My name is Vệ Vũ, and I’m a transfer student.
I grew up living with my grandfather in a remote mountain village. My favorite thing to do every day was study the secret feng shui arts he taught me.
On my very first day after transferring into eighth grade, I noticed traces of an evil occult art on Tô Tích Thủy, the class beauty.
They were faint, but I knew it was a spell that stole other people’s luck.
Judging by her features, she should have been fated to die young, frail and sickly all her life.
And yet she was doing remarkably well—and was even stunningly beautiful.
When something strange happens, there’s bound to be something sinister behind it.
I guessed she must have stolen someone else’s fate—someone unlucky enough to have lost it to her.
My grandfather once told me that stealing someone’s luck was defying heaven, and the backlash could be devastating if you weren’t careful.
Even he, a master of feng shui, wouldn’t dare try it without good reason.
That meant Tô Tích Thủy had a powerful expert backing her.
Before leaving, our homeroom teacher seated me next to Tô Tích Thủy, making us deskmates.
She turned her face to the side, chewing gum as she read a comic book, and occasionally burst out laughing.
The noise was all the more grating during the quiet morning class.
Strangely, no one said a word to remind her to quiet down.
Even the teacher on hallway duty who passed by pretended not to notice.
When she saw me staring, Tô Tích Thủy frowned and snapped her comic book shut.
“From your introduction, I gather your family reads people’s fortunes. Can you do it?”
Clearly, she was a little curious about her new deskmate.
“A little.”
My grandfather always warned me that times had changed, and I shouldn’t show off those old-fashioned skills.
Keeping a low profile was always the right thing to do.
“Then tell me what kind of fate I have.”
Tô Tích Thủy smiled, her voice tinged with a challenge.
She certainly didn’t believe a kid like me could see through her fate.
“Your forehead is broad, and your features are kind. You were born to wealth and privilege, so naturally you’ll want for nothing your whole life.”
“With a face that beautiful, if you’d been born a few hundred years earlier, you’d probably have been a consort in the imperial harem.”
In this line of work, you tell people what they want to hear.
You say whatever the other person wants to hear.
As expected, that made Tô Tích Thủy smile even more brightly.
“Well said. I like hearing that. But it seems you don’t have any real talent.”
I gave her a sly smile, lifted her chin, and leaned slowly toward her ear. “Is that really your fate, Tô Tích Thủy?”
“Tích Thủy… ‘cherishing water’… You should have died in the flood when you were ten. But you survived.”
Tô Tích Thủy’s face instantly drained of color; she looked utterly stricken.
It took her a while to recover. Then she hurried off to “tattle” to the teacher, flinging herself into our homeroom teacher’s arms and sobbing.
I don’t know whether she was frightened, but she accused me of being a “little Taoist nun,” spreading feudal superstition in class, and cursing her.
She said her young, innocent heart had suffered irreparable harm and that I had to be punished.
Our homeroom teacher gently comforted Tô Tích Thủy in her arms, then turned around and gave me a furious scolding. He said I’d caused trouble on my very first day, ordered me to write a 10,000-word self-criticism, and said I couldn’t go home until it was finished.
Back in class, the boy sitting in the last row poked me.
“Vệ Vũ, you’ve got some nerve, picking a fight with the class beauty. You’re done for this time.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“Her family’s loaded. They donated this whole building. The principal practically wishes he could treat her like royalty.”
“Hmm.”
Money can make the devil dance. If you can’t beat them, don’t antagonize them.
A little while later, I saw Tô Tích Thủy walk into the classroom, beaming.
She even deliberately shoved me hard in the back.
Right afterward, I received new instructions from our homeroom teacher: I was supposedly disrupting my classmates’ studies, so from then on, I had to sit alone.
The only empty seat was at the back of the classroom, next to the garbage pile, in a spot that never saw the sun and reeked, with flies buzzing everywhere.
This was what happened when you offended Tô Tích Thủy.
As soon as I finished moving my things to the new seat, Tô Tích Thủy folded her arms across her chest,
and sauntered over to my desk. She even made a show of sniffing a few times before sneering, “Vệ Vũ, what era are we living in? And you still believe in superstition? These days, everything comes down to money. My family has money. You picked a fight with me, so don’t expect to live in peace.”
She was young, but unbelievably vicious.
I really wanted to teach her a lesson, but my grandfather had warned me: “Everyone has their own fate. If you deliberately steal someone else’s luck, the consequences will be unimaginable.”
Besides, I’d come here to study and prepare for the college entrance exams.
“Don’t think that learning a little fortune-telling means you can see through my fate. I’ll live a life of wealth and good fortune, starting with the upcoming college entrance exams.”
Tô Tích Thủy stood beside me, prattling on and on, mocking me for daring to cross her and saying I wouldn’t have a good day ever again.
I treated her childish behavior like wind in my ears, quietly reciting a calming mantra as I put my things away.
Honestly, she was really annoying.
Back home, I wasn’t someone people could push around, either.
When she saw I wasn’t responding, Tô Tích Thủy thought I was scared. Only then did she turn away, satisfied.
“Vệ Vũ is just some little Taoist girl. She’s not in our league. From now on, anyone who talks to her can expect to end up just like her.”
The classroom, which had been noisy just moments earlier, fell completely silent.
No one dared meet her eyes.
Tô Tích Thủy looked around, clearly pleased, then returned to her seat.
Was she trying to bully me?
How ridiculously childish.
If this had happened before, I wouldn’t have held back from slapping her a few times.
But sure enough, from that day on, no one in class dared speak to me.
Whenever they saw me coming, they avoided me, as if they were afraid I’d pull them aside for a little chat.
I was ostracized.
But I wasn’t alone.
Because there was someone beside me whom they couldn’t see.
She was a short-haired girl who looked like a boy.
She was neither human nor ghost, but a Chấp Niệm Sát.
One born from obsessions that could not be let go.
Her name was Thắng Nam.
Sure enough, her obsession ran deep.
She was always buried in her books, doing practice problems like a maniac.
I told her that while practice problems were important, she needed to take a break now and then if she wanted to improve.
She listened with doubt, and it wasn’t until she ran into a difficult problem that she finally stopped and looked out the window.
Every now and then, she even showed me a few tricks.
I was terrible at school. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had to transfer.
Now I’d also made an enemy of Tô Tích Thủy, and no one in class dared help me.
Even the homeroom teacher openly looked down on me.
If I had a question about my studies, I had to figure it out on my own.
I could understand feng shui and the esoteric arts, but these formulas in math, physics, and chemistry were truly going to be the death of me.
Who could understand the misery of being a terrible student?
Back in my hometown, I’d loudly bragged to the village kids that I was definitely going to college.
Before long, the first monthly exams were over.
My scores in math, physics, and chemistry were all hovering just above the passing line.
As for Tô Tích Thủy, she’d never even taken the test, yet she easily ended up holding my score sheet.
Now she was standing at the front of the classroom, mercilessly mocking me.
“Everyone, look at this! That little Taoist girl, Vệ Vũ, always acts like she studies so hard, but look at these scores! Why not just turn in a blank paper?”
“Good grief, these scores are so embarrassing.”
“She’s ruined our class ranking.”
“You’re this bad at school, and you still dared to transfer here?”
“I think you should go back to your hometown and be a little Taoist priest!”
Tô Tích Thủy really was as persistent as a leech.
Whenever she got the chance, she put me down.
I rushed forward in anger and snatched the score sheet from her hand.
“Tô Tích Thủy, you’ve gone too far!”
She loved spouting nonsense and had no filter.
“You’ve brought Khẩu Thiệt Sát upon yourself. Within ten steps of here, disaster is bound to strike you!”