Chapter 1: Stop Engaging in Feudal Superstition

“Mr. Xu, please, you must save my daughter!”

It had just rained, and many puddles had gathered on the uneven road surface. The alley was piled with debris on both sides, and one had to be careful to avoid splashing water on their trouser legs as they passed through.

Hearing the slightly anxious voice of the middle-aged woman behind him, the tall man wearing sunglasses paused. His gaze shifted, finally landing on a window on the right.

This alley was full of old bungalows, and several yellow talismans were pasted on the windows facing the alley. The lines drawn on the talismans were already blurred, making it difficult to see their contents.

Xu Huai tilted his head and looked at the middle-aged woman beside him: “Does your family also have this talisman?”

Hearing this, the middle-aged woman nodded hurriedly: “They said it’s a peace talisman, we put it up at the beginning of the year!”

The lines on the talisman were stagnant and broken; the cinnabar used was of impure quality. However, the runes drawn on the talisman displayed a strong originality from the artist, primarily serving as a source of psychological comfort.

Impressive, he almost didn’t recognize what was drawn on the talisman.

Xu Huai withdrew his gaze, responded coldly, and continued forward.

Water droplets from the low eaves dripped into the puddles, creating small ripples. Seeing that this “Mr. Xu” did not comment on what she had said earlier, the middle-aged woman became even more anxious, and she continued:

“My daughter Qianqian has been sick since the 7th of last month. I thought it was just a simple cold, but for more than a month, she’s had injections and taken medicine, but she still has a persistent low fever.”

As she spoke, the two had arrived in front of a house with a rain shelter.

The middle-aged woman was thinking about her daughter and didn’t realize that this “Mr. Xu” was leading the way for the second half of the journey home. Today was the first time she had met this “Mr. Xu.”

The middle-aged woman’s name was Li Fang. She usually made money by selling cold dishes at a street stall outside the alley. Her husband was a construction worker. They had a daughter named Zhao Qian, who was 13 years old and had just started junior high school this year.

On the 7th of last month, Zhao Qian was kept at school for make-up classes because she hadn’t finished her homework and didn’t get home until late at night. After returning home, Zhao Qian inexplicably began to fall ill, experiencing a persistent fever that didn’t respond to medication.

Li Fang met an old customer when she went to buy medicine. The old customer saw her looking worried and kindly asked what was wrong.

Li Fang had just mentioned her daughter’s situation when the customer was shocked and hurriedly pulled Li Fang aside, whispering that her daughter had probably gotten into something dirty. Taking medicine alone wouldn’t help; she had to find a master to examine her.

Li Fang went to find a master with some skepticism. That night, the master made a thorough arrangement in Zhao Qian’s room, and then the master shouted!

–In full view of everyone, a wisp of white smoke emerged from the room and dissipated.

Zhao Qian improved that night, but unexpectedly, Zhao Qian started to have a high fever again the next day.

Li Fang was highly anxious and found the master again. The master came over and said that the dirty thing clinging to Zhao Qian was too powerful, and the first time wasn’t enough to get rid of it, so he had to do it again.

Li Fang: “Then the master started to arrange things again, sprinkling glutinous rice on my daughter’s bedside and foot of the bed, and even brought a live chicken in…”

“Effective?”

Xu Huai interrupted Li Fang before she could finish speaking.

“Uh…” Li Fang looked embarrassed, “This… if it were effective, I wouldn’t have come to you!”

The gentleman newly invited today was surnamed Xu, and his name was Xu Huai.

Li Fang’s husband’s boss introduced him. It was said that they hired him when the construction site started, and they had been working for more than a year without any problems.

When Li Fang met Xu Huai at the agreed location, if Xu Huai hadn’t taken the initiative to greet her and walk over, she would have thought she had mistaken the person.

She never thought that this “Mr. Xu” would be a young man who looked to be only in his twenties.

Not only that, but the external image of this “Mr. Xu” was outstanding: tall and slender, handsome and refined, not inferior to those male stars in the street posters…

In her inherent thinking, the masters skilled in feng shui, exorcism, and suppressing evil should all be older men in their sixties or seventies, and their abilities should be linked to their age. The older they were, the more experience they had, the more stable they were in handling situations, and the stronger they became.

This young man didn’t even recognize the peace talisman on the window and asked her what it was. Doesn’t this prove that he is not “professional”?

No matter how you look at it, he seems like a showy person. Li Fang grew increasingly uncertain, blaming her husband’s boss for being unreliable and sighing countless times.

What should she do now? She had already invited the person, so it was impossible just to let him leave, right? Anyway, she hadn’t paid yet, so she should take a look first.

Li Fang pulled open the rusty iron door with a heavy expression.

The space behind the door was narrow, and Xu Huai could see all the things inside at a glance. Most of the household items were stacked together, and the only slightly larger pieces of furniture were a bunk bed and a single sofa.

The only source of external light entering the house came from a square window. As the two entered the house, Li Fang closed the iron door, and the musty smell intensified.

The girl lying on the lower bunk got up from the bed after hearing the sound of the door opening, looking at her mother Li Fang with a pale face.

Red threads left by the previous “master” were still wrapped around the bedposts on both sides of the bed. After obtaining Li Fang’s permission, Xu Huai approached the bed, raised his hand under the girl’s gaze, fiddled with the copper coins tied to the red thread, and said:

“Have you been to the hospital for a check-up?”

The light in the house was dim, and he couldn’t see anything clearly while wearing sunglasses. Xu Huai folded the sunglasses and put them away after entering the house. At that moment, he focused his beautiful, peach-blossom eyes on the inscriptions on the copper coins.

His face, which was not covered by sunglasses, was completely exposed, and even Li Fang was taken aback by his appearance. It wasn’t until those eyes shifted to her that she snapped back to reality and hurriedly said:

“Yes, yes.”

It started to drizzle outside again, and the sound of raindrops falling like beans became the background music in the room.

This Mr. Xu was estimated to be over 1.8 meters tall, requiring Li Fang to look up slightly to meet his eyes. Li Fang also noticed that Xu Huai’s eyes were different colors, possibly due to the light from the bare bulb in the room.

It wasn’t a pronounced difference, just that the pupil of his left eye was a little lighter.

The coolness brought by the rain seeped in from the cracks in the iron door, and Li Fang couldn’t help but shiver. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t dare to look Xu Huai in the eye anymore and quickly withdrew her gaze.

“I went to the hospital, but it didn’t work.” Li Fang shook her head. “They said she ran into something dirty, so she hasn’t gotten better.”

The girl on the bed shrank back into the quilt at this time, looking at Xu Huai timidly.

Xu Huai: “Returning home late at night… getting back so late, parents should pick them up.”

Li Fang was anxious: “Is it, is it because my daughter is prone to running into those things? Master, do you have any way?”

Xu Huai: “No.”

Li Fang was stunned: “Huh?”

Xu Huai used a little force, and the inferior red threads wrapped around the bedposts broke, and the copper coins strung on the red threads scattered all over the ground.

Xu Huai: “There are many human traffickers at night, and it’s quite remote coming in from your side. Looking at these, that old customer probably scammed you and that so-called master.”

Seeing Li Fang’s face change slightly, Xu Huai continued: “First, he wears a yellow Taoist robe, pretends to look around the room with a compass, and then suddenly stops at a certain place, trembling all over and starting to go crazy. After a while, he concludes that there is a ghost in your house, and then he starts asking you for money, saying he wants to exorcise the ghost.”

At this point, the color had drained entirely from Li Fang’s face.

…The previous master’s behavior was exactly as this person described.

“You’ve been scammed. Go to a big hospital for a check-up if you’re sick; small clinics are unreliable.” Xu Huai took out his sunglasses from his bag and put them back on. “There aren’t that many demons and ghosts; stop engaging in feudal superstition.”

Seeing that Li Fang still wanted to say something, Xu Huai frowned imperceptibly, turned around, and pushed the door open.

Li Fang’s house was at the end of the alley, and the surrounding bungalows blocked the light, making it dark and humid. The feng shui layout was indeed poor. In layman’s terms, it was a place where sunlight did not shine directly all year round; the location was low, dark, and humid, which easily fostered bacteria and caused diseases.

After leaving the alley, the rain stopped a few steps later. Xu Huai looked at the shops on the street, thinking absentmindedly: “I’m getting off work quite early today; I can go buy two cans for the cats at home.”

Before he could decide whether to buy chicken or tuna cans, his phone started vibrating. Xu Huai paused and answered the phone: “The complaint speed is quite fast today?”

The other end of the phone seemed to be choked by Xu Huai’s very self-aware words and was silent for a while:

“No?”

Xu Huai skillfully moved the phone away, away from his ear.

Even if he moved the phone away, he could still clearly hear the slightly broken voice on the other end of the phone: “Ah?! You know you’re going to be complained about?”

The person calling was Song Lianzhou, Xu Huai’s boss.

Song Lianzhou: “You started slacking off as soon as you got promoted? You only have three KPIs a month, and two-thirds of this month has passed, and you haven’t even completed your second one. I won’t even mention that. I’ve received six complaint calls about you in the past ten days.”

Xu Huai didn’t speak, and his attention had already drifted to the stall under the overpass not far ahead. A simple-looking uncle was taking sweet potatoes out of the black oven. When the iron lid was opened, the sweet fragrance of the sweet potatoes filled the air everywhere.

Xu Huai raised his foot forward and hummed a breathy “Mm” after a few seconds.

“I’m listening, please continue.”

Song Lianzhou, on the other end of the phone, seemed to be irritated by Xu Huai’s attitude and took a cold breath: “We just had a very talented kid join our department last month. Our line of work is a bit special, and we don’t need that many people.”

Xu Huai had already walked to the stall, casually pointed to a sweet potato, asked the stall owner to wrap it up, and had no expression on his face: “Okay, n+1.”

Song Lianzhou: “?”

“Wait, what?”

It wasn’t until he paid and saw the balance in his wallet that the expression in Xu Huai’s eyes changed slightly.

“I’m at the customer’s house right now, and I just came out. I’ve seen the place and the people, and there’s nothing special.”

Xu Huai walked towards the overpass with the roasted sweet potato: “The customer’s house has a noticeable musty smell as soon as you enter. Her daughter’s fever is likely due to a lung or other infection. The specific cause is unknown and requires professional medical equipment to detect. I’ll submit a specific written report to you when I get home.”

Song Lianzhou listened quietly and only spoke after Xu Huai finished: “So there’s really nothing? The complaints I received were that you didn’t do any work at all, you just took a look and left; your service attitude was appalling, and you even destroyed the exorcism things that people had arranged, which seriously affected the customer’s life.”

Xu Huai: “There’s really nothing. Those so-called exorcism things are just meaningless decorations that serve no practical purpose. I took them down.”

Seriously, how exaggerated is that?

Engaging in feudal superstition all day long is what seriously affects life, okay?

It was probably six or seven in the afternoon, and the street on the left started to become congested. The evening rush hour on weekdays had begun. It was also at this time that an ordinary office worker in a suit walked towards him.

Xu Huai’s gaze followed the other person, and he only continued after the person walked past him: “In this day and age, the average person has more resentment than ghosts. Seriously, even ghosts have to give way. Plus, there are surveillance cameras everywhere now. How can those things easily come out and cause trouble?”

People imagine most things.

If you haven’t done anything too excessive or selfish, those indescribable things won’t easily cling to you.

“Okay.” Song Lianzhou was silent for a while before finally relenting, “There’s one more order this month, you have to find a way to write a report, otherwise headquarters will make me write a self-criticism again. These written things can’t be missing.”

“My suggestion is that you still go around nearby, in case some things are hiding…”

Xu Huai was expressionless: “That’s extra money.”

“Of course, if the department can mobilize some manpower and resources to help me find someone, then I will naturally do my best for the department, and die…”

Song Lianzhou hung up the phone.

Listening to the busy tone on the phone, Xu Huai shifted his gaze.

Written report… It’s not easy to make this stuff up. Should I help people with their fortunes? And earn some money for cat food.