Chapter 86: Zhang Shengnan

Returning to the fortune-telling parlor, Fang You reopened the shop for business. As he pondered over Yuan Xi, the puppet master who killed his uncle, and the mysterious Yin-Yang Temple, he realized his own strength was still far from enough to confront them. The Yin-Yang Temple was, after all, a gathering place for masters, and as for that Thai sorcerer, Xi Long—he had twice been defeated only because he was caught off guard. If a true confrontation were to occur, Fang You might well be in real danger!

After much deliberation, he decided it was wiser to wait and see. Though his desire to avenge his uncle ran deep, it wasn’t worth throwing his own life away blindly. For now, he could only keep to his place and quietly mind the fortune-telling shop.

One day, as Fang You sat inside the quiet parlor, there came a knock at the door. Fang You paused, setting aside the brush with which he’d been inscribing talismans. Little White, the fox cub, lay curled in his arms. Stroking the soft fur, Fang You spoke gently, “Come in.”

The door creaked open. It was Zhang Shengnan, dressed in her police uniform, who stepped inside.

“Daoist Fang, you’re back?” Zhang Shengnan smiled as she entered.

“So it’s Officer Zhang. What brings you here today?” Fang You placed Little White on the table and rose to greet her.

“Officer… Zhang?” Zhang Shengnan was rendered momentarily speechless, feeling an unfamiliar distance from Fang You—perhaps because of her recent confession. The atmosphere felt a touch awkward, but she chose to pretend nothing had happened and didn’t press the matter further.

Fang You poured her a cup of tea.

Zhang Shengnan kept her smile and said, “I’ve just been promoted to the Sixth Unit of the Special Cases Division. Quite the good news, isn’t it? The first case I’m handling feels rather unusual, so I wanted to consult you, Mr. Fang.”

“Mr. Fang? Hm.” Fang You was briefly startled, then smiled reassuringly. “That’s good. Tell me, what trouble have you encountered?”

Zhang Shengnan sat down across from him, opened her laptop, and flipped to a page. “The author of this novel is Fang Meiqi, an obscure writer of horror stories. But one day, her novel suddenly went viral!”

“An overnight sensation?” Fang You was puzzled. “People becoming famous overnight isn’t all that rare. Why is that suspicious?”

“Yes, overnight fame isn’t unusual,” Zhang Shengnan continued. “But in several recent serial murders, the crime scenes perfectly matched the content of Fang Meiqi’s novel. In other words, the book seems to be predicting real deaths.”

“Foreseeing death?” Now Fang You was intrigued. He and Zhang Shengnan sat together, comparing the details of the novel with those of the recent homicide cases.

Meanwhile, in a small cabin in the woods, a female novelist was opening her laptop to write.

Her eyes locked intently on the screen, thinking for a long while before she pressed the keys to begin:

Night. A man walks down the street. The roads around him are silent, windless, and touched with a chill. The man…

Even as the novelist wrote, somewhere on a real city street, a drunken man wandered down a deserted road, as if following the path penned by her hand.

He drank as he walked, aimless and swaying. Suddenly, a little girl’s voice sounded behind him.

He turned, puzzled, to find a cute little girl looking at him and saying, “Uncle, can you help me pick up my lower half?”

Confused, thinking he’d misheard, the man asked again, “Little girl, what did you say?”

“Uncle, can you help me pick up my lower half?” the girl repeated with a smile.

“Your… lower half?” The man noticed that the girl seemed to be kneeling, her pleated skirt covering her legs.

The next moment, the girl pressed her hands to the ground and raised her upper body.

The man screamed. The girl’s lower body had been horribly mangled, her legs gone, her flesh a gory mess.

Half sobered by terror, the memory flashed back: half a month ago, he’d accidentally run over a little girl while passing through a mountain village.

When he got out, the child’s small body had already been torn in two by the wheels.

She had pleaded with him to help gather her lower body and take her to the hospital.

But seeing that the lane was unmonitored, the man had fled in his car, leaving the girl’s corpse behind in the wilderness.

Now, staring at the little girl before him, fear seized his heart. He spun around to flee.

Yet in the next instant, the girl had somehow climbed onto his shoulders, her hands covering his eyes. “Come to hell with me,” she whispered.

Ding!

The novelist stretched deeply after finishing her chapter. Just then, an email arrived on her computer. It was a message from her editor: “Fang Meiqi, our star author, time to update! Otherwise, your full attendance record will be broken!”

Playfully, Fang Meiqi replied, “Alright, dear editor! Remember to arrange the recommendations for next month!”

“As long as you keep updating, your recommendations won’t be interrupted! Now, I have to get back to work,” the editor replied.

“Thank you, boss!” Meiqi closed her computer, flopped onto her bed, and soon drifted into a deep sleep.

Suddenly, as she slept, she felt something touching her feet. Puzzled, Meiqi opened her groggy eyes, only to see a boy with no ears staring at her with a mournful gaze.

She screamed, jolted awake from the nightmare, and looked around—just a dream. Quickly, she grabbed the sedatives from her bedside and swallowed a few.

Sitting half-upright, Fang Shuyia rubbed her temples. She couldn’t remember when the nightmares had started, one after another, each so vivid it felt real.

She had seen a psychologist, who told her she had “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome”—a disorder common among creative writers, where reality and imagination blur, and the boundaries between one’s own stories and the real world grow indistinct.

After a brief rest, Fang Meiqi reopened her computer to continue updating her chapters.

Meanwhile, in the fortune-telling parlor, Fang You and Zhang Shengnan were reading the latest chapter.

Suddenly, Zhang Shengnan’s phone rang. She answered. Zhou Shen’s voice came through: “Zhang Shengnan, get to 32 Lane, East Suburb. A drunken man was found dead on the road last night!”

“According to the surveillance footage, he looked as if something had covered his eyes. He staggered, panicked, left and right, before finally being run over and killed by a car!”

“Covered his eyes, body broken in two?” Fang You and Zhang Shengnan stared at the latest chapter on the screen.

“Could this novel truly possess the power to predict death?!”