I then asked the contractor, "Has your wife mentioned to you that she's been earning some money recently?"

The contractor looked at me, stunned. "Are you joking, Master? With my wife's looks, where could she possibly make money?"

But if her Wealth Palace was shining, then the money should still be in her hands.

There was definitely something fishy going on, and since I couldn't see the man possessing her, I asked Cheng Xinghe if he had any insights.

Cheng Xinghe habitually held out his hand. "Give me money, and I'll speak."

Hmph, the contractor didn't have any money, and I knew that. I wasn't even planning on charging much this time. But he was still so greedy. One thing was one thing, and even though I had just earned 800,000, if I had to put my own money in, it would create a debt between the contractor's family and me, and I didn't want to complicate things.

So I slapped his hand away. "You're at the Yellow Stage and don't even think about increasing your merit. You just think about money all day. Isn't that like throwing away the watermelon and picking up sesame seeds?"

Cheng Xinghe looked surprised and immediately said, "Who are you looking down on? Who's at the Yellow Stage? I've been at the Earth Stage for a while now!"

I didn't call him out on his bluff, but he was obviously feeling a little guilty about overstating his abilities. "Fine, consider today a promotional offer!" he said.

Then he lowered his voice and said to me, "This thief is actually quite wealthy."

What? I didn't quite understand that. Thieves are poor and that's why they steal and are chased by people every day. Where would they get money? If they had money, why would they be thieves?

I asked Cheng Xinghe to explain what he meant.

Cheng Xinghe told me that when people die, they appear in the afterlife wearing the same clothes they had on when they died. The dead man possessing the contractor's wife was wearing a Gucci shirt, Versace pants, and an Hermes belt. He was covered in logos and was clearly a wealthy man. Who knew why he had broken into the house to steal?

I thought to myself that Cheng Xinghe wasn't an expert on luxury goods. What if the thief had bought a bunch of knock-off clothes, or what if he had stolen these clothes from someone else's house?

At that moment, the contractor looked at his wife's dry, cracked lips and quickly tried to give her some water. But his wife suddenly stood up and threw the glass on the ground. The glass shattered, and she lay down on the shards and rolled around, cutting her pale skin and causing it to bleed profusely.

She shouted, "Pay up! Pay up! An eye for an eye, and a debt must be repaid! Hee hee hee..."

I watched, my hair standing on end. Wow, this was almost as bad as the Ten Cruel Tortures of the Qing Dynasty. This thief really wanted to torture this woman to death!

The contractor was obviously heartbroken, but it seemed that this wasn't the first time his wife had harmed herself. He skillfully picked her up and used a tweezer to carefully remove the glass shards, one by one. It made my skin crawl to watch. As he picked, he started to cry, saying that his wife was usually so kind and wouldn't even step on an ant. How could she be suffering such karmic retribution? It was truly unfair.

As he picked, his wife showed no sign of pain. She just stared at us and cursed, "Accomplices! Accomplices!"

There are actually many ways to deal with a vengeful spirit. I could have slapped her in the mouth with the sole of my shoe or beaten her back with a salt-dipped willow branch. But this woman did owe the thief her life, and I needed to figure out the cause and effect and mediate. If I acted rashly, I could easily make the situation even more chaotic.

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So I directly communicated with his wife and asked, "Tell me, how do you want to pay back this debt?"

His wife grinned at me and said, "I don't want money, I just want his life."

Well, how was I supposed to negotiate with that?

I asked the contractor if he had a photo of the thief.

The contractor shook his head and said that he had never seen the thief before.

If I could see the thief's face, maybe I could figure out something.

Just then, someone knocked on the door. "Lao Si, are you home?"

The contractor quickly wiped away his tears, put on a nonchalant expression, and opened the door. "Zhang Man, what is it?"

Shit, Zhang Man? Could it be my particularly talkative female classmate?

But the name Zhang Man was pretty common, so I held out hope that it was just someone with the same name.

Unfortunately, what I feared came to pass. Even though it had been a long time since I'd seen her, the person outside the door was indeed Zhang Man.

She had put on some weight since high school, but her features were unchanged. She still had a thin, sharp tongue, and now her head was full of curlers, dressed like a landlady. At the moment, one hand was propped against the doorframe, and her eyes were darting around, full of curiosity. "I just heard from someone in the neighborhood that you found a new mr. expert. I'm just here to check on your wife. How did it go?"

But when she saw me, her expression changed. "Wow, Li Beidou, it's you, the con artist! I didn't expect you to make your way into our neighborhood. You're quite something!"

It turned out that Zhang Man was their neighbor and lived next door. She often came to their house to visit, and I could see that she loved to take advantage of people and borrow whatever she could. It was also obvious that, despite their seemingly harmonious relationship, the contractor was actually quite annoyed with her.

The contractor looked surprised and said in disbelief, "You two are old classmates?" Then he thought about it again. He had seen my abilities at the Shanghe Temple with his own eyes, so he quickly said, "Since you're familiar with each other, then..."

Zhang Man waddled over and said, "We're old classmates. Who doesn't know him? I'm here today thanks to good fortune, otherwise, you would have been fooled by him, wouldn't you?"

While talking, she saw Cheng Xinghe and her eyes lit up with amazement. She quickly straightened her hair rollers and winked at me, asking who this handsome young man was.

I didn't bother responding to her, and Cheng Xinghe gave her a glance but also ignored her. She then twisted her waist like a snake and went to link arms with Cheng Xinghe, saying, "Young man, you look so talented and impressive. I didn't expect you to be so skilled. Hey, by the way, you've seen enough here, right? It just so happens that there's something wrong with my house. Could you take a look at it for me?"

The foreman's expression immediately darkened. "Zhang Man, we haven't argued with you about borrowing things in the past, but as you can see, these two gentlemen are here to save my wife's life. How could you..."

"Hey, how can you be so stingy?" Zhang Man pouted unhappily. "You're so whiny and lack masculinity."

Yo, she's the one who's being unreasonable, but she's the one accusing others. This made the foreman so angry that his eyes bulged.

However, people with sharp tongues love gossip, and with her pointed ears and fondness for snooping, she might know something.

I said it was fine, and we could take a look for her first.

Zhang Man looked very unhappy when she heard that I was coming too, but I'm not her mother, so I didn't care about her feelings.

Cheng Xinghe looked very pained when Zhang Man tugged at him, but in order to investigate this matter, he would have to sacrifice his good looks.

Zhang Man had wanted me to come to their house to check the feng shui before, and she had cursed when she heard about the fee. Today, when we came to take a look, their house's feng shui was indeed not good. The reception room of their house was filled with messy paintings. This position was the peach blossom spot, and the smoky atmosphere made me suspect that her husband had a woman on the side.

And she didn't really want us to check the feng shui. Instead, she wanted to pry into the foreman's family matters: "Young man, what did you see at their house? That woman has never been a good person. You shouldn't help her. I'm warning you, if you help an evil person, you'll suffer karma."

I heard that there was actually a lead, so I asked Zhang Man to elaborate.

It turned out that the foreman's wife was very vain and looked down on others. She always spoke to others with her nose in the air. The last time Zhang Man complimented her bag, she said, "If you like it so much, you can look at it as much as you want. You'll never be able to afford it in your life." This made Zhang Man so angry.

Moreover, she didn't get along well with her neighbors. The last time she parked badly and blocked the road, it was actually her fault. An old man rode an electric scooter and accidentally bumped into her car while passing by. It wasn't a big deal, and he apologized and said he would let his child compensate her. But when his wife saw it, she immediately called a group of people and beat the old man. What she did was inhumane.

However, that woman seemed to have a dark background, and the old man's family was too afraid to speak up. The people in the neighborhood didn't dare to offend her either. When they heard that she had suffered misfortune, they all said it was karma.

Then, Zhang Man lowered her voice and said, "And there's more. I'll tell you, but don't say it was me who told you. I actually knew the thief who fell to his death."