Free movies? Aren't you going to handle a case? What kind of movie do you watch, besides, why should I go to watch a movie with you? I told Hu Zongren this on the phone, but Hu Zongren smiled and said that this case was called by the person in charge of a movie theater, saying that they had not opened the door for a month, and claimed that they were renovating the viewing hall, but in fact there was nothing inside, saying that it was haunted, please go and investigate. I asked Hu Zongren, has the price been negotiated? Hu Zongren said that of course it was negotiated, these people have money, which is enough for us to spend for a while. I said okay, you can make an appointment.

According to the agreed time, Hu Zongren and I met in that pedestrian street, because I had been undercover in this area before, so I came casually about the delicious food in this neighborhood, so Hu Zongren and I did not contact the employer as soon as possible, but before that, secretly ran to the underground shopping mall over there, and came with a bowl of sauerkraut and shredded pork rice noodles. The restaurant doesn't have a name, but it's doing well, and most of the customers are repeat customers who have been here before, except for those who join in the fun. The boss is a forty-year-old elder sister, their sauerkraut is said to be pickled with fresh vegetables bought by themselves, and the shredded meat is also pressed in a pressure cooker, which melts in the mouth, but the meat is fragrant, with the condiments boiled in the big bone broth, the rice noodles are boiled for about 7 minutes, drizzled with oil, sprinkled with green onions, and can earn my saliva just in front of me.

This place is an underground shopping mall of a commercial pedestrian street, mostly concentrated in selling some cheaper clothing, because of the relationship in the underground, so the store rent is slightly cheaper than the street façade, this place has a lively scene of Chaotianmen in the 90s, except that the escalator has always been used as a staircase. If it's haunted, it's more of a haunted place. But it shouldn't be here, because on the bottom layer, there is a large pond, and there are a few green turtles in the pond, which are very old turtles.

After eating a bowl of rice noodles, we walked to the Pingjie floor, digested while smoking, and after throwing away the cigarette butts, Hu Zongren called his employer this time. After we told them the location, we waited for more than ten minutes, and a middle-aged man in a black casual suit walked up to us, shook hands with a smile on his face, and then said that you two are the masters invited this time.

The man walked in front and Hu Zongren and I followed behind, Hu Zongren muttered to me, this guy is so stingy, he won't send a car to pick up people. I said are you sick, this is a pedestrian street, what the is allowed you to drive. It was probably a little louder that the man turned to us and said, "No need to drive, no need to drive, this is very close to our office, just a few minutes away." So I could only smile awkwardly, and by the way, I despised Hu Zongren's two-force logic a little.

Soon we arrived at his office, which is also a building on the pedestrian street, but this building is relatively old, and the ground floor is a shopping mall, probably because of this, it has not been demolished and renovated. After sitting down, the man closed the door, moved the ashtray from his desk to the small coffee table in front of us, and handed me and Hu Zongren cigarettes. As soon as I saw that the cigarette was not cheap, it would be sold for more than 50 packs, so at this moment I was even more convinced of the statement that this unit was rich.

After lighting the cigarette, the man began to introduce himself, saying that his surname was Li, and he had the same surname as me, probably hoping that I would make a good impression of him. He said he was the sales manager of the cinema. When Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li what he meant by the sales manager, he said that he was going to buy the screening rights, talk about copyright fees, and dredge the channels for the introduction of some foreign language films.

Mr. Li said that in the early days, their cinema was actually a staff cinema, and the scale was not large, but in the past ten years, the development speed of this district has been very rapid, and soon it has formed one of the most popular commercial pedestrian streets in Chongqing. Mr. Li told us that because of this crowding, the business of the movie theater is not as good as day by day, and usually the people who come to see the movie are some students from nearby schools and retired aunts and uncles, etc., even if our ticket price is twice as cheap as others, there is still not a lot of traffic. Mr. Li emphasized, but even so, we have not collapsed for many years, completely because of the flow of these people. If we had moved somewhere else, we would have been closed long ago.

I asked Mr. Li, you said it was a staff cinema, but which factory? Mr. Li said that it was the previous factory, in that era, this staff cinema was the best equipped in so many staff cinemas in Chongqing, the most screening halls, and the most luxurious one, but because this company began to operate in the market after the most and became a joint-stock limited company, many of the supporting facilities in the factory were transferred out as capital for listing and equity, and we took over this cinema. Mr. Li said that they originally belonged to a large film group in southern China, and in addition to shooting films and television dramas, this group also has a number of subordinate projection organizations, some of which are like them, inherited from other places, but are included in the weaving of that film group, unified business, and then divided into business.

Hu Zongren said to Mr. Li, you have said so much, which means that you are just one of the contractors of this film group, right? Mr. Li smiled and said that it can be roughly understood that it should be regarded as a distributor, and most of the profits are their own, and they only need to pay management fees. Hu Zongren said, then the flow of people in your area is so large, the yang energy is enough, and as far as we know, even the real estate developers who built this pedestrian street are famous in China for paying attention to feng shui, and this movie theater is not the mainstream consumer object, how can it be haunted.

Mr. Li said, don't you two come here just to figure out this matter, think about it, our management fee is paid quarterly, this is more than a month, half of the quarter has passed, there is no turnover, what do we use to pay. And we can't just talk about it, because in the end they think we're not a good partner, and if we cancel this relationship, we'll lose a lot. Hu Zongren didn't speak, probably because Mr. Li was sincere enough, and he smoked very well. So Hu Zongren said to him, "In this case, you can first tell us about the specific situation you encountered."

Mr. Li said that about a month ago, their theater launched a special package that allowed you to watch three movies in a row at the price of one movie in addition to giving away popcorn and coke, and the process was still seamless. It's just that the time is set at midnight, so it is called "midnight show", in order to attract couples who are in love, so that they can come and experience the benefits of our cinema.

Midnight show, in my childhood, was basically the same thing as showing small yellow films. Mr. Li also said that their midnight movie, which varies from room to room, has increased the choice of customers, and this event has attracted more moviegoers than usual, usually the number of people in the whole day of the day is not as large as the number of people in a midnight show in the evening, so the company's promotional strategy for this event is actually very successful.

Mr. Li said, but just when everyone was happy about it, the next day we encountered complaints, and some customers seemed very excited, saying that we were not letting anyone in to make money, and that we didn't have any quality at all to watch movies. There was also a conflict with one of our managers on duty at the time. Later, when we learned about the situation, we learned that the reason why this group of guests wanted to complain was because when they were halfway through watching the movie, some people would be very impolite to laugh or cry on one side, talk loudly, and even run to the screen from one end to the other. At that time, the audience in the theater was very angry, so they scolded a few words and said who was so unqualified, but that voice lasted for a long time, and there were often people walking around in front of the screen, which made many moviegoers very angry, so they found the younger brother in the screening hall to complain, and then there was a conflict.

Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li, "Didn't your movie theater show any movies like viewing instructions before the movie started?" For example, set your phone to vibrate, don't make loud noises, don't smoke and block others, etc. Mr. Li said that this is something that is strictly required by the National Cinema, how can it not be released, but if it is released, there will always be people who will not listen, and there is nothing we can do. Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li how this incident ended in the worst end, Mr. Li shook his head and said, how else can it end, asked all the people who watched the movie, no one admitted that it was him, and the movie theater did not install surveillance cameras, so it was impossible to find out who it was.

I abruptly interrupted Mr. Lee's rear-projection projector or was it the original one? Mr. Li said that it is a projection type, but the machinery and equipment are relatively new, and it is not a problem to cope with most of the current movies. I asked him again, then you said that there were people running around in front of the screen at that time, and those people saw a figure or a specific person? Mr. Li said that he was not present at the time, so he could not answer conclusively, but there were several events after that made their employees suspect that the things that caused the conflict that day were not people at all.

Or rather, it never existed.