Chapter 43: Chapter 43: This Villa… Is Haunted

Hearing that Shen Zhiyao was looking for a house, his voice suddenly shot up. “Whoa! Matriarch, why didn’t you tell me you were looking for a place? If there’s one thing I have, it’s houses. Do you want a villa or a luxury flat? Do you prefer the convenience of the city or the peace and quiet of the suburbs?”

“C’mon, why are you being so formal with me? We’re practically family! I have so many houses just sitting empty. It’s better to let the Matriarch live in one! Just you wait, I’m busting out of this hospital right now to go pick out a house for my Matriarch!”

“Don’t leave yet! Or else you’ll…” Unfortunately, Shen Zhiyao didn’t get to finish before the call was disconnected.

「Half an hour later,」 Jin Fan arrived in a frantic hurry.

The moment his car stopped, he impatiently threw the door open to get out. The next second—BANG! An electric scooter slammed right into it.

Jin Fan was instantly knocked to the ground.

The gauze on his wound had just been changed; it was still pristine. But with this impact, fresh blood started streaming out, adding a new injury on top of the old one. The pain contorted his face.

The scooter rider was completely unharmed and started cursing him out. “Are you an idiot?! You don’t look behind you before opening your door? You trying to get someone killed?! Hey, you’re bleeding? That’s got nothing to do with me! I’m the victim here, so don’t you dare try to make me pay for anything!”

Jin Fan couldn’t have cared less about her money. He impatiently told her to leave, then clutched his injured leg and looked at Shen Zhiyao with a pitiful expression. “Sob… I’m so miserable!”

“I was in the hospital for a few days and almost forgot I was cursed with bad luck.”

With a sigh of resignation, Shen Zhiyao took the hairpin from her hair and handed it to Jin Fan. “You’d better stop pushing your luck, or else not even the best Peace Talisman will be able to save you.”

Jin Fan unabashedly stuffed the hairpin into his pocket. Only then did he notice that Shen Zhiyao was still wearing the same dark green qipao and brown coat.

He couldn’t help but ask, “Matriarch, don’t tell me this is the only outfit you own? You don’t change your clothes? You’ve earned a decent amount by now, haven’t you? No need to be *that* frugal, right?”

How could he have known that Shen Zhiyao was protected by Spiritual Power? Her clothes never gathered a speck of dust or dirt, so naturally, she didn’t need to change them daily.

But explaining that would make her sound very strange, so she just gave a perfunctory reply. “I’ve been busy lately. I’ll buy more when I have time. Your leg is still bleeding, why don’t you go to the hospital and get it bandaged first?”

Jin Fan quickly pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to the wound. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just a scratch! Let’s go look at houses first!”

Seeing that his injury wasn’t serious, Shen Zhiyao didn’t press the matter.

As for housing, Shen Zhiyao’s main requirements were a nice environment and a quiet place where she wouldn’t be disturbed.

So, Jin Fan listed all the properties in his name and let Shen Zhiyao take her pick.

Jin Fan owned quite a few properties, but he wasn’t good at managing them, so they just sat empty. They were the perfect thing to use to curry favor with Shen Zhiyao.

To make it easier for Shen Zhiyao to browse, he even pulled up pictures of the rooms in each property for her reference.

Shen Zhiyao looked through them one by one, then pointed to a particular villa. “This one. Longfeng Villa. The environment looks nice.”

Jin Fan froze. “That one’s not suitable. Let’s pick another one!”

Shen Zhiyao asked, “Why not?”

Jin Fan said, “Matriarch, you don’t know the story. Longfeng Villa is in a great area, the location and environment are both top-notch. But every night, a bizarre singing voice can be heard. It got so bad that the owners who bought homes there didn’t dare to live in them. They would move out in a hurry, even if it meant taking a loss. After that, more and more villas were left empty, and absolutely no one dared to buy them. Now that whole mountain is completely desolate. I wasn’t paying attention just now, or I definitely wouldn’t have shown you this one.”

Longfeng Villa was positioned as a high-end villa community.

The developer had a good relationship with the Jin family, and hearing that they were looking to acquire a new residence, they gifted them a villa. It was the “king unit”—the largest and best-positioned one in the entire development.

Back then, Mrs. Jin spent hundreds of millions on renovations, only to discover there was a problem with the villa afterward. Naturally, no one has lived there since.

High-end villas are already hard to resell, let alone one with problems. It was completely unsellable.

That happened to be the year of Jin Fan’s 18th birthday, so Mrs. Jin gave the villa to him as a present.

At first, Jin Fan didn’t know there was anything wrong with the villa. He cluelessly brought his friends over to the luxury villa to throw a birthday party.

Everyone was having a wild time, and the music was blasting loud enough to be deafening.

But suddenly, the rock music turned into piercing screams:

“AHHHHHH—”

“AHHHHHH—”

“UGH, AHHHHH, DON’T KILL ME—”

Woven into the piercing screams was a low, bizarre melody:

“Sister’s carrying her dolly, oh… To the cherry tree they go. The dolly’s crying, ’Mama, dear!’ The birds in the tree just laugh and sneer…”

“What the hell? Who the fuck is pulling a prank on my birthday!” At the time, Jin Fan thought it was a joke. The sound system was right next to him, so he tried to adjust it, but no matter what he did, the song wouldn’t change.

Furious, Jin Fan shut the sound system off completely.

But the bizarre music continued:

“Ohh~ Mama~ Mama…

Wooo wooo wooo…

Hee hee hee, la la la la—”

Even now, just talking about what happened that day, Jin Fan still trembled in fear.

He said to Shen Zhiyao, on the verge of a breakdown, “Ever since then, I have to take a detour even if I’m just passing near that villa community! It’s cursed, I tell you, seriously cursed! The developer even hired a Metaphysics master to perform an exorcism at Longfeng Villa, but it was useless. Completely useless. Now that whole mountain is just abandoned.”

Shen Zhiyao said, “So it’s quiet. Perfect for someone like me, whose mind is as calm as still water.”

“What? You’d really live there? It’s haunted! Aren’t you scared at all?” Suddenly, he seemed to realize something. “Right. You can even purify an evil ghost, of course you’re not afraid.”

“Alright, since you’ve taken a liking to that house, I’ll give it to you!”

Shen Zhiyao asked, “How much did your family pay for it originally?”

Jin Fan waved his hand. “Didn’t spend a dime, the developer gave it to us. Of course, they needed a favor from the Jin family, otherwise they wouldn’t have just given us a house for free.”

“Later, it was my birthday, right? I wanted to buy the newest model sports car and asked my mom for thirty million.”

“So my mom gave me this villa instead. She said property holds its value, and since I was an adult now, I should learn to manage my finances. I actually thought she had a point. I figured it wouldn’t be too late to sell it and get a car once I got tired of living there.”

“Who knew my mom would screw me over like that! The house is haunted, it’s completely unsellable! If I’d known, I would have just asked her for the thirty million in the first place!”

“Alright, thirty million then. But I don’t have that much money to give you right now. I can only give you seventeen million first. I’ll give you the rest once I’ve earned it.”

From Shen Zhiyao’s perspective, a detached villa like this was much better than buying an apartment in a residential building shared by dozens of people.

Jin Fan quickly said, “…”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep