Jiang Youyou moved away. It is said three moves equals to one fire (That means frequent moves will make a lot of loss). Fortunately she didn’t have many belongings. She casually packed all of them into a big plastic woven bag.

The new house was far away from the madding crowd of the downtown area. It would took her two and a half hours to the city centre by the only one bus, which would crookedly drive down the road every thirty minutes. For most of time one could only see tuktuks driven by green grocers who had purchased fresh vegetables and poultry from the farmers in the villages. You could rarely see taxis. Even if you saw one, it was passing by occasionally and went like a gust of wind without leaving a single shadow.

The house agent said the interior decoration of the small building was in fact rather good. The landlord had gone abroad and would be back at most once a year. He rented out the building mainly for fear that it would turn in ruins when unoccupied, otherwise the rent wouldn’t be so low.

This self-contained three-storey small building sent chills down her spine when Jiang Youyou first saw it. The sharp-pointed roof was covered with dark green creepers and the gloomy walls were full of moss. She pushed the gate open and entered to be greeted by a clammy smell mixed with a faint odour of rotting animal bodies.To watch carefully, she could see small dead mice in the sewer had been washed white by long- deposited stagnant water and their skeletons loomed out.

Inside the parlour two portraits of deceased old persons were enshrined. Black-and-white photographs in black frames made the atmosphere depressing at this rainy dusk. One of the lights in the parlour was out of work, so the dim light make you feel the autumn was coming ahead of time.

“Don’t be afraid. Those are the photos of the landlord’s parents. They have already passed away. The landlord kept enshrining their photos on the table in case they didn’t want to leave home. You can just think they don’t exist.

Jiang Youyou had a cramp in the leg. It was perhaps because of her uncured wound. Although she was unable to feel the pain, she felt a little unsteady, so she sat down on the big chair in the parlour, drew out the money and counted the bills earnestly.

“That’s weird — it feels like a ghost house.” Jiang Youyou looked at the house agent and said, “Isn’t it because of this the rent is that low?” The agent was still that young glassed man who wore a short-sleeve shirt and tie. He was fair-skinned. In the murky light his features seemed to have little to do with his face but just floated on it. He smiled eerily. “Do you believe in these? The flat I rented to you last time didn’t have a good fengshui, so you confronted the robbery with knife and blood. Therefore this time I’ll show you the house for free. The fengshui here is rather good, and it is quiet here. What’s more, it is very convenient for you to buy ingredients for cooking.”

It was indeed very convenient. Jiang Youyou could smell the fertilizer in the vegetable fields coming along the wind five hundred meters away.

OK. This was the house she would rent. The Brother Agent said she could hire some peasant workers nearby at a price of twenty yuan per hour to clean up the sewer. And the walls could also be re-whitewashed. But it must be done on a sunny day so that the wall could dry completely in three days. She could put the useless things into the storeroom. She could use the first floor as the dining room and the second floor as the bedroom. On the third floor, there were a loft and a balcony which would be used for every purposes. It would cost her only one hundred thousand yuan per year. If she grew some plants in the yard, you could even say this was a villa, Jiang Youyou relieved herself thus.

She went to the bank to deposit her money. The beauty in China Merchants Bank felt suspicious about the stains of blood on the bills, but she checked them out and said with a smile, “Are you sure that you are going to open a bank account to deposit these seventy thousand yuan into our bank?”

The bank beauty had very fair skin, and there was a black beauty nevus in the middle of her forehead. When she smiled, she made you feel a kind of willingness to give her the money for the exchange of that little card. Jiang Youyou sniffed and nodded.

In the bank lobby a tall uniformed boy brought her a cup of hot coffee and asked her to rest on the sofa and then brought a pile of forms to her and taught her how to fill them in..

The cool wind from the air conditioner and the warm coffee plus the smile of the handsome boy made Jiang Youyou sense a sudden feeling of peace.

A familiar figure entered the bank.