Strictly speaking, Lulu had nothing to do with the Ghost House, which when she had arrived was called the Fan Building.Lulu"s name was Jiaolu and her family name was Yu. She was the only daughter of a local landowner. Although the family was not very rich, it was one of the best in this small county.
Besides having a good family, Lulu was also very beautiful, so naturally, many people wanted to marry her. Back then, the matchmaker in town walked the path from the road to Lulu"s front door with great frequency, but eventually, Lulu fell in love with a servant. Her aging parents tried to persuade her to reconsider one of the better matches in town, but Lulu"s mind had been made up. In the end, her parents realized that all they could do was delay the marriage, so they gave the servant a sum of money and promised Lulu"s hand to him if he could double the sum within a year.
Her parents" intention was simple. On one hand, they wanted to buy time. On the other, they wanted to test the man"s character. The money they offered him was not a small amount. A man with lesser values might leave with the money and never be seen again.
As for the servant, while everyone envied his relations.h.i.+p with Lulu, they also looked down on him.
His name was Huang Shuai, and his father had been a sharecropper for the Yu family. He helped his father with his work until Mr. Yu saw him and thought him hard-working and talented. Afterward, Mr. Yu paid Huang Shuai"s father a small sum to let his son shadow an accountant and learn accounting skills.
Not long after Huang Shuai had begun to study accounting, he discovered the underground gambling market and got involved as a way to make quick money. When the gambling stalls were raided by the police, he was arrested together with the gamblers. His father pleaded to Mr. Yu to save his son, and Mr. Yu came forward to protect Huang Shuai.
However, after that day, he was unwilling to let Huang Shuai study in the accounting room anymore. Huang Shuai deeply regretted what he"d done, and he worked hard on the farm with his father until Mr. Yu trusted him again. Eventually, Huang Shuai came to know the other members of Mr. Yu"s family.
During this time, Huang Shuai also met a few men who he became fast friends with. Mr. Yu was displeased by these relations.h.i.+ps, as he"d heard many stories about this particular group of men and their poor ethics. Although Huang Shuai did his work well and hadn"t made any mistakes since the gambling incident, Mr. Yu was nervous about trusting him in light of these events.
Time pa.s.sed, and in less than half a year, Huang Shuai came back to the Yu residence. He had successfully multiplied the money he had been given several times over. Since he"d met Mr. Yu"s condition, the man permitted the marriage to go ahead. Unfortunately, Huang Shuai"s old father died before the ceremony. According to the ceremony rules, Huang Shuai needed to show filial piety before he could marry. So Mr. Yu said that after 27 months of filial piety, Huang Shuai could marry Lulu.
Although he"d agreed to allow the marriage to happen, Mr. Yu was glad for the excuse to delay it yet again. At that time, Lulu was only 15 years old, and he was unwilling to let her go yet.
Huang Shuai spent the period of filial piety helping Mr. Yu grow his business. He demonstrated that he really had talent and a knack for earning money. Mr. Yu had suspicions that Huang Shuai was doing something wrong, but he never found proof of any wrongdoing. The company affairs all seemed to be in order and the numbers were all accurate.
Nearly two years had pa.s.sed and the wedding date was approaching when Huang Shuai approached Mr. Yu about a business opportunity. He wanted to go out to handle some business that would earn him money for the wedding and Mr. Yu naturally allowed him to go. Before he left, Huang Shuai drank with Mr. Yu freely at a practice banquet for the wedding. By this time, their relations.h.i.+p was almost like that of father and son.
However, less than a month later, Mr. Yu received terrible news. The Yu family grave had been ransacked by grave thieves. The ancestral grave was not easy to find, so it was a shock to hear this news. In order to prevent thieves from stealing the family fortune, the Yu ancestors had found a hidden place in the mountains to bury the deceased. The location was only pa.s.sed down to Yu family members and no one was allowed to go there to wors.h.i.+p.
Mr. Yu himself had only been to the site once, many years before, when his father died. He imagined that even he would be unable to find the site without a.s.sistance. At this time, a servant girl met with Mr. Yu privately and told him that in the
At this time, a servant girl told Master Yu that at the practice banquet, Huang Shuai had been asking around for information about the ancestral grave site. Mr. Yu felt that there could be truth in what the servant girl said. When Huang Shuai returned, Mr. Yu tested him to see if he would reveal anything, but on the surface, everything appeared to be fine.
The wedding grew closer. Huang Shuai had earned a great sum of money to give as the bride price and although the atmosphere was joyous, Mr. Yu felt troubled. The servant girl"s words were like a thorn stuck in his heart, preventing him from celebrating his daughter"s upcoming union.
Around this time, Huang Shuai came across a big secret. One of his friends from the group that Mr. Yu distrusted had found a map that was said to lead to a huge amount of treasure somewhere in the county. However, because it was difficult to reach the location, Huang Shuai decided to get a.s.sistance from Mr. Yu.
Before approaching Mr. Yu, Huang Shuai removed a piece of information from the doc.u.ments and then he sought the man"s help. Mr. Yu agreed to travel with the younger man to the location on the map and there they found a huge underground palace. However, Mr. Yu realized that the palace itself was actually a mausoleum.
Mr. Yu, who had just recently experienced the ransacking of his ancestral grave, was unwilling to take anything from this mausoleum. Not only was he not prepared to take anything himself, but he also reprimanded Huang Shuai hard for thinking of taking anything from this place. Huang Shuai accepted his words with an open mind and the two men ordered the palace to be sealed again.
As a result of this interaction, Mr. Yu felt that he"d had the wrong impression of Huang Shuai, and he happily joined the others in preparing and decorating for the big day.
However, at the wedding banquet, something terrible happened. Before the family had finished wors.h.i.+pping, a group of officers rushed in. They took hold of Mr. Yu, accused him of being a grave robber, and then, without saying anything else, dragged him from the banquet.
Lulu began sobbing and nearly fainted on the spot, but Huang Shuai remained calm, telling his new bride that they could sell all of the property to earn money with which to bribe the officers. Lulu, not older than 18 at the time and freshly married, was very naïve. As a result, she naturally believed her new husband and agreed to go along with his plan.
Unfortunately for Lulu, Huang Shuai disappeared that day. Moreover, the government found several items that had been taken from the tombs hidden in the Yu house, which confirmed for them that Mr. Yu was indeed the thief. Before Lulu was able to try anything to get her father out of jail, he was killed in prison.
Her father had died, her husband had disappeared, and the government confiscated her family property. Lulu was truly in a desperate situation. She could hardly endure the stares and abuse she got from others as a result.