The Villain's Mom Becomes Famous for Fortune-Telling and Gossip Ch. 21

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The three young men beside her immediately followed suit, their voices in unison and tinged with solemnity, "Master Yu."

"Mm." Yu Yuan gave them a once-over before turning around. "Come in."

Kun Kun and a boy named Xiao Bei hurriedly helped the tightly wrapped-up Xiao Nan inside.

The summer night air was still warm, yet the house had a cool, eerie chill even without the AC on.

Xiao Nan curled up on the sofa. Before Kun Yuan and the others could speak, Yu Yuan cut straight to the point: "You ran into something unclean while visiting your family's ancestral graves?"

They all stiffened in shock, even the sluggish Xiao Nan snapping his head up in surprise.

"H-How did you know?"

Beside him, Kun Yuan's expression darkened. "Wait—Xiao Nan, didn't you say it happened on your way home at night?"

Xiao Nan shivered, hugging himself as his lips trembled from the chill. At Kun Yuan's questioning tone, his gaze flickered evasively.

"I... If I told the truth, my dad would kill me."

His family had lived in a coastal city in the south for generations, deeply believing in and fearing the supernatural. But Xiao Nan had grown up under his grandparents' care—both university professors, firm atheists who scoffed at anything remotely spiritual. Naturally, he had inherited their skepticism, brushing off ghost stories as pure nonsense.

If his parents and grandparents hadn't all convinced him together, practically cornering him with no way to refuse, he wouldn't have gone home for the ancestral rites at all.

It wasn't that he was unfilial—he just couldn't stand being the only atheist stuck in a room full of elders who were obsessed with ghosts and gods. They kept spewing things he neither understood nor believed in, all while acting like it was for his own good, trying to force their beliefs onto him.

It felt like being a hardcore anti-marriage person stuck at a family gathering, bombarded by endless aunties nagging him to get married—his brain was ready to explode.

And if his superstitious dad ever found out that he'd pissed off something unclean by accidentally knocking over an old lady's sacrificial rice on the roadside... yeah, he'd probably get his ear twisted off while being scolded to death.

Huddled inside his thick winter coat, Xiao Nan sighed at the memory of that night.

He had gone home to pay respects to his ancestors on Qingming Festival—but he had dragged his feet all day, only heading over late at night. By the time he was ready to leave for the airport, it was already dark. His grandparents had warned him not to travel at night during Qingming, but he didn't want to hear another lecture from them, so he insisted on driving himself to the airport.

Then, as he passed through an intersection after a traffic light, he saw an old lady squatting by the roadside, tending to a fire basin, burning joss paper.

Now, while he didn't believe in ghosts, he wasn't disrespectful either. Worried that his car might kick up a gust and blow embers onto the old woman, he even slowed down as he passed.

What he didn't expect was that the old lady had placed a bowl too close to the road. His car crushed it under his tires.

By the time he realized what had happened and thought about stopping to apologize, he was already trapped in a ghost loop.

Thinking about that night, Xiao Nan's brows furrowed deeply. He could still feel that bone-deep chill creeping through his body.

No matter how far or which direction he drove, he kept ending up at that same intersection.

Time and time again, he drove through a thick, eerie fog, only to see several bowls of offerings in the middle of the road—each with five incense sticks, arranged in three long, two short. The bowls were filled to the brim, almost overflowing, the incense embers flickering dimly within the mist.

And with every loop, the bowls were placed closer.

The final time he passed through, the offerings were no longer in the middle of the road.

They were sitting on his car's hood.

The five incense sticks burned just barely a meter away from him.

That was the last thing he remembered.

The next morning, he woke up to his grandmother crying. His stomach felt unnaturally full—and beside him sat those same offering bowls from last night.

They were completely empty.

Xiao Nan retold everything in excruciating detail. His gloved hands covered his face as he spoke, his voice filled with agony.

"I don't remember anything after that... but I know I must've eaten the food from those offering bowls. That stuff was meant for the dead."

"My grandma didn't tell my dad—she took me straight to a local spiritual master that same day, and at first, it seemed fine. But the moment I got home, it was like I was cursed or something."

"It's the middle of summer, and yet... I feel like I'm freezing to death in a snowstorm."

His expression twisted, his long lashes coated with a thin layer of frost. Ice crystals had started forming on his cheeks, and his entire body shook violently—as if he had just walked fifty miles through a frozen wasteland.

There were a lot of details in this whole thing that Kun Yuan and her brother had never heard of before. Especially when they found out that this guy might've absentmindedly eaten offerings meant for the dead—at that moment, all three of them shuddered at the same time, their eyes filled with worry and fear.

Realizing the severity of the situation, Kun Kun quickly turned to Yu Yuan and asked, "Master, is there still hope for him?"

"What nonsense are you talking about!" Kun Yuan shot a glare at her brother. "Don't scare Xiao Nan!"

She then turned to Yu Yuan, who was lazily lowering her gaze, and anxiously pleaded, "Master, no matter what, you have to help him!"

"Yeah, yeah, exactly!" The usually quiet Xiao Bei suddenly chimed in, nodding eagerly. Then, as if suddenly realizing something, he jolted and asked, "Master, how much do you charge? Cash or transfer?"

At first, Kun Yuan felt that bringing up money might seem a bit disrespectful to the master, but on second thought, what if the master only accepted cash? She needed to be prepared. Otherwise, making the master wait would look super insincere!

Yu Yuan thought about her grandmaster, who was currently tucked away in the storage room. Her calm breathing subtly hitched for a second.

Going by the pricing standards of her previous sect, even if she lived for 800 years, she still wouldn't be able to afford to build a temple for her grandmaster.

All credit goes to the original author
Feel free to pinpoint us if there are any grammar error or typos
Please don't use Guazi's translations to re-translate in other languages

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