The Price Was Higher for a Live One
When Xu Huo returned to his lodgings, he found his door wide open. The table, chairs, bed, and other things he'd just tidied that morning had been tossed into disarray again. Even the sheets had been slashed, and there were some foul-smelling, unidentifiable objects in the stove.
There was no way he could cook in that state, so he knocked on his neighbor's door and asked if she could help clean up. He could pay her.
The woman had been wary of him at first, but when she heard she could earn some money, she hesitated, then opened the security chain and asked, "How much are you willing to pay?"
Xu Huo handed her fifty. "I don't want anything in the kitchen. Sorry for the trouble, but could you take it all away too?"
A faint smile appeared on the woman's face. "I'm not paying you for things you're throwing out."
Only after Xu Huo confirmed that he didn't want any money did the woman enter his room. She first straightened the bed, table, and chairs, then took everything from the kitchen and scrubbed it several times.
She left as soon as she finished cleaning and didn't bring up cooking for him again.
Judging by the state of things, even if someone dared to cook for him, he wouldn't dare eat it.
He had bread he'd picked up along the way for dinner. In the middle of the night, he rose without a sound, pulled the wire out of the light switch, and climbed out the window.
A group of people was on its way to his place just then. Two of them were familiar faces who'd come by yesterday; the other two were new.
They hadn't found him yesterday, so today