For a moment, I didn’t dare to move either. That ghost didn’t do anything, just stood there stiffly, and I felt cold sweat pouring out nonstop.

After a while, I gradually calmed down and tried moving a little. The ghost still didn’t react, which made me a bit puzzled. Could it be a dumb ghost?

The sky was getting brighter and the scene over there became clearer bit by bit. Gathering my courage, I walked closer for a look, and immediately noticed that the ghost’s clothes looked very familiar.

My mind turned quickly and I immediately remembered—weren’t those the clothes William Carter was wearing last night? Looking more closely, the person squatting there—damn, it really was that old man.

Didn’t I send William Carter away yesterday? How could he be in my room? I was extremely puzzled. Turning my head, I saw that my room’s window was open. Could he have climbed in through the window? But I’m on the sixth floor—does this old man really have the legendary skill of walking on snow without leaving a trace? I thought about it and exclaimed, thinking to myself, don’t be fooled by how honest this old man looks—Shanxi is a place where bandits come from. Maybe this old man climbed into my room to double-cross me, planning to steal back the things he sold me?

I shouted twice, but the old man didn’t respond, just kept squatting there motionless. I thought he was playing dead, so I casually took a few coins out of my pocket and tossed them over, hitting the old man on the head. I called out, “Hey, William Carter, what’s going on? Did you forget something?”

The old man still didn’t move, as if he were dead. The coins fell to the ground with a crisp sound and rolled back to my feet.

I was a bit annoyed. Seeing that William Carter was skin and bones, I didn’t really need to be afraid of him. So I walked toward him. With no weapon at hand and worried the old man might try something, I grabbed a stool, walked four or five steps closer, and kicked the old man from a distance with my toe.

William Carter swayed a bit, then suddenly collapsed completely, like a pile of rotten mud, falling to the ground and still not moving. I smelled a strong odor of alcohol on him, and his graying hair was almost plastered to his face. My heart skipped a beat, and I seemed to realize something.

I immediately put down the stool and carefully felt the old man’s hand. The moment I touched it, my heart jumped—ice cold.

Experience told me something had happened. The old man like this—this was big trouble.

I felt around a few more times, but couldn’t find a pulse. Then I remembered the method I’d seen on TV for checking pupils, so I brushed the hair off his face to look at his eyes.

After just two brushes, I gasped. I was so scared I let go at once and backed up several steps.

Under the messy white hair stuck to his face, the old man was staring with all his might, his cloudy eyes wide open, pupils already dilated. What sent chills down my spine was that the corners of his mouth were twisted up at an inexplicable angle, and that expression—he was actually grinning menacingly.

I was really puzzled. What was going on? How did this old man, perfectly fine, end up dead in my room? Did he come here in the middle of the night to steal something, have a heart attack or a stroke halfway through and die? But what was with that expression?

What could he have seen to make him show such a terrifying expression? There was only me in the room—could it be that he saw me and died of fright? Am I really that ugly?

At the time, I wanted to go out and call the police, but then suddenly realized something was wrong. The old man died in my room—this was way too suspicious. When Raymond Clark comes later, what am I supposed to say?

I couldn’t tell the truth. I bought his stuff yesterday, which already counts as buying stolen goods. If I told the police, I’d end up in jail anyway. But if I didn’t say anything, things would get even more complicated.

Back then, people had a natural fear of the police, and my line of work was already a bit shady. Everyone in the business knew that hardly any antiques were clean—eighty percent of the antiques on the market, whether from a few days ago or a few hundred years ago, basically came from the ground or the sea. In theory, private individuals weren’t even allowed to own this stuff, so the money I made was basically illegal.

My mind was working fast, and I immediately realized I couldn’t call the police. It’s the same logic as criminals robbing other criminals—if I sold drugs and then killed the buyer, the buyer’s side absolutely couldn’t call the police. If they did, they’d be the first to end up in jail.

So what should I do? I was panicking, spinning around in place several times. Suddenly, a scene from a foreign movie popped into my head: dumping the body!

Thinking it over, it actually seemed doable! This old man wasn’t a local, dressed in rags, and he’d snuck into my room. I had nothing to do with him. As long as I dumped the body somewhere far away, there’s no way it would be traced back to me... but how would I transport it?

I remembered there was a cart for buying vegetables. There’s a bridge underpass dozens of miles outside Nangong, and basically no one lingers there in the morning. If I left the body there, people would definitely think the old man was a homeless beggar who froze to death.

Thinking of this, I didn’t even bother with my belt and ran downstairs to knock on Young Master’s door to borrow his cart.

Young Master was an early riser. He had just come back from buying vegetables at the morning market, where prices were much cheaper than at regular markets. So he was neatly dressed at this hour. When he opened the door and saw me like that, he thought I was there to borrow the bathroom. When he heard I wanted to borrow his cart, he found it very strange.