Chapter 369: The Noisy Neighbor

It had just finished raining a little.

The weather cleared up again, the sun remained scorching, and the puddles on the ground were quickly evaporated.

Seeing the old man looking like he had a long story to tell.

Wu Xian pulled the old man into the shade and diligently lit a cigarette for him.

The old man was already tired from moving, so he left the moving work to his children, while he sat with Wu Xian by the flower bed, puffing away and chatting to rest his feet.

"Your little building is a single-family unit, so you don't know, but life in this residential complex has become unbearable. Starting two months ago, someone has been chiseling the walls every night. I don't know if it's renovations or what, but it makes it impossible to sleep."

"I went to knock on every neighbor's door, and they all said it wasn't them, and they were also annoyed to death... It's all bullshit, someone is definitely lying."

Wu Xian echoed, "That really is lacking in manners. You should find the property management and have them handle it."

The old man didn't pick up on Wu Xian's point, scratching his lower back with one hand as he spoke.

"It's not just the noise. Ever since the sounds started, I haven't felt comfortable at home at all. It's like someone has been watching me the whole time—watching while I eat, watching while I sleep, watching even when I'm in the bathroom. I suspect someone must have installed a pinhole camera in my house!"

Wu Xian feigned surprise: "Then you should call the police."

The old man exhaled a large cloud of smoke.

"My daughter and son are heartless too. When I told them, they said I was just bored and making trouble, and they insisted I provide evidence before they'd believe me."

"What more evidence do I need? I'm at this age, could I still be lying?"

"For the past few days, I've been trying to catch them in the act, but my son won't let me live here anymore, insisting on taking me away..."

When the old man spoke, his face often wore an inexplicably fierce expression. His fingernails were full of dirt and grime, and he kept scratching his body; some places had even been scratched raw. Even Wu Xian would have thought he had mental health issues.

Wu Xian thought for a moment and said, "How about this, let me take a look. I used to work as a detective for a while. We're neighbors, so I won't charge you for this."

The old man casually threw the cigarette butt on the ground and walked out from the shade with a laugh.

"Detective my ass, who doesn't know you're just someone who catches cheating spouses? Anyway, I'm moving out, so I won't trouble you."

Under the shade.

Wu Xian scratched his chin.

This old codger was quite devious. He hadn't told him the truth, had been avoiding questions the whole time, and refused to seek help from the outside world, which suggested that he himself played an unsavory role in it.

Then Wu Xian went to the property management to ask around and found that most of the residents who had moved out recently lived in the same building as the old man, and all of them had reported noise issues.

This complex was very old, and when it was built, noise issues weren't considered. Even if only one household was noisy, the sound could travel very far, and every household in the building was plagued by it.

At this point.

Wu Xian no longer had any interest in continuing the investigation.

Neighborhood conflicts caused by noise issues were far too common. Not to mention causing people to move, some even escalated to wiping out entire families. Wu Xian had once encountered an auntie who went out in the middle of the night to bang on a metal basin throughout the complex; that was far more stimulating than this.

Additionally, when the old man spoke, he showed some symptoms of mental illness. Wu Xian even suspected that the source of the noise was him. He said he couldn't sleep because of the noise and felt he was being watched, just to clear himself of suspicion.

Now that the old man had moved out and the noise couldn't bother Wu Xian, Wu Xian couldn't be bothered to look into it further.

But Wu Xian was not what he used to be; he knew about the existence of malevolent entities.

So he decided that after finishing his late-night snack, he would go to the old man's house to take a look. If he confirmed there were no factors of malevolent entity influence, he would stop worrying about this mess.

Late at night.

The streetlights had all gone out.

The night was still, everything was silent, and the chirping of crickets came from the greenery by the street. Wu Xian easily bypassed the security guard playing games and the surveillance range of the cameras, arriving all the way in front of the stairwell where the old man's house was located.

The security of this kind of old residential complex could only be described as better than nothing. If it were truly useful, the stairwells wouldn't be covered in all sorts of small advertisements.

Wu Xian looked up and found that a few households still had their lights on.

He quietly walked up the stairs on tiptoe, trying his best not to let his footsteps travel too far.

This old building had seven floors in total, and the old man lived on the fourth floor. If he deliberately created noise, it could easily spread throughout the building, which further corroborated Wu Xian's conjecture.

Click.

Wu Xian easily opened the door with two pieces of wire.

The old man had just moved out, and no furniture was left in the house; it was like a bare, unfinished room, only in some places were old posters of early female singers pasted.

Some of these posters were on the floor, some on the walls, and there were even some on the ceiling.

Wu Xian saw at a glance that there was a problem with the posters. When he peeled them off, he found that underneath were all pits that had been chiseled out.

"Tsk..."

"This old man is too obsessed."

On the ceiling, the floor, and the walls, a total of nine pits could be found in the entire house.

Each pit was the size of a soccer ball, getting narrower the deeper it went. Wu Xian tested it with a wire and found that these pits almost broke through the partitions between the various households, and at the end, there was a small hole the size of a grain of rice.

On the walls around each pit, there were traces left by tape. Judging from the traces, this tape was used to secure wires.

"So this old man used some kind of tool to chisel the wall every midnight, and after breaking through, used a pinhole camera to peep at the neighbors?"

Wu Xian scratched his curly hair.

"This really is... a bit ridiculous."

The traces at the scene confirmed Wu Xian's deduction during the day: the source of the noise in the complex was indeed this old man.

But now Wu Xian felt that there must be something fishy about this matter.

To chisel the wall like this without being discovered by the neighbors, and to install a pinhole camera, required extremely high technical skills, professional tools, and abundant physical strength...

It sounded simple, but in actual execution, the difficulty was hellish. Wu Xian himself wasn't confident he could do it, let alone a neurotic little old man?

"Not to mention how he managed to do it."

"Assuming he is a one-in-a-million wall-chiseling expert, what is his purpose for chiseling the wall, and what reward can he get from monitoring the neighbors?"

Wu Xian observed carefully again.

Then he noticed that the walls around every pit had two slightly darker patches, which meant the old man had pressed his hands against the wall and leaned his eyes close to the pit to observe.

"This hole is only the size of a pinhole, what can he see like this?"

Wu Xian imitated the old man's movements, leaning his eyes close to the pit, and to his surprise, he really saw the scene next door.

The lights were on next door, dust was flying, the floor was covered with tiny brick and soil traces, and occasionally a somewhat chubby arm could be seen waving a chisel and flashing past his line of sight.

And while seeing the scene clearly, Wu Xian heard the clear sound of chiseling the wall.

Clang, clang, clang...

The resident opposite was also chiseling the wall, trying to break through the wall between their house and the old man's house, only to reveal a pinhole-sized hole to use for peeping!

(End of chapter)