One divination a day, a trainee celestial master

Jinshuiwan Villa District, south of the city.

On the dark corner of the second-floor staircase, Shen Xu sat quietly on the mahogany railing.

She wore a white dress stained with a few dark red bloodstains, her legs dangling gently in mid-air. Her pale, bloodless face exuded a coldness and helplessness beyond her years.

Shen Xu is... well, or rather, she's forever stuck at eighteen.

Eight years ago, in the summer, the college entrance examination had just ended. She went with her parents to the provincial capital to attend her cousin's wedding. On the way back to the county town, the car was driving on a long, winding downhill mountain road when the brakes suddenly failed.

The car crashed through the guardrail and tumbled down the cliff.

When Shen Xu regained consciousness, she found herself floating lightly in mid-air. Below her were the twisted and mangled wreckage of a car, and the horribly mutilated bodies of her parents and herself.

She didn't see the Black and White Impermanence, nor the legendary Bridge of Helplessness. She didn't even see her parents' souls. It seemed that in the instant of the car accident, they had already conformed to the rules of heaven and earth, peacefully dissipating or departing for another world.

Only she stayed.

Amidst the chilly mountain winds that swept across the hills, Shen Xu lowered her head, trying to find the reason for her lingering attachment to the human world.

Was it because she couldn't bear to leave her parents? Was it because she didn't receive an acceptance letter from her dream university? Or was it because she harbored deep resentment towards the accident?

Shen Xu carefully examined her somewhat transparent soul.

Finally, somewhat embarrassed, she discovered that at that moment, the strongest thought that kept her soul from dissipating was—

"The Korean drama I'm watching is about to air its finale tonight, and the male lead is about to discover that the female lead is actually a real chaebol heiress! And that one on Tomato Video called 'The Runaway Bride of a Tycoon,' the male and female leads haven't cleared up their misunderstandings yet!"

This seemingly absurd yet incredibly pure and intense obsession with watching dramas by a female otaku forced Shen Xu's soul to remain in the mortal world.

Having accepted the fact that she was dead, Shen Xu, like a wisp of weightless smoke, followed her instincts and drifted back to her home in Jinshui Bay in the south of the city.

The huge villa lost all its owners overnight and became empty.

Shen Xu began to adapt to life as a ghost. She found that she no longer needed to eat or drink, nor did she feel sleepy. However, the sunlight during the day would cause her a burning, stinging sensation, so she could only hide in the dark storage room in the basement.

At night, she would drift back to her bedroom or living room and begin to explore how to use the cold, yin energy within her body, known as "resentment power."

After several days of trying, she finally learned how to use her yin energy to touch physical objects. She turned on the computer and turned on the TV.

For the first three months, this deserted villa became Shen Xu's paradise for binge-watching TV series.

Without her parents' nagging or the pressure of the college entrance exam, she could sit on the large sofa in the living room without restraint, sobbing while watching the beautiful love stories of Korean dramas, and giggling foolishly while watching the ridiculous yet addictive plot twists in CEO romance short dramas.

Unfortunately, the good days didn't last long.

Three months later, due to the lack of payment, the villa's water and electricity were cut off, and the internet was also shut down.

Another two weeks later, Shen Xu's uncle opened the door with the key. He directed several movers to move all the valuable appliances in the house, including her beloved 65-inch 4K TV and high-end desktop computer, leaving nothing behind.

Later, my uncle put the villa up for sale.

Not long after, an unsuspecting family from out of town moved in, attracted by the cheap price.

Shen Xu didn't actually intend to harm anyone; she was just too bored.

Every night, when Shen Xu couldn't resist her addiction to watching dramas, she would quietly drift into the living room, use her yin energy to force the newly bought TV to power on, and then keep changing channels to find those idol dramas that aired at midnight.

When she saw the second male lead die tragically for the female lead, she couldn't help but sob in the living room; when she saw the male and female leads finally kiss, she couldn't help but let out a satisfied laugh.

The result was predictable. The family was so frightened by the television that turned on automatically in the middle of the night and the girl's crying and laughing coming from the empty living room that they almost went insane.

They invited several monks and Taoist priests to their home to perform rituals. Shen Xu sat cross-legged on the chandelier, watching the group below strike the wooden fish and sprinkle dog blood. Those crude rituals had absolutely no effect on her, a deeply attached earthbound spirit; instead, they only made the yin energy in the house heavier and heavier.

The family dared not stay any longer and moved away overnight.

From then on, rumors of the house being haunted spread throughout the county. Locals dared not buy it, and outsiders, upon learning that a family of three had died in an accident and that the house was haunted, also avoided it like the plague. The family had no choice but to lower the price again and again.

During the long period when the villa was vacant, poor Shen Xu, because she had no internet, could only sneak out of the yard every night and drift to the windows of other nearby villas to "watch TV".

But she dared not enter other people's homes, fearing she would be injured by the door gods or Guan Gong statues they worshipped. She could only pitifully hang upside down outside people's windows, peering through the glass. Sometimes, when her neighbors were watching the news or "Agricultural Prosperity," she could only listlessly watch the postpartum care of sows all night.

Until recently.

The Lin couple from the provincial capital bought the villa because they were tempted by the huge price difference of over 800,000 yuan.

Shen Xu was overjoyed!

Finally, the power's on! Finally, we have gigabit fiber broadband! Finally, we can watch the new drama "The CEO's Secretly Married Wife" again!

That evening, as soon as the Lin couple fell asleep, Shen Xu couldn't wait to turn on the TV in the living room on the first floor, turn down the volume, and happily start watching her favorite shows.

But she easily gets carried away when she's happy. Seeing the female supporting character causing trouble, she couldn't help but let out a few sinister laughs.

As a result, Mrs. Lin, who came down to use the restroom, was so frightened that she almost had a heart attack.

Actually, Shen Xuzhen didn't mean to harm them. As long as they slept upstairs at night and gave her the TV on the first floor, everyone could live together peacefully.

But the Lin couple clearly didn't see it that way. They not only wanted to take over her home, but also wanted to kick her, the "native resident," out!

These past few days, the Lin couple have been bringing all sorts of monks and Taoist priests into their home every day. These people carry wooden fish drums and copper bells, and chant scriptures and spells all night long in the living room, making the villa smell terrible.

Shen Xu was absolutely fed up!

"Since you won't let me watch dramas, then you won't have it easy either!"

To warn the ungrateful couple, Shen Xu went to the storage room and found a bucket of leftover red paint from a previous renovation. With great effort, she used her resentment to pour the paint into the bathtub in the second-floor bathroom, making it look like it was full of blood.

This tactic worked as expected. The Lin couple were so frightened that they fled the villa overnight and rented a place to live elsewhere.

Shen Xu finally had two peaceful days of watching her drama without being disturbed.

I thought the couple had given up.

But... tonight, the peace and quiet were broken again.

Shen Xu sat on the second-floor railing, coldly watching the man in the bright yellow Taoist robe in the living room downstairs.

The Taoist priest's hair was slicked back with hairspray, making it shiny and smooth. His cheap synthetic robe reflected a glaring, thieving light under the glow of several flashy RGB lights.

What Shen Xu found even more unbearable was that this guy actually lit a bunch of cheap incense sticks on her coffee table, which smelled of pungent chemical fragrance!

Although Shen Xu was already a ghost and no longer needed to breathe, the smoky smell and the white smoke filling the room still brought out her obsessive-compulsive disorder about cleanliness that she had in life.

"Where did these charlatans come from? They've turned this place into a disco."

Shen Xu frowned as she looked at Master Wang, who was pretending to perform the ritualistic steps and wielding a chubby peach wood sword in the middle of the living room, and couldn't help but find it amusing.

She originally didn't want to bother with these clowns; she just wanted them to finish their antics and leave on their own.

But the Taoist priest, oblivious to the danger, actually shouted, "Demon, show yourself at once!"

"Tch, so be it. Do you really think I'm afraid of you?"

Shen Xu slid lightly down from the railing.

She deliberately removed the barrier that concealed her figure, letting her afterimage in the white dress drift slowly over Master Wang's head like a tattered rag.

I felt the temperature in the living room drop suddenly, and I saw the Taoist priest's back as he stood frozen in place, sword in hand.

Shen Xu recalled a classic scene from a short drama about a domineering CEO that she had just seen on her tablet, where the female supporting character mocked the female lead. She couldn't help but curl the corners of her lips into a chilling, ethereal laugh:

"Heh...hehe..."

The man downstairs, called Master Wang, visibly trembled at first.

Shen Xu floated in mid-air, looking at him with some confusion as he excitedly shouted something like "The demon has appeared!" and spoke into the microphone on his collar.

She looked at the young assistant hiding in the shadows below the stairs.

The assistant was deathly pale, trembling like a leaf, holding a remote control in his hand, and speaking through the earpiece with chattering teeth:

"Fu...Brother Fu...my power cord...isn't plugged in yet..."