“I see…”
Sister Fan’s expression softened instantly. She finally understood why this young boy was so desperate for money.
“I’ll let you know as soon as another gig comes up. Go on, go change and wash off that makeup.”
Shen Yanxing flashed a bright smile, hopping and skipping his way to the dressing room.
Between this rain scene and the previous patriotic student protest scene, they had been filming for a brutal sixteen hours straight. Because it involved getting drenched, the crew offered the extras a relatively high hourly rate: eighty yuan an hour!
Earning over 1,200 yuan just for getting soaked for two days felt incredibly worth it to Shen Yanxing. But when he finished changing, dried off, and turned on his phone to check the transfer, he was stunned.
It wasn’t 1,280 yuan. It was 1,920 yuan!
Sister Fan sent a message explaining: [The director felt you were really special. Your acting was so immersive and moving that he upgraded your pay to the “special extra” rate 120 yuan an hour.]
At this stage in his life, Shen Yanxing didn’t understand the industry distinctions between regular extras, minor special extras, and featured extras; he assumed they were all just background actors. Not wanting to question his good fortune, he happily accepted the transfer without asking further questions.
This is amazing! He had been terrified he wouldn’t have enough money, but this was more than enough!
It was still early barely 3:00 PM. That gave him plenty of time to take a trip downtown and buy the necklace he had been dreaming about!
Without lingering a moment longer, Shen Yanxing dried his hair and immediately rushed out toward the city center.
He had only just left when Gu Congjue arrived.
“Dad,” the 1.68-meter boy muttered, feeling exceptionally small like a tiny chick walking beside his 1.86-meter father. “Didn’t you say you didn’t have any scenes today? If you’re not filming, how are you supposed to teach me acting techniques?”
“I’ll have one later,” Gu Pingyue said as he walked into the dressing room, casually pulling up a chair. “Get your makeup done first. There’s a massive scene tonight, and it’s probably going to take a long time to grind through. When I’m too busy to look after you, just stay with Uncle Qi.”
Uncle Qi was Gu Pingyue’s manager.
Gu Congjue obediently agreed, sitting down beside his father to watch him get his makeup applied.
On the surface, he played the perfect, well-behaved son politely greeting the manager and casually asking the crew about the filming schedule but in reality, he was just scouting for a chance to slip away.
He had been sitting there for less than half an hour, but he had already figured out his dad’s schedule. Tonight, Gu Pingyue had to film a scene where his character gets severely injured. To achieve a realistic, bloody effect, the special effects makeup on his face and body alone would take at least two hours!
“Wow Dad, being an actor is exhausting,” Gu Congjue sighed aloud, though inwardly he was ecstatic. Two hours? Perfect.
After clocking exactly thirty minutes to avoid suspicion, he used the excuse of going to the restroom, bolted out of the set, and hailed a taxi.
“To the train station, please. And step on it, I’m in a rush.”
The driver instantly tossed aside his phone which had been looping short videos donned his sunglasses, and gave a sharp thumbs-up. “You got it, kid!”
Seeing that no one was chasing him, Gu Congjue breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled out his phone and bought a ticket for the earliest bullet train back to the Chao’an District.
He had an appointment today. He Fang had been invited by a wealthy socialite in Chao’an to read her natal chart, and she had agreed to meet Gu Congjue at a Western restaurant near the SDP Mall at 4:00 PM.
Though the round trip wasted a massive chunk of time, pulling a fast one on his father and his nanny, Rong Ma, put him in an incredible mood. The urge to pour his heart out was becoming uncontrollable; his heart hammered against his ribs so hard it felt like it might burst out of his chest.
Thanks to a flurry of taxis and high-speed trains, Gu Congjue arrived at the designated cafe just before four o’clock.
By sheer coincidence, he ran right into He Fang just outside the entrance. Carrying a leather handbag and cradling a fabric-covered book likely her copy of the I Ching (Book of Changes)—she offered him a gentle smile.
“Long time no see, Young Master Gu. Have you grown taller again?”
Gu Congjue, who was never particularly good at social graces, swallowed hard. He bowed politely and proactively took the heavy handbag from her. “Hello, long time no see.”
He Fang smiled warmly and led him inside to a private room.
Once seated, she laid out the I Ching before pulling out a purple astrology chart from her bag. While she was organizing her things, Gu Congjue chatted with her casually and was shocked to learn that this woman, who looked barely in her late thirties, was actually forty-eight years old!
“You’re really forty-eight?” Gu Congjue asked, incredulous. “My grandmother is only—”
Realizing that staring was incredibly rude, he quickly cut himself off and apologized.
“I’m sorry for staring. I honestly thought you were much younger, like you belonged to my parents’ generation.” Mentioning his parents brought back a wave of anxiety. “Our private conversations… you won’t tell anyone, right? You won’t tell my parents?”
Under the table, he tapped his phone screen to check WeChat.
Thank goodness. No new messages. Nothing from his dad, his mom, or Rong Ma. It looked like his grand escape hadn’t been discovered yet.
“I won’t. I don’t even have your parents’ contact information,” He Fang replied serenely, flipping open the I Ching. “It was quite obvious they don’t believe in my work, which is why they didn’t care to take my business card last time.”
Gu Congjue glanced at the book and noticed that almost every single page was covered in dense notes written in red, blue, and black ink.
“Yeah, they don’t believe in it.”
Hesitating for a moment, Gu Congjue finally explained his true purpose.
“I didn’t believe it either at first. Not until you mentioned my ‘past life.’ I’m deeply curious about that part. I want to understand how you read that kind of information from a… from an astrology chart? And what else can you actually see?”
At his core, he was a skeptic of the supernatural. He needed validation. He needed to know exactly how much this “Immortal He” truly knew.
He Fang let out a soft sigh, her voice candid. “Young Master Gu, I am old enough to be your grandmother. I don’t mind you laughing at me, so I will give you the honest truth.”
She explained that when she was fourteen, her neighbors migrated abroad and left her a few items they couldn’t take with them, including an astrology chart and the I Ching. Those two items sparked a deep fascination with metaphysics, launching her into more than thirty years of painstaking study.
In reality, whether it was the charts or the I Ching, these tools were created by ancients to interpret and explain natural phenomena long before modern science existed. Strip away the mysticism, and they were essentially data logs of human patterns.
“I understand why people don’t believe it. When I first started studying, I didn’t believe it either. To be frank, part of me still doesn’t.”
Driven by a desperate urge to understand, she buried herself in research. Wanting to test her “theories,” she began using the charts to divine fortunes for people.
At first, she merely regurgitated passages from the I Ching and generic astrological terms to pacify people’s questions. But over time whether she simply became highly perceptive, truly unlocked the algorithms of the universe, or stumbled into a genuine spiritual realm the information appearing on the charts became terrifyingly vivid.
“Many people claim I am profoundly accurate, that I can predict the future, and they call me ‘Immortal He.’ But truth be told, even I don’t fully understand how it works. I simply input the data into the chart, and then read what appears before me.”
Gu Congjue listened intently, nodding slowly. “I see.”
A waiter knocked on the door to deliver their drinks. Fearing that the divination tools on the table would be seen, Gu Congjue quickly stood up to intercept the tray at the door.
“He… what should I call you?” The young master clumsily poured her a cup of hot tea. “Please, have some tea.”
“You can call me Grandma Fang. Given my age, you really should call me Grandma,” He Fang said, accepting the hot tea. “Thank you, young master.”
“No, no, I think I’ll call you Auntie Fang.”
Gu Congjue sat back down, taking a long sip of his cold drink to soothe his nerves.
“If I told you… that I can remember things that happened in a past life, would you think I’m crazy?” He intentionally avoided the word “reincarnation,” opting for a milder, more digestible phrasing.
“No,” He Fang replied, pulling out a pair of reading glasses from her purse and putting them on. “Young Master, the first time I saw you, I felt it. Your eyes are different from other children. You are remarkably poised, calm, and carry a maturity that simply does not belong to your age.”
Hearing her validation gave Gu Congjue a massive sense of relief. “My past life was exactly as you predicted a ‘premature death.’ I died in a car accident before I even turned eighteen. I’ve always felt there was something deeply wrong with that accident. It haunts me. Can you see anything more specific about it?”
“What do you intend to do with that information?”
“Find someone.” Gu Congjue’s gaze turned fiercely resolute. “Find someone incredibly important to me. We made a promise to spend my eighteenth birthday together, but because of that accident, I broke my word.”
He Fang began shifting the components of the astrology chart. “Is that all? When you mentioned that the accident felt wrong, is there something else driving you?”
“Yes. I want revenge.”
The young boy’s eyes suddenly went ice-cold.
He took another sip of his iced drink, using the freezing sensation to anchor his volatile emotions. “That accident happened far too suddenly. I’ve always suspected it was orchestrated by someone. I have to unearth the truth. I need to know if it was truly an act of God, or if someone actively murdered me.”
His dark confession didn’t seem to startle He Fang at all. She pulled a square red envelope from her bag and unfolded it, revealing a piece of red paper.
It was the paper containing Gu Congjue’s birth coordinates his Shengchen Bazi. She was supposed to have burned it, but driven by an insatiable curiosity regarding his anomalies, she had selfishly kept it.
“Young Master, I am genuinely glad you reached out and sought me out today. In all my years doing this, I have never encountered a natal chart as bizarre as yours. I kept your birth data and have secretly run your chart a few times purely out of professional curiosity. I meant no malice, and I hope you won’t take offense.”
Gu Congjue shook his head. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“According to standard spiritual law, a person’s life balances out. Blessings and tragedies, highs and lows, eventually cancel each other out so that the net total equals zero. But your chart breaks this rule entirely. The point where your past life intersects with your current one reveals something striking: in your past life, your suffering vastly outweighed your blessings. Because of that imbalance, your current life will yield a surplus of absolute fortune that heavily outweighs any misfortune.”
Gu Congjue blinked, completely lost. “Why is that?”
He couldn’t wrap his head around spiritual theories, trying instead to process it using basic mathematical equations where the net sum changed from a negative to a positive.
He Fang fell silent, pondering deeply before finally speaking.
“It is highly possible that someone stole your fortune in your previous life.”
Gu Congjue grew even more confused. “Stole my fortune? How do you even do that?”
“I don’t know the exact mechanics; it is simply the only deduction that fits,” He Fang sighed softly. “There are far too many things in this universe that defy scientific explanation. Oh, by the way, Young Master… this important person you mentioned earlier. Are they a friend, or a lover?”
He Fang’s abrupt pivot caught Gu Congjue completely off guard. He flushed, flustered and speechless. Rubbing the back of his neck, he desperately summoned the memory of Shen Yanxing’s face before finally tapping the table firmly. “A lover. I… I love him very much.”
“Then you can rest easy.” He Fang pointed directly to a junction on the astrology chart. “Your marriage line is exceptionally stable. Judging by the cosmic alignments, your destined partner is already drawing closer to you. You will likely cross paths in the very near future.”
Gu Congjue froze. “…What?”
He stared blankly at He Fang, his eyes wide.
Crossing paths in the very near future meant…
He was going to see Shen Yanxing soon?!