Chapter 176
Chapter 176
Right now, we were in a partnership with Pan Xiaorou. We were counting on her to help us rescue Meng Yifan.
So if she needed us, we had to answer immediately.
It was already nine o’clock at night. Song Xiaotian drove us straight to Pan Xiaorou’s house.
In the car, I called Seventh Master and briefly explained the situation.
But we didn’t know the specifics either. There was a very real chance Xiang Kai’s soul had returned.
After listening, Seventh Master said, “After a person dies, they will make one trip home, but it’s usually on the seventh day after death. On that day, they return once to the place they lived long-term while alive. After that, the Human Soul follows the body to the grave and becomes a Corpse-Guarding Soul.”
“In his case, he should be like Tao Xiaoyu. He doesn’t know he’s already dead. This kind of spirit has one particular trait: it tends to ‘return’-to return to the place it lived long-term while alive.”
“They’ll come home like they did in life and use the things they used before, or do the things they often did at home. That can cause certain objects to move somewhere else for no apparent reason, even though no one touched them, and it’s very easy to frighten the living.”
After hearing Seventh Master’s explanation, Song Xiaotian and I more or less understood.
What Pan Xiaorou had encountered was probably exactly that.
“Xiang Kai died a violent death, so he’s aggressive. Aside from his wife, he may attack anyone.”
Seventh Master warned us, “Be careful. Don’t act rashly. I’ll drive over right away.”
After giving Seventh Master the address, I hung up.
“That Xiang Kai really knows how to cause trouble for no reason,” Song Xiaotian grumbled. “If he wants to go home, then go back to Tao Xiaoyu’s place. Why go back to his wife’s house? When he was alive, he never even stayed home. Now that he’s dead, he suddenly figured it out? And in the middle of the night, too.”
I said, “Stop complaining. Just think of it as Xiang Kai creating an opportunity for us. We help Pan Xiaorou out, get a little closer to her, and our partnership becomes more stable.”
When I put it that way, Song Xiaotian drove even faster. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at Pan Xiaorou’s residential compound.
Her neighborhood was naturally a villa district as well. She didn’t dare go back inside and was standing just past the front gate of the compound in her pajamas.
This woman was already stunning to begin with, and in pajamas, that beauty gained a few extra traces of allure.
She stood there with terror written all over her face, completely lacking the aura of the female CEO she had during the day. She looked just like a frightened young woman.
“President Pan, what happened?” Song Xiaotian asked with concern.
Pan Xiaorou patted her chest, still shaken. “I… I had just taken a shower. I hadn’t even had time to dry my hair when I heard the TV in the living room suddenly turn on.”
Song Xiaotian said, “Could your TV be broken…?”
Pan Xiaorou furrowed her delicate brows and stamped her foot almost like she was pouting. “No! After I came out, I found an extra cigarette butt in the ashtray in the living room. There was also a pack of cigarettes beside it, and one cigarette was missing from the pack.”
“After that pack was opened, he only smoked one cigarette from it. Then he didn’t come home for the next few days, so I remember it very clearly. And I had kept that pack of cigarettes in the coffee table drawer the whole time.”
After hearing Pan Xiaorou’s description, Song Xiaotian and I swallowed at the same time.
I asked, “Did he have the habit of lighting a cigarette first thing whenever he came home?”
Pan Xiaorou nodded, trembling all over.
“Were there any other abnormalities?” I asked again.
At that moment, Pan Xiaorou nearly burst into tears. “He’s in the study right now. I heard the sound of someone flipping through books inside…”
The moment she said that, Song Xiaotian’s face turned pale.
I realized Song Xiaotian wasn’t afraid of heaven or earth.
The only thing he feared was ghosts.
Even after everything we’d been through, he was still afraid of ghosts.
I said, “Let’s go take a look.”
Pan Xiaorou led us to her villa.
The moment we opened the door and stepped inside, the temperature was completely different from outside. It was blazing hot out, but the house was strangely cool.
I asked Pan Xiaorou if the air-conditioning was on.
She said, “Only in the bedrooms…”
Looked like yin energy was at work.
And the lights in the house were off, leaving everything pitch-black. In this kind of environment, even I was scared.
Song Xiaotian said in a trembling voice, “It’s already haunted. Why didn’t you turn on the lights?”
Pan Xiaorou shook even harder. “They were on when I left. I wasn’t the one who turned them off…”
I reached out and flipped the living room light switch, but before it had been on for two seconds, the light went out by itself.
I turned it on again. It turned itself off again. I tried several times in a row, and it shut itself off every single time.
Song Xiaotian looked at Pan Xiaorou. “Your husband sure is playful…”
I said, “A Ghost prefers darkness over light. Let’s not turn it on. We might anger him.”
Seventh Master had just said that Xiang Kai had died a violent death, which made him aggressive.
I told Pan Xiaorou and Song Xiaotian to take out their phones and use the light from their screens to see.
Pan Xiaorou grabbed my arm on one side and Song Xiaotian’s on the other, clutching us so tightly that her nails were about to break my skin.
I could tell she was terrified, but damn, it really hurt.
I couldn’t help saying, “President Pan, could you loosen your grip a little…?”
Pan Xiaorou said, “I’m sorry… I’m scared… Can I go outside?”
I told her no. “To your husband, we’re strangers. If we enter his territory, it will provoke him. But it’s different with you here. You’re also the mistress of this house.”
“Take us to the study first.”
Pan Xiaorou clung to Song Xiaotian and me as she led us to the study.
The study door was closed. I stood outside and listened for a while, but I didn’t hear any pages turning.
I drew in a breath, twisted the doorknob, and rushed inside.
The light from our phones didn’t reveal anything. The study was completely quiet, and there was no sign of Xiang Kai’s Ghost.
I walked over to the desk and found that there were no books on it. Instead, there was a bidding proposal, densely covered in writing. I rubbed the words with my finger; the ink was still fresh.
“This… this is his handwriting.”
In the dim glow of the phone, Pan Xiaorou’s face looked deathly pale.
I nodded. “What you heard was probably him flipping through the bidding proposal. He’s writing this. For Jiangling Group, this bid is extremely important. It directly concerns the group’s future.”
This might have been the thing Xiang Kai cared about most while he was alive. So even after his death, he was still worried about this bid.
Song Xiaotian sighed with emotion. “President Xiang was truly dedicated to his work.”
At that moment, I noticed that the safe nearby was open. Scattered outside it were many gold bars, along with several bank cards.
There had to be almost a hundred gold bars. They were probably worth a fortune.
“This… What was he taking these things out for?” Pan Xiaorou frowned, utterly confused.
I asked her, “What do you use these gold bars for?”
Pan Xiaorou explained, “These gold bars, and the money in those bank cards, are basically our family’s emergency reserves. The gold bars are worth a lot, and those gold cards have tens of millions in them too. Unless there was absolutely no other choice, neither of us would touch that money.”
I walked over and picked up two items from the floor. When I looked at them, they were two copies of a divorce agreement.
I handed them to Pan Xiaorou and said, “Looks like he wants to divorce you. My guess is, he was planning to transfer the assets…”