The Villain's Mom Becomes Famous for Fortune-Telling and Gossip Ch. 125

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Panting heavily, Lu He stopped at a crossroads, glancing around at the unfamiliar high-rises completely different from where they'd been earlier. He let out a long, shaky breath.

"Thank... god!" He half-collapsed onto a planter by the road. "Even though my luck sucks, I guess there's still a tiny bit of good luck left..."

Not seeing the funeral procession behind him and unsure whether the assistant or driver had made it out, Lu He took out his phone to call his second brother.

Some things were better left to the professionals.

"Beep... beep..." The line rang over and over. No one picked up.

For the first time ever, Lu He felt like his usually reliable second brother was being completely unreliable.

A creeping unease gnawed at him. He called two more times, but still no answer. Left with no choice, he braced himself and started walking in the direction of home.

The long road ahead was eerily quiet. Usually, this area wasn't exactly bustling, but it was never this deserted... Lu He silently grumbled but didn't dare dwell on it too much.

He pushed forward, past one traffic light... then another. By the time he passed the seventh one, he finally realized something—he was caught in a ghost loop.

Normally, just one set of traffic lights would bring him home. This time, he'd gone through seven, and still hadn't made it.

Clunk...

On the verge of snapping, he dragged his exhausted body along the seemingly endless road—when something suddenly bumped against his foot. The sudden clattering sound actually brought him a brief moment of joy.

After walking for so long, he finally ran into something different.

But when he saw what he'd kicked, the smile that had just appeared vanished in an instant.

It was a small white porcelain bowl. The white rice inside had spilled everywhere, and the bowl was painted with elegant little flowers that looked oddly familiar.

Lu He instantly remembered where he'd seen it before—during Ghost Festival on the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month, when his grandma would burn offerings and set out food for the dead!

This was a bowl used to hold offerings for the dead!

His scalp tingled at the thought. A cold, eerie wind swept by, and Lu He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

He took a trembling step forward, planning to act like he hadn't seen anything and skirt around the spot—but just as he lifted one foot, he saw an old woman dressed in black kneeling at a nearby intersection. She was quietly burning paper offerings into a small bronze basin.

Golden slips of joss paper were being swallowed up by the flames, their ashes glowing faintly as they floated into the air, carried by the wind straight in Lu He's direction.

His foot froze mid-step.

In that split second, a flood of Hong Kong horror movie scenes flashed through his mind. After hesitating a moment, he bent down, picked up the porcelain bowl, and cautiously walked toward the old woman burning paper.

The old woman was dressed all in black, kneeling by the fire. Her black-and-white hair was pinned with a small white flower, and she silently added more paper money to the flames. Beside the fire, Lu He noticed two small paper figurines that hadn't been burned yet.

He didn't know if it was just his imagination, but one of the paper figures... kind of looked like him.

"Granny..." Lu He gently placed the bowl back beside the fire and used the most sincere tone of his life to apologize. "I'm really sorry—I didn't notice the offerings by the road and accidentally knocked them over. I didn't mean to, I swear. Please forgive me..."

As he spoke, he bowed and quickly added a string of kind words. "I hope the one you're honoring reaches the Pure Land soon, and in the next life is reborn into a rich family, living a life free of worry or hunger!"

Thump thump—the old woman tapped the rim of the basin with the wooden stick she was using to stir the ashes. Bits of ash clung to the stick, falling as she tapped.

She let out a strange laugh, her voice raspy and hoarse. "Next life? If she's reincarnated, she won't be my daughter anymore..."

Her voice was so eerie—it sounded like claws scratching against a wooden door. Lu He instinctively took two steps back.

The old woman seemed lost in her own world, mumbling in that same creepy tone, "Rich families... rich families are great. They hit someone, toss over some money, say it wasn't on purpose, and a human life is just written off like that..."

Lu He was starting to get the picture. Trying to comfort her, he said, "Please don't be too sad, Granny. The law can help you. In cases like this, you can absolutely sue the person responsible!"

"Sue?" The old woman let out another strange laugh. "My daughter... I wanted to sue. But what if her husband took the settlement and didn't want to?"

"That..." Lu He was at a loss for words. This was someone else's family issue—he really had no right to say more. So he just said, "Please take care of yourself. My condolences."

"I don't want your condolences..." The old woman suddenly stood up, her face wrinkled like dead tree bark, but her cloudy eyes gleamed sharply. "I've already found a way to bring my daughter back. I just need a little favor from you, young man..."

Even though it was midsummer, thick fog rolled over the street. Lu He stumbled through the dense mist, his right shoe lost somewhere along the way, but he didn't dare stop.

The old woman he'd met earlier wanted him to feed the rice from the offering to her daughter and use his body to call her daughter's soul back.

"Ugh..." He spat out the rice in his mouth, though the weird fishy taste lingered.

He didn't know how far he'd walked when he spotted someone standing by the roadside, staring at their phone, seemingly waiting for a ride.

Such a normal, corporate-worker pose almost made Lu He want to cry. "Hello, I..."

The woman by the road looked about 60% like the old woman who was burning paper offerings. She paused at seeing Lu He, then smiled, "Oh, I'm just waiting for my ride..."

Yu Yuan and Wen He came out of the temple right on time, having arranged to meet at the haunted hotel.

At first, no matter what, the hotel manager refused to admit there was anything wrong with the hotel and even threatened to call the police if Wen He's group spread rumors. But when Wen He took off her sunglasses, revealing a face that had dominated screens for years, the fierce general manager's attitude shifted immediately.

"Miss Wen... oh, it's you! If only you'd said so earlier, I'd have arranged the best room for you..."

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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