We Weren’t Fated, I Just Played My Cards Right - Chapter 13
Leaving the club, Master Ning walked briskly in silence.
Zhan Hongye signaled Jiang Jia with a look. She slowed her pace to follow behind while he hurried to catch up.
“Master Ning, my deepest apologies. I never expected the girl to be so ill-mannered.”
Master Ning gave him a cold look: “Next time you need this kind of help, find someone else.”
“Absolutely no next time.” He slipped a card into Master Ning’s hand, “Please accept this token.”
Master Ning’s expression softened slightly. Whatever Zhan Hongye’s faults, he never hesitated with money.
After pocketing the card, he gave a curt “Hmm.”
“Will Master be returning to rest? My son’s car has arrived—let him drive you.”
As he spoke, a black sedan pulled up beside them.
Zhan Huitian got out and respectfully opened the passenger door.
The considerate behavior of the Zhan father and son barely managed to dissipate some of Master Ning’s anger. After getting into the car, he took out a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper, then rolled down the window and handed it to Zhan Hongye.
Zhan Hongye received it with both hands, his eyebrows lifting slightly upon reading the contents. “Thank you, Master.”
Master Ning replied indifferently, “It’s only halfway through the year, and this is already the second one. You should know your limits.”
Catching the hint of dissatisfaction in his tone, Zhan Hongye quickly explained, “Rest assured, Master. I guarantee this will be the last one this year.”
Master Ning ignored him further, closing the window and saying to Zhan Huitian in the front seat, “Let’s go.”
As the car drove away, Zhan Hongye carefully tucked the paper away, glanced back at the clubhouse behind him, and then headed toward the parking lot.
Since Liu Mumu made her “clubhouse remarks,” her status in the Dong family had risen in an almost unscientific manner.
The most obvious manifestation was Aunt Jiang avoiding her, maintaining a distance of at least ten meters. She even seemed to be secretly browsing protective suits online, likely trying to isolate her through scientific means.
Dong Zhenghao, on the other hand, was quite different. Nowadays, he made a point of greeting her whenever he left the house.
He even shamelessly came by daily for her “daily divination.” After Liu Mumu predicted “bloodshed and disaster” for him three days in a row, Dong Zhenghao went from being terrified on the first day to eagerly asking her by the third when it would actually happen.
How was she supposed to know? Liu Mumu made it clear that the divination was done—there was no after-sales service.
Her job was just to cast the hexagrams. Whether they came true or not depended on how accurate her readings were that day.
After sending Dong Zhenghao away, Liu Mumu began casting a hexagram for herself.
She tossed the coin three times in a row, and each result was disheartening. Today was yet another day without any movement from the “Red Phoenix Star”—sigh…
Since fate had decreed no boyfriend for her today, she could only head upstairs to find Dong Yue to play with.
Dong Yue was in her room working on summer homework. As a high school sophomore, her assignments were already piling up by the stack. Sitting on her bed, Liu Mumu watched her scribble away furiously, feeling a somewhat perverse pleasure at seeing the younger generation suffer.
Back in her day, she had gone through the same ordeal—especially with math, which had been the bane of her existence.
Once Dong Yue finished her homework for the day, the two played mobile games on the bed for a while before heading downstairs to cut some fruit.
While washing an apple, Liu Mumu suddenly heard the sound of a car engine outside.
Dong Zhenghao, who wasn’t supposed to return until evening, had suddenly rushed back home, taking less than two minutes from parking to bursting through the front door.
To put it bluntly, he looked like he was scared out of his wits.
The commotion at the entrance was so loud that even Jiang Li, who had been in her room, was startled. Soon, the entire family gathered around him to see what was going on.
Dong Zhenghao’s neatly tied tie from the morning was nowhere to be seen, his shirt buttons fastened haphazardly. If not for the sheer terror on his face, Jiang Li would have thought he’d been fooling around with some seductress.
“Something’s… something’s happened!”
Dong Zhenghao rushed up to Liu Mumu, frantically pulling open his shirt to reveal his skin.
Several vivid red marks streaked across his flesh, as if slashed by a knife. Some spots had broken skin, tiny beads of bl00d welling up.
Jiang Li shrieked, “What is this? Who did this to you?”
Ignoring her, Dong Zhenghao turned to Liu Mumu. “These marks just appeared out of nowhere—I swear I didn’t do anything!”
From the moment the marks appeared to his return home, barely an hour had passed.
“Out of nowhere…” Liu Mumu mused before speaking. “Does this seem… familiar to you?”
Dong Yue peeked out from behind Liu Mumu, eyeing her father before saying, “It looks like Uncle Qin’s situation, though Dad isn’t bleeding as much.”
The reminder struck Dong Zhenghao like lightning.
It was exactly the same. Qin Kai had once mentioned that while he was asleep, inexplicable cuts appeared on his body, bleeding profusely.
Later, he died from excessive bl00d loss—unable to stop the bleeding.
And now, these marks on Dong Zhenghao were clearly cuts, though not as deep as Qin Kai’s. Maybe he had caught it earlier.
Was he… following in Qin Kai’s footsteps?
“Could it be some kind of contagious disease?” Dong Zhenghao stammered. “Why just me? You were all there that day too!”
Liu Mumu replied lazily, “Probably only affects men.”
Dong Zhenghao was on the verge of tears, but for the sake of his life, he forced himself to speak gently. “That’s not what I meant, I was just saying…”
“Then don’t say things so carelessly next time.”
“I promise I won’t! Is there any way to fix this?” he pleaded urgently.
“There’s one way, but I can’t guarantee it’ll work. You’ll have to gamble on it.”
That sounded completely unreliable!!!
“Can’t you give me a foolproof solution?”
Liu Mumu shrugged. “If I were that capable, I wouldn’t be a fortune-teller—I’d be a mystic.”
Supernatural matters usually fell under the mystics’ domain. Rumor had it they were so powerful they could race horses on their arms—far stronger than fortune-tellers like her, who could be knocked over with a single finger.
At least, that’s how her master had described it.
“Do you know any mystics?” Dong Zhenghao asked hopefully.
“No.”
Finally resigned, Dong Zhenghao grabbed Liu Mumu’s hand. “My life is in your hands now.”
Liu Mumu yanked her hand back in disgust. “Are you listening or not?”
“I am, I am! Go on.”
“Generally, the fastest solution is to eliminate the person behind it. If you can’t find them, then you just have to get as far away as possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you need to leave this place immediately—whether by plane or high-speed rail, get out of the province as fast as you can. The farther you go, the weaker the curse’s effect on you will be.”
From what Liu Mumu had read, that sorcerer could only cast curses across villages. If he’d truly been that powerful, he wouldn’t have been hunted down and beaten to death. These methods usually had limitations—distance was likely one of them.
Maybe the one cursing Dong Zhenghao could wreak havoc within the city, but once he left the province, the curse would probably fail no matter how hard they tried.
“Alright, I’ll leave now.” At this point, he could only trust Liu Mumu. Without even packing clothes, he just asked Jiang Li for the car keys and swapped vehicles with her.
Soon after, two cars drove out of the villa compound one after another.