Chapter 68: Exploring the Ghost Building (3)

"Boss, not a single piece of glass is left on the sixteenth floor!" Pipe reported the battle situation, panting, his face flushed with excitement.

Chen Hao looked at the glass shards all over the stairs and the ugly, gaping holes in the corridor windows, pacing back and forth in the hallway in a state of high agitation. At this moment, he felt a strange sense of dominion, as if the entire building belonged to him. There was also a deep sense of revenge against this bullshit world. "Pipe, do you know what this is called? This is called smashing the old world."

"Mm-hmm," Pipe nodded repeatedly. In truth, it didn't matter what his boss said; he just liked smashing glass. Smashing good things to pieces was truly thrilling.

"This place was already uninhabited, it's ownerless, yet the glass was perfectly fine. What a waste," Chen Hao said viciously.

Pipe laughed out loud, "We're destroying public property here; no one else is as wicked as we are."

"What wicked? You're the one who's wicked, damn it. Why is smashing useless glass considered wicked? Who made the rule that glass, once fired, can't be used for smashing and must be used to frame windows? It's ownerless anyway, so I think smashing it to pieces beautifies the environment. Is that not allowed?" Chen Hao said.

"Mm, that's true too," Pipe quickly said.

"You say that when we were born, the rules of the world were already set, so why should we have to follow them? They didn't ask for our consent when they made the rules! It's like having to go to school for self-study on Saturdays—why?" Chen Hao said, then fiercely picked up another rock and threw it at the large piece of glass still remaining in the stairwell window. "To put it plainly, it's just that we don't have the ability yet. All that 'it's for your own good' or 'it's for everyone's good' is all lies! The rules of this world are set by the strong! If I were a strong person, the rules of this world could be rewritten by me."

"Then what rules would you write? Are the rules that we can all smash other people's windows whenever we want?" Pipe said with a grin.

Sometimes Chen Hao really didn't want to pay attention to Pipe. Pipe was a person without any dreams or any ideas; sometimes it was really quite boring. He squinted his eyes, ignored Pipe, and walked downstairs alone. This was a leadership strategy he had recently come up with: if a subordinate couldn't grasp your spirit, or if you couldn't answer a subordinate's moronic questions, then you just don't speak and put on an inscrutable expression, like squinting your eyes and walking away.

Chen Hao walked down one floor to the fifteenth, leaned over to pick up another rock from the corner, weighed it casually in his hand, and threw it hard. A pane of glass shattered in response. Suddenly, he seemed to hear a panicked shout, faint and ethereal.

He froze, just about to listen carefully, when Pipe came huffing and puffing down from upstairs, "Boss, Boss, Boss!"

"Don't make noise," Chen Hao said sternly. "Did you hear any sound?"

"The sound of my majestic footsteps?" Pipe said.

Chen Hao glared at him, but no matter how hard he strained to listen, this remained a quiet Ghost Building. "Fuck," Chen Hao said, "scaring myself."

He picked up another rock and continued smashing glass. Pipe followed him step by step; he felt that Pipe had learned his lesson and now they could continue their conversation.

"No matter what, only when you are a strong person yourself and can define the rules will others respect you. I don't want to be looked down upon for the rest of my life."

"Then what should we do?" Pipe said, also starting to smash glass. "We can't rely on our families. As a strong person, first you have to have money. Having money is being strong; we have to get money first."

"Then Guanzi, you tell me, in this internet age, how should one go about making money?" Chen Hao stopped and asked.

"Get famous, obviously," Guanzi said without thinking. "My cousin is an eighteenth-tier internet celebrity, but just by relying on that bit of fame to sell slippers and dolls online, he easily earns several game consoles a month."

Guanzi said it casually, but Chen Hao took it to heart. He suddenly felt that Guanzi wasn't that stupid after all. He excitedly reached out and put his arm around Guanzi, saying, "What you said is a path. Getting famous isn't too hard. What if we recorded what we're doing now and put it online?"

"We'd get called morons," Guanzi said easily.

"It doesn't matter if people call us morons," Chen Hao said enthusiastically. "Which badass tough guy didn't have a dark history when they were starting out? Once enough people call us morons, the fame will come, and then we can just whitewash ourselves later."

"What if they make us pay for the glass first?" Guanzi said, a bit worried.

"It's ownerless!" Chen Hao said, frustrated by Guanzi's lack of ambition, and knocked on the nearby door "bang-bang-bang" to emphasize his point. "Besides, if we get famous and have money, would you still care about paying for a little glass? This is project cost!"

"Boss is right." Guanzi was happy. He looked at Chen Hao, just about to say something, but his expression suddenly changed, and he took a sharp step back. "Holy shit, why is there a door here?"

Only then did Chen Hao notice he was leaning against a door. He jumped in fright and followed Guanzi back three steps, both of them staring at the iron door, terrified that someone might come out.

"Didn't you say this building was uninhabited?" Chen Hao whispered, trembling with fear. "How come this room has a door on it? Could it be where the building caretaker lives?"

Sweat broke out on Guanzi too. "The caretaker lives on the fifteenth floor? There's no elevator installed, you have to climb the stairs every time. Is their determination to lose weight that ironclad?"

Chen Hao thought what Guanzi said made sense, but it still didn't explain why this door was installed here. Since there was a door, there must be something behind it that needed hiding. "Is there someone inside?"

"You just knocked on the door, didn't you? You knocked so hard, if there were someone, there should have been some movement by now," Guanzi said.

Chen Hao wanted to curse. He really had itchy hands just now. If he had knocked out some hulking brute, he would definitely have been beaten to a pulp.

"Then maybe the person isn't home. But what kind of person would live here?" Chen Hao pondered. "I saw on the news that some drug makers hide in residential areas. Nowadays, quite a few people can make meth right in their own kitchens."

"No way, right?" Guanzi said, though his eyes were full of interest. He reached out and knocked on the door again, pressing his ear against it to listen carefully. Sure enough, there was still no movement inside. "Boss, you can pick this crappy door, right? Let's sneak in and see who lives here. If they're drug makers, we'll call the police and do a service for the people?"

"And wait to have our whole family wiped out?" Chen Hao gave him a blank look. "We could just steal a little bit of that and make some quick cash. It's not like we made it anyway; whoever sells it is harming people, so it's not our fault."

"Brilliant!" Guanzi gave him a thumbs-up.

Chen Hao pushed on the door. "The quality of this door is poor enough, and it's not even a security door. The person living here probably doesn't have much money."

"Whether they have money or not, we aren't stealing their money; we aren't thieves," Guanzi instigated. "Try opening it?"

"What do you mean 'try opening it'? It's not a tin can, you think you're opening yourself?" Chen Hao said irritably. However, he fished his tools out of his pants pocket: a thin metal sheet and a piece of wire. In truth, he didn't really hesitate; ever since he learned this craft, he always wanted to try it everywhere. He felt embarrassed to try it on normal people's locks, but here... it was basically the same as ownerless.

He carefully inserted the thin sheet into the door gap, and suddenly, for no reason, he shivered, as if a cold wind had pierced his spine. He turned his head to look at Guanzi, and Guanzi shivered too, saying, "It's cold because all the glass is smashed."

He thought that was indeed the case, breathed a sigh of relief, and stuck the wire into the keyhole.