Possession (Conclusion) Part 2

Li Su said, "Just one glass, it won't kill me."

Li Ye called out, "Boss, two bottles of white liquor, the strongest kind you have."

Although Lin Banxia and the others didn't understand what was happening, Li Su was experienced and quickly said, "Forget it, forget it, I won't argue with you—I'll use tea instead of alcohol, that's fine, right!"

Li Ye's lips twitched. With his face full of beard, it was impossible to tell if he was angry or smiling.

Li Su muttered, "You're more difficult than my own father."

Li Ye sneered, "I don't mind you calling me Dad."

Li Su: "..."

Lin Banxia watched their bickering with great interest. Song Qingluo, however, was used to their squabbles and grew impatient. "Can you two wash your hands before eating? You just handled an urn, and now you're shoving food in your mouths?"

Li Su was about to retort when Li Ye lifted him up like a little chick and dragged him off to wash his hands, looking aggrieved.

Lin Banxia found it amusing and said, "They have a good relationship, don't they?"

Song Qingluo said, "Yeah, Li Su picked Li Ye up in Russia."

Lin Banxia smiled. "You can pick up a person?"

Song Qingluo nodded.

While they were talking, Ji Leshui had already finished ordering the food. Song Qingluo glanced at the menu, added a few hundred more skewers of meat, and then placed the order. He asked, "How did you and Ji Leshui end up here too?"

Lin Banxia explained, "Ji Leshui said he saw you being held by two people and taken into that building. I thought you'd been kidnapped."

Ji Leshui said mournfully, "I thought a master was being abducted by some strange people. That friend of yours named Li Ye is built like a bear..."

Lin Banxia burst out laughing.

"Song Qingluo, how did you know there was something else in that building?" Lin Banxia asked curiously.

Song Qingluo slowly shelled an edamame, ate one, and then said, "Do you remember the scene you and Ji Leshui saw through that window?"

Lin Banxia and Ji Leshui nodded at the same time.

Ji Leshui was a bit confused. "Wasn't that a hallucination caused by where we live?"

"No," Song Qingluo said. "Based on your description, I sorted out the timeline and found that the scene in the window appeared before the doorplate started to have an effect."

Lin Banxia was stunned.

Song Qingluo continued, "Doorplate 1303 usually starts to mentally corrupt the host within a week to half a month of them moving in. The specific timing depends on the host's mental state. After the effect begins, the host will materialize their inner fears based on their own situation. The more people living there, the richer the materializations become, and it can even create an independent space to trap the host." His long, slender fingertips flicked open another edamame pod, which he brought to his lips, his white teeth biting down gently. "When Ji Leshui saw the window, he hadn't seen anything terrifying in the room yet, nor did he have any thoughts of moving out. Therefore, it wasn't normal for him to see someone jump from the window. That's why I suspected there was something else on that floor."

Lin Banxia suddenly understood. "No wonder I saw it even though I didn't want to move out."

"Mhm," Song Qingluo said. "I went over that night just to confirm it again."

Just as they finished talking, they saw Li Ye and Li Su return.

The barbecue they ordered arrived at the same time. Li Su picked up a beef skewer and ate it with relish, asking vaguely when Song Qingluo was going over. As he asked, he shot a seemingly casual glance at Lin Banxia.

"As soon as possible," Song Qingluo said.

Although Lin Banxia wanted to ask where Song Qingluo was going, he felt his relationship with him wasn't that close, so he kept quiet and lowered his head to eat with Ji Leshui.

Song Qingluo, Li Ye, and Li Su were clearly well-acquainted, but the atmosphere between them was strange. Li Ye barely spoke, while Li Su chatted cheerfully with Song Qingluo about trivial things. Song Qingluo gave him the cold shoulder, and in the end, it was Lin Banxia who ended up chatting with Li Su. He learned that Li Su and Li Ye had been partners for many years, that Li Ye was Russian and his Chinese was quite good, though he couldn't handle overly complex sentences. You could curse at him in dialect, since he wouldn't understand anyway.

As Li Su was speaking, Lin Banxia uttered three word: "Son of a—"

Li Su: "Oh, those three words won't work. I curse at him so often that he's learned them."

Lin Banxia: "..."

"Hey, don't be fooled by his bear-like build. He's actually six years younger than me, only twenty," Li Su said. "It's a shame that foreigners tend to look older, and he doesn't like to talk to people, so he looks like a bear."

Lin Banxia couldn't help but laugh.

Li Ye remained sullenly eating meat on the side the whole time, looking like he couldn't be bothered with Li Su.

The barbecue actually tasted very good. The only flaw was that the portions were a bit small, which wasn't the owner's fault, but mainly due to the recent high price of meat.

The few hundred skewers Song Qingluo added weren't even enough to fill Li Ye's stomach. After less than half an hour, Li Ye went and ordered several hundred more. This made the owner keep looking over at their table as if he were watching gorillas.

"Banxia, aren't you about to take your annual leave?" Ji Leshui, who had been eating nonstop, was finally full. He paused, let out a burp, and said, "Your annual leave will expire if you don't take it by May."

"Oh, that's right," Lin Banxia finally remembered. "But even if I take it, I have nowhere to go."

"True," Ji Leshui thought of Lin Banxia's family situation, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. The group continued to eat, chatting idly.

Before they knew it, after a few rounds of drinks, Ji Leshui, the worst drinker, was passed out on the table, fast asleep. Lin Banxia had also been plied with a lot of alcohol by Li Su, and his consciousness was a bit hazy.

"Hey, you happen to be on annual leave?" Li Su suddenly started a new topic. "Want to go out and have some fun with Song Qingluo? He's about to go on a trip."

Song Qingluo shot Li Su a glare.

Lin Banxia thought he was displeased and said awkwardly, "No, it's okay, I wouldn't want to trouble Mr... Song." He had meant to say Song Qingluo, but when the words came out, they stubbornly turned into Mr. Song.

Hearing Lin Banxia's words, Song Qingluo pressed his lips together slightly.

The corners of Li Su's eyes crinkled, and his smile became even brighter. He leaned closer to Lin Banxia and lowered his voice, "Actually, I was joking. Song Qingluo isn't going on a trip, he's going to work."

Lin Banxia was stunned. "Then wouldn't it be even more inappropriate for me to tag along?"

Li Su winked and smiled. "I just wanted to ask you, do you want to go on an adventure? The kind that pays."

Lin Banxia stared blankly at Li Su.

Li Su said, "Actually, Song Qingluo has been looking for a partner for a long time but hasn't found a suitable one. I think you're a great fit. Our line of work, while a bit dangerous, pays really well." He said, "In just this half month, Song Qingluo has already earned back your rent money."

Lin Banxia said, stunned, "For real..."

Li Su said, "You're short on money, right? Don't worry, this job is also legal, it's just not something that can be discussed openly. Earning over a hundred thousand in about ten days, you can think about it carefully." After saying that, he straightened up with a smile, raised the teacup in front of him in a toast to Lin Banxia, and then drank it all in one go.

Song Qingluo stood by with a grim face. "Li Su, shut up."

Li Su said, "Oh, don't be shy. If you see someone you like, you have to make a move quickly, or they'll get away. Besides, can you bear to see a talent like Lin Banxia wasted on collecting corpses?" After he finished, he grumbled in dissatisfaction, "And collecting corpses isn't much better, it's probably even scarier than what we do."

Lin Banxia nodded in agreement from the side, saying sadly that corpses weren't a pretty sight at all, and that after seeing one, he couldn't eat meat for half a year.

Song Qingluo frowned. "My work is very dangerous."

Lin Banxia said in a small voice, "It's okay, I'm the only one left in my family. It doesn't matter if I'm gone."

Song Qingluo's frown deepened. "How could it not matter?"

Lin Banxia said, "It really... doesn't matter."

Song Qingluo fell silent. Although Lin Banxia's voice was soft, he could feel that he was serious.

Li Su rested his chin on his hand, watching with interest. Li Ye, who was next to him, suddenly spoke up, "Song Qingluo, he's very suitable for you."

Lin Banxia cast an expectant look at Song Qingluo.

But Song Qingluo only said softly, "Let me think about it again."

Lin Banxia lowered his eyes in disappointment.

Time flew by, and it was three in the morning.

The hundreds of skewers of meat they ordered were eaten clean, most of them by Li Ye. He didn't talk much, just ate and drank on the side, and before anyone knew it, he had polished off most of the food. Ji Leshui had passed out on the table early on. He was a good drunk; he didn't make a sound, just lay on the table motionless, as if sleeping. Lin Banxia was drowsy from the alcohol. Though not completely drunk, he was already dazed. Li Su, on the other hand, hadn't touched any alcohol due to his health, so he and Song Qingluo were both quite sober.

In the end, Lin Banxia had no memory of how he got home. When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying in bed, even changed into a clean set of pajamas. He woke up feeling thirsty, so he clutched his dizzy head and got out of bed. Before he even left the bedroom, he heard the angry shouting of a man coming from the living room television.

Lin Banxia froze when he heard the voice. At first, he thought he was mistaken, but after listening carefully, he realized it was indeed Liu Xi's voice.

How could Liu Xi's voice be coming from the TV? Lin Banxia's heart skipped a beat, and he halted his steps. He carefully opened the bedroom door a crack and peeked into the living room.

Song Qingluo was sitting on the sofa in a relaxed posture, his face expressionless, fiddling with the two dice Lin Banxia had seen before.

The dice, one black and one white, spun and slid in Song Qingluo's hands as if they were a part of his body.

The cursing on the TV continued. Lin Banxia saw the image on the screen, and it was... really Liu Xi.

Liu Xi was wearing strange white clothes and was confined in a spacious room. The room looked very odd; all four walls were mirrors, and bright lights were installed in almost every corner, making the entire room look overly bright, so much so that it was hard for the viewer to keep their eyes open.

Liu Xi was strapped to a transparent bed in the room, his limbs firmly restrained. However, his mouth wasn't gagged, so he could spew forth angry curses without restraint.

"This is illegal detention! I'm going to call the police! I'm going to sue you! I'm going to sue you!!" He was clearly not there voluntarily, constantly writhing and cursing.

However, no one paid him any attention. A man's voice sounded, carrying the unique indifference of a machine, "Please cooperate with our work."

Liu Xi said, "Cooperate? Why should I cooperate with your work? Who are you people? Who the hell are you??!"

There was no response. The voice appeared only once and then vanished, leaving Liu Xi to continue screaming and shouting in the room.

The scene on the TV began to fast-forward. About two hours later, Liu Xi lay limply on the bed, having given up struggling.

"Please cooperate with our work," the voice sounded again.

Liu Xi was blindfolded and couldn't sense the passage of time. To him, those short two hours had felt like an eternity. He said hoarsely, "What do you want? Money? I can give you money, I have lots and lots of money."

"Please make a wish," the voice said.

"What?" Liu Xi was stunned.

"Please make a wish," the voice repeated.