Ch98 - Is What He Said True?

“Am I really dead?” Seeing that his own body was motionlessly lying on the ground, Fan Zeng only felt that there was something blocking his thoughts, making it difficult for him to accept at the moment.

Lu Xu calmly gave him an answer from the side. “Yes, you’ve died. The cause of death is a sudden cardiac arrest due to excessive overwork. I am your exclusive grim reaper, here to send you off to the underworld. If needed, I can also help you obtain a number in line for reincarnation ahead of time.”

“Grim reaper?” It wasn’t only Fan Zeng who had this question; even Ji Xiunian was completely dumbfounded.

Although Lu Xu liked smiling, he wasn’t the kind of person who liked to joke about everything.

In reality, Ji Xiunian had remembered very clearly that after he had entered the room, the door had been closed. If he was only a normal person, there was no way Lu Xu could have appeared out of nowhere in the room.

“So, you’re not a spiritual master?”

Ji Xiunian felt stifled. He had already guessed the answer, but he wasn’t willing to believe it and wanted to hear the answer from Lu Xu himself.

Now that he thought about it, the F4 before had always chased after Lu Xu calling him ‘Master’, and looked extremely reverent.

Ordinarily, people would never use this kind of attitude to address others, but if Lu Xu was a grim reaper, then it would explain these instances.

And Lan Gaojie; although the studio didn’t reveal any news of his death, Lu Xu was extremely certain of even his time of death.

If he was a grim reaper, then this explained everything even more clearly.

Even before this was Lai Chengshan. Lu Xu had immediately seen through his little act, and had helped him avoid the token that borrowed his lifespan.

If Lu Xu was a grim reaper, this kind of thing would be a piece of cake for him.

One by one, past events resurfaced in front of his eyes. Ji Xiunian suddenly realised that everything that had happened before were all foreshadowings. But at that time, how could he have thought of a grim reaper? He had even thought that Lu Xu’s ability to see ghosts was because he had taken the hanged female ghost’s rope from him.

It seemed like Lu Xu had been putting on a show from beginning to end, even pretending that he was ‘scared of ghosts’.

Ji Xiunian had always thought Lu Xu was good to him, but now Ji Xiunian could not distinguish between what was a falsehood and what was sincerity with his concern.

“I’m not a spiritual master.” Lu Xu also hadn’t thought he would encounter Ji Xiunian here. Meeting one’s own client at the scene of a soul harvesting was a textbook accident scenario, but his current attention wasn’t focused on Ji Xiunian.

Lu Xu turned back to Fan Zeng, and continued on with his task. “Fan ge, you are currently dead. Please verify your materials. If there is nothing wrong I will send you off…”

It was naturally difficult for people to accept their sudden deaths, but at this time, it seemed to Fan Zeng that Lu Xu had his own aura of light, and he had unconsciously begun walking towards him.

“Don’t!” There had been too many sudden events today, but Ji Xiunian still didn’t want Fan Zeng to just die like this.

In the moment he spoke, Fan Zen subconsciously looked back to glance at him.

“Don’t go over there. If you go, you really will die.” Ji Xiunian didn’t continue wasting his words, and continued giving the body in front of him CPR.

In the not even two minutes since Fan Zeng’s sudden death, Ji Xiunian’s mind was completely filled with how to save him within the quickest time, pressing with force on Fan Zeng’s chest against his heart, praying that it would start moving again.

“There’s no use.” Lu Xu’s tone was calm to the point of being emotionless, and even carried a hint of coldness. “He’s already dead. There’s no use trying anymore.”

Ji Xiunian didn’t listen to him, and merely clenched his teeth and continued administering CPR.

“Hurry and revive, revive!” CPR itself was a very taxing and physically demanding action. Along with the fact that Ji Xiunian was already very exhausted and stressed, he was immediately covered in sweat.

Nevertheless, he still didn’t want to give up, and pressed up and down, praying whole-heartedly for a miracle.

He did CPR like this for three minutes, to the point where even Fan Zeng himself felt uncomfortable, to the point where he wanted to open his mouth and tell Ji Xiunian to give up.

But the current Ji Xiuinan couldn’t hear anything. His head was only full of ‘wake up, wake up’. Lu Xu didn’t want to watch him waste his energy for nothing, so called Fan Zeng. “Let’s go Fan ge, I will let them take better care of you.”

Fan Zeng glanced at Ji Xiunian with a complex expression, and slowly accepted the fact that he had died.

Although he also didn’t want it, the final result was that he had died.

Fan Zeng couldn’t help thinking of how before he had died, Ji Xiunian and Lu Xu had already given him reminders.

Even when his own body was also subtly giving him warnings; chest stuffiness, weariness, exhaustion…

If he had just stopped to rest during any one of the days, perhaps today’s event wouldn’t have occurred.

But he hadn’t.

He had always thought sudden death was something of an insignificant probability and wouldn’t ever happen to himself. He had even thought on multiple occasions that he would go back and spend a good amount of time with his family after filming this show.

But once something that only happened once in ten thousand times actually happened, it had a hundred percent probability.

There was no point, no matter how much he regretted it. The grim reaper had come to pronounce his death, and he had no space left to struggle.

Death was comparatively easier for those involved to accept, but it was a slow, lengthy wound for those who lived on.

Ji Xiunian refused to watch the person he cared about leave with his eyes open. He didn’t want to shed tears, but his nose soured, and the tears fell anyway, coincidentally or not, landing on the jade pendant resting against his chest.

The jade, which was already covered in many cracks, immediately shattered into pieces, and a mass of light tunneled into Fan Zeng’s body. Ji Xiunian instinctively felt like there was hope. Seeing that Fan Zeng was walking towards Lu Xu’s side, he forcefully raised his voice. “Fan Zeng, come back!”

The change was instantaneous.

The Fan Zeng who was about to verify his information was dragged by an unknown outside force, and he didn’t know himself how he managed to return to his body.

Lu Xu stared blankly at Fan Zeng’s spirit returning back to his body, and was actually stunned still for a while.

He had been working in this profession for so many years, but this was his first time being interrupted by a human right in front of his face.

Another person reviving a dead person from his hands was the most intolerable thing for a grim reaper.

What made him even more concerned was that Ji Xiunian was a mere mortal. How had he managed to do something like this?

He glanced at the shattered jade pendant, then discovered that the aura around Ji Xiunian’s body had undergone a qualitative change.

The jade pendant was the protection amulet Ji Xiunian’s mother had left him. Before, when he had had the jade pendant, there was only a light hint of death energy on his body. But now that the jade pendant had shattered, the death energy on Ji Xiunian’s body suddenly surged out, enveloping his entire being.

“You…”

Such dense death energy meant that the person wasn’t living anymore. Actually, it was heavier than the dead’s.

Lu Xu looked at Ji Xiunian with a complicated expression. He had never expected such a scene to occur today.

Ji Xiunian himself also couldn’t calm down.

He had always seen death energy on others before, and never thought he would see it on himself one day.

Lan Gaojie and Fan Zeng’s death energy were childish compared to the death energy lingering on his body.

Ji Xiunian smiled slightly in a self-mocking way, as if foreshadowing his own end.

Now that he had sent away his own relatives and friends, was it finally his turn?

He glanced down at Fan Zeng lying on the ground. Seeing that his chest was gently moving, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat more relieved.

[There has been a shipment error with the order. Your order has been canceled.]

The work that had basically landed into his hands had flown off like this. Lu Xu himself was even a little dumbfounded.

He looked at Ji Xiunian, and suddenly said, “Stealing clients from a grim reaper’s hands is a textbook example of seeking death.”

This was the first time Ji Xiunian had encountered Lu Xu speaking in such a serious tone.

He was obviously a little angry that he had been fooled, but when he thought of how he had impacted his business, Ji Xiunian actually felt a little afraid.

“I stole a person’s life from your hands. Can I pay it back with my own?” Ji Xiunian understood that his own days were numbered after seeing the death energy on his body. Since Lu Xu was so concerned about his assignment numbers, he might as well send himself off to him.

Although he was here for the sole purpose of rushing towards this giant order that was Ji Xiunian, when the ‘giant order’ himself willingly said he would turn himself in, Lu Xu actually felt very strange inside.

Just as he was about to say something, the room became foggy. When they returned to their senses, an additional person had appeared.

“How come you’re here?”

Lu Xu recognised Peng Hanfei, and knew that this Southwest Grim Reaper Bureau fellow was the one who had reported Xie An.

Peng Hanfei had thought he had stolen orders from the Southwest Grim Reaper Bureau. The two of them were at odds with each other.

But he didn’t think that he would actually appear here.

“This question is something I should be asking you instead.”

Peng Haifei looked all around the room and gauged the situation before asking Lu Xu in an interrogatory manner, “Fan Zeng should be our Southwest division’s order. Why did you cancel it after taking the order?”

Ever since his face-to-face confrontation with Lu Xu, Peng Hanfei had been holding in his anger.

Since he couldn’t challenge the previous events, his future performance couldn’t always be disrupted by Lu Xu.

After Fan Zeng’s order came, Peng Hanfei’s first reaction had been to accept the order.

This was a new order under their Southwest district. It wasn’t a historical case nor a stowaway case, so it should have been him coming over to harvest the soul.

But before he had even accepted the order, the system had already informed him that Lu Xu had taken the order.

There couldn’t be two grim reapers working on the same order. This order originally had nothing to do with him, but the more Peng Hanfei thought about it, the angrier he became, and he couldn’t resist coming over to argue with Lu Xu.

“This is an order under the jurisdiction of our Southwest district. Forget about stealing it, you even canceled the order…” Peng Hanfei’s tone was full of suspicion. He was already angry, and seeing Ji Xiunian standing on the side made him blurt out, “What, you want to raise this kind of stowaway again?”

Stowaway?

“What does that mean?” Ji Xiunian was very surprised faced with the stranger who had suddenly appeared. After listening to the two of them talk, he vaguely understood that this person was also a grim reaper. He didn’t think the opposing side would actually point his finger at him and call him a stowaway. When he saw that Lu Xu didn’t have a very big reaction, Ji Xiunian instinctively felt that this was a situation regarding something he didn’t know about.

Lu Xu didn’t think Peng Hanfei would come, and definitely didn’t think he would talk about the stowaway matter in front of Ji Xiunian.

“Enough. I will go myself to explain Fan Zeng’s situation to the Bureau Head. You may leave.”

“Ha.” Peng Hanfei didn’t pay any attention to him, and pointed at the Fan Zeng lying on the ground, saying, “I suspect that you’ve been creating a stowaway for personal use, so I will now have to request that you come with me to the Bureau Head to accept an investigation.”

“Wait!” Ji Xiunian couldn’t understand what they were talking about, but he understood that his revival of Fan Zeng had created problems for Lu Xu. He said to Peng Hanfei without thinking, “I’m the one who revived this person, it has nothing to do with Lu Xu.”

“Oho, even a stowaway dares to refute me?” As Peng Hanfei said this, he immediately thought of something.

Ji Xiunian was a big order they had been watching very carefully. Now that the death energy on his body was dense, if he accepted this person’s offer from before, he would be able to find and gain back the things he had lost to Lu Xu.

With these thoughts in mind, Peng Hanfei suddenly nodded. “Okay. Since you offered, I’ll take you back for investigation.” He glanced at Lu Xu, his smile forced. “I’ll take this person. You can stay here.”

Peng Hanfei made movements to retrieve Ji Xiunian’s spirit as he spoke, but he didn’t think Lu Xu would actually block him from doing so.

The youth was like a proud wolf, his tone cold as he said, “He is my person.”

Peng Hanfei laughed. “What do you mean your person. The bosses gave the responsibility of investigating to you. You’ve only come to investigate him. That doesn’t mean he’s your order, okay?”

This was too much information. Ji Xiunian could only feel his mind fall into disarray. The more he organised the conversation between the two, the more his heart sank.

He still remembered how when they first met, Lu Xu had been sitting in the contestant seats watching him, claiming he had come to participate in the competition because of him.

He also remembered when Lu Xu had blocked Lai Chengshan’s life borrowing, silently protecting him.

He still remembered the depths of the ocean at Devil’s Bay, when Lu Xu had jumped into the deep waters to save him, even kissing him…

Past events repeated one by one. Although they hadn’t known each other for very long, the two of them had unknowingly already experienced so much together.

This was something that was supposed to be touching. He had thought maybe this was just affection, or even love. He had thought Lu Xu treated him differently from others…

But that person was currently saying that Lu Xu was only taking him as a work assignment, a client, an order.

Ji Xiunian was speechless. After a long while, he asked Lu Xu, “What he said, is it true?”

nao: bruh we all know it’s actually bc phf just watches the grim reaper app all day so he can immediately rush over and report lx the moment something strange happens lmao lx’s personal stalker ????