The matter of buying divinations in the livestream fizzled out just like that.
This happened entirely because those people had no way of contacting Qu Nanzhu.
Qu Nanzhu never checked his private messages, so all the messages from people seeking divinations disappeared without a trace.
As for the rich and powerful, they had initially dismissed him.
Later, after discovering that he had genuine abilities, they grew curious and started looking into Qu Nanzhu, only to discover that everything about him except his name had been classified as top secret and protected.
When influential people who genuinely needed his help finally came along, they discovered that even his phone number was protected, let alone his current address.
On this matter, Qu Nanzhu emphasized only one thing: "What is destined to be yours will come; what is not, you must not force. Divination depends on fate, too."
The viewers obediently agreed.
Soon, the third divination began. It concerned financial luck, and nothing unexpected happened.
Once the three divinations were finished, it was time for the viewers to share gossip from their own lives again. Since there were many newcomers in the livestream, plenty of people who were uninterested left.
The viewer count settled at 290,000, and the comments became much more harmonious.
Qu Nanzhu would occasionally answer viewers' questions about the mystic arts as well.
At noon the next day, Fuchenzi sent a message saying that the matter had been resolved and volunteered that the evil cultivator who had harmed someone with dark arts had also been caught.
Evil cultivators like this were generally imprisoned for life once caught, but those behind bars usually did not live long. After all, they could not use special methods to extend their lives in prison.
To date, Fuchenzi had never seen an evil cultivator spend more than five years in the special prison.
Of course, he did not tell Qu Nanzhu any of that last part. After all, the master probably was not the chatty type.
The master's replies were always brief.
This time, he only replied, "Mm."
After replying to Fuchenzi, Qu Nanzhu opened his chat with Shang Ni'en to read the detailed account of the incident she had sent.
This was one advantage of allowing content from the livestream to be circulated: the viewers could quickly learn how incidents turned out.
After the people from the Celestial Master Bureau had dealt with the problem, Xu Chengbing immediately went online to assure the concerned netizens that he was all right. He also attached a photo with his wife, captioned with his thanks to Master Qu and the relevant authorities for saving her life.
In the picture, Lu Mo no longer needed a ventilator and was smiling at the camera alongside her husband.
Whether they knew the story or not, the netizens who saw this offered their blessings to some degree.
At the same time, it gave Qu Nanzhu another massive surge in popularity.
According to Shang Ni'en, the person who had used dark arts to harm someone was an elderly woman living in the same villa complex as her.
Being able to live in the same villa complex as Shang Ni'en spoke for itself when it came to the elderly woman's wealth. She was the sort who would occasionally spend tens of millions converting the garden in front of her villa into an outdoor pool, and Xu Chengbing was the designer her household employed long-term.
By chance, the elderly woman met his wife, Lu Mo. Seeing how devoted they were to each other, she could not help remembering how her own daughter and son-in-law constantly argued over work, with minor quarrels every other day and major ones every three days. Jealous resentment arose in her heart, and she found the warm scene before her unbearably grating.
She pretended to make conversation, but every sentence was barbed. Unfortunately, Xu Chengbing was too oblivious to notice any of it and even cheerfully told his employer, "I'm lucky. My wife brings me good fortune!"
And that remark became the root of everything.
The elderly woman spent half her fortune before she could persuade the master who had once assessed her home's feng shui to swap her daughter's fate.
At first, the effects were not obvious, and the elderly woman kept wondering whether she had been scammed. But after about four or five days, she noticed that her daughter and her husband often came through the door chatting and laughing, and she knew she had done the right thing.
Yet this lasted only three months before, one sunny morning, a group of people in specially made police uniforms knocked on her door, shattering the illusion of harmony in her warm family.
As the saying went, a harmonious family prospered in all things. For the sake of those words, the elderly woman had been willing to take someone's life. Her daughter and son-in-law had never imagined that this was the truth behind how smoothly their work had been going lately, and their expressions turned utterly grim.
It was unclear whether this was because her mother's momentary lapse in judgment had ultimately landed her in prison, or because the reality laid bare by the truth was too cruel.
The netizens did not know exactly who the perpetrator was, but within a single morning, the story had spread throughout F City's upper-class circles. The gossip lovers discussed it with relish, while those with guilty consciences each harbored their own thoughts.
After getting his fill of gossip, Qu Nanzhu forwarded the chat history to Huo Sili.
Huo Sili was in a meeting and did not reply immediately. Qu Nanzhu scrolled on his phone for a while, grew bored, and launched his game.
It was another afternoon of being thrashed by the opposing team and mocked by his teammates. Qu Nanzhu exited the game expressionlessly and decided to reward himself with a feast today as consolation.
For nearly half a month afterward, Qu Nanzhu went live at eight sharp every day like this, never enabling gifts. Occasionally, a few cases that required cooperation with the police still surfaced.
One particularly serious case involved a body hidden in a concrete wall. The young man who connected to the livestream said that every night, he could hear cries for help in his newly purchased home. At first, he had thought it was a prank, and the property management had investigated without finding any problems.
Unable to bear giving up the home he had taken out a loan to buy, the young man endured the sound for more than six months.
Just as he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he finally managed to connect to Qu Nanzhu's livestream.
Qu Nanzhu spotted the weak ghost following behind the young man at first glance. After hearing his account, he immediately told him to call the police.
The matter brought to light a three-year-old case and the daughter of an extremely wealthy businessman.
The businessman's daughter had grown jealous over love and hired someone to commit murder. The businessman had then cleaned up her mess, bribing local officials to suppress the matter. The murdered girl's family reported it to the police repeatedly to no avail, and it was ultimately classified as an ordinary missing-person case.
But now Qu Nanzhu had dug it up again, and as a paranormal incident at that. With its fundamental nature changed, the businessman could do nothing.
The Paranormal Investigation Bureau answered directly to the nation's highest leader and took orders from that person alone. Even if the businessman bankrupted himself, he might not be able to meet Wen Youfang once, let alone plead for leniency or bribe him.
He could only watch helplessly as the police took his daughter away, while he himself faced imprisonment for covering up a crime and bribery. Overnight, his family was ruined.
The businessman's wife could not accept this outcome and directed all her hatred at Qu Nanzhu. She paid several evil cultivators notorious in their circles to place vicious curses on him, but every attempt failed without exception. One even died on the spot from the backlash.
Another, whose abilities were too weak, was chased all the way home and beaten up by Paper Figure No. 1, before being taken away by the Paranormal Investigation Bureau.
In the end, the businessman's wife exhausted her fortune without harming a single hair on Qu Nanzhu's head. Before long, she herself was arrested by the Investigation Bureau for attempted murder.
The downfall of a business titan prompted a scramble among news outlets to cover the story. Qu Nanzhu's name was mentioned repeatedly, making him a nationally known figure.
Note: The Celestial Master Bureau operates directly under the Paranormal Investigation Bureau. Its primary function is to train and supply outstanding personnel for the Paranormal Investigation Bureau. The Paranormal Investigation Bureau's responsibilities cover detaining offenders and investigating large-scale supernatural incidents, while the Celestial Master Bureau works with local police to resolve cases involving the mystic arts.