Chapter 20: The Missing Files

Dai Heming seemed to be recalling something; he forced himself to steady his nerves, looking at Shen Lin with a hint of dread.

"You—what did you do?"

Shen Lin smiled and spread his hands.

"Nothing much. I just let you experience a little something. Since it’s troublesome to explain, it’s better to let you experience it firsthand. It’s more straightforward that way."

He admitted it! Dai Heming’s pupils constricted. Even a man as seasoned and masterful in the business world as he was now felt his composure slipping.

Humanity is always filled with fear when faced with the unknown; it is a primal reverence from the depths of the heart, and one should indeed remain reverent.

"An illusion? Or...?" Dai Heming dared not continue. He was absolutely certain that the young man before him possessed immense power and that he acted with the confidence of one who had nothing to fear.

Shen Lin smiled.

"Just a little trick. The space you are currently in is called a Ghost Domain; it is the domain of evil spirits. Due to some accidents, it is now under my control."

"To put it hyperbolically, everything within this space is subject to my command. For instance..."

Shen Lin pointed a finger.

Dai Heming watched in horror as his own lower body withered into dry bone. Even more terrifying was the fact that he could still control every movement of those bones, as if he had become a half-skeleton man.

Dai Heming intended to say something more, but he noticed that among the terrified crowd, someone had snapped out of it.

It was Dai Henian! Having just emerged from the depths of fear, a frantic Dai Henian, seeing the gruesome state of his brother, reached to his waist and drew a pistol.

Disengaging the safety, firing—it was all one fluid motion.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

He fired continuously until the magazine was empty.

The catharsis allowed Dai Henian to calm down slightly, but then he saw Dai Heming, who now looked like a sieve under the hail of his bullets.

Panic, helplessness—it was a fear that slowly descended into despair, because one realizes there is nothing they can do.

In the midst of the panic, the young man’s voice rang out again.

"This is what I told you. In the Ghost Domain, everything here is decided by me."

*Snap!*

With a crisp sound of snapping fingers, it was as if time and space had shifted. Dai Heming looked at himself in utter disbelief.

In his perception, he should have already been dead, lying in a pool of blood.

He looked at the young man once more, his worldview—built over forty years—collapsing continuously within a few minutes, becoming nonsensical and incomprehensible.

"Don't understand?" Shen Lin asked with a smile.

Dai Heming nodded reflexively; he had even given up on thinking.

Shen Lin asked again, "How are you so sure that what he was holding was a gun?"

"Maybe... it was a banana?"

The moment the words left his lips, the pistol in Dai Henian’s hand, which had just fired multiple times, turned into a bright yellow banana. Dai Henian shrieked and threw the banana away in terror. In his eyes, Shen Lin was no different from a devil.

Incredible, breathtaking, incomprehensible.

A storm of emotions flooded Dai Heming’s mind. He glanced quietly at Daoist Jin Xia, who had turned into a living corpse, his eyes filled with wariness.

Shen Lin followed his gaze, and with a flash of gray light, the living corpse vanished, replaced by the hale and hearty Daoist Jin Xia, who had been sound asleep for some time.

***

Dai Heming was numb. He swallowed hard, stood up, and his legs felt weak. He walked over to Shen Lin, his demeanor visibly humbled.

"How should I address you?"

"My surname is Shen. Shen Lin," Shen Lin reiterated.

"Mr. Shen, could you... could you restore them first?" Dai Heming glanced cautiously at his colleagues, who were acting like madmen; he seemed to see himself from a few minutes ago, looking utterly pathetic.

"No problem." Shen Lin chuckled, and with a wave of his right hand, the others seemed to wake from a dream.

Looking at the familiar surroundings, the transition from sheer terror to complete comfort was a jarring, intense experience. Many immediately collapsed to the floor, panting like oxen.

Shen Lin snapped his fingers again, and the noisy crowd vanished. The entire world seemed to have been put on mute.

A Ghost Domain has limited utility against powerful evil spirits—trapping them but not harming them—but against ordinary people or Ghost Controllers, it is a lethal weapon, a terror they cannot resist.

Dai Heming accepted all of this; he forced himself to accept it. If he had previously held an attitude of "better safe than sorry," he now worshipped Shen Lin like a god.

"Mr. Shen, what... what would you like to discuss?"

Finally reaching the main point, Shen Lin narrowed his eyes.

"Boss Dai, I won't hide it from you. Although that old Taoist was spouting nonsense and full of crooked theories, he was right about one thing: this place is indeed unclean."

Dai Heming nodded. He had no choice but to nod; when one is under the eaves, one must bow one’s head.

Whatever Shen Lin said was the truth now—the real was real, and the fake was also real. With his life in someone else's hands, there was no point in arguing.

"I can help you resolve it," Shen Lin dangled the bait. This was the true purpose of his visit.

"Mr. Shen, tell me what I must do," Dai Heming said earnestly, not sounding like he was merely humoring him.

Shen Lin’s smile widened. He liked dealing with smart people; it saved a lot of trouble.

"Four hundred million," Shen Lin said, gesturing toward the unconscious Daoist Jin Xia. "You were willing to pay this charlatan four hundred million, so I assume my price is quite reasonable."

Within the Supernatural Forum, the starting price for resolving a supernatural incident was in the tens of millions of dollars; a request for four hundred million was truly not much.

"Eight hundred million. Mr. Shen, your price is eight hundred million. If you can truly resolve this, I, Dai Heming, will offer eight hundred million with both hands. If you need me for anything in the second half of my life, I will not have a single word of objection."

Shen Lin looked at Dai Heming with genuine appreciation. He was truly worthy of being the richest man in Daxia and a leader among the top 500 enterprises in the country; his vision and breadth of mind were incomparable to ordinary people.

Dai Heming clearly understood that money was just money; if it were gone, it could be earned again. But one only had one life; once it was gone, it was truly gone.

Moreover, according to Shen Lin, the so-called evil spirit was real. If it weren't resolved, it wouldn't just be one or two people affected; the entire residential compound would suffer.

Dai Heming knew his priorities.

"I like talking to smart people. Afterward, I will give you an account number. Deposit fifty million into it, and help me convert the rest into an equivalent amount of gold and send it to me. I will give you the address later. Any problems?" Shen Lin asked.

"No problem," Dai Heming replied without hesitation.

Eight hundred million might be difficult for other companies to mobilize, but for someone in real estate, who didn't have some liquid capital? He could afford it.

"Now, let’s talk about what you’ve encountered."

He snapped his fingers again, and the surroundings returned to normal.

As everyone gathered once more to discuss the renovation of the Longhu Villa compound, the person in charge was now a young man.

Having experienced such terror, they looked at Shen Lin with dread; those he looked at even offered awkward, fawning smiles.

Shen Lin did not speak, and no one dared to speak. He was like a dictator here, his word was law.

***

"When was the first incident discovered?"

The people around looked at each other, eventually focusing their gazes on Dai Heming.

Dai Heming spoke slowly.

"A month ago, a housekeeper in our compound disappeared mysteriously. The family reported it to the police, but we checked the surveillance and found nothing, so the matter was dropped."

"At first, we didn't take it too seriously, but the strange thing was what happened afterward. We received more and more reports. People kept disappearing from the compound, one after another, yet the surveillance showed nothing."

"What was the frequency?" Shen Lin asked.

"Three days ago, we conducted a thorough census. It’s about one person every day," Dai Heming answered honestly.

One a day? Shen Lin narrowed his eyes.

The danger level of this ghost was not high; in fact, it could be called extremely low, the kind that was inconspicuous even among C-class threats.

Its range of interference must be limited, capable of forming a pattern on only one person per day.

"Are there records? Missing persons files?" Shen Lin asked, attempting to find a common trait from the records to deduce the ghost’s pattern.

"Yes, yes, Mr. Shen, please wait." Dai Heming agreed repeatedly and ran to the side to make a phone call.

About ten minutes later, a very beautiful woman arrived late. With a curvaceous figure and clean, sharp attire—professional business wear paired with black stockings and high heels—she looked every bit the corporate elite.

This must be his secretary, Shen Lin thought.

Dai Heming took several folders from her. They were express-printed, and to ensure everyone present could read them, he had printed multiple sets.

Shen Lin took one of the folders and opened it to browse through it.

"Wen Yumei, female, 54, occupation: housekeeper, employed at Longhu Villa No. 34, disappeared on..."

"Qian Hegen, male, 41, occupation: driver, employed at Longhu Villa No. 21, disappeared on..."

"Zhou Ruocai, male, 35, occupation: designated driver, employed at Longhu Villa No. 14, disappeared on..."

Counting the 27 missing persons, more than half were outsiders, which made Shen Lin frown.

What was this? Did people who didn't live in the compound trigger the pattern? But there were also residents of the compound among the missing.

Did entering and exiting the compound trigger it? Then why weren't the security guards the first to be affected? In terms of entering and exiting, they were certainly the most frequent.

"Any others? Since it was only tallied three days ago, are there records for the missing people from these past three days?"

Dai Heming shook his head and gave a bitter smile.

"Everyone living here is a person of status; most are away on business year-round. It took a great deal of effort just to conduct one census; we haven't checked since."

Shen Lin nodded. It was inconsequential. From the current look of it, the existence of those three files didn't matter much; after all, everyone in the files had nothing in common, and no one could make sense of it after reading them.

Others wanted to speak, but they noticed the lights in the living room flickering.

Dai Heming was about to scold someone, but then he remembered it was daytime. The lights in the living room were extremely bright, and his villa was in the position with the best sunlight, so they hadn't been turned on at all.

His pupils shook. Dai Heming wanted to say something, but he saw that everything around him had dimmed. In the darkness, blood-red light was encroaching upon everything like an erosion.

He turned his head in a panic, wanting to confirm something.

But he saw hands, withered like old tree bark, reaching out to choke his throat.