Chapter 63: Double-Crossed

"Is your construction site far from here?"

I asked.

"Not far at all, not far. It's just a two or three-hour drive," the middle-aged man hastily replied.

"Then let's go right now. I'd like to inspect the site in person."

With that, I stood up.

The old man rose with me, and together we walked out of the café and got into the middle-aged man's car.

Perhaps because he was far too anxious for us to solve his problem, the middle-aged man had exaggerated a bit.

Not far? Not at all.

This place was located in the furthest outskirts of the ancient capital.

What with the drive and the traffic along the way, it took us a solid four or five hours to arrive.

By the time we got there, night was already falling.

It left both the old man and me with our stomachs growling continuously.

"Didn't you say it wasn't far? Dragging me all the way out here has really worn me out. This won't do; I think you need to add a bit more to the payment."

As soon as he stepped out of the car, the old man's catchphrase popped right out.

"Add more money? You two, I really don't have any more cash to spare," the real estate developer pleaded. "In our line of work, assets are tied up in movable and immovable property. Our cash flow is far from abundant."

I didn't find this statement incorrect.

Generally, real estate developers of this caliber are rolling in wealth and place tremendous importance on feng shui.

They won't hesitate to spend six or seven figures hiring feng shui masters.

They firmly believe that the more money they spend, the better results they will get.

The reason he came directly to the Li family this time was probably because of their reliability and their past cooperative relationship.

He had only turned to the old man and me out of absolute desperation.

"Ah, don't get worked up. It's just a habit of mine to say that. Just add a little something, one or two thousand will do, even a few hundred and I won't fuss," the old man quickly added.

He really said that out of pure habit.

Demanding extra money at every turn had simply become his mantra.

Upon hearing the sum of one or two thousand, the middle-aged man finally let out a sigh of relief. He had been bracing himself for tens of thousands more. "Then let's add 1,888. It has a much better ring to it."

"Take us to get something to eat first."

The area around this construction site was a chaotic mess. If I had to search for a place to eat on my own, I honestly wasn't sure I'd find one.

"Aren't the two of you going to take a look first?" the middle-aged man asked.

"What can you possibly see in broad daylight? We have to wait until the middle of the night to examine things properly."

I had glanced over the building area earlier. At first glance, there genuinely didn't seem to be any major issues. While the feng shui layout wasn't exceptionally superior, it was certainly a decent location with favorable elemental alignments.

"Very well then. There isn't much to eat around the site, but I'll have the camp cook whip up a few dishes for you two, and I'll get some liquor as well. The accommodations are a bit crude, so please bear with us."

With that, the middle-aged man headed off toward the kitchen to make arrangements.

As for the food, I wasn't particularly picky. As long as it wasn't completely inedible, a few bites to tide me over would suffice.

After all, I wasn't raised in the lap of luxury.

When I was a child, my grandfather did all the cooking, and his culinary skills were mediocre at best. Didn't I still happily eat his meals for over a decade?

After the middle-aged man left, the old man and I didn't just stand around. Spotting a worker's shed, we walked straight inside.

This was where the laborers rested. Inside, the smell of sweat, cigarette smoke, instant noodles—dozens of different odors blended together. Upon walking in, the stench was so potent it nearly knocked me unconscious.

Since they were hard laborers, they weren't particularly fussy about such things.

I didn't look down on them either; they earned an honest living through their own labor, so who had the right to judge?

It was just that the smell was truly a bit much to endure.

"Who are you looking for?"

Inside the shed, a worker playing landlord stood up and asked.

Work had been suspended for a while now, and many of the laborers had returned to their hometowns waiting for the notice to resume work. Only a few had been forcibly kept behind by the middle-aged man to watch over the site.

"We're friends of your boss. I came by to ask you all a few questions," I said.

"Friends of the boss? Here to look at the feng shui, I suppose?" the man said bluntly.

"How did you know?" The old man looked puzzled. It was our very first time here, yet the other party had guessed it instantly?

"The boss has brought in several feng shui masters recently, and not a single one of them was any good."

The man cast a disdainful look at the two of us, probably assuming we were just another pair of frauds.

I had assumed the middle-aged man came directly to the Li family, but it turned out he had consulted several others before us.

"Useful or not, we take people's money to help resolve their disasters."

I sat down on a relatively clean stool and asked, "How much do you know about the incidents happening here?"

"Me? Don't ask me about this. The boss issued a gag order forbidding anyone from talking about it casually, even if you're feng shui masters. If you want to know, go ask the boss—aren't you his friends?"

The worker shook his head.

I glanced at the old man, Zhang Yuxuan, gesturing for him to take out a pack of cigarettes and hand them to the worker.

"Of course I've already asked your boss. I'm just verifying things with you now to see if there's anything he missed," I said with a friendly smile to break the ice. "After all, your boss doesn't visit the site often, but you're here all the time and must be quite familiar with the place."

I was worried the middle-aged man might have left certain details out.

Besides, these workers definitely understood the situation better than he did.

"You really want me to talk?"

The worker took the cigarette, still looking somewhat hesitant.

"Don't worry. If your boss gives you any trouble, I'll shield you from it." I motioned for him not to hold anything back and to tell us everything he knew.

"I heard that our boss was sabotaged by someone. Back then, another party was bidding against him for this project, but our boss snatched it away first. That person went and hired a Taoist priest to cast evil magic and stir up trouble at this construction site. The whole purpose is to ruin our boss's reputation and drive him bankrupt!"

The bare-chested worker lit a cigarette, lowered his voice, and spoke to the old man and me.

Sabotaged?

The middle-aged man had never mentioned this to the old man or me.

True, even if this was just secondhand gossip, it still counted as a lead.

"What else?" I continued pressing, "Tell me everything you've heard, as well as the ghost-related incidents that happened here."

"As for the haunting, I don't know much about it myself. I only heard about it; I didn't witness it with my own eyes. It happened in the dead of night. One of the workers urgently needed to relieve himself. The construction site was a mess, and just grabbing any random corner to pee was a common occurrence. When he walked around a corner, he suddenly heard crying sounds all around him."

"Just imagine—it's the middle of the night, pitch black, and you hear a woman crying. It scared the living daylights out of that worker, and he bolted back as fast as he could. But even after he returned to the shed, the sound of crying kept echoing endlessly in his ears."

"At that time, the other workers in the shed had been working hard all day and were snoring like thunder. That worker wanted to wake someone up to talk about it, but he was afraid of disturbing their rest..."