She even said hello to you

Grandma Huang broke out in a cold sweat the moment she took the call. Her heart pounded and clenched into a ball, like an old rag being wrung tight.

Her deathly pale face startled Grandpa Huang. "What's wrong, dear? What did Hongyuan say?"

"Nothing, nothing." Grandma Huang shook her head, struggling to rein in her tangled emotions and relax her wrinkled face. Then she turned to her little granddaughter, who was watching her worriedly. "Xiao He, do you miss Grandma Bai?"

"The last time we saw her was..." Grandma Huang deliberately pretended she could not remember, tapping her head with a rueful expression. "I really am getting old and useless. When did our Xiao He last see Grandma Bai?"

Beside her, Grandpa Huang's face turned livid, his voice cold and stern. "What nonsense are you talking about? Didn't Old Lady Bai already-"

Before he could finish, Grandma Huang silenced him with a look telling him to stay calm.

"The last time I saw Grandma Bai? Wasn't that three days ago? Grandma, did you forget?" Recalling what had happened that day, Huang He sounded a little more cheerful. "I remember playing under the big tree with the little wooden dog Grandma Bai gave me. After a little while, Grandma Bai came too. She even said hello to you, but you were busy talking to Grandpa, so you didn't answer her..."

Huang He paused, then said, "Grandma Bai was dressed very differently that day. She wore something covered in lots of patterns of the character for longevity... It looked like something only people on TV would wear."

Grandma Huang's expression changed completely.

Patterns of the character for longevity... Wasn't that a burial shroud?!

And three days ago had been the seventh night after that old woman Bai's death!

Listening to his granddaughter, Grandpa Huang also turned white with shock, unable to speak for a long time.

In the end, Grandma Huang only managed a few words to soothe her granddaughter before the ICU nurses asked her to leave, saying visiting hours were over.

Deeply uneasy, the two stood in the changing room, talking as they took off their protective gowns.

"Dear... Master Qi really was right. That damned Old Lady Bai has set her sights on our Xiao He! She used to keep telling me she wanted Xiao He as her honorary granddaughter. I knew what she was thinking. It was only because her own son couldn't have children that... I never imagined she'd try to take our Xiao He away after she died!" Grandma Huang was furious. She all but wanted to rush straight to Old Lady Bai's home and smash her spirit tablet to vent her anger.

But... would that save Xiao He?

"Let's go home first. Let's go home and see what the master says, all right?" Grandpa Huang rubbed Grandma Huang's chest to ease the tightness that had left her breathless with anger, carefully supporting her as they walked out.

What they did not know was that a young man behind them, with dyed yellow hair, black-framed glasses, and several pimples, had recorded their conversation while pretending to take off his protective gown.

The young man had recognized Qi Gu as soon as he saw him earlier.

Lately, he had no idea what had gotten into his girlfriend. She sent him highlight reels of Qi Gu performing rituals all day long, saying Qi Gu was unbelievably handsome and that she wanted to visit Floating Mist Temple sometime to offer incense and ask about her romantic prospects.

The young man thought, Who else could you end up with but me?

He was deeply displeased.

On top of that, his girlfriend kept praising another man, which infuriated him. He refused to watch a single one of Qi Gu's videos and unilaterally concluded that his girlfriend was simply too stupid and had been fooled by online marketing and video effects.

He had been stewing over it ever since.

Then today, his parents dragged him along to visit a relative he barely knew who had been admitted to the ICU. He discovered that Qi Gu had actually come to the same ICU ward, and from their conversation, it seemed this family had invited Qi Gu to look into their situation.

An idea immediately occurred to the young man. He decided to secretly record evidence and upload it online to prove once and for all that Qi Gu was a swindler!

He replayed the elderly couple's anxious, anguished voices in the video, edited it together with the two clips he had secretly filmed earlier, added a sensational headline, and uploaded it straight to the internet.

I Am Long Aotian: This charlatan looks familiar. He's even scamming people in the ICU now. How about earning yourself a little good karma? #Video#

At first, hardly anyone watched the video, but Qi Gu had been so popular lately that someone soon recognized the masked young master as him. For a while, the comments were divided between praise and criticism, and the spectacle had the onlookers as excited as if it were New Year.

[Why is this drama magnet back again? Did he win the lottery or something? He's never off the trending list.]

[How much would he have to win to buy this many trending spots? So jealous.]

[That thing about catching a wanted criminal was hyped up so much a few days ago, but I feel like it was probably just effects and coincidence. Maybe Qi Gu already knew it was a body dump and deliberately went there with the production crew for a publicity stunt.]

[It really was a little too convenient...]

[Uh, weren't his fans saying the official media had already confirmed it?]

[The official media confirmed the case where that elderly couple got stabbed by a thief, not the murderer one.]

[Wow, so it really was all fan tactics and spin, huh?]

[All that paid promotion before was just to build his persona as an occult master and lure rich people into begging for his help, right? What a scheme.]

[Oh my God, when you put it that way...]

[What a calculating man.]

Of course, some fans and people who had previously benefited from Qi Gu's help spoke up for him. But although he had more fans now than before, they were still a drop in the ocean compared with the internet's gossip-hungry masses. How could they win a flame war on this scale?

For a while, countless clout-chasing debunking bloggers also emerged, taking frame-by-frame screenshots of the livestream footage and claiming that the lighting looked wrong here or there, that it must have been props or special effects, and so on. Their arguments sounded so well-founded that they left outsiders completely taken in.

As a result, the online abuse grew even fiercer.

[God, he's such scum. That little girl is already in the ICU, and her family is suffering enough, yet he's still scamming them.]

[I can't even imagine how much it'll hurt when the family goes from hope to despair...]

[Aaaaah, can you please call the police and get him arrested, OP?!]

[I really can't stand scenes like this. It hurts so much. The ICU feels so oppressive.]

[So is nobody wondering why the OP is in the mood to secretly film Qi Gu when his own family member is in the ICU?]

When I Am Long Aotian saw this comment, he hurriedly replied with righteous indignation: [It's a relative I'm not particularly close to in the ICU, not my immediate family. I filmed this to expose Qi Gu's ugly true colors because I don't want more unfortunate people to be scammed. Sigh, the internet these days. I never thought I'd be misunderstood like this.]

As soon as he said this, the commenters loudly praised the blogger's righteousness, while the person who had questioned I Am Long Aotian was soon abused into deleting their comment and closing their direct messages.