As An Antique Shop Owner, It's Only Reasonable That I Know A Bit Of Magic - Chapter 62

Scarlett jolted awake, gasping for air, her face pale.

Her hands trembled uncontrollably.

The vivid vision of her own death shattered her composure, a fist of terror gripping her heart!
Previously, she had only seen the deaths of others; this time, she had witnessed her own.

Death was coming!

It was coming to reap her life!
What should she do?!

“Su…”

She started to speak but was interrupted by the server.

“Your cappuccino, and your caramel macchiato, ma’am.”

The two cups of coffee were placed on the table, their rich, aromatic scent failing to earn Scarlett’s appreciation and instead making her increasingly agitated.

“Su, we need to leave here, now!”

Scarlett didn’t have time to explain. She stood up immediately, but her movement was too abrupt, knocking over the cup on the table.

Coffee spilled across the surface and dripped down, soaking the hem of her dress.

The warm sensation struck Scarlett like a bolt of lightning.

It wasn’t a child this time, but herself?

But the coffee still spilled… so what comes next?

Her gaze snapped to the plastic chair behind her. Somehow, it had already started sliding toward the vehicle lane.

But at that moment, a hand caught the sliding chair just in time.

Seeing this, Scarlett froze. Her eyes traveled up the arm and found the person holding the chair was none other than Su Fan.

When did he get over there?

The question surfaced unbidden in her mind.

But soon, she heard a faint, whistling sound, mingling with the noise of a motorcycle engine, growing closer.

It was the delivery guy…

Without the chair, he shouldn’t…

Just as Scarlett was thinking this, a scream erupted from up ahead.

She whipped her head around and saw a group of young people, playfully roughhousing, right in front of the speeding delivery motorcycle.

A bystander to the side screamed at the sight.

The delivery guy seemed startled by the shout; his body jolted, and he lost his grip on the handlebars.

A pizza flew out of the delivery bag, escaping its box…

Everything happened in the blink of an eye. Scarlett had no time to make a sound, she could only watch it all unfold.

In the air, the pizza was caught by a sudden, unnatural gust of wind, pushing it forward—but the next moment, it inexplicably flew backward instead.

Scarlett was stunned…

That wind was the ‘accident’ created by Death. According to her vision, it should have landed on the truck driver’s windshield.

That unnatural trajectory was just like… just like…

Just like another force deliberately disrupted it all…

The thought struck her, and for some reason, she immediately looked toward Su Fan, just in time to see him lowering his hand.

In the distance, the young people were now gathered at a spot not obstructing traffic, discussing how to cover the damages.

A moment later, the truck rumbled past on the street.

The world remained as peaceful and pleasant as before.

The chain of misfortune engineered by Death had been broken.

So, who was it that severed the chain?

“Stop looking, it was me.”

Su Fan’s voice startled her.

Before she could say anything more, she suddenly felt a gentle breeze blow directly toward her face—only to stop abruptly.

“It’s actually real…”

Scarlett was dumbfounded, muttering to herself unconsciously.
——
Compared to Annie, Su Fan had long sensed that Scarlett wasn’t as trusting of him.

All this back-and-forth testing was getting tiresome.
How could they fight that obsessive-compulsive Death without sufficient trust?

So, Su Fan had staged this little demonstration. He just hadn’t expected the effect to be so potent—maybe a bit too potent.

“The talisman is real?”

“Of course, it’s real.”

“So… did you come from Shaolin Temple? In the movies from Hong Kong, many powerful people come from there.”

“…I don’t practice Buddhism, and I’m not from Shaolin. As you can see, I’m just an antique dealer.”

“Was that ability you used innate, or did you learn it later?”

“Learned it.”

“Superpowers can be learned? Can you get married then? Would you lose your ability if you… lost your purity?”

“…”

Across from him, Scarlett was like an inquisitive child, firing off question after question.

Soon, however, she realized she was overstepping and quickly apologized.

“Sorry, Su… I got a little too excited.”

“You know, people in my country don’t know much about other places, especially the East.”

“It’s fine.”

He could understand the curiosity.

“Wait a minute… Su… why did you think to use your ability to blow away that pizza just now?”

Scarlett had suddenly latched onto a crucial point she’d overlooked.

In the premonition she saw, she died under an out-of-control truck.

The reason the truck went out of control was the pizza blocking the driver’s view.

No pizza, no visual obstruction for the driver, and the accident wouldn’t happen.

So the question was, how did Su Fan know?

“Could it be… you were also given the special ability to see visions of death?”

“No.”

Su Fan denied it outright.

His supernatural abilities were cultivated and comprehended through his own practice—what did they have to do with that ‘Death’?
Unlike Scarlett, Su Fan had relied on his ‘Premonition’ ability to sense the right moment to act.

His current abilities couldn’t show him such specific images; he could only make inferences based on the premonitions he received.

If it were a malevolent spirit causing trouble, he might combine it with his ‘Communing with the Unseen’ ability to glean more information about the evil entity, but Death clearly didn’t fall into the category of a common ghost.

“None of that is important right now. What’s important is how to escape the next round of pursuit.”

Su Fan pulled a stack of talismans from his pocket.

“These are…”

“Talismans. Same as the one you had before. They help ward off misfortune and attract good fortune as much as possible.”

“Right now, it’s quite difficult for Death to kill you, so you can afford to be a little less on edge for the time being.”

“But what about you…”

Getting the talismans didn’t relax Scarlett much.

“Su, you just broke one of its chains. It will target you too!”

“I have my ways.”

He was already aware of this.

The moment he disrupted Death’s chain reaction, he had received a system notification.

[You foresaw events using Premonition and disrupted one of Death’s hunts. Proficiency +2]
[You disrupted one of Death’s hunts, causing it to expend resources needlessly.]
[You are now under Death’s Gaze.]
[Recalibrating and rebuilding the sequence requires some time, but you will face more intense attacks next.]