Chapter 2: Telling Fortunes, What Kind of Thing Are You?

The [National Security Special Protection Department], Third Branch, is managed by Song Lianzhou.

The department’s primary responsibility is to collaborate with the police in upholding public security and stability, managing special events in the southwest region, ensuring the safety of residents in that area, regulating false online public opinions, and promoting a culture that opposes feudalism and superstition.

In layman’s terms, it involves addressing certain supernatural events that may pose a threat to humans, offering scientific and materialistic explanations for paranormal occurrences that capture public attention, distributing pamphlets with a loudspeaker at the entrance of old residential areas, and regularly giving lectures against feudal superstition.

In even simpler terms: fortune-telling, feng shui, ghost-catching, and it’s the national team.

Xu Huai takes home two thousand after deducting five insurance payments from three thousand. After subtracting travel and daily expenses, he is left with only one thousand. With a salary that is barely enough to cover three meals a day, he remains on standby 24 hours a day as a special security guard.

If he didn’t occasionally help people tell fortunes to earn extra money, Xu Huai and his three cats would have to pick up trash to maintain their vital signs.

Now, after deducting the fixed expenses for cat food, the money in Xu Huai’s phone isn’t enough for him to take transportation luxuriously. The hour-long journey home is merely considered exercise after dinner.

By the time Xu Huai arrived near his home beneath the small overpass, it was already getting dark. The light was no longer intense, and Xu Huai tucked away the sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

But the moment he took off his sunglasses, he noticed an undeniable gaze cast towards him from not far away.

Xu Huai’s eyelids twitched, and he quickly turned his head to look in the approximate direction.

His gaze fell upon a green belt. In the C position stood a large iron tree that looked like a pineapple, surrounded by low shrubs shaped into charming spheres.

Besides the vegetation, there was nothing.

The evening temperature after the rain was a bit cool, and the passing breeze lifted Xu Huai’s soft black hair, bringing coldness from outside his clean white shirt into his clothes, causing a slight tremor.

…Strange.

What was that feeling of being licked from a distance by a gaze?

“Xiao Huai?”

Xu Huai was focused on looking at the green belt on the other side and didn’t notice that someone had come to his side. It wasn’t until he heard someone call his name that Xu Huai turned around.

The person who came was an old man with all white hair, leaning on a cane. The old man was a resident of the nearby residential area, surnamed Yang, and he would come out to exercise every morning and evening.

“Has Old Zhang not come back yet?”

The “Old Zhang” in Old Yang’s mouth was Xu Huai’s master, Zhang Daoquan.

In the past, Zhang Daoquan set up a stall nearby to tell fortunes, including naming children and selecting auspicious days. All of these services fell within Zhang Daoquan’s business scope. Together with his disciple Xu Huai, he was “well-known” in this area.

“Mm.” Xu Huai nodded when he heard this, “Master, he, temporarily… It’s not certain when he will come back.”

Old Yang gestured with his hand: “I still remember when I first saw you, you were only three or four years old, following Old Zhang, you were only that tall. Now, in the blink of an eye, you’re so much taller than me.”

Old Yang pulled Xu Huai aside and chatted for a bit longer, mentioning that the talisman Xu Huai had drawn previously was very effective. Before, the little grandson at home cried every night, but after putting the talisman up, he stopped crying at night…

“By the way, your Aunt Li’s son is getting engaged next month. One day, I’ll have her come over to you to help her calculate.”

Xu Huai naturally couldn’t refuse the business that was being delivered to his door: “Okay, then thank you, Grandpa Yang, for taking care of my business.”

After watching Old Yang leave, Xu Huai turned around and walked to the bottom of the overpass. This overpass was not high, and dense vegetation climbed up the concrete walls, forming a green wall.

Going around that “green wall,” you could see an abandoned car with only the iron shell left parked behind it. A small iron box was placed in the iron shell of the car trunk. Inside the iron box was a divination stick tube, which Zhang Daoquan had left behind.

In the past, Zhang Daoquan would place the divination stick tube in front of him, put on his sunglasses, and sit under the bridge hole for the morning. He didn’t shout, nor did he say what he did; it all depended on people guessing.

Zhang Daoquan said that people who needed it would naturally come to the door, and it was useless to shout for those who didn’t need it; it was a waste of effort. However, in reality, there were very few “people who needed it,” and there weren’t even two in a week.

Whether it was the master or the disciple setting up a stall here, it was the same.

–That feeling of being watched had been faintly present ever since Xu Huai started “setting up a stall.”

Xu Huai’s sixth sense was always very accurate. He inconspicuously pinched the talisman in his pocket. He didn’t expect that the ghost wandering around the area, seemingly coveting him, hadn’t arrived yet, but he first waited for a middle-aged man reeking of alcohol.

How rude.

When ghosts are about to come over, they will look at you from the side and observe you in advance, “greeting” you with their gaze. This middle-aged man hadn’t even gotten close, and the strong smell of alcohol had already surged over, preemptively giving his innocent sense of smell an impact.

This middle-aged man had ingested too much alcohol, and his speech was a bit slurred: “Hey, I’ve seen you standing here for a long time, what are you doing?”

Xu Huai picked up the divination stick tube from the ground, shook it in his hand, and the wooden sticks inside the tube collided with the tube, making a crisp sound. He opened his mouth with a clear voice: “Fortune-telling.”

“Fortune-telling?” As if he had heard something funny, the drunk repeated Xu Huai’s words, squinting his eyes and looking Xu Huai up and down with a contemptuous gaze. After a moment, he even sneered.

“What kind of thing are you?”

It sounded a bit like a curse.

Xu Huai calmly allowed the other person’s presumptuous gaze to sweep over him: “Employment, wealth, official luck, marriage, husband, wife, children, and I also occasionally look at feng shui.”

“Oh–” The drunk drew out the sound, his tone full of teasing, “You look like those ass-sellers, and you can do these things?”

Xu Huai wasn’t annoyed. When he heard this, he raised his eyelids slightly, his eyes a bit cold, and said unhurriedly, “I have a little research on peeking into the will of heaven, looking at feng shui, and slaying ghosts.”

Then he asked back: “What kind of thing are you?”

The drunk was stunned for a moment.

He probably realized that Xu Huai had returned his previous words to him unchanged. The drunk, who had failed to find fault, began to rage impotently, cursing Xu Huai in dialect for no reason.

Xu Huai couldn’t understand, nor did he need to understand.

Xu Huai took advantage of the man’s exaggerated voice, which could be heard several meters away, and began to shake the divination stick tube in his hand. When the man’s cursing stopped, Xu Huai also drew a stick from the tube.

The other small characters on the bamboo stick were shrouded in darkness inside the tube, and it wasn’t easy to see them. Only the word [Ominous] written on the head of the stick with gold leaf and cinnabar reflected the fine golden streamer due to the street light.

After cursing for a while, seeing that the fortune teller completely ignored him, the drunk also felt bored and staggered away. But before he could take a few steps, he heard a faint sentence floating from behind him.

–“Be careful on the night road.”

A one-way motor vehicle lane surrounded this overpass. To walk from under the overpass to the sidewalk on the other side, you needed to cross the lane.

The drunk ignored Xu Huai’s words, trying to wrest control of his body from the alcohol and maintain his balance.

Tch, it’s only two hundred meters to his home, what night road does he need to be careful of?

On this side, Xu Huai had just put the bamboo stick back into the divination stick tube when a sharp sound of car brakes came from not far beside him, followed by a huge impact.

Out of the corner of his eye, a human-shaped object was knocked almost three meters high.

The debris from the front bumper of the car that fell off stopped just at Xu Huai’s feet. Xu Huai put down the divination stick tube in his hand, watched the car owner who had hurriedly gotten out of the car anxiously run towards the drunk who had been knocked more than ten meters away and whose life and death were unknown, and calmly dialed the police.

There was only one lane here, and the car that caused the accident was parked in the middle of the road, directly blocking one lane. The vehicles behind quickly became blocked, and it wouldn’t be long before this area’s traffic system would be paralyzed.

“The Lanhe overpass near the Lanhe residential area, there was a car accident at the east exit…” After reporting the location and the incident to the police, Xu Huai hung up the phone.

I told you to be careful on the night road.

With this kind of thing happening, and since he was the one who reported it with his phone number, Song Lianzhou would probably be alerted and come quickly, after all, their department was also a long-term partner of the police.

Before Song Lianzhou could come over to ask, Xu Huai took out his phone and began to report the situation actively.

It was also at this time that a shadow fell beside him. Xu Huai didn’t have time to see who was walking over at this time, thinking it was just a bystander who had come to take a look after hearing the commotion, and ignored him.

But unexpectedly, after a while, a clean male voice came from above his head: “Fortune teller, help me tell a fortune?”

Xu Huai didn’t raise his head, looking at the phone screen and typing, subconsciously asking: “What do you want to know?”

After the words were spoken, Xu Huai belatedly raised his head.

…That’s not right.

There’s a car accident happening next to him, a person is lying next to him, life and death unknown, and this person really came to tell a fortune?

The lights beneath the overpass were dim, and the only streetlight happened to be situated behind the newcomer. As he was facing away, the light from the streetlight cast a warm yellow glow around him.

Xu Huai looked at the other person’s eyes, and his whole body froze in place as if he had pressed the pause button. Even the three vibrations of his phone didn’t bring him back to his senses.

The man curved the corners of his eyes, which were already slightly upturned: “Tell me about marriage, is that okay?”

For some reason, when Xu Huai made eye contact with this person, a strange sense of familiarity would continuously emerge in his brain, as if he had met this person not long ago and even spent some time with him…

Xu Huai searched his memory in the few seconds he was stunned, confirming that he had never met this person, let alone had any memories of spending time with this person.

A delusion.

Maybe he saw a similar face on the internet.

“…” After thinking for a while, Xu Huai nodded slightly stiffly, “Okay, tell me your birth date.”

The birth date needs to be accurate to the hour and minute of the day of birth, and few people remember it so carefully.

Upon hearing this answer, Xu Huai wasn’t surprised and remarked, “The year, month, and day on your ID card are also okay.”

“…”

There was another eerie silence.

Not far away, police cars with sirens wailing had arrived nearby, and the private car drivers blocked under the overpass began to stick their heads out and curse at the motionless vehicles in front.

Compared to the “liveliness” next to them, the place where the two of them were was too quiet.

Xu Huai thought: Indeed, normal people don’t come to tell fortunes late at night. He should have just gone straight home today. He had only set up his stall for less than half an hour, and two people had already come to find fault.

Seeing Xu Huai’s face turn cold, the man had a bit of embarrassment on his face and said, “Sorry. My parents died when I was very young. An aunt adopted me. The date on my ID card is not real… I don’t know the specific date of birth either.”

“…” Xu Huai’s eyes moved slightly, but he didn’t speak.

It was clear that this person’s expression and movements were very natural, but why did he feel that the helplessness and slight shyness revealed by this person had an unspeakable sense of incongruity?

As if he sensed Xu Huai’s struggle, the man wore a distinctly disappointed expression. Combined with the moist vapor hanging in the air at night, he resembled a large dog soaked in the rain.

The man tilted his head slightly, and the warm yellow light behind him softened the somewhat sharp jawline. The facial lines, perfectly balanced between youth and mature sharpness, caused Xu Huai’s mind to wander.

This person didn’t look old, maybe even younger than him.

Ah.

When he was young, he lost his parents and was adopted by someone. He didn’t even know his own birthday. Now he just wanted to know his marriage fortune and see what his future partner would be like.

It wouldn’t hurt to take a look for him…

Looking at the man’s somewhat lonely side, as he was about to turn around, Xu Huai’s heart softened, and he said something that he didn’t mean to say: “I…”

The other person paused and turned his head.

In the dimly lit room, those black eyes were surprisingly bright, gazing intently at Xu Huai as if they had been simmering for a long time.

After Xu Huai made contact with the other person’s gaze, his scalp first went numb, followed by a slight discomfort on the surface of his arms and other areas, as if he were being watched from the shadows by some dangerous creature, feeling coveted.

The man still had that clear and bright clean voice, no different from before: “What?”

His strong sixth sense was desperately stopping Xu Huai, but the words were already on the tip of his tongue.

Xu Huai: “…I can help you take a look.”