Because of that infamous haunted robbery, Villa No. 9 had acquired a mysterious reputation in certain circles. People had privately speculated about what kind of person its owner might be.
Their professional security team had moved in after the robbery. Naturally, they knew all about the incident.
There was absolutely no need to worry about break-ins at Daozi Lane Villa.
Any thief foolish enough to come here and try his luck would be blind and doomed to suffer a lifetime of bad luck.
The two hapless idiots from before had had their criminal records thoroughly dug up. They would probably spend most of their lives behind bars.
Since there was no need to worry about break-ins, they decided to let the suspicious-looking young man in. Surely he wouldn't cause any trouble.
If he really was a thief, then he'd only have himself to blame.
But what if what he'd said was true?
What if he really was connected to the owner of Villa No. 9?
If he was the owner's junior, then treating him properly now would make it easier to get along with him later, wouldn't it?
If the road signs hadn't guided him the whole way, Jiang Yue would have had quite a time finding Villa No. 9.
Even so, it had taken him more than fifteen minutes to get there.
He followed the steps as they wound uphill, climbing twenty or thirty of them before reaching a lawn at the entrance. A path paved with rustic bricks ran through the middle of the lawn, all the way to Villa No. 9.
The villa's front yard was a large garden. A private swimming pool stood at the far end on the right, and there were two garages behind the house.
The villa, garden, pool, lawn, and everything else took up nearly three mu of land.
Best of all, the buildings were spaced far apart. Clever spatial design gave each one excellent privacy, creating the luxurious impression that each household had a whole stretch of scenery to itself.
Seeing it in person, the villa complex was clearly even better than his sister had described.
At the entrance, Jiang Yue faced the most immediate problem: he didn't have a key!
The lock was fingerprint-activated.
He had never been here before. He tried all ten fingers, but of course, none of them worked.
As he hesitated, the rune in his palm began to shimmer faintly.
Its shape strangely overlapped with the pattern engraved on the security door.
Moved by some mysterious intuition, Jiang Yue raised his hand and pressed his palm squarely against the pattern.
Click, click...
A crisp, smooth mechanical sound came from the lock.
Then the door slowly opened by itself.
Jiang Yue was secretly astonished. He never would have guessed that this mysterious rune was a key.
What's going on here? The rune is embedded in my body now. Does that mean I'm the owner of this villa from now on?
Jiang Yue had never been one to believe in windfalls from the sky.
But if a whole villa really had fallen into his lap, would he take it or not?
With Jiang Yue's looks, all he had to do was say, "I don't want to work hard anymore," and rich older women would be fighting to shower him with villas and luxury cars.
Jiang Yue felt he was still young enough to live off someone else.
He took a deep breath, prepared himself for all possibilities, and pushed open the door.
There were no bats like in the stories, and no eerie laughter, either.
He turned on the lights and glanced inside from the entrance.
The villa had been decorated in a traditional Chinese style. At first glance, there was nothing unusual.
Normally, a house that had been unoccupied for so long should have smelled heavily of mold and decay.
But it didn't.
The whole house felt a little cold and empty after being unoccupied for so long, lacking the warmth of everyday life, but the air indoors felt perfectly natural.
By the standards of yin-yang studies, the flow of qi was excellent.
The earth qi, door qi, and life qi were all flourishing.
And judging by the villa's location, orientation, and surroundings, it was unquestionably an auspicious residence.
It had nothing in common with the haunted house of legend.
As steady as an old dog, Jiang Yue stood at the entrance and observed the place for a good while. Only after ruling out every possible anomaly did he stroll inside without hurry.
It was clear that a lot of thought had gone into the decor. Every table, chair, book, and painting had been carefully chosen.
The antique floorboards, with their water-and-ink patterns, complemented the rustic solid-wood furniture, adding to the old-world charm.
The spacious living room had a high ceiling. Screens, latticework, display shelves, and other furnishings divided the space into distinct layers, lending it even more artistic flair.
"Welcome to the Spirit Intelligence world..."
Just as Jiang Yue was congratulating himself on his artistic taste, a languid voice suddenly came from the empty living room.
The voice gave him the impression of a bored shop assistant on a dull afternoon, half asleep and in a bad mood, greeting a customer who had barged in without warning.
The speaker had no desire to help, but their professional obligations forced them to pretend to be polite.
Jiang Yue's first reaction was undeniably quick.
Almost as soon as the voice sounded, he darted back to the entrance, grabbed the doorknob, and tried to flee.
"It's no use. Don't bother." The same listless voice spoke again.
No matter how hard Jiang Yue wrestled with the doorknob, it wouldn't budge.
Was this a kidnapping? An attempted murder?
Jiang Yue suddenly felt like a wild animal that had fallen into a trap. Panic swept over him.
He couldn't help imagining all sorts of cruel and horrifying possibilities.
Scenes of brutal, bloody violence from the horror movie Saw kept flashing through his mind.
When the situation was unclear, staying calm was the best choice.
After a brief moment of panic, Jiang Yue slowly regained his composure.
His mental fortitude hadn't come from nowhere. The upheavals his family had gone through over the years had toughened him up and taught him not to panic when things went wrong.
He tried to figure out whether the voice belonged to a person or an electronic device.
At the same time, he began thinking about how to test the speaker, how to question them, and how to escape...
"At a time like this, getting picked by that Spirit Intelligence bastard... I honestly don't know whether I should congratulate you or feel sorry for you."
"Forget it. I'll stick with the usual and congratulate you."
"After all, they gave me the same spiel when I first got here."
Jiang Yue tried to pinpoint the voice, but it was no use. He couldn't tell where it was coming from at all. He couldn't help asking:
"Um... can I interrupt for a second? Who are the people you mentioned? And who are you?"
"Well, that's a long story. But I can sum it up in one sentence..."
"They and I are just as unlucky as you."
Unlucky? A whole bunch of unlucky people?
Was this some kind of unlucky-people club?
Jiang Yue swore he hadn't thought those five words through at all. They had popped into his mind completely on their own.
"Long story short, you got that paper talisman, right?"
"Yeah. Did you send it to me?" Jiang Yue could come up with a hundred lies in a second, but this time, he decided to tell the truth.
"What if I told you it sent itself? Would that scare you?" A hint of mischief crept into the speaker's lazy tone.
Would it scare him?
If you'd asked him a week ago, the answer might well have been yes.
But now?
Jiang Yue shook his head. "No."
"Oh? Oh..." The speaker sounded surprised at first, then oddly disappointed. Apparently, they were a little let down that they hadn't managed to scare Jiang Yue, a rookie.
"So... what exactly is this paper talisman?" Jiang Yue had recovered enough from his initial panic to hold a conversation, though he was still a little uneasy.
"It... damn it, it's really not a thing!" The speaker suddenly grew agitated and couldn't help swearing.
Jiang Yue held his forehead, at a loss for a moment.
There was an awful lot of resentment in that voice.
Most importantly, this wasn't how things were supposed to go.
Going by the usual plot of movies and novels, wasn't this the crucial moment when he got a cheat ability?
Usually, a scene like this was supposed to be heartwarming, wasn't it?
Even if there wasn't a kindly old man, surely he'd at least get some kind of system dad?
There was no reason for the whole process to be so convoluted, only for the ending to be so anticlimactic.
"Don't disbelieve me! In a few years, you might be cursing it right alongside me." The voice was indignant, its resentment undiminished.
Jiang Yue wasn't sure whether he'd be cursing it along with the speaker years from now.
Right now, he wanted to curse the speaker.
Had they ever been to school? Did they know how to get to the point? They'd been talking for ages, and still hadn't given him a single useful detail.
"Um... senior, I hope you don't mind me calling you that. Even if it's not a thing, what exactly makes it so terrible?"
"It tricked me, wasted my youth, broke my heart, and then locked me up. Being locked up was bad enough, but then it..."
From the speaker's utterly despondent tone, Jiang Yue could tell there was a tragic, heartrending story after that trailing-off "then."
"But... now that you've been tricked into coming here, and there's another unlucky person in this world, why am I feeling a little excited?"
Great.
The little sympathy and compassion Jiang Yue had just felt disappeared at once.
As expected, every pitiable person had something despicable about them.
"Think I'm being a little gleeful at your expense?" The speaker sighed softly.
"Ugh, if you'd been locked up for this long, you'd be a little twisted too."
"You've been locked up for a long time?" Jiang Yue asked curiously.
"Not that long. Just a little over two thousand years."
What the hell?
Two thousand years?
Jiang Yue didn't think there was anything wrong with his hearing. His first thought was that being locked up for so long had left the speaker mentally unstable and prone to babbling.
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