.

Lin Zhongcheng looked at the corpse and said, “Mr. Zhang, listen here! While the victim took the lift, something happened and the lift broke. His limbs broke as a result, and his wounds were so serious that he later died.”

“How are you going to explain that you couldn’t find him on the day of his disappearance? Also, how did his body move to apartment No. 304?”

Lin Zhongcheng looked at me with a wry smile. “Sometimes, it’s better to leave some questions unanswered.”

I understood what Lin Zhongcheng meant. He didn’t want to continue to investigate this case. Otherwise, society as a whole might be affected, and he could lose his job.

I knew that he had worked hard to get where he was, so I didn’t insist. I nodded to show my agreement.

Of course, this was just to keep up appearances. I would never give up until I found the real cause.

The corpse was taken away, and since we were the key witnesses, we were taken to the police station to give our oral confessions. We got released shortly after.

Ru Xue was very scared. “What do we do now? That corpse went missing for a long time; the cops had searched the entire third floor back then but couldn’t find it. How did it suddenly end up in that apartment?”

“It seems we’ll have to make a trip to apartment No. 304,” I said.

“No.” Ru Xue and Yin Xinyue immediately rejected my suggestion. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t want to go.”

“I’m going with Li Mazi,” I said. “That apartment is the key to this case. I discovered something while I was there.”

“Oh, what did you discover?” Li Mazi looked at me with interest.

“That apartment has two ghosts,” I answered. “However, they rarely bump into each other.”

“How come?” Li Mazi looked at me puzzled.

“One goes out in the morning and returns in the evening, while the other goes out at night and returns early morning,” I patiently explained. “We have to understand where they are going.”

Li Mazi nodded and looked pensive.

“Why do we have to go to No. 304?” Ru Xue didn’t understand.

“It’s simple. Because that’s where the ghosts depart. We have to keep track of them from there.”

“Can you keep track of a ghost?” Yin Xinyue was doubtful.

I held the ancient garments in my hands and said, “Don’t worry. If their deaths were related to this ancient dress, as soon as the dress appears, the ghosts will be attracted to it.”

I studied the dress one more time. The dress exuded an ancient aura that made one feel pressure. It was as if I was standing in front of an upper-class woman.

To the police, the case seemed to end here. They announced to the neighborhood that they had found the victim underneath the elevator. It was just an accident.

A strange death had been covered up with the usage of technology. Only God knew how many similar cases had been covered up in the same way.

The families that lived on the third floor returned to their respective apartments, and the elevator was operative again.

I felt both happy and worried.

I was happy because the residents were returning. It meant that they would weaken the Yin energy from apartment No. 304. However, I was also afraid that the Yang energy from the families could provoke the spirits living there, making them hostile.

After considering things for a while, I called Lin Zhongcheng. I asked him to evacuate the residents. I wanted them to leave the place for a while and return only after everything had truly settled.