Livestream Fortune-Telling: Making the Bed in a Haunted House from the Start

My name is Chen Ye. I’ve worked in the funeral business and even picked up urns, but nothing prepared me for inheriting the haunted house my grandfather left behind. Three tenants died here in three years, and the last one hung a red cord from the bedroom beam. To scrape together the rent, I started livestreaming as I made the bed. The moment my fingers touched the cool bamboo mat, I heard pages turning overhead, though the ceiling was completely bare.

The comments called me a fraud, so I forced out a lie about “pipes resonating,” but my hand clenched the Heavenly Secrets Compass in my pocket. Its needle was spinning wildly, pointing straight beneath the bed, where half a sheet of yellow paper bearing a Nanyang black-magic talisman was hidden.

Even stranger, after every bed-making stream, an anonymous tip appeared in my account with a message like “Don’t make the bed with your left hand” or “Seal the window crack with cinnabar,” as if someone were watching my every move. Then Shen Xingman from the Ninth Bureau came to see me and showed me my grandfather’s old case file: buried beneath this bed was a Soul-Suppressing Tree from the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion.