Chapter 698: The Fourteenth Live Broadcast

I hadn't expected the taxi driver to be so brazen. Small details reveal the bigger picture—this alone showed just how chaotic the outer district of Jinghai City really was.

"What are you staring at? We're here. Are you getting out, or do I have to invite you?" The driver stuffed the three hundred yuan into his pocket, his face full of impatience.

His attitude was so atrocious it actually made me laugh.

I opened my mouth, sorely tempted to tell him that the last person who dared rob me was currently buried deep underground.

"You certainly taught me a lesson. Jinghai City is not to be underestimated." The corners of my lips curled up. Sliding a fingertip over the Ghost Ring, I tucked a strand of the Fate Ghost's hair beneath the seat cushion.

I wasn't doing this to murder the driver. It was just a casual move, a planted seed to link our karma. Somewhere down the line, he might just block a disaster for me.

I had only just learned this method of borrowing another's destiny to ward off my own calamities. Bored on the trip over, I had flipped through the three ancient books I got from Chen Jiuge.

The Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva Fundamental Vows Sutra was far too obscure. It dealt with Buddhist principles and reincarnation; without a Buddhist cultivator's help, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. As for the Little Village Temple Daoist Classic, I recognized the characters, but the contents were so profoundly esoteric that reading it left me utterly bewildered.

Out of the three books, only the one on Fate Cultivation wasn't terribly difficult to grasp. Perhaps this was because I possessed the innate potential of a Fate Usurper. After just an afternoon of skimming, I figured out some fundamental applications for manipulating destiny.

First Destiny, Second Luck, Third Feng Shui. Destiny ranked first. Unlike luck and feng shui, destiny was decreed by heaven and impossible to change.

Some people, for example, were simply born lucky, while others had terrible luck no matter what they did. But by praying to the gods and Buddhas, observing vegetarian fasts, and chanting scriptures, one could perhaps change their luck and bring in rolling wealth for a time.

Feng shui was even easier to alter. As long as one knew how to read the flow of qi and track dragon veins, avoiding certain taboos, a cursed house could be transformed into a blessed haven.

Only destiny involved the very foundation of a person. It was unfathomably deep, and anyone who touched it was bound to suffer ominous consequences.

Logically speaking, destiny was the hardest concept for ordinary people to grasp. Yet, reading that book, I didn't find it difficult at all. I connected the dots seamlessly and quickly mastered a few Fate Cultivation techniques.

Casting Fate Cultivation arts required a person's birth Eight Characters. If those eight characters or certain special Fate Patterns weren't available, a mature Fate Ghost could serve as a substitute. After all, when they were alive, they were people who possessed unique Fate Patterns themselves.

Just now, I had used a strand of the Fate Ghost's hair to cast a spell, linking my karma and luck with the taxi driver's. As long as he didn't burn that black hair, there was a chance that if I ever encountered mortal danger, our entangled destinies would drag him in to absorb the blow for me.

Destiny superseded luck. To alter one's luck, the most fundamental approach was to alter one's destiny. I didn't have the power to rewrite the taxi driver's destiny, but I could use Fate Cultivation techniques to link our fortunes together.

If the heavens targeted me, he would suffer the fallout right alongside me.

"Let's just consider it an experiment." I gave the driver a deep look, memorizing his face, then grabbed my leather suitcase and pushed the car door open. "My money isn't that easy to take."

I opened a black umbrella—the kind typically used only for visiting graves. The smile tugging at the corners of my lips gave the driver the creeps. He shuddered, cursed under his breath about seeing a ghost, and sped off as if fleeing for his life.

As I got out of the car, I checked the time. It was 7:10 PM. There were still fifty minutes before the Live Show released the mission.

I stood beneath a banyan tree by the roadside and surveyed my surroundings. To save himself some trouble, the driver had dumped me in the most remote part of Jinghai City's outer district. I couldn't see a single building over five stories high around here. The roads were muddy, and signs warning of ongoing construction hung along several stretches.

"This isn't what Jinghai City looks like on TV." The streetlights flickered sporadically. The road was uneven and riddled with potholes, with piles of sand heaped on both sides. Unkempt weeds grew wild. As far as the eye could see, it was an expanse of densely packed two- or three-story residential houses. You had to walk quite a distance just to spot an alleyway or two.

"Baogang District?" I gleaned the name of the area from a small flyer plastered to a wall. "Forget it. Now isn't the time to gather intel. I need to find a hotel to settle down in first and wait for the Live Show Mission."

Mind made up, I ducked into a small alley. Remote as this place was, the population was dense, housing a large number of migrant workers.

After walking a few dozen meters, I finally spotted a hotel sign at the end of the alley. I closed my black umbrella and stepped inside.

The front door was wide open. It was a tiny hotel converted from a residential house, and the conditions were abysmal. The air was thick with a strange, damp, stifling odor. There were no tiles on the floor, just a layer of gray cement.

A few wooden stools sat in the corner. There was no front desk—just a wooden table set up deeper inside the room, covered in a haphazard pile of mahjong tiles.

"Is anyone here?" I called out, standing at the door with my suitcase. I waited a few minutes before a middle-aged woman lumbered down from upstairs. Her skin was dark, and she wore a floral jacket. She was heavily overweight; with every step she took, it seemed as though her entire body jiggled.

"You looking for a room? Come register." The middle-aged woman dragged her slippers against the floor, making a highly unpleasant scraping sound. She rummaged through the mahjong table for quite a while before pulling out a Yellow Leather Notebook. "Eighty a night, two hundred for the deposit. Let me see your ID."

She shook the notebook, muttering, "Where's my pen?"

"Boss, my ID is with a friend. Look, it's raining outside. Can I just stay here for one night? I definitely won't short you on the money." I absolutely couldn't show my ID to anyone. I was currently wearing the Human Skin Mask; even if I produced my ID, the face wouldn't match.

"How're you supposed to stay without an ID?" The plump woman tossed the notebook onto the table, her beady eyes shifting. "Forget it. I'll take pity on you. Hand over two hundred bucks, and I'll let you stay for one night."

"Easy enough." I couldn't be bothered to argue. I took out the cash and handed it to her, casually striking up a conversation. "Boss, your Baogang District is part of Jinghai City too. Why is it so different from downtown? The difference is like night and day."

"I don't like the sound of that. Big difference or not, this is still Jinghai. You see those three-story houses outside?" The middle-aged woman pursed her lips toward the door. "This used to be just a village of single-story houses. Do you know why people bulldozed the old homes they'd lived in for decades and spent every last dime just to build upward?"

"No idea."

"How can you be so dense? If the outer district ever gets rezoned into the inner district, developers will compensate us based on square footage. Tens of thousands per square meter! Would you believe this three-story building of mine could fetch almost ten million?" The woman looked incredibly smug, as if she were already living her fantasy of becoming a multimillionaire. "A few years back, Jinghai City announced plans for expansion. It was all over the news. But then, who knows what went wrong? All the outer district projects were brought to a screeching halt. It's enough to drive a person crazy with anxiety."

'The construction projects in the outer district were halted? That must be a directive from the higher-ups,' I pondered to myself. 'The disparity between the inner and outer districts is enormous, yet the development plans were completely frozen from above. It seems the waters in this outer district run quite deep!'

"Here's your key. The room number's on the door, find it yourself. Check out downstairs before ten tomorrow morning." Yawning, the middle-aged woman was just about to head upstairs when she turned her head and spotted the dripping black umbrella in my hand. She stopped dead in her tracks, her sudden halt making the fat on her body jiggle from the momentum. "Hold on! You can't stay here!"

"I already paid you, why can't I stay?" Catching her stare, I lifted the black umbrella. "Just because of an umbrella? You aren't trying to scam me out of my money, are you?"

"People who carry black umbrellas just can't stay here!" The woman circled me as if guarding against a thief. "What's in your suitcase? Open it up and let me see."

Her reaction was incredibly bizarre. The live broadcast mission was about to be released, and I didn't want to get into a bitter dispute with her. I simply opened my suitcase, letting her see the video camera, chargers, and other gear inside. "I came to Jinghai City with a friend to look for work. They say there are plenty of opportunities in the big city. But the moment I arrived, I was swindled by a taxi driver who forced me out before even taking me to my destination..."

My words were half-true, half-false, making it hard to pick out any glaring flaws. The middle-aged woman stared intently at my neck for a long time. It took me a moment to realize she was looking at my Adam's apple.

"I don't know about the other districts, but in our Baogang, you'd best not carry a black umbrella. It's a good thing you're a man. If you were a woman checking into a hotel with a black umbrella on a rainy day, forget about me—no one in all of Baogang would dare let you stay."

Hearing her tone soften, I quickly pulled out another hundred-yuan bill and handed it over. "Why can't women with black umbrellas stay in hotels? You guys are just practicing feudal superstition."

"Superstition or not, I don't know, but that's what everyone says." The middle-aged woman unceremoniously snatched the hundred bucks. "Since you know how to grease the wheels, I'll give you another tip. Don't ask so many questions, and outsiders shouldn't linger in the outer district for long. It's very chaotic here."

The boss deliberately drew out the word "chaotic," as if hinting at something. I nodded and watched her leave.

"Comparing Jiangcheng, Xinhu, and Jinghai... I can't help but feel that any city connected to the Live Show is more bizarre than the last." Gripping the key, I made my way to my room. When I opened the door, I was dumbfounded. The room was only a few square meters in total, and aside from a bare wooden bed, there was absolutely nothing else inside.

Smelling the faint scent of mildew in the air, I was rather speechless. "I spent three hundred just to stay in this dump? It's even worse than the Anxin Hotel from my first live broadcast."

It was only upon arriving in the big city that I started missing the comforts of home. I locked the door, set the black umbrella down by the entrance, and walked over to the window to draw the curtains.

Listening to the rain outside, I plugged in the Live Show Phone to charge and began to wait quietly.

This live broadcast was absolutely critical for me. If the live broadcast mission released by the Live Show was still somewhere near Jiangcheng, I would have no choice but to abandon it and spend points to exempt myself from the penalty. Doing so would trap me in a vicious cycle where my points continually dwindled until I was ultimately forced down the path of betrayal.

'The Live Show was able to see through the Two-Faced Buddha's plans in advance, so they should also know what happened to me in Jiangcheng. If they don't want to give up on me just yet, they definitely won't assign me a certain-death mission just to make things difficult,' I thought, clasping my hands together. Truth be told, I still wasn't prepared to make an enemy of the Live Show. This organization operating under the name of the Underworld was far too mysterious and terrifying.