The Con: Starting at the Secondhand Market

Ten years ago, Qing Mo was cast out by his family, discarded like something worn out. Ten years later, he found a broken compass at a flea market and, on a whim, extended the life of a dying underworld boss by three days. His name shook the underworld. Feng shui was his blade, and human hearts were his whetstone. When a property developer trampled his design plans, he didn’t lift a finger. With a carefully plotted feng shui formation called “Nine Dragons Trapping the Beast,” he made his rival’s billion-yuan development vanish within a month. When a financial tycoon wanted to tear down the old city, Qing Mo turned the waterways and underground rivers beneath the entire city into a chessboard. Using an old locust tree that had been dead for twenty years, he swallowed up the tycoon’s trillion-yuan empire instead. He saved lives without medicine, using feng shui. He broke deadlocks without violence, by understanding people. Everyone thought he was about to reach the top. Instead, he squatted outside the flea market, eating cold pancakes and haggling with a vendor over a single copper coin. “It’s too heavy. I can’t hold on to the real thing.” Then one day, he found an old photograph tucked inside a book. On the back, in ink no more than ten years old, was a single line: “Mo’er. The parasol tree is waiting for you to come home.” Only then did he realize that every move he’d made had been part of a game laid out ten years ago. This isn’t the occult. It’s someone who understands the human heart borrowing the power of heaven and earth.