18. The Spirit Medium Master
Daniel, a middle-aged man, received a notice from his company informing him that the hotel it operated had been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Occupancy had dropped sharply, leaving the hotel unable to make ends meet, and the company had decided to suspend operations. The company laid off the hotel’s rank-and-file employees and required management staff to choose between taking unpaid leave or receiving severance pay. Daniel held a meeting with several other managers to discuss the matter. Most of them decided to take the money and leave, while only Daniel, White, and a few others chose unpaid leave and planned to get temporary jobs during the hotel’s closure. Even they had no idea how long the shutdown would last.
Daniel’s decision to take unpaid leave caused a family crisis. His wife, Amy, believed that her husband should take the severance pay and find a new job, perhaps as a building manager, which would at least cover the household expenses instead of leaving her to shoulder the entire financial burden alone. Daniel believed that the company had only been temporarily affected by the pandemic and that the hotel would eventually reopen. He wanted to return to his job after the pandemic, not only because he had worked there for twenty years, starting at the bottom as a tour guide and tour leader before finally being promoted to manager of the tourism department, but also because he had developed deep feelings for the job. Above all, he believed that the pandemic would eventually pass. The couple argued bitterly over the issue. Amy issued Daniel an ultimatum: if he insisted on taking unpaid leave, then unless his income from temporary work was enough to cover the family’s expenses, she would divorce him.
Daniel decided to leave home and look for temporary work in another city. On the one hand, he no longer wanted to endure his wife’s domineering personality or be treated by her for years like an ATM. On the other hand, ever since they had begun sleeping in separate bedrooms ten years earlier, their relationship had grown increasingly cold. More than once, Daniel had heard from mutual friends that Amy had an ambiguous relationship with the manager of her real estate company. He had always felt that, in Amy’s eyes, he was merely a “backup plan” she was reluctant to discard. His three children were also emotionally distant from him because, while they were growing up, he had rarely taken the initiative to care about their lives or studies. At most, whenever they needed money to purchase expensive electronic gadgets or pay for school trips, they would come to him and ask, and he would play the role of Santa Claus by handing over the money.
Daniel left Amy a signed divorce agreement, packed a small amount of luggage, and drove his old car to a small town called T, located between mountains and the sea. The town was filled with villa communities that attracted wealthy people from nearby cities as well as tourists who came because of its reputation. Investing in property, sightseeing, and leisure vacations were the town’s main economic activities. Daniel found an old apartment and rented it cheaply. He took a temporary job as a real estate salesperson. There was no base salary; his income depended entirely on sales performance. Since he had often accompanied Amy when she took clients to view properties, listening to her sales pitches, he was already thoroughly familiar with her methods of selling houses.
Because he was new to the area and knew no one, Daniel thought that instead of going door to door handing out flyers, he might as well set up on a busy street in the commercial district, attract pedestrians with an Eastern-style appearance, and use a few magic tricks to entertain onlookers while taking the opportunity to sell them houses. To prepare for this, Daniel taught himself several magic tricks from YouTube short videos, along with the professional terminology used by Eastern fortune-tellers and Taoist physiognomists.
Daniel set up a booth at a busy intersection in the commercial district and dressed himself as a Taoist fortune-teller. He wore a square Taoist hat and dark navy Taoist robes, held a fly whisk in one hand and shook a bronze bell in the other. Beside him stood a canvas banner that read: “Spirit Medium Master—Iron-Mouthed Prophecies.” He focused on Asian tourists, especially wealthy Chinese, Hong Kong and Macao Chinese, and Taiwanese visitors wearing gold and jewelry, all of whom were potential buyers with substantial financial resources. Daniel had learned Mandarin Chinese from Chinese pastors at his church. Although his Chinese colleagues at the company thought he spoke Mandarin with a strange accent, he was confident that his Chinese would finally come in handy.
Sure enough, Daniel’s unusual strategy worked. The moment he appeared, he attracted the attention of passersby, especially Chinese visitors who were curious about his fortune-teller appearance. A white man who could recite a whole string of Eastern fortune-telling terms and even use a turtle shell to demonstrate a form of divination with coins left the onlookers completely astonished. On his first day, Daniel found three groups of Chinese clients and arranged separate appointments with them to view properties.
That evening, a sudden thunderstorm struck. Daniel hurriedly packed up his booth and used the canvas banner to shield himself from the rain. Just as he was about to return to his apartment, a bolt of lightning suddenly streaked toward him across the small plaza. Daniel was struck by the powerful electrical current and instantly collapsed unconscious.
When Daniel regained consciousness, he found himself lying in a hospital bed. The Bagua symbol on the front of his Taoist robe had been burned through, leaving a hole the size of a fist. His right cloth shoe was nowhere to be found, and his toes were wrapped in gauze. As a Chinese female nurse came over to change the dressing on his toes, she told him that he was incredibly lucky to have survived. The powerful electrical current had exited through his toes; otherwise, he would have been turned into a “barbecued ham.” Half jokingly, she also told him that “those who survive a great disaster are bound to have good fortune afterward,” and advised him to buy a lottery ticket after he was discharged to get rid of his bad luck. It was the first time Daniel had ever heard such a belief about changing one’s fortune. He found it amusing but did not take it seriously.
On the very day he was discharged from the hospital, Daniel suddenly discovered that he possessed the ability to foresee future events—what might be called a “sixth sense.” Scene after scene appeared in his mind. He saw armed robbers holding up a bank in the town. After shooting and injuring a security guard and escaping with a large amount of cash, the robbers engaged in a gun battle with police cars pursuing them through the streets. One robber was shot dead at the scene, while two others escaped despite being wounded. Sure enough, several hours later, a news bulletin reported events that exactly matched Daniel’s premonition.
Then he foresaw an arson attack at a nightclub located in the basement of a commercial building, with people trapped inside the burning building. He could not help wondering whether he should warn the building management and the nightclub. Daniel decided instead to go to a café across from the building and watch the scene from there, confirming whether his premonition would come true.
First, Daniel saw two men being chased out of the basement by several muscular men. The two beaten men fell to their knees and begged for mercy, and only then did their attackers stop. The two men left dejectedly in a taxi. Less than an hour later, a vehicle arrived at the building. One of the battered men was carrying an aluminum baseball bat, while the other was carrying a bucket of gasoline. They entered the basement and started a fire, and flames immediately erupted.
Daniel was terrified. Now that he possessed this supernatural ability, how should he make good use of his “premonitions” to earn money, improve his financial situation, and secure his life for the years ahead? Daniel decided to become a “Bad-Omen Prophet.” Whenever a premonition came to him, he would proactively call newspapers and television stations and tell reporters what was about to happen, allowing them to arrive at the scene in time to film and report on the event.
His first prediction concerned a subway train in K City that would derail while traveling and crash into a parking garage, causing deaths and injuries. The newspapers and television stations assumed that Daniel was mentally unstable and had deliberately called to cause trouble. But the accident actually occurred, and both the time and location exactly matched what he had predicted in his call.
His second prediction concerned a helicopter that would suffer a mechanical failure and crash into a residential neighborhood. An NBA basketball star, along with his wife and children, would die in the crash. The newspapers and television stations that received the prediction decided that it was better to believe it might be true. They sent reporters to the scene, and sure enough, a helicopter crashed there at exactly the time and location Daniel had predicted.
For his third prediction, Daniel called a television station and reported that terrorists would hijack a school bus carrying students and demand a huge ransom and a speedboat from the authorities. Daniel proactively demanded that the television station pay him a prediction fee in advance, and the station agreed to his terms. The two sides arranged to exchange the cash at a specified time and location because Daniel did not want to attract police attention and cause any unnecessary misunderstanding. Nevertheless, the transaction later aroused the police’s attention and suspicion. Was this self-proclaimed “Bad-Omen Prophet” involved in the incident? Or was he actually the mastermind behind it? The police therefore began tapping and recording Daniel’s phone and tracking the source of his calls.
For his fourth prediction, Daniel called the general manager of a bank. He reported that one of the bank’s managers was stealing from the bank, taking advantage of the lax security during a long holiday to use a company vehicle to remove a large quantity of gold and U.S. dollars from the vault. The general manager immediately reported the matter to the police. The police set up a sting operation and successfully arrested the manager while he was committing the crime inside the vault.
Afterward, Daniel and the bank’s general manager arranged a location where Daniel could collect his reward. But Daniel unexpectedly discovered that plainclothes detectives were lying in wait. He did not dare show up to collect the money, fearing that once the police arrested him, he would have no way to explain himself. Daniel contacted the bank’s general manager from a public telephone and donated the prediction fee to an orphanage in the city. Daniel’s handling of the matter convinced the police that this “Bad-Omen Prophet” truly had no involvement in the case.
But senior police officials had a better idea.
They thought they should find this “Bad-Omen Prophet” and have him assist the police in preventing crimes and major accidents.
The reputation of the “Spirit Medium Master” gradually spread, making Daniel a favorite of the news media. At the same time, he became a “supernaturally gifted individual” whom the police, the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies desperately wanted to locate. Daniel became increasingly frustrated. He only wanted to provide these predictions, earn some prediction fees to make a living, and live a simple life. Why, then, did he have to face a vast police and intelligence-agency dragnet and spend his days hiding from them?
With no other choice, Daniel came up with a plan. He obtained the cooperation of the media and, at a secret location witnessed by several reporters, put on a mask and publicly told them about another “premonition”: a sequence of images and events that had appeared in his mind, along with the time and location at which they would occur. Terrorists intended to hijack an international flight and threaten the authorities into releasing their arrested and convicted accomplices. Daniel then took actual action to prove that his “premonition” was genuine and that he himself was innocent. Only then were the police willing to believe Daniel’s explanation.
The CIA and FBI became increasingly interested in this mysterious “Bad-Omen Prophet” who could foresee future events. But Daniel wanted nothing more than to live a simple life. He did not want to become a “medium” relied upon by intelligence agencies and lose his freedom forever. Daniel decided to return to his old profession. Wearing a human-skin mask, he became a wandering Taoist fortune-teller, answering only the personal questions brought to him by clients seeking divination and charging them a small fee. He traveled from one city to another, setting up his stall in a different location every day and changing to a different human-skin mask. After closing his stall, he would drive his RV to find a small hotel or motel where he could spend the night.
Daniel returned to T Town and set up his fortune-telling stall in a riverside park. One day, a Chinese woman named Qiu Lili came to have her fortune told. Lili was a street artist who was considering breaking up with her live-in boyfriend, Chen Junsheng, because he was a freeloader who refused to work properly to make a living and frequently asked Lili for money.
When Daniel held Lili’s palm, images suddenly appeared in his mind. He saw Lili discovering that her boyfriend, Chen Junsheng, was cheating on her and had brought another woman back to their apartment to have sex with her. When Lili and Junsheng got into a violent argument over the affair, Junsheng ran into the kitchen, grabbed a fruit knife, returned to the bedroom, and viciously stabbed Lili. The incident was to occur on the night of Valentine’s Day.
Daniel felt compassion for Lili. He did not want to see the young woman die at the hands of her boyfriend, so he decided to go to the riverside park on Valentine’s Day, paint a portrait of Lili, and invite her to go for a drive with him, allowing her to escape the disaster that awaited her.
The murder happened anyway. Chen Junsheng was arrested by the police, but the victim was the woman Junsheng had brought home from the nightclub. Daniel had just accompanied Lili back to the apartment building when he saw Junsheng being escorted out by several police officers, while several neighbors stood nearby whispering among themselves.
Lili asked one of the officers what had happened. The officer said that a neighbor had called the police after hearing a woman screaming inside the apartment. When the police arrived, Junsheng was cleaning up the crime scene.
Daniel decided not to tell Lili that this was the result of his painstaking intervention. The shaken Lili needed a pair of warm arms around her at that moment.
After this incident, Daniel realized that even when he actively intervened in accidents or criminal events, he could not prevent them from happening. The only thing that changed was that the victim might be someone else. From that day forward, Daniel decided to protect Lili. His fortune-telling stall was set up right beside Lili’s street portrait booth.
Then one day, an image of his wife Amy appeared in Daniel’s mind. He saw Amy using her feminine charm to lure William, the manager of her real estate agency, to their home. After the two had sex, Amy coaxed the bank account password out of William. She then drugged him with sleeping pills, robbed him of his credit cards and financial assets, put on gloves, carefully took out a handgun, attached a silencer, shot William to death, and placed William and the gun together inside a body bag before loading it into the trunk of her car.
From the images, Daniel realized that the handgun was the very one he had bought for self-defense. He thought there must be his fingerprints left on the gun. Amy was clearly planning to frame him for the murder. But he was also worried about what would happen to his three children if their mother were gone.
Should Daniel expose his ex-wife’s plot to murder William for financial gain? How could he prove his own innocence? He was torn by conflicting emotions.
Just then, his high school classmate Adams contacted him by phone. Adams wanted to persuade Daniel to accept an invitation from the CIA to become an agent responsible for providing advance intelligence warnings. The two arranged to meet at a café. Daniel told Adams that his ex-wife Amy was about to murder her lover, and that he was worried his three children would lose their mother.
Adams believed that since Amy no longer had any feelings for Daniel, Daniel had no reason to hold back. Adams was willing to help Daniel stop Amy’s murder plan in time. But Daniel said that although his premonitions were always accurate, they could not change the outcome of events. Even if another person became the scapegoat and died in the murder, Amy would still be unable to escape criminal liability for murder.
Adams said that handling the matter would not be difficult. As long as Amy was arrested at the murder scene, her plan to frame Daniel could be stopped in time. But once everything was over, Daniel would have to join the CIA and use his supernatural ability to contribute to his country.
Daniel accompanied Lili back to the apartment building and watched Chen Junsheng being taken away. Yet an indescribable shadow remained in his heart. It was the first time he had actively tried to “rewrite” fate, but he had never expected the murder to happen anyway, with only the victim changing.
Only then did Daniel understand that his premonitions were not really “warnings,” but more like “commands from fate.” Certain deaths were unavoidable; only the manner and the victim could change.
That night, Daniel dreamed again. A horrifying image appeared in his mind: Lili was pale-faced and lying in a pool of blood, while the killer was none other than Daniel himself. He woke from the dream drenched in sweat. He could not believe it. Could this be merely a projection of his own fear rather than a predetermined future?
Yet he began noticing some strange details. There seemed to be a knowing glimmer in Lili’s eyes, as if she had already discovered his secret. The figures in her paintings even seemed to coincide with the scenes of death he had “foreseen.”
One day, Daniel discovered a drawing in Lili’s sketchbook. In it, he was wearing a Taoist square hat and robes, with a knife embedded in his chest. His face was twisted, like the doomed soul of a man destined to die.
Daniel was horrified and confronted Lili.
But Lili merely smiled sweetly, her voice cold. “Do you think you’re the only one who can ‘see the future’? My paintings are my prophecies. And you think you saved me, but in reality, I was the one who drew you into this step by step. I knew Junsheng would kill someone. I was simply waiting for you to change the victim for me. That way, I wouldn’t have to die.”
Daniel froze.
He realized that he was not the savior. He was merely a pawn being used.
Lili moved closer to him and whispered, “You can see the future, but you cannot change fate. Every time you try to change it, the Grim Reaper simply finds another way to collect a life. The knife in my painting… might be here tonight.”
The moment she finished speaking, lightning struck outside the window again, and the electricity suddenly went out. In the darkness, Daniel could hear nothing but his pounding heart and Lili’s faint, almost imperceptible breathing beside him.
The next day, the newspaper headlines shocked the entire city:
“Famous Street Artist Qiu Lili Murdered in Her Apartment; Unconscious Man Found at Scene Clutching Murder Weapon.”
The man was Daniel.
The police believed that he might have committed the murder in a mentally disturbed state. But one question remained unanswered—the surveillance footage showed that Daniel had clearly entered the apartment alone before the incident, while Lili had already disappeared without a trace.
Her final painting was taken away by the police. In the painting, a man wearing a Taoist square hat was tightly entangled in the threads of fate, powerless to break free.
Beside the painting was a single line of chilling handwriting:
“The true Spirit Medium Master is me.”
