Chapter 21 : Chapter 21
Chapter 21: The Truth of the Matter
The moment that aged voice sounded, the red filter that had been covering Zhao Mingyue’s vision vanished instantly. She understood that the moment she stepped onto the thirteenth stair, she had already entered another world. The ghosts and spiritual flames she had seen were all the result of the female ghost’s mind and resentment influencing her.
Under the female ghost’s influence, reality and the world of resentment had overlapped. Only they could see it. The arrival of the person outside had broken the ghost’s influence, which was why everything had returned to reality.
It was also possible that the female ghost feared that person and deliberately withdrew her power.
But none of that was the key point.
The key question was who the person outside actually was—someone capable of provoking such a strong reaction from the female ghost.
Zhao Mingyue believed that an ordinary person walking directly up to the fifth floor would never create such an effect. That person would likely be in mortal danger, let alone influence the ghost instead.
“It’s the landlord…”
Zhao Mingyue turned around.
She recognized the voice immediately. It was definitely the landlord from downstairs.
In fact, this result did not surprise her. Only the landlord had the key to the fifth floor, and only he could come upstairs silently. The white putty covering the corridors of the fourth and fifth floors had also been applied by him.
But what she could not understand was why the landlord would do such things.
The female ghost had already been dead for so many years. Not only had her body never been buried, it had even been imprisoned here. If her corpse had been properly laid to rest, even if her spirit remained, her resentment would at least have been somewhat reduced.
Even in death she had no peace. Her bones had been hung with chains, sealed in rotten mud, and apparently separated from her two children.
Anyone would develop enormous resentment under such circumstances.
Many people had died in this building. Every face embedded in the walls outside represented a life. Those who had died unjustly here were equally unable to find release.
Their deaths had absolutely been connected to the landlord.
The landlord must have known that the woman’s resentful spirit had not left. He must have known how dangerous the female ghost was. Yet he still rented out the apartments on the fourth and fifth floors.
Calling him an accomplice would not be an exaggeration.
Holding Miss Rabbit with one arm and gripping the magic staff with the other, Zhao Mingyue pulled the bathroom door open.
She did not even know what she was feeling at this moment. Perhaps fear—because the landlord, who looked like a normal person, might be hiding a darker side. Perhaps anger—because so many people had died unjustly in this building. Or perhaps confusion. She truly could not understand what benefit the landlord gained from doing all of this.
What she wanted most now was to question him directly and uncover the entire truth.
Zhao Mingyue stepped out of the darkness. The beam of a flashlight in the living room landed on her body. The other party seemed surprised.
“Little Zhao? Why is it you?”
The landlord was very old, already in his seventies. His hair was gray, one of his legs was crippled, and his body was thin. Yet he seemed quite energetic. His back was straight, and there was light in his eyes.
However, there was none of the kindness one might expect from an elderly man. Instead, his face looked fierce.
He wore a gray button-up shirt, leaning on a cane with one hand while holding a flashlight in the other. Under the harsh beam of light, his face could not be clearly seen, which somehow made the scene even more terrifying.
It was a different kind of terror from the female ghost.
It felt like standing at the scene of a murder. You know who the killer is, and the moment you turn around, you see them staring at you from the darkness.
“It’s me. Are you surprised?”
“How did you get in here? And who is this person?”
The landlord frowned. The wrinkles on his face seemed to twist together, making him look even more frightening.
“I’m already standing in this room, and you still want to keep lying to me?”
Seeing that he was still pretending at a moment like this made Zhao Mingyue inexplicably angry.
As soon as she said that, the atmosphere grew tense.
The landlord leaned on his cane and remained silent for a long time, staring at Zhao Mingyue.
“So you already know?”
In television dramas, whenever a villain says those words, it usually means they are preparing to silence someone forever.
Zhao Mingyue tightened her grip on the magic staff and instinctively stepped back half a step.
“Yes. I know everything. You imprisoned that ghost and caused people to die!”
As she spoke, she silently called out Bai Yu’s name in her heart.
Even though the landlord was over seventy years old, Zhao Mingyue still did not feel confident facing him alone. Calling Bai Yu would definitely be safer.
But Bai Yu did not respond.
Instead, the landlord walked forward. He casually switched on the lights in the room. At some point, the electricity had returned, and the room suddenly became bright. However, the lights were not energy-saving lamps but old-fashioned light bulbs.
The dim yellow light illuminated the room, yet it brought no warmth.
The burnt smell in the air had disappeared, replaced by an even stronger odor of disinfectant. The smell seemed to have seeped into the walls themselves. Most of it came from the landlord.
“I say that I never intended to harm you. Do you believe me? I did bury Xiaolian’s body here, but I never intended for her to kill anyone.”
“I investigated this place. The people who committed suicide in Sunshine Apartments over the past few years—are you daring to say they have nothing to do with you?”
More than ten people had committed suicide in this building. Zhao Mingyue did not believe it was merely coincidence that they had all come here to die. Ninety-nine percent of it was related to that female ghost. Just this morning, the ghost had even trapped her in a ghost loop.
“They… do have something to do with Xiaolian.”
The landlord sighed.
“I won’t deny that. I did everything I could to help them. But from the moment they stepped into this building, the ending was no longer something I could control.”
“Little Zhao, what you saw may not be what you think. Listen to me finish, and you will understand.”
“Since you have already investigated, I’ll explain it to you in detail.”
“Xiaolian—the ghost you mentioned—is actually my daughter.”
“When she was young, something happened that damaged her mind. She was always in a daze and had no sense of security about anything around her. She would often hurt others.”
“She was like that even at school. Because she frequently injured her classmates, no school was willing to accept her. From the time she entered middle school, she stayed at home.”
“Her mother died early, so I was the only one taking care of her.”
“Time passed quickly, and Xiaolian gradually grew up. But although her condition improved slightly, I kept thinking that one day I would grow old. When I no longer had the strength, who would take care of her?”
“So when she turned twenty-five, I brought in a live-in son-in-law named Lin Gui. He had once been a tenant here. I thought he was kind and honest, so I created opportunities for him to interact with Xiaolian.”
“The two young people got along fairly well.”
“A few months later, I spoke to Lin Gui about the matter. His parents had died early too, so he agreed.”
“In the third year, their child was born—a pair of twins, one boy and one girl.”
“And it was that same year that Xiaolian’s condition began to worsen again after giving birth.”
“At the time I could not understand it. Her condition had already been under control. Why would it suddenly become worse again?”
“I went to many hospitals, but none of them helped.”
“Later on, when her illness worsened, she would smash furniture. At times she would lock herself inside a wardrobe, saying ‘they’ had come for her and she needed to hide.”
“Once, Xiaolian even locked the two children inside the wardrobe and sealed the door.”
“Lin Gui and I had to break the door open to rescue them. The children had not eaten or drunk anything for an entire day.”
“Things like that happened often. During that time we didn’t even dare place large furniture in the house. All the mirrors were removed.”
“That year, the twins were already five years old. For most of that year Xiaolian did not have many episodes.”
“But one day she suddenly tied the two children up and set a fire, trying to burn them alive.”
“She said those things had already hidden inside the children’s bodies, and only by doing that could she drive them out.”
Zhao Mingyue could not help asking, “Then why didn’t you separate the children from their mother?”
“We tried that as well. But whenever Xiaolian was separated from the children, her condition became much worse.”
“To continue… after that incident, Lin Gui could no longer endure it. He discussed it with me, and we decided to send Xiaolian to a psychiatric hospital.”
“I was afraid she might hurt the children, so I agreed.”
“After Xiaolian was taken away, I left this place too and moved outside the city. Staying here was too painful for me. After all, Xiaolian was my own daughter.”
“A few years later, Lin Gui suddenly told me he had brought Xiaolian back. He did not explain why—only that she would not hurt the children anymore.”
“After she returned, he locked her on the fifth floor together with the two children.”
“At the time I thought her condition had improved. I told Lin Gui that the children were growing up and should be sent to school. Children cannot grow up without education.”
“The problem only began after the children started school.”
“At first Xiaolian agreed with the idea. But when she heard that the children would attend No. 13 Middle School in East City, she suddenly went mad and insisted on bringing them back.”
“One night she somehow escaped and went to the school—perhaps to pick up the children.”
“And that very day, a fire broke out at No. 13 Middle School. One entire class of students failed to escape and were burned alive.”
Zhao Mingyue’s eyes widened.
“The children…”
“Yes. They were in that class.”
The landlord let out a deep sigh.
“When Xiaolian returned that night, she set a fire on the fifth floor and burned herself alive.”
“After her death, her ghost wandered on the fifth floor. At first she killed several people.”
“I had no choice but to invite a master.”
“The master told me to retrieve Xiaolian’s corpse, hang her head and limbs with chains, bury the body with soil mixed with locust tree roots, and periodically scrape soil from the corpse and smear it onto the walls.”
“That way her spirit could be suppressed and trapped between the fourth and fifth floors, forever unable to escape.”