Global Collapse

Chapter 49 Cursed Land
The landlord welcomed them inside.

Gu Mian sat on the sofa and inquired about the textile factory: "I came here today to ask about Shenghong Textile Factory. You know this factory, right?"

The landlord was taken aback at first, then nodded: "I know, I know, I used to be a long-time employee of that factory... This apartment building used to be the staff quarters of the textile factory, you can see the names are similar."

Only after she said that did Yuwen Hao realize what was going on.

Shenghong Textile Factory and Hongsheng Apartment are simply two names that are reversed with one character changed.

"Do you know about the fire at Shenghong Textile Factory? I heard that a woman died in the fire."

The landlady was stunned upon hearing this. She looked at Gu Mian and the others with a strange expression: "Why are you asking this?"

“Some of us have encountered some strange things that may be related to this dead person.”

Upon hearing this, the landlord's wrinkled face revealed an "I knew it" expression. She looked at Gu Mian, then at the others, as if she wanted to say something but hesitated.

After hesitating for a while, the landlord spoke again, but this time he lowered his voice as if afraid of being overheard: "To be honest, what happened after that woman died was indeed strange."

Yuwen Hao slightly opened his eyes and looked at the landlord with great eagerness.

The landlord then whispered, "I know that anyone involved in the fire incident doesn't end up well..."

She sighed and shook her head as she spoke.

Gu Mian asked, "Could you elaborate?"

"You can't just say things like that. After that person was burned to death, everyone connected to her encountered strange things, like a curse. It's as if everyone is haunted by her."

"After she died, the factory's business declined, and it went bankrupt not long after. I don't know if it was haunted by her."

"People who were even slightly close to her in the past have all suffered misfortunes in their families; I know of almost everyone who's died."

"At first, everyone said that she died with resentment, which is why she keeps haunting the living. But we've offered sacrifices, performed rituals to help her pass on, and even hired a shaman to perform a rite, but we still couldn't get rid of her."

"Later, everyone who knew her got into trouble. Everyone was on edge, and no one dared to mention that person again, for fear that if they did, she would haunt them..."

Gu Mian frowned slightly. With such a strong sense of resentment, could it be murder?

Yuwen Hao also asked the question: "Who set the fire?"

The landlord paused for a moment, then hesitated before speaking, "She put it there herself."

Yuwen and the others were puzzled. If it was suicide, the resentment should not be so strong. Could there be other hidden reasons?

Gu Mian then asked, "Do you know why she set the fire?"

Was it because he suffered an immense injustice that he wanted to commit suicide? For example, being cheated out of money or sexually assaulted. If so, it's understandable that he would become a vengeful ghost after suicide. At this moment, the landlord suddenly looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper: "Originally, I couldn't tell you this, for fear of being haunted too. But thinking about it carefully, I'm getting old, just an old man with no long to live anyway, so I'll tell you secretly..."

“That person committed suicide. No one forced her or made her suffer any injustice. She truly committed suicide, and it had nothing to do with anyone else.”

It's strange. If no one made her suffer any injustice, why did she commit suicide?

The landlord continued, "If anyone's to blame, it's her own fault. Everyone knows that, but nobody dared to say anything at the time."

“I remember she died around 87. That year, electric lights seemed to have just become common in our area. There were power outages every day, and electricity was extremely expensive. We couldn’t afford to turn them on at night, so we just used a kerosene lamp, the kind with a glass shade, you know?”

Gu Mian nodded.

"That night she was on duty in the warehouse, with a kerosene lamp lit. But she dozed off during her shift, put the lamp aside, and went to sleep. When she woke up in the morning, she found that the lamp had set the goods in the warehouse on fire, burning several boxes."

"The person is alright. It seems the fire wasn't very big; it only burned a dozen or so boxes of goods before going out. But those boxes all contained items."

"All the odds and ends added up to a little over sixty yuan. Don't think sixty yuan is a small amount; that was in 87. I remember back then, our daily wage was only a few cents. Sixty yuan was an astronomical sum."

"The factory certainly couldn't bear these losses on its own, but we felt she couldn't afford to pay them herself, so we discussed it with her and asked her to pay half first, with the other half deducted from her wages."

"She was just an eighteen or nineteen-year-old girl back then, she had never seen anything like the world, where would she get money? Besides, she had several sisters in her family, and her parents had to pull strings to get her a job at the factory. She didn't dare go home and tell anyone about it."

"This matter was delayed again and again, for more than half a year. The factory couldn't wait any longer, so they said they were going to find her parents."

She panicked and tried to borrow money everywhere, but no one was willing to lend her any. In the end, she couldn't borrow even a few dollars.

"When she couldn't borrow money, she would curse people for being hypocritical and the factory for being heartless, trying to drive them to their deaths."

"After she finished yelling that day, she disappeared. The factory thought she had run away and planned to go to her house to look for her parents the next day. But who would have thought that the warehouse would catch fire again that night, and this time it was a huge fire."

"The girl who shared a dormitory with her saw her suicide note. She said she was driven to suicide by the factory and wanted to take that warehouse full of goods with her and die."

"But after the fire started, she seemed to regret it. I happened to be on duty at the time, and I heard her screaming for help inside, begging someone to come in and rescue her."

"The fire was huge, and it was nighttime, so there were hardly any people around. When she saw that no one was going in to save her, she started cursing... saying she cursed those heartless bastards to die a horrible death..."

"She didn't yell for long before she went silent inside... That night, a girl was on duty in the burning warehouse. Because she was far from the fire, she was also burned, but thankfully she was rescued... However, half of her face was burned, and her life is ruined."

"The girl's parents couldn't afford to raise her, so she was given to relatives at birth. She was already unwelcome, and with her face disfigured, her family simply abandoned her."

"I took pity on her and took her in, letting her stay with me... right across the street. If you want to know the specifics of what happened, you can ask her."

I never expected the Lunar New Year to be so busy! o(╥﹏╥)o
Thank you to the following for their generous donations: Eat Well, Drink Well, Sleep Well; Allure is for Lemon Sour; Ice Choice; Flowing Willow; Medicine Doesn't Grow; I Joined the Group for Urging Updates; Hua Zi Guo Guo; Lin Feng Han; Fairy; Fantasy Moon Shadow; sty1999; Qi Jiu 7979; Depressed Actress Sauce; After Drinking, Aha; and zyy869307. (ω)

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(End of this chapter)