I stared at the screen for a few seconds. Which b.a.s.t.a.r.d turned my QQ into this?
I quickly thought of a prime suspect and made a call. When it was picked up, I instantly shouted, “Lao Yao, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! What have you done to my QQ account?!”
“You took advantage of me! You used someone else to attack me! I’ll spread your nude photo to the whole world tomorrow!” he shot back.
“No, wait! Let’s discuss this!” I knew that wasn’t an empty threat. Someone like Lao Yao was more than capable of doing this kind of thing.
It turned out that Lao Yao was still bitter about the money. Xiaotao promised him she would give all of the bonus money in her pocket to Lao Yao. In the end, Xiaotao only pocketed ten yuan, so that was what Lao Yao got. He felt deceived and angry, but he didn’t dare to mess with a police officer, so he instead took it all out on me.
“I was paid ten yuan!” he whined. “What special kind of idiot do you think I am?”
“But you made that agreement with Xiaotao. This has nothing to do with me!”
“This has everything to do with you! You’re finished, Song Yang! From today onwards, I’ll make sure your life becomes a nightmare you can’t wake up from!”
I shuddered. Being targeted by Lao Yao was not a laughing matter at all. Once, a moderator of a forum deleted one of his posts. Lao Yao retaliated by hacking into the moderator’s personal computer, stealing all of his private photos, and spread it to the whole world.
I absolutely did not want to be one of his victims.
“Calm down, Lao Yao, I’ve got an idea. I need your help to get some information. If you help me, I’ll pay you instantly at a price that you set.”
“Okay,” his tone changed immediately. “Let me hear what you’ve got to offer me.”
I asked him to find information about the haunted house. We then discussed the price. Once we had a deal, Lao Yao said, “You’ll hear from me soon.” He then hung up.
If only Lao Yao were a part of the police force, I thought, then I wouldn’t have to spend money every time I needed information about something.
But hacking wasn’t Lao Yao’s only talent. His skills in obtaining information were top-notch too. That might not sound impressive to you, as you might think that anyone could do it by typing down some keywords into a search engine. But in fact, the most difficult part was finding relevant information. More often than not, the most accurate and reliable information was hidden behind a paywall or pa.s.swords.
I understood nothing about SCI or ISTP. But to Lao Yao, these were merely his playground.
After waiting for a while, I received a text message from Lao Yao that told me to log into my QQ account.
I did so, and found that everything had gone back to normal. Lao Yao had also sent me some doc.u.ments there.
I opened it and skimmed through everything. I was taken aback by how much information he was able to gather in such a short amount of time.
According to the doc.u.ments that Lao Yao found, the house where the bodies were found was involved in a fire more than a decade ago. It was ruled as arson by the authorities. At the time, a family of three lived there. The wife was young and beautiful, while the husband was much older and very possessive. Because of their difference in age, the husband always suspected that his wife was cheating on him, and this caused tension in their relations.h.i.+p.
At one point, the husband secretly took a paternity test with his son. When the result came out, it turned out that the two of them were not related at all!
This triggered the husband’s fury. Because of that, he developed a terrible plan for revenge. He killed the boy in cold blood, then cooked the flesh in a dish. He then told his wife to try the dish that he specially made for her. When she took a bite, he asked her if her son tasted good, then revealed that he killed the boy because they took a paternity test and he found out the boy was not his own! He then grabbed her and demanded her to tell him who was the boy’s father.
The wife lost her mind immediately, which made the husband even angrier. He hit her so hard on the head that she lost consciousness.
Late that night, the wife woke up and burned the whole house down while she and her husband were still inside. There were witnesses who testified that they saw a woman standing by the window on the second floor laughing wildly as she was engulfed by the flames!
The court then seized the mansion and auctioned it off. The house was sold off at a very low price because people had died in it. The person who bought the house was a real estate investor. He never intended to stay there, but had invited some ‘professionals’ called ‘Haunted House Busters.’ These people had lots of guts. They would stay a few nights in haunted houses and figure out what was going on in there. Some would claim to have ‘exorcism’ skills and ‘cleanse’ the house of ghosts and bad spirits, which enabled the owners to either renovate and live there or sell the house again at a higher price.
However, when several Haunted House Busters were brought in to stay at the mansion, they all ran out in defeat the next day. Some of them reported hearing weird noises in the kitchen at night. When they listened to it carefully, it sounded like the crackling of fire.
Some of them would even see a little boy bouncing a ball in the living room. Some saw a woman floating around the house, and she was covered in blisters and burns…
Once, a group of these Haunted House Busters tried to stay in the house overnight. One of them was found crying in the middle of the night while holding an old doll in his arms. His voice sounded like a woman. His colleagues were scared till they wet themselves on the spot.
In the end, the owner had to lower the price dramatically. Some people tried to live there, but none of them lasted more than a few days. Most of them agreed that there were evil spirits in the house. Sometimes, its walls would suddenly be ablaze with fire in the middle of the night, and one could clearly hear a woman’s hysterical laughter. The inhabitants would be so scared that they’d escape immediately that night.
The house was now managed by a real estate agency, and the ident.i.ty of the owner was kept secret. But Lao Yao was a first-cla.s.s hacker after all, so he somehow obtained the name of this person.
A few minutes later, Lao Yao’s avatar on QQ was shaking. He was urging me to pay him immediately. I transferred two thousand yuan to his account with a heavy heart. It was a lot of money just for information, but I had to admit that Lao Yao had been helpful.
At noon, Xiaotao asked me where I was and told us to get to the police station as soon as possible. Dali rushed over there, and when we arrived, we saw her standing akimbo at the entrance. I guessed it was because the investigation had gone smoothly.
We all went to a restaurant nearby and ordered a light meal. As we were eating, Xiaotao informed me that the victims had been identified. The older one was called Lu Liang; the younger was called Lu Wei. They were uncle and nephew. They did not find out what their occupations were, but their bank accounts were full of money. They had been travelling all over the country all year round.
“They’re probably Haunted House Busters,” I suggested.
“What?”
“Oh, I know I know!” Dali interrupted. “I’ve read about it in novels and on the internet. They’re people who stay in haunted houses! I always thought that was a fictional profession!”
“Well, art usually imitates life!” I remarked. Then I summarized the information from Lao Yao to them.
“So there was another fire just like the one from years ago?” Xiaotao pondered. “Then perhaps we might never find the murderer.”
“Hold your horses,” I said. “If even the task force captain thinks this way, how will we ever solve the crime? No, I don’t believe ghosts can harm people, or else there wouldn’t be so many wicked people in this world to fill the prisons!”
“You’re right,” Xiaotao nodded. “I’ll tell w.a.n.g Yuanchao to stop investigating the house’s background now that you’ve gathered enough information about it.”
“No, don’t do that! Please let him continue!”
“But we’ve got enough information!” Dali interjected. “Wouldn’t it be a waste of manpower to do the same thing twice?”
“But w.a.n.g Yuanchao and Lao Yao’s sources are different,” I explained. “Their methods are different too. It’s like when you’re trying to get to know a person. You’ll ask different people about their opinions of the person so you can get a more complex and dimensional impression! Besides, this mansion is at the center of this mysterious case. It’s only right for us to expend a lot of time and effort to find out more about it!”