Chapter 2: When Life Is Short Enough, Does Shortening It Extend It?

At 3 a. m., the alarm blared shrilly; after sleeping the best sleep since his transmigration, Feng Xue finally dragged himself out of bed, having lingered in it all day, and reactivated his over-the-shoulder view—only when he confirmed the number above his head had indeed become four digits did he finally feel some relief.

This world superficially resembled the modern light-novel style common in前世 web novels, with technological levels similar to those before his transmigration, yet it had only four continents, renamed the Four Great Continents, as if the Xiyu universe had endured the End Dharma Era.

For instance, the city Feng Xue now inhabited lay on Yingzhou Island in Dongsheng Divine Continent, together with Penglai and Fanghu Islands forming the "Three Immortal Isles," and under the legal jurisdiction of the constitutional monarchy of the Great Tang, which controlled three-quarters of Southern Han Continent and one-third of Dongsheng Divine Continent.

Although online data suggested this world was merely a modern technological one, with only vague, 前世-like mythological legends and no trace of supernatural power, during the past half-month since his transmigration, Feng Xue had used his golden finger to uncover the horror hidden beneath its peaceful surface.

At the moment of transmigration, to verify his golden finger's authenticity and to extend his own lifespan, his first destination was the hospital—and this gave him his first real understanding of his golden finger.

His golden finger actually consisted of two parts—

The first part was unremarkable: it simply allowed him to see lifespans. Although this "seeing" defaulted to 【people】 within his line of sight, whenever he focused his mind and formed the thought "I want to see lifespan," he could clearly perceive the lifespan of anything within his field of vision—plants, trees, snakes, insects, rodents—even bacteria under a microscope.

This observation could be triggered not only by direct sight, telescopes, or mirrors, but also by video recordings and even photographs—it was how he discovered it, seeing the lifespan number on a blurred patient photo pinned to the hospital's medical records wall.

Notably, the lifespan observed through photographs, recordings, or other media was not the lifespan at the time the media was recorded, but the lifespan at the moment of observation.

Under normal circumstances, the lifespan he saw was not absolute: in the hospital, he had seen numbers plummet due to deteriorating illness, and also seen them slowly increase after surgery.

As to why "under normal circumstances," one must mention the second part of his golden finger—

That being the over-the-shoulder view, discovered shortly after his transmigration.

The origin point of this view could not extend beyond a two-meter radius around himself; aside from letting him peek at other players' tiles during mahjong, it seemed to have no special function—but through experimentation, Feng Xue discovered that the view itself was merely incidental; its true core ability was the "lock."

Under the over-the-shoulder view, aside from seeing the back of his own head, it was indistinguishable from normal vision—but when Feng Xue formed the thought "observe lifespan," a golden 【lock】 icon appeared before the lifespan number seen through this view; with his will, he could toggle this icon to lock or unlock it. When the icon was in "locked" state, the target's lifespan would not increase or decrease due to any external influence.

For example, Feng Xue once locked the lifespan of an ant with only three days left; afterward, whether he burned it with a lighter, poured boiling water on it, or crushed it with force, it did not die, nor did its lifespan decrease—but normal time passage still reduced the number.

By the way, if directly thrown into fire, the ant remained unharmed; but if only a leg or even half its body was burned by a heat source like incense, it was still possible.

In other words, once lifespan is locked, it is immune to illness or injury—but non-fatal injuries can still occur; only injuries that would inevitably be fatal are exempted.

After testing, Feng Xue found he could lock the lifespan of only one target at a time, and this locking action required direct observation of the target's physical body through the over-the-shoulder view—he could not operate it via photographs, recordings, or telescopes as he could with lifespan observation.

Under unobstructed conditions, his operational limit was about five hundred meters, but in practical scenarios, he could generally guarantee precise control only within a sixty-meter range.

Although this ability seemed highly playable and full of potential, it had no positive effect on Feng Xue's own lifespan issue; after a full-body medical examination confirmed his body was perfectly healthy with no lifespan-affecting conditions, Feng Xue could only focus his attention on others' lifespans.

His idea was simple: whether cultivation, superpowers, or anything else—if supernatural forces affected lifespan, those who possessed them could not possibly resist using them. By finding individuals whose lifespans changed unnaturally or were far longer than normal, he might uncover clues about extending lifespan.

And this led him to notice some chilling details—

For example, on streets outside the hospital, scattered banknotes and coins occasionally appeared; some people who picked them up saw their lifespan decrease by one or two days.

For example, in short videos where someone livestreamed their birthday, some streamers' lifespan numbers dropped outright by a hundred days or more.

If these were guaranteed events, that would be one thing—but the real trouble was that this lifespan reduction seemed probabilistic.

The same act of picking up money: some people who turned it in to police or donated it to merit boxes still lost lifespan, while others who casually spent it saw no change at all—utterly unpredictable.

What sent chills down Feng Xue's spine was his sudden realization of the root cause of his own lifespan problem—

It was during his "lick-the-image" reconnaissance that he found, in the前身's email trash folder, an email: the classic curse letter, claiming that if the reader did not forward it to x people, they would live only xx more days.

At the time, he'd thought it was spam—but now that he'd witnessed how many things in this world genuinely reduced lifespan, he realized this might be the very cause of his own two-month remaining lifespan.

Yet if this world contained supernatural factors that reduced lifespan, it must also contain those that extended it; driven by this thought, Feng Xue began visiting temples and Taoist shrines touted as "miraculously effective," burning incense and praying for added yang lifespan.

He visited many temples and shrines, drained most of the前身's savings, yet the number above his head continued its steady decline; after abandoning this futile waste of time, Feng Xue began intensive internet searches to find individuals with abnormal lifespans.

Then he saw him—the professional mahjong player who, for the first time in history, achieved a pure Nine Gates in an official match.

3286. Before transmigration, Feng Xue would never have noticed anything odd about this number—but in the few days since transmigration, through constant use of his golden finger and lifespan calculations, he had developed extreme sensitivity to numbers, especially in year-to-day conversion; he instantly recognized this number was extremely close to 9×365=3285, and with the keyword "Nine Gates," a legend about lifespan reduction immediately surfaced in his mind—

In前世 online circles, there were frequent jokes about "life-span poker," and phrases like "life-span card-drawing" or "life-span mahjong" were common; though mostly memes from mobile or tabletop games, the most widely circulated was the mahjong "Death Hand."

Hands with extremely low probability, such as Great Four Blessings and Eighteen Arhats, or pure Nine Gates, were often called "Death Hands," and Nine Gates, due to the number "nine" in its name, naturally gave rise to this saying—

【Winning a standard Nine Gates costs nine years of lifespan; winning a pure Nine Gates leaves you with only nine years left to live.】

The instant this information surfaced in his mind, Feng Xue did not think of lifespan reduction—he thought instead of a brainwave he'd had while chatting before transmigration—

If winning a pure Nine Gates leaves you with only nine years, then what if someone whose lifespan was already less than nine years won it—wouldn't they gain lifespan instead?

Later, this even spawned dark humor about high-age mahjong tournaments held every nine years—but as he pondered it, compared to other high-risk, low-probability lifespan-increasing methods he'd discovered, mahjong seemed more plausible?

Though he couldn't be certain it would truly extend his life, he had at that moment found a do-or-die strategy; combined with the over-the-shoulder view's ability to see all four players' tiles, he held a strong advantage in mahjong. Driven by the thought, "Might as well try before the final leap—even if it fails, I'll at least earn some funds," he walked into a mahjong parlor.

He played for over ten days.

(End of Chapter)