The night was thick, with only a scattering of stars in the pitch-black sky. The midsummer heat was dry and windless, roasting everyone like an enormous furnace.
Qi Gu sat in a wheelchair. He was handsome but had a cool air about him, and whenever his face was expressionless, he looked downright aloof.
He held a Purple-Gold Gourd in one hand and his freshly bought crispy pork belly and starch sausages in the other, waiting eagerly for the tea shop employee to finish his jumbo cup of fruit tea.
Seeing his good looks and his difficulty getting around, the employee couldn't help feeling sorry for him and added an extra-large scoop of coconut jelly to his fruit tea before putting on the lid.
Qi Gu thanked her gratefully and murmured an instruction to the little green ghost behind him, invisible to ordinary people. The wheelchair beneath him sped forward on its own, at one point even overtaking the electric scooters on the road.
Passersby marveled at what an excellent wheelchair it was. They wanted one themselves.
When he arrived downstairs at his rental, Qi Gu stood up from his wheelchair under the sympathetic, pitying gazes of the elderly men and women cooling off beneath the roadside trees, then strolled into the stairwell carrying his food.
The elderly men and women: ???
Qi Gu: Don't ask. If you do, the answer is that I'm too lazy to move myself.
Ever since discovering that the harder he worked, the more unfortunate he became, he had practically wished he could have the little ghost he had subdued feed him his meals.
The building he lived in was an old, privately built house belonging to a local resident. Each floor had been converted into three single rooms for easy rental, and he lived in the east-facing room on the second floor.
Handing everything to the little ghost slave behind him, Qi Gu fished his keys out of his trouser pocket as he went upstairs.
The moment he slid the key into the lock, there was a click, and the key snapped inside the keyhole.
Qi Gu: ?
That shouldn't have happened. Hadn't I already kept my phone balance below five thousand today? Why was I still having bad luck?
As though remembering something, he felt around in his other trouser pocket. Sure enough, he pulled out a fifty-yuan note.
Qi Gu: "..."
Remaining calm, he headed downstairs with practiced ease to find the locksmith, who, like Huaimin, was also still awake, and paid him fifty yuan to open the door and cut a new key.
Since this was already the third time in six months, the locksmith wondered where he found such inexhaustible brute strength every day, and even felt a little tempted to challenge him to an arm-wrestling match.
Qi Gu politely declined and accepted his newly cut key.
Finally back in his room, which was so small it could only fit a table and a bed, Qi Gu switched on the light, put his food on the table, and opened the Purple-Gold Gourd. The little green ghost obligingly zipped back inside, and a chill stronger than any air conditioner blew out of the gourd, dispersing the scorching air in the room.
He washed his hands, took out three sticks of incense, lit them, and first bowed toward the southwest, where Floating Mist Temple stood.
His master had passed away, and since he lived in a rental, it wasn't convenient to bring his master's memorial tablet with him. He was afraid the landlord would object.
Qi Gu had been an abandoned baby. The abbot of Floating Mist Temple had found him, so Floating Mist Temple naturally became the school he belonged to.
Floating Mist Temple was supposedly a Daoist temple, but he had never seen anything remotely Daoist about his master. Daoism advocated nonaction, yet his master had been a man of extraordinary initiative. Over the dozen-odd years Qi Gu had lived at the temple, his master had renovated it more times than he could count, eagerly hoping to attract a few more worshippers and scrape together enough for his university tuition.
Of course, part of it was also that his master genuinely wanted Floating Mist Temple to flourish.
But Floating Mist Temple was simply too remote. It wasn't set among famous mountains or great rivers, nor had any enlightened immortal cultivated there. Naturally, no matter how much it was renovated, it could never attract more than a handful of worshippers.
Qi Gu wanted to fulfill his late master's wish.
Unfortunately, he had been born unlucky. The job placement that should have been guaranteed after university graduation fell through when the relevant policy was abolished in the very year he graduated. When he went to work for a company, he had barely worked a few days before the boss packed up and fled with his brother-in-law.
Later, Qi Gu entered the entertainment industry on the strength of his good looks. He studied hard and followed the gentle persona his company had designed for him, only for his naturally cold face to keep breaking character.
Before he could become a big star and promote the temple, his manager smeared him from head to toe because he refused to entertain people over drinks.
After that, Qi Gu left the entertainment industry and made money through assorted part-time jobs, keeping up his life of slacking off.
His master had once assessed his unlucky fate: "Even murdering, burning, raping, and pillaging in your past life wouldn't necessarily earn you a fate like this."
His fate could be summed up in a single word: poverty. A lifetime of hardship.
Having grown accustomed to poverty, Qi Gu had even worked out a pattern: once the money on him exceeded five thousand yuan, all sorts of things would inevitably happen to make him lose it.
He had been exploiting this loophole in the laws of heaven all along. Today, he had only fallen victim because he forgot about the fifty yuan in cash in his pocket.
Wrapping a piece of crisp, richly fatty pork belly in a bright green lettuce leaf, Qi Gu dipped it in the dry seasoning and stuffed it into his mouth. He thought that if his master were still alive, they would surely be coming to blows right now over such delicious food.
He alternated mouthfuls of crispy pork belly and starch sausage, slurped up a huge mouthful of fruit tea, and polished off everything on the table with a look of utter bliss.
Seeing that it was already nine, he remembered the director's instructions and logged on to Weibo.
The father of someone he had previously helped hadn't minded his status as a disgraced entertainer and had introduced him to a guest spot on a supernatural variety show.
He had said that Qi Gu could earn a clean fifty thousand just by talking a little about mysticism, and the producer had even agreed to pay him in installments of five thousand.
For Qi Gu, who was poor and didn't want to work hard, this was undoubtedly a tremendous joy, so he had agreed without hesitation.
On Weibo, the official account for Investigating the Strange had already posted an announcement.
Investigating the Strange V: Explore the uncanny and cool off this summer. We're delighted to welcome mysticism master @Qi Gu coo coo coo and guests @6part Mu Xingchen @Vivian can't spend it all @Sha Chuan @User11111111 to join our production team on an adventure!
As an online variety show that had only been in development for a month, attracted absolutely no interest, and hadn't even reached a hundred followers on Weibo, Investigating the Strange shouldn't have caused any ripples on the platform.
Until Qi Gu reposted the official announcement.
Back then, plenty of netizens had followed Qi Gu just to insult him. Some had even earned top-fan badges through the sheer volume of their abuse. After Qi Gu left the industry, those righteous netizens gradually forgot about the whole thing and never unfollowed him.
But today, Qi Gu's account, dormant for a year, suddenly came alive. Not only had he changed his name, he had also reposted something.
Qi Gu coo coo coo (abbot of Floating Mist Temple) V: Looking forward to it / reposted from @Investigating the Strange.
His old haters and the internet's drama seekers instantly revived, flocking to both the show's and Qi Gu's comment sections for a group outing.
[The internet really has no memory, huh? It hasn't even been a year, and disgraced entertainer Qi Gu is already allowed back out to scam people for money???]
[Lmao, if it weren't for this post, I'd have forgotten to unfollow that thing.]
[Just noticed he changed his name. What the hell is "abbot of Floating Mist Temple"? A piece of trash like Qi Gu can become a Daoist and run a temple?]
[Looked it up on Baidu. No such temple...]
[Lmao, so he just made up a nice-sounding temple name and started swindling people?]
[Uh... has Qi Gu abandoned his old gentle, polite boy-next-door persona for a mysticism persona?]
[Didn't that persona fall apart ages ago?]
[A mysticism persona. This guy really is creative. Speaking of which, how's the manager he used to bully and harass? That poor guy was crying his eyes out on livestream back then, snot and tears everywhere. As a fellow worker, I felt that so hard.]
[His former manager's at a big company now and has made a huge star out of his artist. He's turned things around and is living the good life!]
[That's wonderful. So satisfying!]
[Your entertainment "circle" never disappoints. There's always some persona I never would've thought of. A promiscuous guy like Qi Gu adopting a mysticism persona-doesn't he worry heaven will get fed up and strike him with lightning?]
[Uh, production team, are you sick in the head? Why is our Mu's name after Qi Gu's? Since when does Qi Gu have more Weibo followers than our Mu?!]
[Don't make our Mu look bad, person above, aaaaaah!]
[Even the mega-rich Vivian is joining? This production team has some serious connections.]
[What's with that last one? They haven't even picked a name. There's a limit to padding out the roster, isn't there?]
[Sha Chuan! I love his looks. My long-haired internet husband-wife!]
In short, the buzz around the Investigating the Strange production really was visibly growing.
Before you continue