During the day in this rental house, Martin can't help thinking about the protected buildings in England, as he was reminded of his quieter home in England. At night, Martin would hear some creaking in the rental house. It was probably the timbers of old buildings, caused by the thermal expansion of day and night, or by the perching activities of rats or animals that slept late. Most of the creaking came from upstairs, but several times it was just before Martin's door. But when Martin opened the door and looked, he could find nothing. This feeling made Martin more and more uncomfortable, so that at night he would have strange nightmares. For example, he would dream that an old woman from fifty years ago, who was now a ghost, would wander through the building. In his dreams, there was a dark world inside the building no one knew existed. In this world there are strange creatures that are very restless at night. After nearly a month of this, Martin decided to go upstairs alone to see what was going on. "The best way to conquer fear is to face it directly," was Martin's credo. Late one night, Martin went straight to the attic, where the light seemed to shimmer, without his flashlight. He opened the door and saw, in the shimmering room, a thin figure, like a silver ghost, clinging to a halo of light that seemed to lead to another world. Martin gasped, and out of the habit of his profession he immediately drew his pistol, but fumbled and realizing he doesn't have his gun, he steps back and began to flee. Suddenly, the silver spirit floated toward him. Instinctively, Martin kicked at the spirit. With a 'crack', accompanied by a sound like hitting wood, Martin came to his senses and saw that what had been kicked to the ground, is a very thin and little man. The light in the attic was as feeble as a candle. It was in this light that Martin thought that man was a ghost.
'damn it! 'Martin swore in his heart.
Obviously he thought the man might have breathed his last. His experience had taught him that few people could stand such a kick from him. He had used the same force to kill his opponent instantly. As results of a deadly leg attack training method that uses steel as a training target, he used to kick a Russian man as fierce as a polar bear in a black market boxing ring in Siberia, shattering his ribs, damaging his liver and causing internal bleeding and finally caused him death. However, as Martin carefully examined the man, he was so frightened to took several steps back that he almost tripped over a log in the darkness and fell. Because the little man struggled slowly to get up. Now Martin could not tell whether the figure was a man or a ghost! He was in such a daze when the little man began to speak in a weak voice. 'Who are you? What do you want?"
It was then that Martin realized he might now be an intruder. However, he immediately asked the same question. Clearly, he felt he was the one who was really wondering: "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
The little man looked at Martin. 'Who are you? I've lived here all my life. I rent this room." with particularly palpable confusion in his tone.
...
There was an immediate logical explanation. According to the skinny man, he was a tenant on a long lease and had been here for five years. He has hardly left his house for years because of his novel writing. He was so long and punctual in paying his rent that the old auntie landlady had almost forgotten him as part of the building.
"Perhaps that is why you think of me as a ghost." "The little man said, covering his bottom his has be kicked as he limped back to his laptop desk. The computer's silver screen was now flickering in the darkness.
As learned that that kick just fall on the man's buttocks by a strange coincidence. Martin felt that he had been lucky. Otherwise, he might well have suffered the consequences of injuring another human life. Still, he could not help but wonder. He did not know whether it was his own diminished strength, or whether the man's own physical qualities were unusual. Otherwise, that man would not have been able to stand up. Of course, Martin certainly didn't think himself was cursed. This time, it had to be due to the man's bottom, which was apparently a little firmer than average. Besides, maybe he thought his luck didn't seem so bad after all.
And so, perhaps not to hit is not acquainted with one another, His new neighbor became a temporary friend of Martin,and this small, reclusive man seemed quite knew around the city in his own way. In his spare time, Martin would go to this dark attic and talk with the little man for a while, which seemed to be one of the best ways for Martin to relieve his distress.
During this time, Martin ran through the takeaway, although relying on exceptional physical strength and skills, he barely surpassed the competitive riders around him and gained some benefits. But he soon found that even this kind of work is facing increasing internal competition, with extreme harshness of the customer's evaluation system, he gave up temporarily. He then wanted to become an online ride-hailing driver, but the price of the Ford car he aimed was much higher than that of local sales in the UK, so he didn't want to carry out the plan.
He tried to enter the insurance industry. But after his initial contact with the insurance industry here, he realized that the way of selling and settling insurance claims in China was completely different from that in Britain. He even had to buy several insurance for himself in order to increase sales to his head of department. However, he felt the industry was boring and strange, so he quit. Eventually, he was offered a job at a small Internet company. The work was decent, but it also brought hardship. What he disliked most was being asked almost every day and night to give what he thought were meaningless powerpoint presentations. On several occasions, his proposal was deliberately required to be repeated modified several times because of the format and layout content. This was a waste of time and energy. Although Martin had absolute confidence in his physical fitness and highly determined mind, he felt that the work like devil was straining his strength and mind all the time.
That day, Martin was working at the company until 12:00 p.m., when he suddenly felt his forehead sink, he watched a lock of his hair fall onto his notebook in front of him. He felt in horror that it was as if the hair had been torn down by an unknown amount of evil charm. This unprecedented phenomenon made him suspect that he might have suffered from an unknown chronic disease due to excessive fatigue and mental exhaustion.
Then, in an office where there was no one else at the moment, Martin exclaimed as shouting out , "damn it!"
As Martin talked to his upstairs neighbor, he could not help but reveal his confusion as to why he was surrounded by so many strange things. He felt as if he had been pursued by a ghost ever since he had accepted the assignment. What the little man told him, however, made the atmosphere even more ominous. He told Martin that he was a migrant worker from a small town in Heilongjiang province, and that he had forgotten the exact day he had lived there because of the after-effects of some intense work. Even so, he remembers a few bits and pieces of his fellow workers' past: these dreams he had, these nights he didn't come home. Of course, he will not forget that after the development of the Internet, they held the dream of realizing wealth freedom, and began to work overtime day and night until they were exhausted.
"So how did you survive?" Martin seemed puzzled, because in his work experience, no one could survive for long in such an environment without a trained body and an iron will. It even occurred to him that that little man's body, which could withstand the full force of his foot and come out unscathed, might have something to do with the long time working environment. Martin thought of the numbness in his thighs that came from sitting for long periods of time, which remind of the hard qigong that his Chinese teacher had told him about.
Thin man: "I don't know, actually. Looking back, I just feel like there was an invisible hand pulling us along, and we couldn't resist its power."
To that power, the little man seemed afraid to put it into exact words. As for the intensity of work, the little man's colleagues had become accustomed to it, and all of them took it as a good pride of hard work that time. Still, Martin sensed something from him that was hard to breath, especially when he told him about the many times he had seen something 'unclean things' while working late. It was just that, because of the numbing effect of work, the unclean things were no longer a threat to their workers. As for whether these "unclean things" are Chinese folk ghosts, Martin is not sure.
When the little man told him this, he had the air of an old soldier remembering what had happened on the battlefield. Especially when he spoke of the infighting with his colleagues and the complicated vicissitudes of love and hate, some anger and blood shone in it.
It was a pity, Martin thought, that with the exception of a few stories that did not end, the outcome of most of these stories had nothing to do with the good beginning and the good end. Although the thin man mentioned that some of his colleagues had made a lot of money, and some had chosen to live here, and some had returned to their home countries, most of those who had worked with him were either never heard from, or were heavily ill, and many had left this world for various reasons. When talking about this, the thin man looked particularly desperate and frustrated. According to him, he may be the last person in the group of fellow workers they came to this city together.
"Early overdraft of body, everything is early overdraft of body!" The way the little man sighed as he spoke made him look even paler. Why the little man had chosen to stay here rather than go back, he strangely could not explain. All he knew was that he have stayed in this small dwelling for several years. However, Martin found it even weirder that the thin man was also 35 years old when he left the company. He had been working like this ever since he joined the company, until he finally received that letter from the company. It was the first time the thin-little man was informed that he was graduated form the company and need to continue his career elsewhere in the society. However, it was only after he left the company that he found out that the world was not at all what he had imagined. In particular, he was surprised to discover that he was already one of the declared elderly people in the workplace. And soon his own strength, as if under a curse, began to be drained by an invisible force. Until one day, he realized that he could no longer work in the society again.
Though Martin listened attentively, in his real opinion this was like found the hell of devil. Besides these unscientific curses as the little man said, from his own experience and from the little man's narration, the intensity of the work that the man said was unbelievable. For he calculated that, at the average working capacity of an Englishman, it might be two years, at most, before any young Englishman would be sick and quit his job. After all, having grown up in England, Martin knew the Englishmen around him indeed.
After that conversation, for some unknown reason, Martin began to become more and more distracted. Even when he tried to meditate, he couldn't calm any of his mind. "What went wrong? Martin was restless. His mind was constantly dragged by an unknown force, and before he knew it, the Arabic number '35' seemed to spread through his thoughts like a vine. When he typed the number into the Internet, his surprise grew even greater. Like a worm, the content around the that number began to spread everywhere. Most of them revolve around jobs and unemployment. It seems that in China, the age of 35 is the dry end of most people's career. Some people are more miserable. It seems that at this age, their life begins to face all kinds of anxiety. In addition to the mortgage, children, taking care of elderly parents, there are countless worries about the direction of their life. Many begin to suffer from mental illness. And this age, this number, seems to be threatening all young people in some indescribable, damning way. It seems that once people pass this age, they will become worthless and begin to be rejected by society. Except for a lucky few, people can stay in certain kind of peculiar institutions or organizations and keep working to survive. But even then, those anxieties never seem to go away. Only a very small number of people, it seems, is living.
"Does it make sense for the majority to die and the few to live? Why don't all people live forever?" At some point the question suddenly crossed Martin's mind again. He thought back to a
time when his parents had taken him to church when he was a teenager. Martin posed the question that had always puzzled him. He asked a priest at the famous English church to give him an answer. The old priest smiled at his question and explained, "Well, I can't answer that either. But what I can tell you is that God is merciful, and God speaks of eternal life not just for the body, but for the soul, and He wants everyone to be saved."
"But why is God so kind that only a few people get into heaven?" Martin was still puzzled.
"I think it's really a matter of choice. God just makes the rules and the place. He gives people freedom as long as they let go of their own desires, repent deeply, pray deeply, and become a truly good person. Our Lord forgives us all. And those who don't get into heaven do so for their own reasons." 'The old priest explained earnestly.
Young Martin, however, remained undeterred. "God is so good, why do so many people suffer in this world? Why are some people rich and others poor?" Wouldn't it be better if everyone were rich? And why do some people die so young while others live so long? It is not fair that the majority die and the few live. Why not wealth and the body live as well as the soul lives forever?"
The old priest, Martin remembered, apparently had a lot of trouble trying to explain the theological points to Martin. Good people who die early, for example, are sent to heaven, while evil people who live a long life are eventually sent to hell. However this explanation of old priest seemed to be perfect, Martin was always able to find some holes in it and question the priest again. Of course, Martin did this not because he really wanted to embarrass the old priest, but because he simply did not understand. In the end, he was able to memorize only one of the priest's core theories, and that was: "God always gives men a chance of justice and happiness, but it is the latent devils who continue to plague the world, and continue to create wealth imbalances, and lure those who are in good health, and consume their lives again and again, until they drag those who could be saved step by step to the abyss death of soul. As for the good men who have died, according to the old priest, these good men will be protected by God, but God will protect their souls even more."
Martin, though, nodded his head vaguely. However, he did not want to embarrass his parents around him. There's still a lot he doesn't understand. For example, he couldn't understand why God didn't just get rid of the devils so that everyone could be happy. Nor could he understand why the old priest had always promoted ideas about the eternal life of the mind and soul, as if wealth and spirit were kind of opposites. He did not know why people believed that the Lord, who had created a world where injustice was everywhere, was a good God worthy of praise. He even began to suspect that the so-called spiritual perfectionism was a self-deception designed to make all those who were treated unfairly accept the status quo. Of course, he did not dare to tell his parents or priest about these ideas, because he did not like to be seen as an odd one, also he was afraid that God would punish him for it. At the time, Martin thought that by agreeing with the priest, he would at least make his parents happy. However, after a car accident took his mother's life, he began to questions his faith again.
After his mother died, Martin spent a lot of time alone in his room. He was less and less able to understand why people died. Why did God not give man eternal life? Two years later, his father also died of illness. When he was still in elementary school, Martin felt as if he was sinking into a abyss of life he had never felt before. According to the British doctor's diagnosis at the time, his father apparently had difficulty accepting his wife's sudden death, and had died of a heart attack after a long depression.
However, Martin was unable to accept this explanation, as he remembered that his father had mentioned to him around that time that he had discovered references to out-of-body experiences while studying Chinese philosophy. His father, at the time, even began to rejoice at this unexpected discovery. But that soon became irrelevant. The family was already in financial trouble before my father died. Martin would later learn that his father, who had quit his job around that time, had become a reclusive eccentric. Martin also remembered well the day the personable man in the suit and tie came to his door. The man told Martin's father that the family loan had come due and that you needed to move out immediately. Not knowing anything at the time, Martin remembers that man's message who dressed like a banker: "If you need a loan, call me. I can drop you a few points. That's my job." Martin also remembers being foolish enough to ask the man afterward: "So can you provide me with a house and food?" The man's reply, still gentlemanly, was: "Of course, if you have the money."
After his father's death, Martin, who is forced to leave his home full of memories, relies on a former friend of his father's to help him escape the threat of homelessness and hunger. It was then that Martin decided he no longer believed the priest's words. To live was to live, and to die was to die, and there was no God or devil. Otherwise, why should good people die, and why should sanctimonious people who exploit and hurt others for their desires live so gracefully? Out of hatred and fear of death, he chose to face them directly. He felt that "rather than waiting for death by following the rules that keep people alive, it would be better to be a part of death, and to face it directly, at least, to have the rights to get the life, can stop his heart from being filled with hatred to goodness." In the end, he became a killer.