Ominous Divination
Jin City, Greenleaf University.
In the girls’ dormitory, Lin Xuan revised her graduation thesis once more, then glanced at the time. It was five minutes past twelve.
She needed to go eat lunch. She still had to get to her part-time job by one.
Stretching her arms out and loosening up her body, Lin Xuan decided to go next door and ask one of the classmates she was familiar with to head to the cafeteria together.
Although it was lunchtime, the corridor was quiet, with only a few people scattered about. Graduation was just around the corner, so by this point, most students had either already started internships or were out attending interviews. Those still lingering in the dorms were either people who had no intention of looking for work at all, or people like Lin Xuan, who simply hadn’t managed to find a job yet.
“Li Menglin, where’s Xiaorong?”
The door next door was open, but Lin Xuan still politely knocked before entering.
“She went to work.”
The girl wearing black-framed glasses, who was hugging a bag of crisps while watching a drama, turned to look at Lin Xuan.
“Work? She found a job?” Lin Xuan asked in surprise.
“Yeah. She got an offer last Friday. Didn’t she tell you?” Li Menglin asked, puzzled.
“I’ve been working part-time outside these past couple of days and getting back late.” Lin Xuan had spent the whole weekend working. By the time she returned to the dorm, it was usually already around eleven at night.
“Maybe she was afraid of upsetting you. You’re the only person in our class who still hasn’t found a job now, right?”
“…Yeah.”
Lin Xuan felt a little awkward.
Did she really have to put it that bluntly?
Li Menglin merely gave an “Oh,” then turned back to her drama, completely unaware that what she had just said had made things awkward.
The atmosphere suddenly went cold.
Lin Xuan hated awkward silences more than anything, so she tentatively asked, “Li Menglin, do you want to go to the cafeteria together?”
“No. I’m only halfway through my drama and don’t feel like going out. I’ll order takeaway later.”
Lin Xuan didn’t say anything else. She turned around and went back to her own dorm room.
Looking at the empty room, an enormous sense of disappointment and frustration suddenly welled up inside her.
That was right.
She really was the only person left in their class who hadn’t found a job.
Why couldn’t she find one?
What exactly was she lacking?
In terms of grades, she had never fallen out of the top ten in her major.
As for qualifications and certificates, she had obtained practically everything a university student could reasonably get.
And when it came to interview experience, she had done countless part-time jobs throughout university. Her experience could definitely be considered extensive.
No matter how she looked at it, she shouldn’t have been the person who couldn’t find a job.
Could there be something wrong with her appearance?
Lin Xuan began doubting herself and looked into the mirror.
She had recently been working part-time at a cake shop and eating a little too much dessert, so her face had become slightly rounder. But her chin was still pointed, making it obvious she had the foundations of an oval face. Her features were regular, her skin was fair, and she had naturally long, straight black hair that had never been permed or dyed.
She definitely couldn’t be called ugly.
Besides, although she hadn’t dated anyone in university, she had received confessions before.
So it definitely wasn’t her looks.
Then why couldn’t she find a job?
Had she simply not sent out enough résumés?
Yes.
That had to be it.
A great salesman had once said that the most successful sales technique was to scatter business cards everywhere.
If she wanted to sell herself, then she needed to scatter résumés everywhere.
Lin Xuan was a woman of action.
She immediately forgot about lunch, opened her laptop, logged into all the major recruitment websites, and began frantically sending out résumés.
By the time she finished, half an hour had already passed.
“I’m definitely going to find a job this time.”
Lin Xuan was full of confidence.
Just as she exited the recruitment webpage, her screen suddenly flickered and a spam website popped up.
“Divination Website. One hundred percent accuracy. What kind of trash website is this? Looks like my computer needs an antivirus scan.”
Lin Xuan instinctively moved to click the X and close it.
But a second before doing so, she suddenly remembered a conversation she’d had with her best friend yesterday.
“Xuan’er, why don’t you go to a temple and pray or something? Change your luck. Maybe then you’ll find a job.”
Lin Xuan had always searched for problems within herself, but her best friend thought that perhaps she was simply having a run of bad luck.
Could it really be because she was unlucky?
“Should I… try a reading?”
Lin Xuan was a little tempted.
“If the result is bad, I’ll go to a temple and pray to improve my luck. If the result is good, that means I’ll probably find a job soon.”
The idea seemed pretty reasonable to her.
So instead of closing the divination website, she deliberately entered its fortune-telling page.
The interface was extremely simple.
Against a background depicting the Eight Trigrams stood an enormous bamboo fortune-stick container in the centre of the screen. Written across the container in large brushstrokes was the character:
**卦 — Divination.**
So it was fortune-stick drawing.
“I want to know whether I’ll be able to find a job before graduation.”
Lin Xuan closed her eyes and silently repeated the question three times before using the mouse to click the fortune-stick container.
The container immediately began shaking.
A remarkably realistic rattling sound came from the speakers.
A moment later, a wooden divination stick with a red-painted tip fell out.
Other than the touch of red at its end, the wooden stick had no decoration whatsoever.
“Is this supposed to be an auspicious fortune or an inauspicious one? Why doesn’t it even say? Whatever. I’ll just interpret it first.”
Ordinary fortune sticks usually had things like *Good Fortune*, *Great Fortune*, or *Bad Fortune* written on them.
But Lin Xuan didn’t dwell on it for long and directly clicked the **Interpret Fortune** button underneath.
The screen changed.
A payment page appeared.
**[Please pay the divination fee: 10 yuan per reading, 100 yuan per reading, 1,000 yuan per reading, 10,000 yuan per reading, or 100,000 yuan per reading.]**
**[Note: Diviners, please choose carefully. Your choice will determine your starting point.]**
“I knew they’d charge money.”
Lin Xuan spoke with an *I knew it* expression.
But after seeing the payment options clearly, she sucked in a breath.
“A hundred thousand yuan for one reading? Why don’t you just rob people?! And ‘your choice will determine your starting point’? Why not just write, ‘The more money you pay, the better your fortune will be’? If I hadn’t randomly felt like getting my fortune told today, there’s no way I’d fall for this.”
Lin Xuan decisively selected the ten-yuan option.
She wasn’t giving them a single yuan more.
Truthfully, she didn’t particularly care about the result anyway. She only wanted the fortune telling to give her an excuse to decide whether she should go to a temple and pray.
The instant the payment went through, the divination result appeared.
Two blood-red characters occupied almost half the screen.
**[大凶!]**
**[GREAT MISFORTUNE!]**
**[Within a radius of five hundred metres, you are certain to be hit by a vehicle.]**
Lin Xuan’s eyes widened.
She was so frightened that she immediately slammed her laptop shut.
It took her quite a while to recover.
“What kind of garbage website is this? Even if you’re going to scam money, this isn’t how you do it! I paid ten yuan. Couldn’t you at least say a couple of auspicious things? Fine, forget the auspicious words, but why are you cursing people? And so viciously too!”
Lin Xuan was almost angry enough to cry.
Mostly because she was furious at her own stupidity.
She wanted to go back in time and beat herself to death from a few minutes ago.
How had she become so possessed that she actually paid money to get herself cursed?
Wouldn’t spending that ten yuan on milk tea have been better?
Although she kept calling it a scam website, seeing something like that was undeniably ominous.
“Don’t panic. Don’t panic. It’s all fake.”
Lin Xuan repeatedly slapped the wooden desk with her palm and spat several times to ward off the bad luck.
“Doesn’t count. Doesn’t count. I clearly asked about finding a job, and this result has nothing to do with that at all. So it isn’t accurate. It isn’t real. Garbage website. I’m reporting you.”
Lin Xuan intended to report the money-grabbing website for scamming people and cursing them.
But when she opened her laptop again, the divination page had disappeared.
She checked her browser history.
There was no record of it there either.
Could it have been some kind of Trojan virus?
Lin Xuan didn’t think about it for long. She opened her antivirus program, set the computer to automatically shut down after the scan finished, then left the dormitory.
She had to get to her part-time job.
Lin Xuan ran toward the university’s north gate as quickly as she could.
The north gate was very close to the dormitory area, only about a five- or six-minute walk away. Outside the gate was a street lined with food stalls, and directly opposite it was a bus stop.
Five stops on the bus would take her to the cake shop where she worked.
Wanting to catch the nearest bus, Lin Xuan ran as fast as she could.
When she reached the gate, she instinctively prepared to cross the road directly.
The road outside the north gate was a small one. Although there were traffic lights, there was no zebra crossing. Pedestrian traffic was heavy while there were relatively few cars.
As a result, most students simply looked left and right, confirmed there were no cars coming, then quickly crossed the road to save time.
Lin Xuan normally did the same.
But only a few minutes ago, she had drawn a **Great Misfortune** fortune that explicitly stated she would be hit by a vehicle.
Better safe than sorry.
She stopped herself from crossing directly and obediently waited beside the road for the traffic light.
“I absolutely do **not** believe that fortune. I’m merely refusing to give the prediction any opportunity to come true.”
Lin Xuan patiently waited until the red light turned green before crossing.
On the opposite side of the road, the No. 108 bus she needed was already approaching from the distance.
Lin Xuan unconsciously quickened her pace and began running toward the other side.
“Watch out!”
Someone suddenly shouted.
While running, Lin Xuan instinctively turned her head.
Before she even had time to clearly see what was happening, an enormous force slammed into her body.
She was sent flying.
She could distinctly feel her body tracing what could almost be called a perfect parabola through the air before crashing heavily onto the ground.
A black Audi tore past her at frightening speed.
Something warm and sticky spread across her cheek.
Liquid seemed to be seeping out.
Within her gradually unfocused vision was a dazzling expanse of red.
*I really got hit by a car?*
At that moment, Lin Xuan did not experience the flood of memories that most people supposedly saw when hovering on the brink of death.
There was only endless regret.
*If I’d known the divination was real, I never would’ve gone outside.*
“Host meets system-binding qualifications. Does the Host wish to bind to the system? Upon binding, the Host’s injuries can be repaired. Considering the Host’s current vital signs, the Host has three seconds to decide. Countdown commencing now. Three…”
Just before the overwhelming pain completely swallowed her consciousness, a voice suddenly sounded.
“Bind.”
Lin Xuan used the last of her strength to force out that single word.
Then she completely lost consciousness.
“Confirmed. Binding commencing.”
In an instant, an invisible force erupted from within the girl’s slender body and rapidly began repairing her damaged wounds.
In the blink of an eye, the fracture in her skull was completely repaired and the bleeding stopped, leaving behind only a small wound.
Only then did the crowd finally gather around.
People cautiously surrounded the girl, voices overlapping one another.
“Quick, call 120! She’s still breathing…”
“Everyone, don’t touch her. Wait for the doctors.”
“Call the police! How awful—the driver even fled the scene.”
“She was thrown that far. There’s no way she’ll survive. Poor girl…”
“Does anyone know her?”
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