JOS Extra 4

Huang Yu helped her up and said, “Then I can tell you this. You really have encountered a ghost. You think you’re not in the wrong, so don’t try to convince me—go convince the ghost that wants to kill you.”

Jiang Yue sobbed and said, “How can you reason with a ghost?”

Huang Yu replied, “The ghost was an honest person who was deceived to death by you people. I think you’re the ones who can’t be reasoned with.”

Jiang Yue was choked by her words, feeling both angry and ashamed. She sat on the edge of the bed sobbing, while Huang Yu showed no intention of comforting her.

After about half an hour, the sound of water flowing from the roof finally disappeared.

Jiang Yue’s mood relaxed, and when she turned her head, she found Huang Yu leaning on her long staff, sitting on the other side playing with her phone.

Jiang Yue asked in a low voice, “Can you continue to stay with me?”

“Can you afford to pay me?” Huang Yu said without looking up. “Plus overtime fees. For long-term protection, double the rate. Three thousand per night.”

Jiang Yue gritted her teeth, seemingly still unwilling to give up. “I…”

“Looks like you have quite a bit of savings,” Huang Yu smirked and tilted her head slightly. “Instead of living in fear now and having to pay high fees, why didn’t you choose to be a decent person from the start?”

Jiang Yue said, “Are you certain I did something wrong?”

“Sister, I’m also an educated person who reads the news. You work at that financial company—I can guess what you did.” Huang Yu counted on her fingers. “One: you worked in customer service, helping the wicked. Two: as an internal employee, you deliberately deceived customers about predatory clauses in contracts, acting as an accomplice. Three: as an internal employee, you tampered with contract data for profit, embezzling from within. Pick one.”

Jiang Yue fell silent.

Huang Yu shook her head. “Looks like it’s a multiple-choice question after all.”

After hesitating, Jiang Yue still said, “Everyone at our company did this. Could I not do it? The one leading us was even the boss’s relative, our supervisor, which meant everyone tacitly approved. No matter how you look at it, it shouldn’t fall on us little people. Which industry doesn’t have unspoken rules?”

She paused and asked, “Everyone wants to take advantage—so who pays for these advantages?”

Did living off money earned through deception cause guilt?

Perhaps at first, but later she forgot about it.

After getting used to it, it became natural. She could calmly place herself among the crowd.

Jiang Yue retorted sharply, “I’m not like you Taoist priests who can earn money easily. Besides, there are fraudsters among Taoist priests too, right? Can you guarantee everything you say is the truth?”

Huang Yu changed her position and flipped her phone over to continue playing games.

“Today I won’t charge you money, for my friend’s sake. But I want to remind you—from now on, every time you spend money, that water sound will get closer and closer to you. As for what will happen when the water sound reaches your ear, I don’t know.” Huang Yu said, “I heard my friend encountered someone like this. Maybe I can ask him about it then.”

Jiang Yue became somewhat agitated, and her loose hairband fell off with her movements. “Are you truly unable to help me, or unwilling to help me?”

Huang Yu thought for a moment and made a gesture.

Jiang Yue said angrily, “Are you sick? I said so much and you just give me a ‘V’?!”

Huang Yu: “…I meant both.”

Jiang Yue: “…”

Huang Yu yawned and said, “The water sound stopped, right? If there’s nothing else, I’ll go home and sleep first. Good luck to you.”

Huang Yu couldn’t wait to leave. She stepped forward and opened the door.

Jiang Yue wanted to chase after her, but just as she stepped out, the motion sensor light came on, yet the stairway was already empty.

She stood for a while, feeling the cold air in the stairwell pressing in on her. In the end, she didn’t dare pursue and closed the door, returning to the bedroom.

The next day, Chu Xuanliang, who had been sent to spend the night with Mr. Xue, also returned to report the situation.

Several people gathered together to discuss the previous night’s events.

“Nothing happened,” Chu Xuanliang said. “There was some yin energy coming from all directions. Mr. Xue said he heard the sound of rushing water, but I didn’t hear it. The other party didn’t show themselves either. Don’t know what they’re planning.”

Huang Yu raised her hand. “Same here. Though I did chat and discovered some criminal facts. Should we confess to Old Ye?”

Chu Xuanliang said helplessly, “Oh, the one on my side was more cautious than yours. He told me a whole story about his entrepreneurial history, his difficult journey, and his lifelong integrity.”

“Really?” Huang Yu said, “Now that’s a real master.”

Chu Xuanliang: “If it’s true, then the tutoring business really makes money.”

“When did we Taoist priests fall to doing this kind of multi-faceted work? Are we police officers or psychologists?” Huang Yu clicked her tongue. “This life… and importantly, I didn’t even get paid last night.”

While Jiang Feng listened to their chat, he reported the situation to Officer Ye and asked if the background investigation on the relevant people had been completed. Xue Qi called in a panic.

“I heard it! Last night I heard the water sound again, and this morning I went upstairs to ask the neighbors, and asked those downstairs too. None of them got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and no one used water. I really encountered a ghost, didn’t I?”

Jiang Feng said, “If the sound was light, it’s also possible it came from floors above you, flowing down through the pipes.”

“I don’t know, but I’m just very scared!” Xue Qi said. “I’m out now. I want to come find you, is that okay?”

Jiang Feng heard some scattered background sounds from the call, including the harsh honking of horns.

Xue Qi seemed busy on her end, so after speaking, she remained silent for a while, not caring about his response.

Just as Jiang Feng was about to hang up, the breathing on the other end suddenly became heavy, and she angrily smashed something.

Jiang Feng asked one more question, “What happened to you?”

“I hit someone,” Xue Qi took a deep breath. “No, I encountered an insurance scammer.”

After saying this, Xue Qi hung up first.

Huang Yu turned her head. “Hit what?”

Jiang Feng was still looking at his phone. “Insurance scam.”

Huang Yu: “Tsk tsk tsk, what poor little thing is this?”

Officer Ye must have gotten up too and went to another department to get materials, editing and sending the main content to Jiang Feng.

After Jiang Feng hung up, the homepage notification showed Ye’s feedback.

He directly called back.

“You said Xue Qi’s family has no connection to this financial company?”

“Indeed no connection. Mr. Xue’s family runs an educational institution, and they have no apparent business dealings with that financial institution—no direct investment relationship anyway. I checked the investors related to the company, and they have no connections with Mr. Xue either. Besides, this financial company is located in S City, and while Mr. Xue’s business is spread quite wide, he hasn’t established any branches in S City yet.” Officer Ye said, “This financial company has been under investigation, though it’s not our department’s responsibility. I heard there are suspicions of dual contracts among internal employees, defrauding customers of a lot of money. Of course, the company’s methods weren’t very sophisticated to begin with, so that’s what’s being investigated recently.”

Jiang Feng: “What about Mr. Xue himself?”

Officer Ye said, “Well, I looked into their company’s founding history and found it somewhat strange.”

“How so?”

“How so? The competition in the tutoring industry is very fierce now, with several well-known companies already in the market. Tutoring institutions generally charge high fees, so when consumers choose, they pay more attention to reputation. And the tutoring business isn’t that easy either—there are many industry secrets. When everyone takes exams, they always want to predict questions. Whether you can predict questions correctly depends on whether you have sufficient connections. Even if you can’t predict questions accurately, you at least need to know some inside information to give your students a sense of security, right?” Officer Ye said, “When this tutoring institution achieved success, several companies in the market had basically stabilized. It started advertising heavily, bringing in faculty, building many branches and renting classrooms—very well-funded. I heard that at the time, some classes were planned for fifty-person classrooms, but only three or four people enrolled, yet they still ran the classes. Calculating this way, the costs were excessive. They survived for several years before gaining reputation and gradually starting to make money. So I wondered, where did they get so much money in the early stages?”

Huang Yu: “Are you sure he’s not just some rich second generation who casually made a hundred million first?”

“No,” Officer Ye said. “Both he and his wife came from modest backgrounds, and their parents couldn’t help with funding at all. Anyway, during those years, the two of them suddenly came up with a sum of money to use. But I can’t trace where it came from.”

Jiang Feng: “Alright.”

Halfway through the conversation, Jiang Feng’s phone started vibrating again. He looked and saw it was Xue Qi calling back. After telling Officer Ye, he ended that call first.

“I can’t come over,” Xue Qi said with undisguised irritation in her voice. “I’ve been particularly unlucky lately, always losing money. I really won’t stand for it. This time I’m going to fight him to the end. I’ve already sent this person to the hospital, had the doctor examine the injuries, got traffic police to record the evidence, and found a lawyer to analyze the dashcam footage. I don’t believe he can pull off this scam!”

Huang Yu interjected, “Wouldn’t that be even more expensive?”

Xue Qi: “I’m just angry now! It’s not about money at all! This kind of declining trend is systematic—I must see it through today! I’ll hang up now.”

She hung up decisively after speaking.

Looking at the screen that had gone black again, Jiang Feng slowly said, “I should have reminded her not to spend money carelessly.”

Currently, the more she spent, the faster her wealth would be depleted.

“Not spending money is impossible,” Huang Yu said. “Even using the bathroom requires toilet paper and flushing water—that all costs money.”

While Huang Yu was chatting casually, her phone rang.

“We really have a lot of business,” Huang Yu said regretfully after seeing the caller ID. “Too bad none of it’s paid work.”

She put the phone to her ear, and Jiang Yue shouted from the other end. “I just heard the sound of water flowing!”

“What?”

“Just now!” Jiang Yue’s voice was terrified. “Daytime! Morning! It suddenly appeared right by my ear, especially loud, really.”

Huang Yu glanced at Jiang Feng, immediately understood, and asked gravely, “How much money did you just spend?”

Jiang Yue continued speaking to herself, screaming. “Then I opened my phone and found our company’s app had appeared in my menu. When I opened it, the homepage showed my name, saying I had borrowed over one hundred thousand. I didn’t! I just slept! But all the money in my bank card disappeared. This makes no sense! I logged into our company’s main page, but I couldn’t find this transaction at all, and couldn’t cancel it.”

Huang Yu: “If you can’t find it, then it’s fine. You don’t have to pay it back.”

“No,” Jiang Yue said, covering her face and crying. “I had my mom transfer five thousand to me, but it just passed through my bank card for a moment before being transferred away immediately. The debt item showed that five thousand had been repaid. How is this possible?”