Stepdaughter of a wealthy family? The little darling of a Beijing tycoon

Soon, the first lucky winner successfully connected online, and his ID—Brother Long—appeared at the top of the screen.

The moment the call connected, the face of a middle-aged man appeared on the other end of the screen. He looked to be in his thirties, with an expression that was both somewhat flustered and unable to hide his excitement.

"Master Shen! It really connected with me! I can't believe I managed to snag a lucky bag!" Brother Long's voice came through the receiver, barely concealing his excitement.

Shen Jingshu spoke calmly through the camera: "Don't be nervous. Tell me about your situation. Do you want to know about your career, your fortune, or has something strange happened at home?"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

Wow, the first one is Brother Long!

Congratulations, Brother Long! Your hand speed is impressive!

Tell me what happened! I've got my stool ready.

[Surprise live stream launch and you can even snag a lucky bag? I'm so envious!]

Brother Long swallowed hard, the joy on his face slowly fading, replaced by a thick cloud of worry.

"Master Shen, I... something really isn't going well at home lately. I haven't been sleeping well for days, and I'm on the verge of a breakdown."

The winner, whose online ID is "Brother Long," is 33 years old and just an ordinary working man.

He came from a poor family and had never been in a relationship or married. A few years ago, his elderly parents fell ill, and Brother Long spent all his savings seeking medical treatment everywhere, doing everything he could to save them, but in the end, it was all in vain, and his parents passed away one after another. After his parents passed away, he left his hometown and came to the big city alone to make a living.

He only had a junior high school education, his grades were mediocre, he didn't have any decent diplomas, and he couldn't find a respectable or easy job. In the end, he could only go to construction sites and make a living by carrying bricks and doing odd jobs.

Struggling financially, he rented a small single room of about 30 square meters in an urban village. The room was small, but it had everything he needed. Inside, there was a metal bunk bed, a makeshift stove set up next to the table, and a tiny bathroom partitioned off in the corner. He rarely cooked, mostly eating boxed meals from the construction site. For him, working alone far from home, this little place was enough to provide a place to stay.

During the day, he does heavy physical labor on construction sites. In this vast city, he has no relatives or friends. During the long nights, he passes the time by exercising. Gym memberships are too expensive, so he goes to secondhand markets to buy dumbbells and other home workout equipment. He either exercises in his rented room or occasionally goes to the small courtyard downstairs to work out.

Working on a construction site is already physically demanding, and many of his coworkers would tease him, saying that he was already exhausted during the day and yet he still had to work out at night, which was just asking for trouble.

When others teased him, Brother Long just smiled faintly and didn't take it to heart.

Everyone should have a hobby of their own.

He doesn't smoke, drink, or have any other pastimes; working out is his only pleasure. Watching his muscles gradually build up fills him with a profound sense of accomplishment each time.

The strange things started when he moved into this rented room.

When Brother Long first arrived in this big city, he was in a very sorry state. He was wearing faded old clothes and had only two thousand yuan in his pocket, which was all his savings. He searched everywhere for a place to live, but the rents elsewhere were terrifyingly high. Only the rents in the urban village were relatively low, so he chose this room.

The landlord was a middle-aged man around forty years old. Seeing that Brother Long was tall and strong with a muscular build, and after hearing about his orphaned parents and his lonely life, he felt a bit of sympathy and specially rented the house to him at a discounted price.

Brother Long was extremely grateful. Over time, he and the landlord became quite familiar with each other, their relationship like that of brothers, and they got along very well. Whenever Brother Long came home from get off work and bumped into the landlord downstairs, he would always stop to greet him and chat for a few minutes. The landlord, looking at Brother Long's well-developed muscles, was full of envy and often asked him for fitness tips, occasionally even trying out a few moves himself. Their relationship remained very harmonious.

But the peaceful days didn't last long. Just over a month after moving into the house, all sorts of strange and bizarre things began to happen.

At first, every night just as he lay down to sleep, he could hear faint footsteps coming from inside the house. The old building had poor sound insulation, and at first, Brother Long just assumed it was the sound of the upstairs residents moving around and didn't pay any attention to it.

But as time went on, the strange feeling became more and more obvious. Despite it being the height of summer and the other rooms were unbearably hot and stuffy, his room was always cool and felt unusually cold. At that time, he even joked to himself that now he could save on the fan and save on the electricity bill.

The incident occurred late at night a few days ago.

In the middle of the night, a sleepy-eyed Brother Long got up to go to the bathroom. There was a simple vanity mirror on the bathroom wall. He walked to the sink in a daze, and out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly caught a glimpse of a man's figure in the mirror.

This startled him so much that the hairs on his body stood on end.

He hurriedly rubbed his eyes hard, and when he looked again, the mirror was empty, with nothing in it, as if what he had just seen was just an illusion.

He nervously finished using the toilet, returned to his bunk bed, but couldn't fall asleep. The image of the person in the mirror kept replaying in his mind, keeping him tossing and turning all night.

The next day at work, he was listless and looked haggard. His coworkers at the construction site saw him like this and started joking with him, asking if he had gone out to play during the night, and teasing him about whether he had found a girlfriend.

Brother Long could only explain with a wry smile that he was a rough man who had just arrived in this place and had no relatives or friends, so where would he find a girlfriend?

His coworkers continued to laugh and joke, teasing him that even without a girlfriend, he could still go out and have some fun.

Brother Long never took the jokes of these rough men to heart; such casual banter was common on construction sites.

Brother Long initially thought it was just a hallucination caused by lack of sleep the previous night. But for the next few nights in a row, the shadow would flash by repeatedly.

Sometimes, when he was resting in bed, he would catch a glimpse of a dark shadow on the ceiling out of the corner of his eye; other times, when he passed by the bathroom, he would quickly catch a glimpse of the person's silhouette in the mirror.

Although Brother Long was a burly, real man, he couldn't help but feel uneasy after encountering these strange events one after another, and he couldn't eat or sleep at night. But his salary hadn't been paid yet, and he was short of money, so he couldn't afford to move and had no choice but to grit his teeth and continue living there.

He couldn't sleep again tonight, waking up frequently in fright. He couldn't even muster the energy for his favorite workout, and could only lie in bed aimlessly scrolling through his phone. By some strange twist of fate, he stumbled upon Shen Jingshu's live stream, and happened to catch a lucky draw, so he stayed and was lucky enough to win a spot to connect online.