Chapter 63

In Rao Yun’s recounting, Qi Xu learned more details.

“At first, I didn’t take it seriously. It was just a very small red envelope, five yuan, saying it wanted to borrow five points from me. I didn’t know what those five points were back then. Later, during the exam results, I suddenly realized that one subject’s score was five points off from what I had estimated myself.”

“You might not know me, but I’ve always had great grades, really great… I was always very confident in myself.”

Ah, she didn’t need to know her for that. Qi Xu had some idea. No need to mention anything else; just knowing that Rao Yun had been a student council officer in her junior year showed what an overachiever she was.

When she brought up the borrowing of points, Qi Xu also had a realization. The girl on the forum who had cried about having her points borrowed and missing out on the scholarship was probably Rao Yun.

Sure enough, Rao Yun’s later words confirmed it.

“But I didn’t take it seriously either. I didn’t even use that red envelope. I thought it was fishy, so I just donated the money. I didn’t receive any more red envelopes after that, so I thought it was just someone’s prank.”

As Rao Yun spoke, her complexion grew worse and worse. At the crucial parts, she even looked somewhat pained.

“At the end of last semester, during finals week, one day I was preparing to leave the library after returning my borrowed books. I opened my notebook and found a red envelope tucked inside. There was a note in the red envelope saying it wanted to borrow points from me, 100 points!”

“I was already feeling a bit off by then, but I was in the library, so I thought it was just a prank and didn’t want to disturb others, so I held it in. But when the exam results came out, I found that five subjects were each twenty points lower than my estimates—exactly 100 points in total!”

“I raised an objection with my professors and requested a recheck of my papers, which they approved. But the papers I saw were completely different from what I remembered filling out! There were many questions I clearly answered—even reciting them on the spot to the teacher during the recheck—but they were blank on the paper!”

By this point, she was on the verge of breaking down. Qi Xu’s grades were only average, mid-tier in her class. Scholarships were out of the question for her, but failing wasn’t her fate either. Still, she could fully understand Rao Yun’s grief over losing twenty points in five subjects.

Because—if it had been her losing twenty points, she would have failed outright.

Up to this point, though Rao Yun was scared, it wasn’t enough to make her hide in a blanket barrier. After all, it was just some credits; scholarships weren’t absolutely essential to her. When her family heard about it, they even took her to a famous temple in her hometown during the summer break to pray.

She thought the bad luck wouldn’t stick to her anymore. More importantly, it hadn’t affected her physical health yet. So when the student council had to clean the sports field, she let her guard down—and that’s when the life-borrowing red packet incident happened.

Right after that came the recent trip to the temple where she stuffed all those red envelopes into the merit box, and now she was still receiving them.

As a clear-minded and kind university student, Rao Yun even asked Qi Xu, “I panicked at the time, so I stuffed that red envelope into the merit box. If the temple monks pick it up, will they be in trouble?”

She could barely protect herself, yet she was still worrying about others.

Qi Xu sighed. “It’s fine. They’re high monks; it won’t faze them.”

Only then did Rao Yun breathe a sigh of relief. She looked at Qi Xu, hesitation still in her eyes. “Will I cause you trouble? This doesn’t seem like anything simple; it’s too out of the ordinary.”

Qi Xu wasn’t afraid at all. She spent every day with Xia Zhiming; if that ghost had the guts, it could shove a red envelope into Xia Zhiming’s house.

To reassure Rao Yun, Qi Xu pulled out her official investigator badge from her bag. “To be honest, I’m actually a specialist in this area.” The official badge looked very formal, complete with an embossed seal. Rao Yun took it, examined it, and believed Qi Xu.

It helped that Rao Yun was so pure and naive. If it had been anyone else, seeing this department Qi Xu had never heard of, they would have suspected she was just having a chuunibyou episode and made it up online.

“So what should I do now?”

“Didn’t I just give you the peace talisman? Didn’t you feel much better after taking it? Don’t let go of that peace talisman. Tell me where you received the red envelopes, and I’ll go check it out.”

Rao Yun nodded and told Qi Xu the exact location in the library and the direction of the grove. Qi Xu instructed her not to overthink it; their department would definitely handle this and never ignore the life and safety of the masses.

“But don’t tell anyone else. We’re a secret department.” Thinking of what was said on the forum, she continued explaining to Rao Yun, “Even if you did tell others, no one would believe you. We also have a dedicated information processing department. If you post about it, it’ll be flagged by keywords and deleted quickly.”

Qi Xu wasn’t lying to Rao Yun about this. She had indeed seen people on the forum frequently cursing the information processing department for being slow with supernatural event handling. Of course, the information processing department was flexible; not every supernatural post got deleted.

Often, it was better to guide than to block. Rather than deleting everything, they mixed real and fake posts, had relevant personnel control the narrative, turning genuine incidents into seeming hoaxes.

For example, with the life-borrowing red packet thing, people online were originally terrified of receiving one. But under the information processing department’s guidance, it turned into humorous “what to do if you get a life-borrowing red packet” posts. Nine times out of ten, if someone received one, they either ignored it or actually collected them to drop in a merit box.

Gradually, the general public became less afraid of this kind of life-borrowing red packet ghost story.

There was a saying on the forum: fear was this emotion of dread, which could often turn into hate—the two felt indistinguishably similar at times. Especially after actually encountering a supernatural event, dread quickly converted to hate.

Hate and resentment toward ghosts for targeting you; hate and resentment toward your bad luck for why it was only you. Even the unwillingness before death—all could boil down to “hate.”

In short, to reduce the public’s dread of ghosts, the information processing department was genuinely working hard.

So even if Rao Yun posted about the incident online, it would be handled quickly.

Qi Xu’s words brought a faint smile to Rao Yun’s face—the first smile Qi Xu had seen from her since they met. “Got it.”

She gave Rao Yun a few more instructions, mostly to comfort her. After that, Qi Xu left Rao Yun’s dorm and headed to the places where she had received the red envelopes. The first spot, near Building C of the academic complex, yielded nothing after Qi Xu circled it several times.

Next, she went to the library.

Qi Xu didn’t come to the library often. She wasn’t that bright to begin with, barely scraping by in the middle of her class. Coming to the library every day was for grind overachievers and top students; she wasn’t that type. Still, she came occasionally, at least to cram before finals.

Plus, the library’s lending room had comics and novels, which Qi Xu loved.

The reading room where grinders like Rao Yun hung out was really different from the ones she visited. It was packed with people, books spread out before them, studying intently. Qi Xu circled the reading room once, and the noise of her footsteps even made the studying top students look up at her. She clasped her hands together in apology and backed out.

Nothing there either.

It looked like she had to check the grove. Qi Xu left the reading room and reached the library entrance. Before she had taken two steps, her phone rang—Xia Zhiming calling.

“I heard you ran into a life-borrowing red packet?”

“Yeah.” Qi Xu immediately knew it was the vice bureau chief who had told her. She wondered if the “replacement” the vice bureau chief mentioned was Xia Zhiming.

As she thought, Xia Zhiming yawned on the other end, clearly just woken from a nap. “The vice bureau chief told me to head to the school, but since you’re there, I won’t bother.”

“?” What did that mean? That Xia Zhiming wasn’t coming to help? Qi Xu’s eyes widened. No way did she look like she could handle this alone! After her shock, she immediately said into the phone, “No, I can’t handle it by myself!”

“Quit your yapping, tomboy. What’s so hard about it? You’ve sneakily taken so many of my talismans from me. If you can’t handle it, give all the peace talismans back!”

Qi Xu subconsciously clutched her sling bag tighter.

But still no! As a spoiled mama’s girl, she hadn’t even sent one to her own mom yet. She hemmed and hawed, trying to say more, but Xia Zhiming hung up without a care. “Click!”

“Ah…”

The call ended, screen returning to standby. Qi Xu stood at the library entrance, sighing in dismay, not knowing what to say. At that moment, she suddenly sensed a wave of yin energy.

Qi Xu was sensitive to both yin energy and yang energy, but in her human form, she wasn’t as attuned to yin energy. For her to sense it so clearly, it had to be quite dense. She jerked her head up and saw a boy passing by her side.

The boy was very thin but not tall, about Qi Xu’s height. For a split second as he passed, she even wondered if he was a girl. But looking closely, from his clothes to his walk, he was definitely a boy.

He was shrouded in an especially dense layer of yin energy. Qi Xu froze for a moment, then looked closer and confirmed he was human, not a ghost.

Qi Xu instinctively chased after him a few steps. She felt he was possessed by a ghost; if left alone, something bad could happen. But when the boy heard urgent footsteps behind him, he bolted.

Qi Xu paused, then gave chase.

After a few turns, she lost him.