As dusk fell, the bustle faded away.
On Gudao West Road, Shili Street, stood an inconspicuous shop. It was an old fortune-telling business called the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion.
The inside was dim. To save on electricity, Shen Qiong never turned on the lights, and when night came, he simply closed up for the day.
Shen Qiong rubbed his growling stomach, then turned to look at the calligraphy hanging high on the wall.
Glimpse Heavenly Secrets, calculate people's fates.
The six characters were bold and imposing, each stroke revealing the writer's immortal grace and unyielding pride. Supposedly, his great-grandfather had written the piece when the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion first opened. It had been around for many years.
"Glimpse Heavenly Secrets... To glimpse the secrets of Heaven is to shorten your life." Shen Qiong murmured the words his father had always said.
His father had been a truly capable man. Whenever he told fortunes for the neighbors, he was always right. When Shen Qiong was young, he had often clamored to learn, but his father had refused to teach him. Instead, he had earnestly urged him to study hard so he could make something of himself. As for those tricks of pretending to be a mystic and cheating the neighbors, he said, they were best left unlearned!
Only now did Shen Qiong understand his father's good intentions. Glimpsing Heavenly Secrets really did shorten one's life. His grandfather hadn't lived to see his sixtieth birthday, and his father had died of a serious illness just two months ago, leaving him nothing but this lonely old shop.
They had spent all their savings treating his father. Shen Qiong was now completely broke, and even getting three square meals a day had become a problem.
Shen Qiong sighed and went to the door. A light rain had begun to fall, pattering against the ground.
"It's raining. I might as well close up. No one's going to come anyway." The shop had been the Shen Family's livelihood for many years. Even though Shen Qiong hadn't learned much from his father, he still couldn't bear to let it go out of business in his hands.
He used the light coming through the window to light a candle, then returned the book Six Arts of Yin and Yang to the shelf. His father was gone, but he had left behind plenty of books—enough to keep Shen Qiong reading for years.
He was about to go home and cook some noodles when thunder suddenly rumbled overhead.
CRASH! Thunder and lightning!
Shen Qiong was so startled that he dropped his phone. A bolt struck a tree not far away, setting it ablaze. He hurriedly picked up his phone to call the fire department, only to find its screen flickering.
"Don't tell me it broke when I dropped it?" He pressed the buttons several times, but it still wouldn't respond. His heart sank, and he trudged home with his head down.
Shen Qiong lived only a short distance from the shop, about a five- or six-minute walk. Ever since his parents divorced ten years ago, he had been living on his own.
Back then, he had hated his mother for abandoning them. Now, he could understand her. Technology had advanced, and many people were against superstition. Hardly anyone came by for fortune-telling anymore. If his father stubbornly insisted on sticking to the family trade, he was bound to go hungry.
He also had a younger sister. He had stayed with their father, while his sister had gone with their mother. He figured she was probably better off with their mother.
When he got home, he told himself not to dwell on it. First, he'd take a hot shower and warm himself up.
Water rushed down...
"Damn it, why's the water cold? Don't tell me we're out of gas?" Shen Qiong grumbled as he dried himself off and stepped out. Sure enough, they were out of gas.
What rotten luck. His fortune really was terrible!
He figured he couldn't go on like this. Picking up his phone, he decided to look for a part-time job to earn some spending money. But when he glanced at the screen, he exclaimed, "Huh? My phone's working again? WeChat updated? What the heck..."
He used the neighbor Old Wang's Wi-Fi to update WeChat, then poked around for ages without finding anything new. Then he noticed a little red dot beside "People nearby."
"This thing got updated?" Curious by nature, Shen Qiong tapped it.
A prompt suddenly popped up: The People Nearby feature has been updated. You can use this feature to obtain information about people nearby. This information is accurate. Please do not disclose it carelessly.
He tapped to continue and entered the People Nearby page.
User: Shen Qiong Level: 0 (Completely clueless) Increase your Fame and Reputation to raise your level. Current reputation: 0 (Nobody) Nearby people's information 1. Li Ruyu (within 100 meters). Her profile picture was the auntie who lived next door to Shen Qiong. 2. Li Anping (within 100 meters). His profile picture was the uncle on the seventh floor who collected the utility bills. 3. Qian Jun (within 500 meters). A stranger Shen Qiong had never seen. He was probably passing by downstairs. 4. Yan Fangming (within 500 meters). His profile picture was the owner of the convenience store downstairs. 5. Ren Xinghai (within 1,000 meters). Another stranger he had never seen.
Shen Qiong kept refreshing the list. Then WeChat displayed a reminder: Because your level is too low, you can only detect five people. Raise your level to detect more people and view more detailed information.
He tapped Li Anping's profile—the uncle who collected the utility bills—and was stunned by how much data it contained. He could only see the most basic details: age, height, gender, and Health Value. The rest of the data, such as singing, education, acting, driving, and cooking skills, was all marked with question marks, meaning it was unknown.
Shen Qiong paid special attention to the other man's Health Value. It might seem simple, but it was extremely important. After all, there were many ways to define whether a person was healthy. Some hidden illnesses couldn't be detected by ordinary examinations, but with Health Value, Shen Qiong could tell at a glance whether someone was healthy.
His heart raced. The description said he could see more information after raising his level. That must mean all the data marked with question marks. Those were the truly valuable details. After all, everyone was born with a talent, but people usually had to experiment countless times to discover what they were good at and what they weren't.
If he could get his hands on all that information, wouldn't that mean...
He swallowed excitedly and repeated under his breath, "Glimpse Heavenly Secrets, and you'll shorten your life. I need to take it slow."
"But this doesn't count as glimpsing the secrets of Heaven, does it? WeChat's a piece of technology. The conclusions I get from it are based on technology." Shen Qiong reassured himself.
Heaven hadn't left him without a way out. With this feature, the old Shen Family shop would sooner or later become famous throughout the world. By then, mansions, luxury cars, and beautiful women would all be his for the taking!
In short, he was about to reach the peak of his life.
At the thought, Shen Qiong couldn't help laughing out loud. He was suddenly full of energy, as if he could beat up several tigers.
He couldn't sleep a wink that night. He kept refreshing People Nearby and discovered a pattern: the system refreshed every ten minutes, and at his current level, he could only search for five people.
He also noticed something interesting: everyone's profile picture showed their real appearance. Uh, without makeup, that is.
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