Chapter 2

A burst of chaos.

Ke Zhengye, clutching his broken tooth, was taken away with a face full of blood and fury.

Ke Chenyi gave Ke Xingzhou a complicated look, left him 10% of the advance payment and the recording address of the show, informed him of the check-in time, and then left with Ke Father and Ke Mother.

The little broken-down house finally returned to silence.

After a while, the door to the inner room creaked open. The child poked his head out, holding the just-rescued kitten in his hands: “The mother cat won’t feed this one. What should I do?”

Ke Xingzhou looked at the weak but stubbornly wriggling black-and-white kitten, and was inexplicably reminded of himself when he first moved into this little house.

He was silent for a moment, then helplessly said, “What else can we do? Keep it. Count it as payment for that five-yuan fortune telling.”

The child hesitated, glancing at the birthing kit still lying out on the kang.

Ke Xingzhou let out a sharp laugh: “Didn’t you hear from behind the door just now? I just got 700,000 out of that family. You think I care about your few measly coins?”

“You’re the one who said ten yuan per reading…”

“This isn’t fortune-telling,” Ke Xingzhou interrupted. “Alright, go. I need to feed it.”

Only then did the child return to the inner room, picking up the lion cat, glancing back three times every step as he went next door.

Ke Xingzhou got up to prepare goat milk. As he waited for the water to heat, he suddenly asked seriously, “I took those two sums of money—am I really not going to suddenly drop dead?”

Beside him, the translucent figure from earlier gradually solidified, sitting cross-legged right on the edge of the offering table.

He wore a black long robe, holding a book thicker than an English-Chinese dictionary—the Life Register—in a traditional outfit completely out of place in modern times. But hanging from his chest was an ID badge with the word “Judge,” and underneath it read: Position: Intern Judge.

He was typing furiously on a floating keyboard, treating the Life Register like a computer monitor, and didn’t even look up: “Relax. This settles the karma between you. As long as the other side is willing, you can take however much you want, and Heaven won’t punish you.”

Ke Xingzhou’s expression shifted immediately: “Any amount? Then…”

As soon as that “then” left his mouth, the Judge already knew what he was thinking. He looked up and ruthlessly shattered his delusion: “Forget it. It only works if they give it willingly. If you ask for it, it deducts merit.”

Ke Xingzhou: “…”

He instantly deflated: “I’ve been doing ten-yuan readings for years—when can I finally raise my prices?”

“Be patient. You don’t have enough merit yet. If you charge too much, your health bar drops. Did you forget last time’s backlash?”

Ke Xingzhou: “…”How could he possibly forget? If it weren’t for that incident back then, he wouldn’t have moved out of the Ke family and ended up in this small place telling fortunes for ten yuan a pop.

“But my merit is way too low! Was I some disgusting person in my past life or something?”

The Judge rubbed his chin, also feeling it was strange: “Logically, with your level of metaphysical talent, you must’ve done something huge in your last life—at the very least, a charitable saint type. So how is your merit this low? Just getting mistakenly brought into a small influential family almost wiped you out?”

If there were a third person here who had opened their heavenly eye and could communicate with the spirit world, they would probably see the faint, nearly invisible thread of merit light on Ke Xingzhou, and his dangerously thin life line recorded in the Book of Fate.

It was even more pitiful than the reincarnation of some villain who had wreaked havoc in their previous life.

While the man and ghost were chatting, Ke Xingzhou finished making the goat milk, tested the temperature, and fed it to the black-and-white kitten.

Only then did a faint, hair-thin strand of golden merit light emerge from the kitten and merge into Ke Xingzhou’s own.

The Judge hit enter: “Merit +1! According to the program I wrote, you're only 1,439 merit points away from charging 100 yuan per reading. Keep it up! Wealth is just around the corner!”

Ke Xingzhou: “...Thanks so much!”

Frustrated, he packed up the birthing kit, rolled a protective talisman around the kitten, and tucked both the kitten and the talisman into his pocket, then began tidying up the house.

This rundown little house also belonged to the Ke family. Now that he had decided to cut ties with them completely, he naturally had to return what wasn’t his.

Ke Xingzhou didn’t own much, and quickly packed everything into an old suitcase. Most of it was tools for ghost-catching and fortune-telling; only a few changes of clothes for spring, autumn, and summer.

He looked around the old house he had lived in for more than a decade, and finally lit incense for the ancestral master.

Ever since his heavenly eye opened at five years old, he had known he wasn’t the Ke family’s biological child.

And more than that, every moment he spent enjoying luxury in the Ke household, his merit light had visibly drained away.

Ke Zhengye had said he "wanted to die" because when Ke Xingzhou was five, his merit light was nearly depleted—his life was hanging by a thread. That was why they had to send him to the countryside to be raised, to avoid further entanglement with the Ke family's karma.

The merit he had now was what he had painstakingly accumulated over the years, doing trivial readings for the village neighbors.

When merit runs out, your time in this world ends. So even for the sake of survival, Ke Xingzhou had to agree to the Ke family’s proposal—to appear on that variety show.

But as for playing second fiddle to Ke Yuanbai?

That would depend on his mood, Ke Xingzhou thought, completely lacking in any sense of contractual obligation.

After offering incense to the ancestral master and taking a bath, he noticed the talisman on the kitten had dimmed. Shocked, he quickly replaced it with a new one and fed the kitten more goat milk.

After that, he glanced at the Judge who was still typing furiously on the keyboard, and gave him a distrustful side-eye: “You still haven’t found out who I was in my past life?”

This time, the Judge froze.

He scratched his balding head and cursed under his breath: “This damn thing is way worse than a computer. When is the underworld finally going to upgrade to a smart system?”

“When your program gets approved, maybe then they’ll upgrade,” Ke Xingzhou replied.

He didn’t really mind. With a yawn, he put the kitten on his head, rolled over, and fell asleep instantly.

Not needing to eat or sleep, the Judge who was stuck working 24/7: “…”

What an exhausting overtime shift this was!A few days later.

Ke Xingzhou followed the address Ke Chenyi had given him, but was stopped by the security guard outside the filming base.

“Hey you, yeah, you.” The security guard, with a baton strapped to his belt, walked up and gave Ke Xingzhou a once-over, frowning so hard his brows twisted into a knot. “Who are you? Where are you from? What are you sneaking around here for?”

Following the guard’s gaze, Ke Xingzhou reached up and touched his hair, which looked like a bird’s nest. Turning his head, he caught a glimpse of himself in the nearby glass—

A ragged Taoist robe patched over and over, a bulge at the chest where a newborn kitten was tucked underneath, and the only remotely valuable item on him—a pair of sunglasses—was missing one leg. Because he’d been taking care of a kitten abandoned by a lion cat right after birth, he hadn’t had more than two hours of continuous sleep these past few days. His already pale face now looked ghostly, his lips nearly colorless.

If he hadn’t at least cleaned himself up a little before heading out this morning, he’d probably have been chased off as a homeless man, not just stopped at the gate.

So even though the guard had an aggressive tone, Ke Xingzhou still cooperatively took out his phone and showed the security guard the program invitation that Ke Chenyi had forwarded him—he hadn’t known about the show beforehand, and all the contact info the crew had was for Ke Chenyi. The invitation had been sent to the Ke family.

The guard paused for a moment when he saw the surname “Ke” on the invite.

It was a rare surname, and with all the buzz online recently, he quickly figured out who Ke Xingzhou was. His eyes flicked, and he sneered.

“You say this invitation’s yours, and we’re just supposed to believe it? How come everyone else got theirs directly? Where’s your original copy?”

Ke Xingzhou’s brows furrowed slightly. He realized the guy was intentionally giving him trouble.

He shifted his gaze from the phone to the guard’s face. “I can show you my ID, or just fill out a visitor registration first.”

Behind the crooked sunglasses sliding down his nose, his eyes were dark as ink. That deep gaze made the guard’s back go cold, like a blade had cut open his skin and a chill ran up from the soles of his feet to the base of his skull.

But he quickly snapped out of it, realizing he’d actually been startled by a ragged bum. That only made him angrier.

He subtly glanced at the surveillance camera mounted by the guard booth, then pretended to take Ke Xingzhou’s ID—only to press both the ID and phone flat on the table.

“You think this is some place where any random stray cat or dog can just waltz in? An ID means nothing. If you’ve really got connections, have the person who invited you come out here!”

Through a relative who worked on the show, the guard had already gotten the inside scoop.

The Ke family baby-switch drama was all over the internet. Anyone remotely linked to the Ke family was riding the wave of fame.

The Ke family, trying to win favor with their biological son, had pushed this fake son out as a foil. And now Ke Xingzhou’s invitation was just a forwarded photo—proof enough that the family had already abandoned him and wouldn’t speak up on his behalf.

The guard was deliberately provoking Ke Xingzhou. If he could catch him losing it on camera, he could ride that fame too.

It was a solid plan—only, Ke Xingzhou just stared at him steadily, showing no signs of blowing up.

His gaze calmly swept across the guard’s face. With narrow brows, a protruding nose bridge, and shifty eyes, it was clear this was a petty, scheming sort of man. That wasn’t the worst of it—his thin earlobes showed he lacked good fortune, and that needle-like mark between his brows meant he was stubborn to the point of self-destruction. No matter how he schemed, he’d end up with nothing—and worse, invite misfortune.

Ke Xingzhou, naturally insensitive to personal slights and already seeing through the man’s motives, felt no anger. In fact, he spoke quite honestly: “You’re about to have a serious disaster.”

The guard thought he was cursing him and instantly flared up, grabbing the baton behind him and stepping forward to strike.

He was already bitter about being older and stuck in a dead-end job as a security guard. Seeing this fake young master, who had lived in luxury for over twenty years, made his jealousy skyrocket—he wanted nothing more than to take his place.

And now the fake dared to mouth off at him?The security guard approached with a fierce glint in his eyes, thinking that since this guy couldn’t produce the original invitation or prove his identity, even if it got escalated to the production team, he’d still have the upper hand.

Seeing this, Ke Xingzhou’s gaze turned cold as well.

He didn’t like stirring up trouble, but he wasn’t afraid of it either. He had even given the man a free reading, yet not only was it unappreciated, the guard kept making things difficult. If he kept putting up with it, he’d be the one in the wrong.

He was a properly trained Taoist priest, a graduate of a Taoist academy—not some weakling without the strength to truss a chicken.

Since the other party was the one who started it, he should also be prepared to bear the consequences. No matter who came to question things afterward, it wouldn’t fall on him.

In that moment, both their thoughts reached a strange alignment. As their eyes locked, the tension between them crackled like drawn swords.