"Get one. Little brother, I see a bloody calamity in your coming days."
"Let me go!" Zhao Pengfei swallowed his saliva and flailed—no, kicked and punched to break free from Su Cui's grip, but all his attacks were effortlessly countered by the old woman behind him. Finally, he could only cry out in pain.
"Little brother, we're fated to meet today. I live in this old building and haven't seen a stranger in years..." Su Cui blew cold air on his neck and murmured, "So you must have come specifically to get a fortune reading from me... I don't want anything in return... Guess what I want?"
Zhao Pengfei stammered, "My... life?"
Su Cui almost burst out laughing.
Her mouth twitched, and she continued in a sinister tone, "Your life isn't worth much."
"M-money?"
Huh.
What a clever one.
"I don't accept undeserved rewards," Su Cui said, a principled old grandmother. "Hurry up and get a reading. What's your birth date and time?"
Zhao Pengfei shivered. "I don't know my birth date..."
Su Cui suddenly realized she didn't know either, so she changed the subject. "It's okay if you don't know. I can tell fortunes without it. You look pretty old—how old are you?"
She called him old while asking his age like he was a child.
Zhao Pengfei felt the full force of her malice and hesitated. "Thirty?"
"Are you lying to me? You can't even say your own age with certainty!" Su Cui said suspiciously. If she hadn't read the novel and knew that this sleazy man was thirty today, she might have thought he was lying.
"Louder!" Su Cui clenched her fist to encourage him. "Say your age loudly!"
Zhao Pengfei raised his voice, trembling. "I'm thirty!"
Su Cui looked around. It was dark and quiet, no one in sight. Hehehe. So she continued to encourage him, "Not loud enough! Louder!"
Zhao Pengfei was about to break down.
Wasn't he loud enough?
Suddenly he had an idea and shouted even louder, "I'm thirty!" Then he began to scream for help. "Help! There's a ghost!"
"Hehe." The hoarse voice behind him remained calm, as if she wasn't afraid of him calling for help.
Zhao Pengfei shouted for a while but found that this dilapidated building truly lived up to its dangerous reputation—it grew even quieter under his shouts, with only a few dim, yellow lights flickering.
So his shouts grew softer.
He confirmed he was dealing with a ghost.
"You can scream until your throat breaks, no one will come!" Su Cui said ominously.
That line was originally said to the female lead by Zhao Pengfei in the novel, only then he thought heaven was helping him, so the female lead's desperate cries for help went unanswered.
But Su Cui knew clearly that tonight there was an event in the square; all the neighbors had gone to watch a free movie and dance square dancing there.
Everyone living here was poor, most of them old people like her. Who didn't have some leisure time?
Only she was still here, passing the time by telling fortunes.
Life was truly lonely as snow.
"Do you still want your fortune told? If not... you might immediately..." Su Cui was about to say "die" to scare him.
But Zhao Pengfei nodded frantically. "I'll do it! I'll do it!"
"Damn it, you're worthless!" Su Cui couldn't help cursing.
Shameless old pervert!
"I want my marriage fortune!" Zhao Pengfei blurted out, then quickly changed his mind under the sudden increase in Su Cui's grip strength. "I want my fate, Master! Will I... will I survive today?"
"Yes," Su Cui said, a law-abiding citizen.
"But your complexion is dark. Have you recently gone through your wife leaving, your lover turning against you, and your boss cursing you?"
"Ah, Master, yes!" Zhao Pengfei was stunned. He didn't expect her to be right about everything.
"Are you in a very bad mood, but today you saw a glimmer of light?"
Zhao Pengfei thought of the girl he had been following all day, and his heart warmed. "Yes!"
"Exactly! That's why I said you have a bloody calamity!" Su Cui began to spin a story. "Have you been feeling extremely irritable lately, with a desire to destroy everything?"
"Yes!" Zhao Pengfei said excitedly.
Could she really be a master? The pain from the beating faded. "Master, save me!"
"Remember: never approach that glimmer of light again, because that light is a disguise meant to swallow you. But you can escape for a while, not forever. Heaven's net is vast..." Su Cui thought back to the original novel's description of the female lead being bullied, and the more she thought, the angrier she got. She really wanted to take out her phone and call the police.
"Anyway, to completely break the curse, simply escaping the light is useless."
"Then, Master, how... how do I break it?" Zhao Pengfei panicked.
But behind him, there was silence for a while. Seeing that he hadn't caught on, she had to remind him, "Divulging heavenly secrets goes against heaven's harmony. Even I have to pay a price, let alone you."
Zhao Pengfei suddenly understood and took out his phone to transfer money.
But he realized he didn't know the master's bank account number. Awkwardly, he said, "Master, I don't have cash. Do you have a... bank account?"
"How could a reclusive immortal like me have such worldly possessions?" Su Cui knew that Zhao Pengfei had a very valuable jade pendant. It was because of that jade pendant that the female lead was exposed to a powerful mafia leader and was nearly tortured to madness. So she said calmly, "I calculate with my fingers: the jade pendant around your neck is fated with me."
Zhao Pengfei: "...This is a family heirloom passed down for generations."
"If you lose your life, what's the point of an heirloom?" Su Cui said flatly. "Since you won't trade, it seems we have no fate today. Alas! The day after tomorrow, you'll die in vain!"
"I'll trade!" Driven by his will to live, Zhao Pengfei took off the jade pendant from his neck and, with a heavy heart, handed it to Su Cui.
Su Cui took it and stuffed it into her shirt pocket. She then gave Zhao Pengfei some guidance: "Tomorrow afternoon, a bald man will pass by Hechuan Du Qixiang. You must rush up and hug him tightly, then breathe deeply into his body."
"That man is a reclusive Buddhist cultivator. The more of his sun-moon spiritual energy you absorb, the better you'll be able to turn danger into safety. If you don't absorb enough, you'll survive death but not disaster, and you'll inevitably face prison time. So be sure to absorb plenty! Remember! Remember!"
"Huh?" Zhao Pengfei was skeptical. "Really...?"
"Go back now. Your wife has already returned home, but she brought an uninvited guest. If you don't believe me, go see for yourself."
Your wife brought her black-belt older brother, who's about to beat you up. Hurry back and get beaten!
Su Cui was glad that she had read the beginning of this garbage novel "Elegant Snow" carefully. At the time, she had thought it was a pity that this scumbag went home late after bullying the female lead and didn't get beaten by his wife.
Let me give it a push.
"Go now! Keep moving forward without looking back. I'm also returning to the mountains." Su Cui released her grip on Zhao Pengfei and pushed him forward, making him stumble.
"Master?" He disobediently looked back.
But to his shock, there was no master at all. The old community was empty, with only a streetlight flickering on and off, scaring people.
A cold wind howled past.
Zhao Pengfei quickly lowered his head, snapped back to reality, and rushed out of the old community area without looking back again.
【Author's Note】
Newcomer here~
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