Prologue

“I’m going to Paris tomorrow.”

“That’s not such a remarkable place. Was there really any need to tell me specifically?”

“You might not see me for a very long time…”

“I’ve never really seen you to begin with!”

“…You’re refreshingly honest.”

“Even if a dessert shop is a small operation, I’m still an honest businesswoman.”

“……”

This summer was truly sweltering. The cicadas kept up their racket past sundown without any sign of stopping, fraying everyone’s nerves with the noise.

It was summer break, and business at the shop had become quite slow. With nothing better to do, I responded to the call of low-carbon living, dragged a rattan chair out to the courtyard, and sat there fanning myself with a palm leaf, watching the stars.

On the side table were two cups of tea — one mine, one belonging to the person who had just left. Her cup was already empty. She was, to this day, the only person I had ever seen drink a cup of Fusheng in one sitting without so much as a twitch of the brow.

Fatty drifted out from behind me, clutching a tub of vanilla ice cream, and asked with a full mouth: “Boss-lady, who were you just talking to?”

I picked up my teacup without batting an eye. “There was only me here, from start to finish.”

“That’s impossible…” Fatty blinked his small eyes, grabbed Skinny — who had just crept out from a sneak raid on the kitchen — to serve as a witness. “You saw it too, right? The person sitting across from our boss-lady?”

Skinny wiped his greasy mouth and shot Fatty a look. “So what?”

“That person was wrapped head to toe in thick grey cloth, like a mummy, right?” Fatty demonstrated with his hands.

“Yeah, and?” Skinny impatiently shook off Fatty’s hand. Monsters of every description came and went through Bu Ting — one summer weirdo wrapped up like a mummy was hardly worth making a fuss about.

“The thing is…” Fatty leaned close to Skinny’s ear and whispered, “Boss-lady said there was only her. Is she having a heatstroke, or is she possessed, or going through early menopause?” Before he could finish, there was a sharp yelp — my flip-flop had landed squarely on his head.

“Before I get possessed, I’ll make sure you’re the first to have a stroke, you fat lump!” I yawned, shifted sideways, and leaned back in my chair for a light doze. Fatty and Skinny made themselves scarce.

Neither Fatty nor Skinny had been seeing things — the person who had just sat across from me was absolutely real. And I hadn’t lied either. She was there in front of me, and yet she was nothing at all. If you peeled away all the cloth wrapped around her, there would be only air.

My feelings about her were complicated. I knew her whole story, and over the years I’d felt by turns dismissive of her and deeply impressed. That one year, she asked me: “What would you like for your birthday?”

I smiled. “Anything is fine?” I knew she counted me as a kindred spirit — if I had asked for the stars in the sky, she would have plucked them for me. And true enough, she nodded with full conviction.

“Then give me a real Lu Azang.”

She was stunned for a long moment, gave a bitter smile, and quietly left.

Yes — her name was Lu Azang. Zang — as in hidden, concealed…

One

Today’s front page of the Paris Daily read: “Charlotte Beruell, only daughter of real estate magnate Luc Beruell, kidnapped at her own birthday banquet — police have yet to uncover any useful leads; wealthy heiress believed to be in grave danger.”

In truth, for nearly half a month, every major Paris media outlet had been dominated by headlines of this kind. A tycoon’s child being kidnapped brought not only news value but also plenty of fodder for ordinary people’s after-dinner conversation. But when the children of dozens of the world’s most elite billionaires were abducted one after another, the result was not entertaining gossip — it was a wave of panic sweeping across France and across the whole world.

Crushing pressure descended from the Élysée Palace through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and all the way down to the Paris Police Headquarters, and from the commissioner to the most ordinary officer, every head had turned white with stress. The kidnapping case bearing down on them was unlike any ordinary case — the parents of the missing children were each, without exception, figures who could move markets and topple governments in the global financial arena.

City of Romance, City of Fashion, City of Luxury — those once-cherished titles had become a grating joke. In everyone’s eyes, Paris had now become a city of terror.

“Not a single lead.” André shoved aside the documents he’d read a hundred times and stood up to walk to the window, addressing the air outside Paris Police Headquarters with bitter mockery. “At this rate, those children’s parents will probably hire an army to level this place. Right, Liang?”

André had been a police officer for twenty years and had cracked countless kidnapping cases. To be utterly at a loss like this — it was a first. The billionaires’ children had, without exception, vanished under heavy security detail and in full public view. The kidnappers had left no trace behind. No ransom demand had followed. It flew in the face of all reason, and left the police with absolutely nothing to go on.

Seated across from him was a young man with black hair and an East Asian face, lounging in the office chair in a state of near-drowsiness over a cup of instant coffee, his tie hanging loosely over a slightly open white collar, his black suit jacket tossed carelessly over the sofa, buried under a scattered mess of gossip magazines.

André turned, saw that the man behind him appeared to have not heard a word, and the hot-tempered police veteran strode over and slammed his palm on the desk. “Are you even listening to me?”

Everything on the desk jumped at the impact and clattered back down — including the man’s coffee, which startled out of the cup and splattered across his shirt.

“Ow!” The man jolted awake and leapt to his feet, snatching up tissues and rubbing frantically while yelping, “Uncle, this shirt was expensive!”

André stared at him without words. He had a stomach full of things to say, which in the end all condensed into a single sigh.

One week ago, a young son of a prominent Chinese businessman had been kidnapped while visiting Paris. Given the case’s complexity, and under the China-France Criminal Judicial Assistance Agreement, the Chinese side had dispatched a senior police officer to Paris to assist with the investigation.

When André first set eyes on Mu Yeliang — who looked handsomer than a film star — he flatly refused to believe this young man could possibly be a “senior officer.” His suspicion was quickly and unfortunately confirmed. Beyond following André around every day as a matter of routine, serving as a Chinese interpreter, eating, drinking, and sleeping, Mu Yeliang showed no sign of any other contribution whatsoever. That someone like this had actually made it onto the force was something André could not begin to understand — how his superiors had saddled him with such a useless assistant.

“Uncle, in many situations, solve rates are inversely proportional to the temperament of the officer involved!” Mu Yeliang re-brewed a cup of coffee and placed it in front of André with a grin. “There’s always a crack in every case — patience!”

“I’d love to be patient, but this is a kidnapping — every day we fail to close it, the victims are in greater danger. You’re well aware of the pressure from above!” André couldn’t stand looking at Mu Yeliang’s insufferably unruffled expression, and took a long gulp of coffee. “It’s only been a week, and there’s still not a single lead on the Chinese boy, and now Luc Beruell’s daughter has been taken — these kidnappers pull off this kind of thing as easily as buying bread at a supermarket! Damn it all!” The more André thought about it the more agitated he became, and he slapped himself hard on the forehead. Since Charlotte Beruell’s abduction, three days in, he had slept a combined total of less than three hours.

Mu Yeliang looked at André with sympathy and patted his shoulder. “Uncle, sometimes winning or losing isn’t determined by who’s stronger or smarter — it’s by who can hold their nerve longer.”

“Other than running your mouth, what exactly can you do?” André grew more enraged with every word.

Beep beep beep! The telephone rang with sharp urgency. André dug it out from under a pile of documents and snatched up the receiver. “Hello? It’s me… What — the kidnappers have written a letter to all the victims’ families. All right… I’ll be right there.”

He dropped the phone and leapt to his feet as though galvanized, yelling at Mu Yeliang: “What are you waiting for?!”

“Where are we going?” Mu Yeliang blinked.

“Montier Barracks — DGSE!” André grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward the door without ceremony.

“DGSE? The Directorate-General for External Security? Hey, hey! Uncle, slow down! I haven’t got my jacket!”

Two

Lu Azang had been in this business for a very long time. Many of the details had grown hazy, but she remembered her first client: a woman surnamed Yang, beautiful enough to bring kingdoms to ruin. She had taken on this woman’s likeness, hanged herself at a place called Mawei Slope, was then examined and buried — and only after a troop of furious soldiers broke camp and left did she idly climb out from the earth.

In a sealed chamber lit by flickering candlelight, a dignified elder dressed in magnificent robes knelt and bowed in thanks, thanking her for saving the person he loved above all else in this life. An entire chest of priceless treasures lay at her feet, their dazzling light radiating wealth and splendor.

But she stood without a word, like a block of wood. Because she could see nothing, hear nothing — she only understood that the old man bowing to her in sincere gratitude was the Son of Heaven. At such a moment, the reward seemed almost unimportant. What mattered was that Lu Azang had confirmed she was walking the most correct path possible. Everything she had sacrificed before this moment had been worth it.

She was, in all of history, the most perfect substitute — capable of replacing not just appearances, but every inch of flesh and blood, every vessel, down to the DNA itself. Not a single flaw, absolute perfection.

As a Wuxiang among demons, Lu Azang could transform into any human being in the world and, for the duration of a contract, take that person’s place in completing any task, including death. This was her “business.”

Over the years, she had “played” countless roles — from antiquity to the present day, from heads of empire to common folk — using her own body to achieve one purpose after another for her clients, while along the way enjoying everything that each client’s identity brought to her own life. This kind of existence suited her perfectly.

This time, she had taken the place of the French girl named Charlotte Beruell — and been kidnapped. The contract duration was one month. This was not her first time serving as a hostage for a client, though the kidnappers who took her differed from any she’d encountered before. Whoever had seized her from the birthday banquet was not human. She smelled a dense demon aura on the figure — from that churning mass of shadow, dark as black fog yet swift as lightning, she glimpsed one cyan-gleaming, razor-sharp curved horn, and the stark, bone-white animal teeth that belonged to no human being.

Lu Azang’s knowledge of physics was modest. She had only heard that according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, if an object moved at the speed of light, time would stand still. When this peculiar kidnapper carried her away in plain sight of everyone, she seemed to see all the surrounding scenery freeze in place.

She had never encountered a demon capable of achieving such speed — not even vampires, who supposedly commanded swiftness above all rivals, possessed such agility.

And yet the one who had taken her was only an ordinary — even somewhat foolish-looking — wild boar demon. Although it appeared in the form of a man and wore an ill-fitting T-shirt, it couldn’t even fully complete its human shape. A curved horn still protruded from its forehead, two tusks peeked out beneath its thick lips, and drool trickled along these tusks at intervals.

Lu Azang had no idea where she had been taken. The boar moved too fast, and by the time her vision and consciousness returned to normal, she was already standing in a room whose four walls were smooth silver — cast from some kind of special alloy. The interior was lavishly appointed; a Picasso hung on the wall, and a large refrigerator in the corner was stocked half with food and half with Saint Géron mineral water. Chopin’s Nocturne drifted smoothly from a speaker of excellent quality. Aside from the absence of doors and windows, the room was the match of any five-star hotel suite.

Having deposited her here, the boar demon turned and passed directly through the wall, its body merging seamlessly with the alloy.

Lu Azang walked to the wall and knocked on it — solid, resonant thuds, genuine metal. In her current human body, breaking through this was entirely out of the question. A kidnapper who gave hostages such fine treatment — Lu Azang had never encountered this before.

“Welcome, dear Miss Charlotte.” The beautiful Nocturne abruptly ceased. The wall across from her rippled with water-like light patterns, followed by a faint electric hum, and a rectangular area roughly two meters square lit up. A person wearing a smiling-face mask appeared at the center of that area, seated in a neat suit, the lens pulled very close — an old-fashioned pocket watch hanging incongruously from the person’s chest.

A hoarse, low voice resonated through the room. Drawing on long experience, Lu Azang assumed an expression of fright and called toward the wall the classic line: “Who are you? Where is this place?”

“Don’t be afraid — this place is safer and lovelier than anywhere else.” The figure on the wall gave a strange laugh. “Miss Charlotte, please settle in comfortably here until I have obtained what I want. In three days, someone will take you somewhere, and you only need to follow their instructions.”

“Let me out!” Lu Azang hurled herself at the wall with professional dedication, pounding it with her fists. “Name any ransom — Father will pay it, just let me out!”

“Shhh!” The figure raised a black-gloved right hand and made a hushing gesture. “Miss Charlotte, each person has their use. Other hostages are taken for ransom — but you are not.”

The image on the wall shrank rapidly to a line and vanished.

This job was shaping up to be rather interesting, Lu Azang thought, settling against the wall and assuming the pose of a pitiful little lamb. A kidnapper who wanted no ransom — in three days, what would he need her to do? She found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she was a little curious.

Three

Someone had joked that even the coffee served here tasted of banknotes — and inside the DGSE’s most secret and most fortified underground conference room, as ten figures who held the threads of the global economy in their hands gathered together, the exhaustion and anxiety in every pair of eyes had completely erased whatever imperious brilliance had once surrounded each of them. Now they were nothing more than parents who had lost their children — no different from anyone else.

Everyone in the room, including André and Mu Yeliang, had probably never imagined they would have the “honor” of being in the same room as these figures — and in an atmosphere of absolute equality at that.

All the parents of the abducted children had, twenty-four hours ago, received an express delivery containing a USB drive and a letter. The letter said only this — Please arrive at France’s Montier Barracks within 24 hours. Should you be late, please preserve carefully the enclosed video, as it will be the final trace of your beloved in this world. Thank you.

In the video, each of the hostages sat before a silver-white wall, holding up a newspaper from that day, with the date clearly visible on camera. Each of them appeared healthy — they showed no signs of having suffered.

Within twenty-four hours, parents arrived in Paris from every corner of the world. The DGSE’s small airport received dozens of luxury helicopters in a single day. The entire DGSE was placed on the highest possible alert — not so much as a fly was allowed in or out freely.

Ten letters lay arranged neatly on the conference room table. The content of each was identical, but they had been handwritten in different languages — whether English, Chinese, Russian, or Arabic, the penmanship was uniformly fluid and accomplished.

The relevant departments had rapidly traced the courier’s origin and subjected each letter to every conceivable high-tech analysis — from paper fiber to ink composition to embedded particles — and had even brought in a handwriting expert to analyze the letter-writer’s psychological state. Still not a single useful finding emerged. The handwriting expert concluded with one sentence: “All of these letters were written by the same hand. Intelligent. Measured. Even — genius.”

The room fell silent. Mu Yeliang leaned over to examine the letter written in Chinese, and indeed found the characters vigorous and assured, bearing the unmistakable hallmark of a master. He murmured: “A kidnapper with a good classical education.”

“What are you people planning to do?” One of the billionaires rose, face cold, and asked. “You’re not going to spend time having afternoon tea with us, I hope.”

“If taxpayers’ money is being wasted, they certainly won’t be happy about it.” Another billionaire’s round, pale face had turned blotchy red and purple with anxiety and barely suppressed fury. Watching the group before him still reciting only “we are investigating diligently, please remain calm,” his fists clenched tighter and tighter. Given a wine bottle, he might have brought it down on the Security Minister or the Interior Minister’s head in the next second.

For all his years as a senior police officer, André had never felt so utterly humiliated. “We deeply understand how all of you must be feeling. There is always a crack in every case — please remain patient. Trust us—”

Before André could finish, his collar was seized by the Russian billionaire, who had suddenly leapt to his feet. A burst of furious and not-quite-standard English rang through the room: “Trust? My son has been missing for ten days! You useless idiots — ten days and you haven’t closed the case! You still have the audacity to ask for our trust?”

The Russian’s fist was caught by Mu Yeliang, who flashed him a smile and said in smooth English: “Sir, please don’t be so hasty in calling others useless. If the police are useless, what does that make the so-called elite bodyguards you arranged for your children? What does saying things like that accomplish, besides making everyone more upset? Would you not rather sit down, keep a cool head, and work out together why the kidnapper merely wanted all of you gathered here, without making any other demands?”

Watching Mu Yeliang’s composed face, the Russian lowered his fist. The Chinese man’s eyes held a pressure buried beneath sincerity — a sensation the battle-hardened Russian financier had felt before, but only when facing a truly formidable opponent.

André stepped forward, and said — not with anger, just one sentence: “I have a daughter too.”

The atmosphere in the room eased, just slightly. The officials of far higher rank than Mu Yeliang quietly breathed a sigh of relief and silently thanked this Chinese police officer who had gone unnoticed in the crowd until now.

At that moment, a chorus of different mobile phone notification sounds rang out almost simultaneously. Every billionaire reached for their phone. A group message — The coffee at DGSE isn’t bad, is it? Why not stay another 48 hours — and then, mothers and fathers, please prepare whatever you consider most precious, and bring it to wait before the beautiful Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Uninvolved parties are also welcome to join.

And the most recently targeted victim’s father, Luc Beruell, received an additional private message on top of the group one — Mr. Beruell, might you wish to rebutton your shirt?

Luc Beruell — always meticulous about his appearance — had fastened his second shirt button into the third buttonhole, and had not noticed throughout the journey. And of course no one else had noticed this small detail either; who had any attention to spare for such things at a time like this? But if the first message was a bomb, the second was a nuclear one. Something that not even the people immediately beside him had noticed had been observed in perfect detail by the kidnapper — inside the DGSE’s secret conference room, where not even a fly could get in. Every official’s face turned uniformly pale. Even André and Mu Yeliang could not conceal their astonishment, and exchanged a bewildered glance…

As the “uninvolved parties” of the kidnapper’s message, two hours later, nearly half of Paris’s police forces moved toward the Louvre — in the name of advance guard.

“The Louvre is going to become a tin of sardines stuffed with police.” Mu Yeliang watched the long procession of police vehicles ahead, their flashing lights casting frantic, swirling colors across the gray road.

André took a hard drag of his cigarette and pressed down on the accelerator. “Never come across an opponent like this before. This bastard should be taken apart and thrown into the Seine!”

Mu Yeliang smiled and turned away, gazing at the scenery rushing past outside the car window in apparent boredom, a faint stillness rising in the depths of his eyes — like the mist that covers a full moon.

Four

From the moment they stepped through the Louvre’s pyramid entrance, the ten billionaires’ faces were more taut than they had ever been.

The Louvre was no longer the world museum people came to admire and revere — it was a court waiting to pass a sentence of life or death. Two hours after the kidnapper’s message was received, the Louvre had closed with great efficiency.

The advance guard had conducted a sweep of the entire palace, inside and out — nothing unusual. The billionaires paced restlessly back and forth in the Denon Wing. Behind bulletproof glass, the Mona Lisa continued to smile her unchanging smile. But perhaps it was merely their troubled minds at work — those famously enchanting eyes in the painting seemed, from every angle, to carry a slightly mocking quality, which made the billionaires distinctly uncomfortable.

Each of them held in their hands a dark-colored briefcase — different in style, yet each equally understated. What was inside would have made any ordinary person’s jaw drop. There was the Star of Africa, the world’s largest and finest-quality diamond. There was a night-luminescent pearl, ancient and priceless, from the distant East. There were contracts for the next round of oil extraction rights in a Middle Eastern country. There were even bank drafts in excess of ten billion. Per the kidnapper’s instructions, each of them had brought what they considered most precious.

Time moved more slowly than it ever had. Beyond the labored breathing rising and falling throughout the gallery and the crisscrossing vigilant glances, there was not a sound. All the way through sundown, no further word came from the kidnapper. Fully armed police and agents surrounded the billionaires on all sides; the hands gripping their weapons had begun to sweat, hearts pounding at high frequency.

When the last thread of sunlight vanished entirely from the edge of the city, a strange drop in temperature began inside the gallery. André saw his own breath turn to white mist — the kind you only got in winter… but it was July!

An hour ago, Mu Yeliang had received a call from the Chinese International Police Headquarters ordering him to return to Paris Security Headquarters immediately — a new assignment. If he were here now, André guessed this chatterbox of a young man would be making a fuss and offering ridiculous commentary on the strange temperature change.

The instant André’s attention wandered, a gray shadow shot up from beneath the smooth floor — yes, truly erupting out from the solid ground below — and began spinning at lightning speed like a whirlpool, in seconds creating what looked like a wide river of gray-black across the space between the billionaires and the police.

A howling current of air rushed toward them, bringing with it a tearing sensation across the skin. André felt as though two ice-hard, rough hands had clamped tightly over his eyes; all vision vanished in an instant beneath this inexplicable pain. A bone-deep frozen sensation spread from his eyelids rapidly to his entire body, as though he had been sealed inside a stubborn block of ice.

This feeling lasted less than three seconds. But every single person in the room felt as though they had spent a hundred years returning from hell to the world of the living.

Of course, the first thing everyone’s minds went to, once consciousness returned, was those billionaires standing right there within arm’s reach. They were fortunately all intact — every one of them standing blankly in place, staring at each other. But unfortunately, the briefcases in their hands had vanished without exception. There was one more detail that none of them noticed — and perhaps would never notice their whole lives — on the carotid artery of each of the ten billionaires was a needle-mark so small it was practically invisible to the naked eye.

“Am I dreaming…” one junior officer muttered. They were all diehard materialists — no belief in the supernatural, no belief in ghosts or spirits; even their faith in God was little more than a life habit.

And yet, those cases — held tightly in the billionaires’ own hands, filled with objects of “immeasurable worth” — had been swept clean, before their very eyes. The key point being that no one had managed to identify who had come, or what method they had used to pull this off under conditions that should have been impenetrable.

The billionaires’ complexions were, one and all, ghastly — resembling the recently dead who had just crawled out of their coffins. The Mona Lisa still smiled on the wall. The worse they looked, the more beautiful her smile appeared — a vivid contrast.

André shook his head hard and told himself repeatedly that what he had just seen was probably only a hallucination. But twenty years on the force, and he had never once doubted his own eyes the way he did today. At that moment, his phone rang. André steadied himself, took it out, and saw it was from police headquarters.

“Hello?” He pressed accept and tried to make his voice sound normal.

“Mu Yeliang? He went back to headquarters. What — he’s in the hospital?” André’s pitch was rising, his expression growing stranger by the moment. “Found three days ago? How is that possible! He’s been here with me this whole time, perfectly fine!”

The commotion around him swelled, quickly drowning out his voice.

Five

Lu Azang stood at the end of this long, winding, complex and precise underground tunnel and couldn’t help but marvel at those mole demons who couldn’t even speak proper human language. These low-level minor demons had, in less than twenty-four hours, completed a massive project that would ordinarily take human beings at least a month under normal conditions.

From her place of confinement to here, Lu Azang had walked for an hour, with three others at her side. Well — three demons.

The two nearly identical boar demons still looked every bit as foolish as before. Wearing matching T-shirts, tusks exposed, drooling steadily, they trotted close behind her — flashlight in the left hand, and in the right hand each clutched a small, nondescript black baton.

Lu Azang knew perfectly well those were upgraded electric batons — and not the kind that stopped at twenty thousand volts. What interested her was not the boars or the batons, but the man who had been walking ahead of her the entire time. In the swaying beam of light, a large trench coat hung loose over his slender, tall frame, and his gray hair carried a dim, muted sheen. His appearance was impossible to make out, because he wore a mask — the same kind she had seen on the wall, a smiling face. Instinct told her this man and the figure on the wall were not the same person. He was a demon as well, though the species was unclear — Lu Azang had caught his demon aura. Moreover, when he had just brought her out of the five-star cell and into an elevator that took them to the start of this underground passage, she had seen a muscular brown-furred mole demon emerge from the shadows with a group of its kind, standing upright at the man’s feet and chittering to him in demon-tongue.

Demons know no national borders, and demon-tongue is universal — Lu Azang caught fragmented phrases like “already broken through,” “you’ll see it once you’re out,” and “what about payment?”

The man made a phone call, and shortly several enormously strong boar demons came out carrying dozens of wooden crates, setting them down in front of the moles. Lu Azang stole a glance — the crates were marked with a certain brand of cat food.

The head mole directed its subordinates to carry the crates away with great jubilation.

“You have to come into town to eat a proper meal! Cat food’s not as good as grubs, but it beats going hungry!”

“True — back home the open land’s all been taken over by human factories, not even a blade of grass can grow. Good thing we came out with the boss!”

“If only we weren’t moles but human beings!”

Lu Azang heard two of them say that.

At the end of the tunnel was a steel wall with a large hole punched through it. Beyond the wall was a room of about twenty square meters. Calling it a room wasn’t quite accurate — this “room” was more like a large glass cube. Apart from a cluster of crystal formations in the center of the cube, shaped like a roughly one-meter-tall candelabra, the space was otherwise empty.

The man carefully produced a sealed transparent container the size of a test tube from inside his coat. One end had a metal nozzle, and inside, a shallow layer of blood-red liquid moved slowly as the tube was tilted.

The look in his eyes as he regarded this thing had a certain weight to it, as though what he held was not a glass tube but a lifeline.

“Miss Charlotte, this way please.” The man led her to the front face of the cube, aligned the tube with a square section at the center of the glass, and pressed down firmly.

The thick liquid inside the tube sprayed evenly from the nozzle, becoming a cloud of red mist that clung to the thick glass. After a peculiar hissing sound, the blood-mist seeped completely into the glass, and a six-pointed star marking flickered faintly blue and surfaced.

“Please place your right hand on it first, then your left.” He requested politely, pointing to the six-pointed star.

Lu Azang complied docilely — she was a hostage, and had to play her role, especially with two boar demons standing behind her brandishing electric batons.

A row of green-glowing numbers appeared inside the six-pointed star in three dimensions, gradually materializing.

“Please bring your left eye as close as possible to the six-pointed star, and then your right.” The man continued to instruct. Lu Azang continued to comply.

A red circle roughly the size of a thumb emerged from the center of the six-pointed star. The man produced a thin needle from somewhere, pricked Lu Azang’s left index finger, then pressed the blood-beaded fingertip against the red circle.

Lu Azang felt a faint trembling in the air, and a thin white line extended from the exact center of the six-pointed star, splitting the “glass wall” before her in two and swinging both halves open to the sides.

“Please remove the blue rhombus from the crystal formation.” The man spoke, showing no intention of walking inside the cube with her. He handed her a small golden square box. “Place it in here.”

“Oh…” Lu Azang gave a timid nod.

The moment her fingers touched the blue rhombus floating above the crystal cluster, she felt absolute winter — penetrating from skin to blood. Only an instant, yet deep enough to frighten. She looked closely: enclosed inside the blue crystal was a single teardrop-shaped white flocculent, as though it were still slowly flowing — like nebulae in the cosmos. The longer you looked, the more disorienting it became. She hurriedly placed the rhombus into the golden box and walked out.

From above, movement suddenly sounded. Lu Azang asked the man on some inexplicable impulse: “What’s up there?”

“The Louvre.” The man carefully accepted the golden box from her hands.

Six

The man in front, the boar demons behind, Lu Azang sandwiched in the middle.

On the way back, the boar demons were noticeably more excited than before — chattering among themselves in low voices. The man walked with his head down, saying nothing, clutching the golden box tightly. Lu Azang noticed that the branching path they turned onto was not the one they had come from.

Only when a layer of cool moonlight fell across her slightly warm cheek did Lu Azang realize that the tunnel’s other exit did not lead back to the five-star cell she had been held in, but instead to a rose garden. Amid a ground of wild weeds, a few red roses bloomed in sparse clusters — the rest had all withered. Beyond the garden stood an ordinary white three-story building, its color long since grimy, covered in traces of dirt and corrosion, even the windows incomplete. This place seemed to have been uninhabited for a long time.

The man’s footsteps moved through the rose garden, dry leaves and dead twigs crackling underfoot. Once out of the garden, he stopped suddenly, stood in thought for a moment, then waved at the two boar demons. They trotted up, and the man extended the golden box, saying: “Take this back and hand it over to him. I have other things to attend to — I’ll meet you there later.” One of the boar demons accepted the golden box as though receiving the most sacred object in the world, swallowing nervously before clutching it to his chest.

“Go on now — the shortest route is around this building and through the highland beyond. With what he placed inside you, you should be able to get there without trouble. He’s waiting for your good news!” So the man said.

The two boar demons exchanged a glance and nodded vigorously with glee.

“On it!” the boar demons announced — they could apparently manage quite decent human speech — patting their chests. “Leave it to us!”

The man gestured for them to hurry. The instant they turned to leave, the man drew what appeared to be an ordinary ballpoint pen from his coat, clicked the top twice, and a small, dazzling spark flashed briefly from the tip.

In what amounted to a fraction of a second, the pen tip struck each boar demon’s spine in succession. Two dull thuds, and both boar demons dropped to the ground and lay still.

The man nudged them with his foot — no reaction. He pocketed the pen and removed the mask.

Beneath the mask was Mu Yeliang’s face.

Lu Azang looked at that youthful face, distinct even in the night, and instinctively assumed an expression of terrified shock while backing away — though she was inwardly thinking: with a face that good, any line of work would do. Yet he goes and becomes a kidnapper. What a shame. This world is getting stranger by the day.

“All right, you can drop the performance, Lu Azang.” Mu Yeliang shook his hand at her.

Other than the person who had signed a contract with her, it was impossible for anyone to know her name. After a brief flash of surprise, she pursed her lips and walked up to him, dropping all trace of the billionaire’s daughter’s fragile fear, and asked with a smile: “You’re the one who contracted me?”

“That’s right — I’m your client.” He admitted readily, bending to pick up the golden box from beside the boar demons. He opened it, then fished from his person a white box roughly the size of a cigarette pack, shook from it a glowing-blue rhombus nearly identical in appearance to the one Lu Azang had retrieved from the cube, and swapped it with the rhombus inside the golden box.

Once all of this was done, he set the golden box back beside the boar demon, and carefully returned the small box containing the genuine rhombus to himself.

“Not a bad face, this one.” He pointed to himself. “I modeled it on a Chinese police officer.” Lu Azang smiled noncommittally.

“I know — praising one’s own transformation skills in front of a Wuxiang is beyond presumptuous.” He said with self-deprecating humor. “Feel free to laugh at me.”

“Laughing at you falls outside the terms of our contract.” Lu Azang shrugged, glancing at the two large creatures sprawled on the ground like dead pigs. “Whatever scheme you’re running is none of my business. I only do what the contract specifies. And I should remind you — our contract expires in three days. After that, this Charlotte before you will cease to exist.”

“Three days…” A candle-like hope kindled in his eyes, but was almost immediately extinguished by something far heavier. “Three days is enough.”

“In any case, until the contract expires, you remain Charlotte — keep that in mind.” He walked to the wooden staircase of the house — its color long since unrecognizable — and sat down, patting the spot beside him. “Sit. We’ll need to wait for those two to wake up before I can account for anything.”

Lu Azang sat down beside him, looked at the sky — no stars, no moon in sight, like a dull black chalkboard — and a faintly cool night breeze drifted over the rose garden with an unmelodic rustling sound. The two boar demons in front had apparently sunk into some form of deep sleep and were already snoring, with drool threatening to flow into rivers at the corners of their mouths.

Not beautiful. Not romantic in the least. Lu Azang could have thought she was not in Paris but in some ordinary, dull and disorderly small town.

“This residential district isn’t actually that far from the city center.” He seemed to read Lu Azang’s thoughts and looked at the cleared ground beyond the fence. “The residents here have all been evicted. Charlotte’s father plans to build a top-facility hospital on this site. In no more than a week from now, the place where we’re sitting — along with all the houses on either side that haven’t yet been demolished — will be razed to the ground. There was an old man who refused to leave the home he’d lived in his whole life. Later, the old man disappeared.”

Lu Azang was unmoved. She laughed coldly. “That sort of thing isn’t rare, is it? The strong sacrificing the weak to achieve their desires — does that comply with Darwinian evolution?”

“Ha, I’ve always preferred relativity to evolutionary theory, personally.” His laughter gradually faded, and his gaze turned distant. “Everything that exists is relative. There is no absolute strength, no absolute weakness. We only have ourselves.”

“I don’t follow. I’m not on close terms with Einstein. You’ve gone rather deep on me.” Lu Azang said straightforwardly. She had always been a simple-minded creature who disliked thinking too hard. The meaning of the world — and of human beings — to her was one thing only: performance. Through her various performances, she gained profit, she gained respect, perhaps everything she had once longed for but could never reach. She was satisfied with this life, at least so she currently believed.

“The house we’re sitting in front of right now was that missing old man’s home.” She turned to look at the rotting wooden door behind her, and said with a wicked smile: “Do you suppose the old man was murdered, and his body is hidden somewhere inside?”

“If you’re bored, feel free to do something else — but don’t try to frighten me.” Lu Azang shot him a look. No sooner had the words left her mouth than a gust of wind quite unlike the ones before swept over them; the door and window behind them creaked, and from inside the house something fell with a thud.

Lu Azang felt a chill run up her spine. She jumped off the wooden step and stared nervously at the front door, as though something was about to come bursting through it at any moment. Sure enough — the door began, slowly, slowly, to open a crack.

At that very moment, from the small lane beside the house came a creaking sound. A bicycle came to a stop outside. A boy of eleven or twelve, wearing a baseball cap and carrying a bulging paper bag, jumped off and came running toward them in a hurry.

A small, fluffy something poked its head out through the slowly opening door crack.

It was only… an ordinary little dog, round as a furball.

The boy passed by Lu Azang and the man as though they didn’t exist at all. His bright black eyes were intensely focused — only on the chubby little dog. He picked it up gently and wagged a reproving finger at its nose, his mouth making sounds — syllables that Lu Azang couldn’t understand. The boy was mute.

“What are you doing here? Do you live nearby?” Lu Azang signed fluently, asking the boy who had suddenly materialized.

The boy noticed her and looked toward her, then shook his head and signed: “You’re not here to take them away, are you?”

She and the man exchanged a glance. “Them? We’re just passing through, resting here for a moment. That’s all.”

The boy relaxed, turned, and pushed the front door open. A rush of dusty air came out. Unbothered, the boy walked inside, feeling along the entrance until he found a flashlight, clicked it on, and called out with soft sounds.

Amid rustling movement, a lean Golden Retriever trotted out from somewhere in the shadows, followed by two small puppies playing and chasing each other — identical in appearance to the one that had slipped out the door.

The boy took items from the paper bag: a small packet of dog food, soft bread, sausage, and a bottle of clean water. The Golden Retriever family ate with great happiness.

The boy even carefully broke the sausage into small pieces to make it easier for the little ones to swallow. Lu Azang and the man stood in the doorway without entering.

“These dogs…” Lu Azang asked the boy when the dogs finished their meal and he came back out.

“Grandpa Henri doesn’t know where he’s gone. Bell has been waiting for him and won’t go anywhere. If I didn’t come, she and her puppies would starve.” The boy signed with great seriousness.

At that moment, Lu Azang noticed the boy’s face: several bruises, and a wound that had not yet healed.

She asked him how he had been hurt. Those marks were clearly not self-inflicted. The boy instinctively touched his own face, then shrugged it off with a smile: “It’s nothing. Some troublemakers’ prank at school.”

“They bully you because you can’t speak?” Lu Azang asked suddenly.

The boy was silent for a moment, then tilted his head up and stuck his tongue out at her: “It’s fine. I have to go — if my parents find out I’ve been taking things from home to feed Bell and her family, they’ll beat me.” He was just about to leave when he suddenly spotted the two boar demons lying on the ground, and couldn’t help but ask curiously: “What’s wrong with those two?”

“Oh, they walked too far and got tired, so they fell asleep. They’ll be up in a bit. You go on now.” The man patted the boy on the head. “Oh — and take this. You won’t need to borrow things from home to feed the dogs anymore.” He produced a wad of cash and pressed it into the boy’s hands.

“Go home.” Lu Azang crouched down and touched the boy’s delicate face gently. “Learn to protect yourself — don’t let people push you around. If I am strong, my enemy is weak.”

The boy nodded with a somewhat uncertain air, gave the somewhat odd pair a look, and rode off on his bicycle.

“That child deserves a better life.” Lu Azang said, a trace of regret in her voice.

“You think it’s unfair — that a kind-hearted boy like him is deaf and mute on top of everything, and still gets bullied by people. Am I right?” He asked her.

“If he grows stronger — if he stops being who he is now — he’ll definitely have a better life.” Lu Azang said, quite seriously, with the air of someone who has learned from experience.

The man shook his head and said nothing. The boar demons were still sleeping deeply, their snoring rising and falling. Up to this point, it was a remarkably quiet summer night.

Seven

Several hundred black gun barrels pointed directly at Lu Azang and her client.

The police had received reliable intelligence that the kidnapper was in this partially demolished residential district — even the specific house in front of which they were standing had been named exactly.

The order to encircle and capture the kidnapper had come from police headquarters. No one dared question it. No one dared delay.

André felt like a fool. All of Paris’s police felt like fools. Being led around by the nose like this — the feeling was deeply unpleasant.

Standing openly in front of that heavily surrounded building was the man called Mu Yeliang, clear as day. Their time working together had been short, but André absolutely would not have made the elementary mistake of misidentifying someone right beside him. Mu Yeliang’s complete file had matched perfectly with the archive on the system — even the fingerprints had matched. So how was it possible that there was a perfectly alive Mu Yeliang right here beside him, while a phone call was telling him there was another Mu Yeliang discovered unconscious in a dumpster in the twelfth arrondissement, now in the hospital?

How could there be two Mu Yeliangs in the world?! And with one of them branded as the kidnapper, no less. André’s head was a complete mess.

“How did they find us so quickly?” Lu Azang looked at the man, her eyes conveying that she had absolutely not been the informant.

“I know it wasn’t you.” His gaze fell on the still-unconscious boar demons. “And obviously not them either.” Then he looked at the heavily armed police surrounding them and smiled. “So many people — what a waste of resources.”

Lu Azang had assumed the police would do as they typically did — first shout something like “you are surrounded, put down your weapons and surrender” and similar slogans, then decide on next steps.

But this time, nearly every weapon had been chambered simultaneously from the very first moment, ready to fire. One command, and thousands of bullets would turn both of them into sieves.

Of course, Charlotte would become a sieve. This disguised body would die — but Lu Azang would not. So she felt not the slightest fear, and believed the man beside her — her client — would also be fine. No demon had ever genuinely feared human bullets. Truly.

She was curious what this group of humans intended to do. After all, she was currently Charlotte. If the man beside her, impersonating a police officer’s appearance, was convicted as a kidnapper, she was the ideal hostage. Yet every gun barrel showed not the slightest hesitation on account of the “hostage” — the fingers resting on the triggers waited only for a single command.

“Ready!” The on-scene commander — a bald, middle-aged man in a thick bulletproof vest — raised his hand. They were going to open fire? Lu Azang was baffled. She was standing right beside the kidnapper — were they simply not concerned about her life?

“Stop!” André came shouting out of the crowd and ran to the commander, calling out loudly: “Who authorized you to open fire now? Do you see who that person is? He is a Chinese police officer sent to assist us! And the person next to him — that is Charlotte Beruell! And you want to shoot?!”

The commander looked at him coldly. “These are orders from above. We are following orders.”

“To hell with your orders!” André roared like a lion. “We are police, not executioners! We cannot shoot without first establishing the facts! This goes against regulations, and against basic human decency!”

“You have no authority to interfere with orders from above.” The commander signaled to the side, and two large men immediately moved to grab André and drag him out of the way.

André chopped down the hands reaching for him, ran to the space between the encirclement and the house, raised his gun, and shouted: “I’m standing right here, not going anywhere! If you have the nerve, blow my head off, then go shoot your kidnapper! But before you do, anyone who comes at me — I will shoot them first!”

“Damn fool!” The commander ground his teeth and murmured to the person beside him.

“He’s a good man — just has a terrible temper.” The man watched André blocking the officers from firing and said to Lu Azang. Then, without any change in expression, he picked up a dead leaf from the ground and flicked it quietly toward André.

André felt something like an ant bite on the back of his neck, and a numbing sensation instantly spread through his entire body. Before he fell, the last person he saw was the “Mu Yeliang” standing in front of the house. He didn’t know which Mu Yeliang was real — the one here or the one in the hospital — he only saw that man’s lips move in an exaggerated shape, mouthing one word toward him: thank you.

Why are you saying thank you… André didn’t understand. He had barely hit the ground before two officers pulled him out of danger. Bullets screamed through the air, falling like rain toward the two of them — Lu Azang had never in her life encountered a “hunt” on this scale. At most she had previously taken one assassin’s bullet on behalf of a client. The man took her hand and wove through the barrage with practiced speed, asking: “Fun?”

“I’m not enjoying being used as target practice.” She replied irritably. “Let’s go.”

“We have to take my boar brothers with us. One each — let’s carry them!”

“What? Why would we need to—” Lu Azang’s words broke off as she saw his expression change and he muttered under his breath: “This is bad.”

She looked. On his arm, appearing at some unknown moment, were two bullet holes. Purple blood was seeping slowly out.

Human bullets cannot wound demons.

Lu Azang pulled the injured man quickly behind the house. He touched his own wounds and said: “Mixed in with those ordinary bullets were a few rounds with blood-silver tips.”

Blood-silver — extracted from a blend of the blood of seven different species of black animals and combined with a precise ratio of pure silver solution — was one of the most effective weapons against demons. Many hunters favored applying blood-silver to bullets or weapons; a demon struck by a blood-silver weapon would be wounded or even killed just as an ordinary human would be. But the method of making blood-silver, and even the very existence of such a substance, was absolutely beyond the knowledge of ordinary human beings. Someone was deliberately trying to kill both of these demons.

The assault continued — the full firepower of Paris had been concentrated into one place. Yet behind the house, not a sound. Only a thin wisp of white smoke drifting lazily upward.

The commander ordered a ceasefire. The officers cautiously closed in behind the house and looked. On the ground, other than two enormous, strangely horned men sleeping like dead pigs, there was no one else — only a set of men’s clothes and trousers, lying abandoned in the distance.

Eight

So this one’s original form was a gray rabbit…

Lu Azang looked at the “him” huddled in her arms, blood flowing without stop from his left shoulder.

Fortunate indeed that the tree spirit had once taught her a very useful escape technique — otherwise, she and he would very quickly have become victims of the blood-silver bullets.

Walking through a forest in the darkness, she had no sense of direction and wandered at random, her heart still pounding. It seemed like no previous job had ever ended up as chaotic as this one. He had been badly wounded by the blood-silver bullets — fortunately none had hit his head, or even the immortals couldn’t have saved him. Where to go now, Lu Azang herself didn’t know. She wasn’t even sure where they currently were. She should probably first find somewhere for her client to recover from his wounds — otherwise, who would she collect her payment from?

Her hand found the white square box in her coat pocket. This was his; it had fallen out when he reverted to his original form just now. She still had no idea what was so profound about that blue rhombus to warrant all this enormous effort — but she would keep it safe for him. She was, at the end of the day, a demon with professional ethics.

In the middle of this thought, shapes moved vaguely among the trees ahead. Before she had any chance to see clearly what was happening, several trees ahead suddenly shook violently, and two fierce-looking boar demons burst out from behind them, pinning her to the ground in a few swift moves.

She didn’t even have time to cry out before a cold metal object touched her forehead. A white flash — her body went limp. She didn’t even manage to close her eyes before she lost all consciousness.

Nine

Fortunately, she did not wake in the manner of horror films — tied up with leather straps or iron hoops of some kind, bound from head to toe. She was woken by Chopin’s Nocturne.

A ring of bright white light swayed overhead — that pale, sharp light made her think of a surgical lamp. She lay on a comfortable, wide white sofa, free to move, all limbs intact, without even a scratch.

“I love this Nocturne — it makes me think of home, and of many lost memories.” A weathered voice sounded across from her. A gaunt man, wearing the mask she knew all too well, a vintage pocket watch hanging from his chest, sat before a piano. Fingers that looked less than perfect moved back and forth with practiced fluency over the black and white keys.

What was under him was not a comfortable piano stool, but a wheelchair. This room was enormous — large enough that every sound produced an echo. The beautiful piano music, given this peculiar accompaniment, took on a strange and compelling quality.

In this room, only she, the pianist, and one injured gray rabbit lying at the pianist’s feet were alive. Beyond that, only a sofa and a piano. Pure white filled the eye in every direction — clean in a way that didn’t seem like any earthly place.

Lu Azang sat up and drew herself into the corner of the sofa. She was still Charlotte — she would not forget that.

“Miss Charlotte.” The music stopped abruptly. The masked face turned toward her. “Oh, no — Miss Lu Azang. A rare species among demons — the Wuxiang.”

It seemed this was the first time her identity had been seen through by an outsider before a contract expired. Lu Azang let out a long breath, straightened up, climbed off the sofa, and applauded: “The Nocturne was quite well played.”

“Thank you.” The man inclined his head, and a faint smile sounded from beneath the mask. “It’s the only piece I know.”

“That speaks to your devotion.” Lu Azang rose and looked at the rabbit at his feet. “If you know my identity, you should understand that I am nothing more than a substitute who takes money to do a job. Apart from playing other people’s roles, I have no other value. Bringing me here is not wise. I’m not interested in your identity, either. But I would ask that you not harm that rabbit for the time being — because it is the one who hired me. Before I’ve received my payment, I would prefer it remain in one piece.”

“I like people who get straight to the point.” He pressed a button on the wheelchair; it turned automatically and moved toward Lu Azang, stopping less than a meter away. “Aren’t you frightened at all?”

Frightened? From his scent, she had determined that this person was a genuine human being. Demons did not fear humans — unless it was an exceptionally skilled hunter. This person carried none of the sharp edge that hunters possessed. She could even smell a genuine fragility about him.

Besides — she was a Wuxiang. Formless, shapeless, immortal. No one could take her life, no matter how powerful the demon or how skilled the hunter. There was only one circumstance under which she could die. But she judged that circumstance was something that would never, in all likelihood, come to pass.

She did value her own existence — she felt this way of living was perfectly fine. Though it had already stretched for hundreds and thousands of years, which was admittedly somewhat tedious. But she had grown accustomed to it.

She was not terribly inclined, in the manner of many great figures, to probe the meaning of life. To her, being alive meant being able to breathe, to see, to hear, to use different identities to pass the time. What reason could she possibly have to fear a human being seated in a wheelchair — regardless of whatever powerful backing stood behind him?

“If you’re willing to tell me where I am and why you brought me here, I’m prepared to listen.” Lu Azang smiled. “After all, my contract hasn’t expired yet — I’m still Charlotte, still your hostage.”

“Have you ever hated yourself?” the man asked abruptly. “If there were an opportunity to put all people on the same starting line — no distinction between healthy and not healthy, smart and not smart, beautiful and not beautiful, no wealth, no hierarchy, everyone the same, facing everything on equal footing — pure equality of all things — would that, in your view, be good?”

Lu Azang pressed her lips together. For a long moment, she lowered her head and smiled: “Of course it would be good. But that’s only a soap bubble of an ideal. Everything in this world cannot possibly begin from the same equal starting line.”

“Come.” The man removed his leather gloves and extended his hand toward her. That hand was thin to the point of skin and bone.

Lu Azang took his hand — like taking hold of a length of cold dry bone, the kind that might bring a person nightmares. But there was a strange kind of force in it.

The wheelchair moved toward the east wall. Lu Azang followed him, walking slowly. He drew a remote control the size of a USB drive from his coat and pressed it.

The heavy wall before them opened upward. Waves of beeping, clicking electronic instrument sounds mixed with the somewhat chaotic conversation of human beings crashed in like a gust of wind from the world beyond the wall. Lu Azang’s gaze froze in astonishment —

About ten meters below her feet was an enormous laboratory constructed of tempered glass with alloy trim, shaped in a perfect hexagon, as flawlessly cut as a top-quality diamond. A number of people in white radiation suits, some seated, some moving, busied themselves before rows of electronic instruments flickering with indicator lights in every color. Two thick tube structures, each roughly three meters in diameter, extended from opposite corners of the laboratory to the north and south, meeting at an open central area. From the junction, something like an antenna needle — as fine as thread, yet immensely long — extended upward, piercing through the laboratory’s ceiling and continuing upward, growing and growing like the beanstalk in a fairy tale that reaches all the way to the sky.

Lights flashing, everything in motion — some particular vibration cycled between the two tubes. The laboratory beneath her feet was like a universe on the verge of awakening.

Lu Azang didn’t know why she chose the word “universe” to describe this place, but that was what she thought.

“This is…” Her tongue stumbled slightly.

“This is my own — replica hadron collider.” The man slowly removed his mask. On a face that was no longer young, there was only one eye. The left side of his forehead protruded noticeably more than the right. He had no nose — only two holes of different sizes set into what looked like a lump of excess flesh. Even his mouth was crooked, and as he spoke, saliva occasionally escaped.

Lu Azang had never seen a human being with an appearance this grievous. An exterior more monstrous than a monster itself. But from this creature’s face, she could clearly see an extraordinary self-assurance, and excitement. These qualities brought a kind of radiance to a person — even one sitting in a wheelchair, with a face utterly destroyed.

“A replica hadron collider?” She had heard the name — knew vaguely this was no ordinary device.

“Breaking what I want into particles, applying the principle of the hadron collider, dividing them into two streams of protons, colliding them at the speed of light inside the machine — upon a successful collision, this machine will not only produce energy exceeding 7 trillion electron volts, but also the anomalous ions I want most. When these delightful little things are transmitted through that needle to the highest point on Earth, and there expand internally and explode, their force will scatter across the entire globe.” His voice trembled with excitement. “I must thank you — it is you who retrieved Neptune for me. And you will have the honor of witnessing a great moment.”

“I have no interest in witnessing anything.” Lu Azang brought her gaze back. “I only do what the contract specifies.”

“You’ll be interested. I have studied the Wuxiang.” He smiled strangely. “If you did not hate yourself, you could not have become a Wuxiang.” With that, he pressed the remote, and the wall sealed itself again.

He returned to the piano and lightly stroked the old pocket watch hanging at his chest, murmuring: “It will succeed very soon. We need a new world.” He kissed the pocket watch. “I miss you.”

After a long silence, his gaze fell on the still-bleeding gray rabbit, and he sighed. “You’ve still disappointed me. Did you think I was unaware of what you did?” He tapped his own head. “What’s in here is beyond what you can defeat. Everything will proceed according to the original plan. Although I deeply dislike being betrayed — since blood-silver bullets weren’t enough to take your life, stay and watch this great transformation.” He moved to the west wall, pressed a switch on the wheelchair, and a rectangular section recessed to create a passage.

“You must both remember this.” He turned at the passage entrance and addressed both Lu Azang and the gray rabbit. “If you can create a world — you are a god.”

“Why do you want to be a god?” Lu Azang asked.

The wheelchair paused. The man didn’t turn around — he only gave a quiet, low laugh and said: “You’ve thought about it too. You simply never managed it in the end.”

A very old pamphlet with a sheepskin cover was tossed before her.

“It has been with me for a very long time — always reminding me of what I should do. But I no longer need it now. Here, take it as reading material — gossip of a kind. Ha ha ha.” He disappeared into the passage. The wall sealed back into place. The enormous room became a solid cell. He was definitely a madman, Lu Azang concluded.

But between madman and genius, there is only a line.

Ten

She picked up the booklet and ran to the gray rabbit’s side. “Rabbit — are you all right? You can’t even speak?”

The rabbit moved its fluffy ears and replied weakly: “Blood-silver bullets are a nuisance. Let me rest for another hour. If you’re bored, take a look at what he gave you. Perhaps some questions you have inside you will find their answers.”

All right — Lu Azang admitted that her mind had been bristling with question marks for some time now. From the moment she had seen that deep-buried laboratory beneath her feet, she had understood that this kidnapping was never really about the kidnapping.

She settled the rabbit on the sofa and curled into the other end, opening the booklet yellowed by time.

It was a diary. A name had been written on the title page: Sean.

Lu Azang could read any language — but the handwriting in this booklet was the most beautiful French script she had ever seen.

March 1st — Weather: Clear

I heard the birds on the roof talking about rain tomorrow. I told Mother, and she said children mustn’t tell lies — birds can’t speak. But I heard them.

From the first day I came into this world, I heard the nurses screaming. I heard them whispering to each other that Mother had given birth to a deformed monster.

At the time I lay in a baby cot, at the very corner of the nursery. Other children received many visitors every day — I did not. Only Father and Mother.

Two ants climbed onto the head of my cot. I saw them become two little girls in floral dresses. How interesting. They chatted with me, and said I was the only child who could see them and hear them — they said I was remarkable.

I was very happy. I was no longer bored. The ant girls came to see me every day and brought me sweet berries. But one morning, only one ant girl came — had the other one slept in? It turned out her companion had been stepped on and killed.

She told me that the ant family lived very hard, very carefully, because they were too small, too weak — any small movement from a human being was fatal to them. I told her I would never hurt them.

The next day, Mother carried me home. I never saw the ant girls again.

September 13th — Weather: Rain

Father and Mother had an argument with the mayor, because he refused to allow me to attend school. I am ten this year. Children my age pass our door every day with their schoolbags, fooling around and laughing.

I’ve heard that school is a place where you can learn many things, meet many people, and find much happiness. I want to study.

Yesterday I told David next door that I wanted to go to school with him — even just to look. David agreed. I was so happy.

David is my only friend. Though he does play the occasional prank on me.

September 14th — Weather: Rain

David pushed me onto the empty ground behind the school. He pushed me out of my wheelchair and dragged the chair into a ditch.

The children from the school threw stones at me. They laughed and competed to see who could aim better. I heard someone shout: Kill the monster!

Yes — they were brave knights, and I was the ugly monster. The lines were clearly drawn. Mother brought me home with tears on her face, covered in bruises.

After this, I will never tell them again that I want to go to school.

In fairy tales, the monster eats people. But I don’t eat people — and I’m still a monster? I don’t quite understand.

January 8th — Weather: Overcast

David has married. The bride is very beautiful. They have moved to Paris.

The house next door has new occupants. I saw a white-haired old man, and behind him a small girl with golden curls, carrying a neat little travel case, her cheeks like freshly ripened autumn apples.

I hid behind the curtain and watched quietly.

January 19th — Weather: Clear

Clarice made me apple crepes.

She is the only girl who has ever seen my face without screaming. She said she heard me playing the piano, and that it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

Yes — I have an old second-hand piano. I bought it with money I earned writing papers and manuscripts for people.

I never attended school. Father and Mother taught me to read. But when I look at those mathematics problems, physics problems, chemistry problems, all the difficult questions that give other people headaches — I can write out the answers with ease. The doctoral thesis I wrote for a physics student caused a sensation at his university. They said it couldn’t possibly have been written by a university graduate. And indeed it wasn’t — because I have never attended a single day of school.

Being able to earn money makes me very happy. I don’t particularly enjoy writing these things for people — I love playing the piano. Chopin’s Nocturne. I heard it once and fell in love with it.

No sheet music, no fingering guide — I played it on my second-hand piano, again and again. Clarice said she loves the way I look when I play — that I radiate a kind of brilliance.

March 27th — Weather: Rain

Clarice has been locked in the attic by her grandfather.

Associating with me is forbidden. A good girl should not keep company with a monster.

I pushed the piano as close to the window as possible.

From morning until dusk, I played the Nocturne, again and again.

I know she is as close to me as she can possibly be.

My music is played only for her.

April 26th — Weather: Overcast

The room next door is empty.

Clarice has been forcibly taken to Poland by her grandfather. I’ve heard there is a wealthy and handsome man there, waiting for his bride.

In my hands I hold a pocket watch. It is Clarice’s birthday gift to me. She said that every time she listens to me play, time stands still.

I fell asleep slumped over the piano. Tears from my eyes flowed down between the keys.

June 28th — Weather: Clear

Mother quarreled again with the mayor. Again because of me.

The mayor and his people “suggested” we leave the town. He said all the residents had expressed their unwillingness to have a “monster” who could frighten children at any moment living in their “peaceful and pleasant” town.

Mother refused.

That night, a group of people broke into our home. Many things inside were smashed — including my piano.

“Does a monster like you have any right to play the piano?” one small-eyed man said contemptuously as he left, glancing at me. I sat in my wheelchair and watched them walk out of my home, heads high.

My heart cooled, bit by bit.

August 2nd — Weather: Thunderstorm

A strange illness broke out in the town — like a plague. Many people are gravely ill.

The town’s medium says my existence has brought misfortune. They want to use mob justice to burn me. This town is remote — one person more or less will never be known to the outside world.

Father picked up his hunting rifle for the first time and roared at those who were closing in.

Mother held me tightly, prepared to fight to the death with anyone who came near.

They chained our front door and doused it in gasoline and set it alight.

The smoke was suffocating. Father and Mother fell amid the roaring flames.

I thought I would die. But the rabbit saved me. It dragged me deep into the forest. I saw many other animals — a bear, moles, wild boars.

They said they were demons.

December 25th — Weather: Snow

I’ve lost track of how many Christmases this is in my life.

Just now, I gave the boar demons a gift: an acceleration chip I have just successfully developed. With it, their speed can match the speed of light.

I am grateful to them — only their strength could have allowed me to build this underground kingdom in such a short time. Over the years, they have grown accustomed to treating me as their leader. Once, a boar demon spoke on behalf of all his demon companions and said: You are smarter than all of us.

Yes. I am smarter than anyone. Therefore I have the ability to change this world. I hate what I once was. I hate being placed beneath others.

May 3rd — Weather: Clear

Those ten people must pay for what they did.

Neptune — in the end, it is the finest gift for them, for all the humans who have ever looked down on the weak. I will create a world.

I am a god.

Slap! Lu Azang closed the booklet, her heart in turmoil.

The gray rabbit had opened its eyes, its breathing considerably steadier than before.

“The parents of the kidnapped children — led by Luc Beruell — once pooled their investments and brought back a crystal from the depths of Neptune, intending to use it to complete an experiment in reforming human intelligence. The deep blue crystal from the innermost region of Neptune is said to be capable of instantly remodeling the brain’s capacity, increasing active proteins. In simple terms — turning an idiot into a genius in a short period of time.” The gray rabbit padded slowly to her side and continued. “They called this crystal Neptune. Once Neptune was brought back to Earth, they needed a set of test subjects. They secretly gathered data on ten pregnant women from across France, bringing those expectant mothers to Paris under the name of a health organization offering free prenatal examinations. After the examinations, they enthusiastically took these women — most of whom came from remote small towns or the countryside — on a tour of the Louvre. That day, the air conditioning system in the Denon Wing had already been tampered with: a substance extracted from Neptune had been placed inside it. The substance evaporated into the air and spread through the vents. The people visiting outside noticed nothing.”

“The experiment wasn’t very successful.” Lu Azang laughed coldly. “And among those pregnant women, one of them was Sean’s mother.”

“Of the ten pregnant women, three never became mothers. Among those who gave birth — some children were disabled, some had cerebral palsy. And then there was Sean.” The rabbit sighed. “Those people were simply treating human lives as disposable. Neptune, in truth, doesn’t expand intelligence — it disrupts DNA and damages neurons. Who knows where those rich people heard the ridiculous claim that Neptune could make people smarter. They expected the experiment to succeed, to gain unprecedented profit from Neptune — they even craved Neptune to make themselves smarter than they already were.”

“They were already so fortunate, and still dissatisfied with themselves.” Lu Azang ran her fingers over Sean’s diary. “Sean’s ability to communicate with demons — that was something innate, wasn’t it.”

“Yes. I don’t know whether it has any connection to Neptune, but he truly was born with the ability to communicate with all kinds of demons, and all demons were willing to answer to him — because he is simply that exceptional.” The rabbit blinked. “I myself admire him greatly. Years ago, I was trapped in a hunter’s snare and had injured my foreleg. It was Sean, walking in the forest, who heard my cries for help and freed me. You might find that kind of thing clichéd, but that is what happened. I was genuinely grateful to him, and stayed by his side from then on. When he was nearly burned alive, I used every ounce of strength I had to drag him out of the fire.”

Lu Azang walked to that wall. “Everything in the laboratory outside — all Sean’s work?”

“Yes.” The rabbit nodded. “Sean’s mind operates far beyond the scope of any ordinary person — his intelligence surpasses anything you or I can imagine. He gathered many demons and built this laboratory beneath Paris. Though none of those demons are particularly powerful on their own, their combined strength cannot be dismissed. Following Sean’s instructions, they acquired vast resources, even attracting a number of human scientists to come here. Every resource, every strength — all for Sean’s plan.” The rabbit paused. “He wants to use Neptune to change the world.”

“Wait — you’re not saying…” Lu Azang suddenly felt a chill of foreboding. “Sean breaks Neptune apart, uses his collider to maximize Neptune’s power, then sends it to the highest point on Earth and detonates it — letting the crystal’s effects, with the force of a black hole explosion, sweep across the entire globe?”

“Once the collision succeeds…” The rabbit lifted its head, red eyes fixed on some point in the void above. “Neptune’s force will transform every human being on Earth into a creature bearing some form of defect — perhaps loss of intelligence, perhaps physical disability. In any case… a complete transformation, and a catastrophe.”

“When everyone has become a ‘monster’ with some defect, the world becomes the absolutely fair new world Sean has always wanted?” Lu Azang was beginning to understand what he truly desired.

“Yes. No discrimination, no oppression.” The rabbit’s face was unreadable. “He kidnapped the children of those ten billionaires partly out of revenge — he wanted them to experience the agony of separation from their flesh and blood. But in the end, he asked them to bring their most precious things to the Louvre. He told me that if even one of those ten people said, ‘the most precious thing I have is the child you took away,’ he would abandon the plan. But not one person said that. Their most precious things were diamonds, bank drafts, assets.”

“You don’t want his plan to succeed.” Lu Azang walked up to the rabbit and said suddenly.

The rabbit’s lips moved. After a long silence, it finally said: “Using the monitoring of the human police’s progress on the kidnapping case as my excuse, I temporarily left Sean, and arranged for you to take Charlotte Beruell’s place — for no other reason than this: to retrieve Neptune, one had to first take the DNA of those ten billionaires, and within one hour mix all ten DNA samples together — plus Charlotte’s fingerprint and retinal data — to unlock that specially constructed cube. The real Charlotte I had arranged to be kept elsewhere. She is an exceptionally timid person — I was worried that using her directly would interfere with my plan. So I hired you, hoping you would cooperate with me fully.”

“You planned to swap out Neptune without anyone knowing?” Lu Azang recalled everything he had done in front of that old house.

“My original hope was that you would play out the charade with me to the end, deceiving Sean into putting the fake Neptune into the machine.” The rabbit sighed. “But unfortunately he is too intelligent. He saw through my tricks in the end.”

“Even if he had believed it was the genuine Neptune — once used, he would certainly know it was a fake, and would simply find the real Neptune again to continue his plan.” Lu Azang felt the rabbit’s scheme seemed far from perfect.

“He won’t have that opportunity.” The rabbit shook its head. “Sean’s health has been deteriorating. Years of extreme overuse of his mental capacity, combined with his physical body’s own limitations, mean he is not destined to live much longer. But do you believe a person can be so intelligent as to calculate their own time of death precisely, by computing the quantitative indicators of every one of their body’s functions? Sean can.” It jumped off the sofa. “Tonight at midnight.”

The rabbit moved to the piano and, with effort, jumped up onto it. “You can’t help but admire someone like him — a genius. Everything under his control, precise as clockwork. Luring the billionaires’ children to Paris, forcing those billionaires to gather together, having me take their DNA, bringing Charlotte to retrieve Neptune. What event happens at what time — all arranged by him, not a minute early, not a minute late. I tried to disrupt it. As you saw, I failed.”

“Given that he’s not going to survive past midnight — why not just take Neptune and disappear? If you hadn’t come back to him, you wouldn’t be in this state now. You brought this on yourself.” Lu Azang didn’t understand.

“I didn’t want him to die with regret. His greatest wish was to see Neptune launched. Better to deceive him.” The rabbit gave its head a little shake.

Lu Azang sighed, her fingers drifting across the piano keys, asking: “Why break his plan? You and he were supposed to be on the same side. The lives and deaths of those humans have nothing to do with you, really.”

The rabbit thought for a long while, then asked: “Do you remember the boy who was stealing from home to feed the dogs? Do you remember the blundering police officer André who threw himself in front of us?”

She nodded.

“I simply don’t want humans like them to be harmed by Neptune.” The rabbit exhaled a long breath, as though trying to expel every bit of frustration within. “If what Sean pursues is absolute fairness — then what he is doing right now is itself a profoundly unfair thing. Among human beings, it’s not only people like Luc Beruell. There are far more who are like the little boy and André.”

“You really are a remarkable rabbit.” Lu Azang smiled.

The rabbit sank down in dejection. “My power is still too weak. I’ve tried my best — but I couldn’t stop Sean. Neptune has already completed its collision. He will send it to the highest point on Earth precisely at midnight. At that time, apart from those in the laboratory, every human being on Earth — when they wake tomorrow morning, they’ll find themselves…”

Lu Azang’s fingers hopped clumsily over the keys, the piano producing monotone sounds. “I’ve always thought that phrase ‘saving all of humanity’ is rather trite,” she said, and suddenly broke into a laugh. “Do you think — if I could save them — would I become a truly remarkable Wuxiang?”

“That’s not possible.” The rabbit thought she was talking nonsense. “The collider is already running. Its programming is set so that once started, it won’t stop. Unless someone crawls inside and destroys the main power line. But do you know — even if someone could shrink their body to the size of a mouse or a cockroach and enter through the machine’s intake port, they still couldn’t withstand the extreme heat and radiation inside. They’d be vaporized before ever getting anywhere near the main power line. And those power lines are made of the most resilient alloy in existence — nothing can cut them.”

“Mm…” Lu Azang thought some more, then turned to the rabbit with a bright smile: “Could you do something for me?” The rabbit blinked.

Eleven

The minute hand advanced toward midnight, one increment at a time.

Sean leaned in his wheelchair, eyes lightly closed. His right hand rested over his heart, palm tight around the pocket watch that had long since stopped ticking.

His body had grown far too weak. But he had held on — holding on only for this day. The children he had taken were already freed.

Tomorrow, they would enjoy a new life together with their parents.

He smiled — and then broke into a violent cough. He raised his hand and looked at the pocket watch Clarice had given him. In its smooth surface, his own face was reflected. Twisted. Hideous. Like a true monster.

He lowered his hand, drew a deep breath, and murmured: “Very soon it will be over. No one will ever look down on your deficiencies again — because everyone will be the same. Heh heh…”

The clock ticked. Tick tock, tick tock. In the whole world, it was the only sound.

Twelve

The heat all around was blazing — enough to roast a person alive.

The lights flickering on all sides, like a spider’s web of densely packed wires, made her head swim. But she moved forward quickly all the same.

This sensation of a body being scorched alive — she had experienced something like it once, a very long time ago. That time had been suffering a hundredfold worse. Sean was right: if she had not hated herself, she would never have become a Wuxiang.

She thought of her own clan — a clan that had been universally despised by everyone, people wishing them utterly destroyed and exterminated. They had lived in the darkest, filthiest corners of the world, subsisting on human scraps, existing in a life without light or hope. She remembered her mother — dying because, driven by hunger, she had gone to steal a piece of meat from a family and been beaten to death by them. And so many of the neighbors she had known: some poisoned, some burned, with few dying of natural causes.

From the day she was born, she had been branded with an ignoble reputation. She had harbored hatred — hatred of herself, hatred of why she could not be like those others, with stable lives and the respect and reverence of those around her. She had feared that one day she too, like those of her kind, would die quietly and ingloriously, for no clear reason.

She had wanted to change. So she had crossed mountains and seas to Xi Ming You Sea. In that sacred land of demons, there was a Wuxiang grotto — if you leapt into its rolling lava, shed every layer of your skin and fur, and endured seven days and seven nights of excruciating agony without dying, you could transform at will into any human being. Among even the demon world, this was a rare existence: the Wuxiang. To cultivate into a Wuxiang meant abandoning your former self entirely.

With the identity of a Wuxiang, she could begin a completely new life, claiming everything she had once only dreamed of. No one would ever again know where she had come from, or what she truly was. Yet today, she was actually willing to revert to her original form, to do something she had once thought herself utterly incapable of doing.

The Wuxiang are immortal. But once you chose to revert to your true nature, it meant abandoning that immortality… rather foolish. Yet she had a vague sense that perhaps she was doing something genuinely right.

That night, everyone in all of Paris felt something like an earthquake — though the ground only shook slightly a few times before everything returned to normal.

The next day, people woke, ate, went to work. Cars filled the roads, pedestrians crowded the streets. Everything, absolutely everything, was perfectly ordinary…

Epilogue

The gray-haired man before me brought a photograph. Or not quite a photograph — a hand-drawn image, something like a photograph.

In the image: a black piano. And on the piano keys, a small gray mouse.

This was the first — and last — time I ever truly saw Lu Azang.

“She asked me to find her and have someone draw what I witnessed, as a photograph.” The man smiled ruefully. “She said to give it to you as a gift.”

“What else did she say?” I put away the “photograph,” my face entirely still.

“She said that no creature in the world has teeth more formidable than a rat demon’s.” The man took a sip of tea — not Fusheng, but a light, clear brew, though he evidently still didn’t enjoy the bitterness of tea.

I had said it before: Lu Azang was the only person I had ever seen drink a cup of Fusheng without so much as a twitch of the brow. Because she had endured too much suffering — far, far too much — to become a Wuxiang. The bitterness of Fusheng, compared to that, was too trivial to mention.

I can no longer imagine what was in Lu Azang’s mind as she reverted to the original form of a rat demon and used those teeth — the finest in the whole world — to sever the power line of Sean’s collider. I only know that humanity, who considered itself the pinnacle of all creation, was saved by a rat they had regarded as lowly and filthy.

Of course, they will never know that on some specific night, in some specific underground section of Paris, a peculiar machine exploded. A strange substance called Neptune was obliterated in that explosion.

They are even less likely to know that it was a rat — one that had once cultivated into a Wuxiang — who gave up immortality, crawled into that machine, and gnawed through the power line.

I saw the man out and walked to the backyard, photograph in hand, and buried it beneath the ginkgo tree. At the place where the photograph was buried, an ant moved lazily past.

Fatty was bellowing from the other end of the yard that dinner was ready. I had not the slightest feeling of hunger. This summer’s air carried a taste that made me sad.

I did not want to render judgment on whether Lu Azang’s final choice was right or foolish — it was her choice. And I did not want to probe deeply into whether someone like Sean’s existence was his own fault or the error of the world around him.

What I understand is this: even the most fragile of lives — so long as they have never harmed, have never been base — deserves to be respected.

Even if they are only an ant. A rabbit. Or even a rat.

I hope more people can come to understand this truth. I really do.

Bone and Stone (骨石)

Gu Qiqi loved looking in mirrors.

Her backpack always contained a mirror that could fold to the size of half a palm but, when opened, stood a full person’s height. It was a gift from her mother — made, she said, from the tears of Narcissus, capable of reflecting the most beautiful image.

Gu Wuming, however, had nothing but contempt for his younger sister’s narcissistic habit. Look all you like — it’s nothing but a heap of white bones. If one were determined to describe it beautifully, Gu Qiqi was a skeleton arranged with elegant proportions and graceful curves, whose surface was considerably smoother and whiter than ordinary bone — like the last snow of late spring laid over everything.

But no matter how beautiful, it was still a skeleton. An eternally unchanging fact.

There were not many bone demons left in the world. Since their parents’ passing, Gu Qiqi and Gu Wuming had no family beyond each other.

Gu Qiqi recalled her mother once mentioning that she had originally possessed a maternal aunt of sorts — but this aunt had been unwilling to live a quiet, obscure existence and had gone off to claim a mountain as her territory, establishing a White Bone Cave there. She would drape herself in the skin of a young woman day to day and lure passing travelers into the cave to devour them, until she was ultimately beaten to death by a monkey born from stone and met an undignified end.

Gu Qiqi had of course never met this aunt, and had no fondness for her. Because she ate people. In Gu Qiqi’s eyes, human beings were meant to be observed — they wore different clothes every day, wore different expressions, did different things, gradually changing this world through their own efforts. How fascinating. Why on earth would anyone want to eat them?

Besides, she hated the sight of blood. That bright red liquid flowing out from within the human body made her dizzy — a deeply unpleasant sensation. She couldn’t begin to imagine her aunt tearing apart human bodies. And besides all that — were people tastier than fruit egg tarts?

I had, in truth, always wanted to watch Gu Qiqi eat an egg tart. But she always had them packed up to take away. I was genuinely curious what a bone demon looked like while eating, and had even entertained the rather presumptuous thought that the food she swallowed might fall straight through the gaps between her bones.

In reality, every time Gu Qiqi came to buy fruit egg tarts, Fatty and Skinny were frightened half to death by her. Because she always came at midnight, and out of a desire not to disturb others, moved in complete silence in a floating glide.

One night, Fatty was heading out of the kitchen eating glutinous rice balls when he collided directly with her coming the other way. A rice ball slid into his throat — he could neither swallow it nor spit it out — and he nearly met his end in the prime of his life.

I knew she was a bone demon brimming with curiosity about the world, always unable to get enough of everything around her — even coming to buy an egg tart, she couldn’t resist doing a full lap of my courtyard. Curiosity killed the cat, and a bone demon’s curiosity nearly killed Fatty.

Fatty and Skinny had strong opinions about her and were of one mind: she ought to put on a proper layer of human skin before going out. A skeleton wandering around was simply too hard on the eyes.

But she remained herself, appearing before us always in the most original, most unadorned form. She said it was better that way — no need to get her hair done, no need to put on makeup, no need to even buy clothes. Just living as simply and plainly as that, eating her beloved egg tarts. What could be more easy and free?

She always came on weekend nights to buy egg tarts. I knew her schedule, so I always set the freshly made tarts in a dedicated warming box to ensure they would still be warm in her hands when she arrived — because Fatty and Skinny would absolutely refuse to bake fresh egg tarts at midnight for a skeleton.

But Gu Qiqi had not come for nearly a month. The egg tarts prepared for her had now become our own breakfast several times running.

Today was a weekend again. The summer heat was reluctant to release even after sundown. Fatty and Skinny had left early that morning to go watch girls at the newly opened seaside resort — and fortunate they had gone, otherwise the unexpected arrival of Gu Wuming would have given them nightmares for three days. Yes, today’s visitor was not Gu Qiqi, but her elder brother.

This male bone demon who had survived for several centuries was completely unlike his sister. His skeleton was jet black — deep as an overturned bottle of ink preserved for tens of thousands of years — with sand-like flecks of light embedded in every coarse bone. Among bone demons, demonic power is determined by color: the darker the color, the more fearsome the demon.

Every flower and plant in my courtyard that had been thriving happily wilted and drooped its head in the wake of wherever Gu Wuming passed. He came charging in like a gust of fierce wind. I looked at him with a smile: “Here to buy egg tarts for your sister?”

“Come with me!” His voice was a pleasant one — close your eyes and your mind would conjure up a very complete-looking man.

I kept smiling: “Running off with a skeleton is not very romantic, so — I decline.” He seemed to have grown angry. The table between us was swept over with one palm, teapot and cups shattering to the floor, jade-green tea spreading in every direction. He crossed to stand before me in one stride. I felt the chill emanating from his very bones alter the temperature of the room in an instant. I plunged from summer into the dead of winter.

He was a full head taller than me. Looking up at a black, furious skeleton was considerably more unpleasant than meeting the gaze of that golden lion from before. Because he had no eyes, there were no eyes — I could read nothing from him and guess nothing of his thoughts.

“I want one breath of your true Qi — you, the tree spirit!” His hand, without warning, locked around my wrist. To be suddenly seized by that cold, bony grip made me feel, for a single instant, as though my hand had ceased to exist.

“I haven’t fought in many years.” Though he had no eyes, I looked seriously at those two hollow black sockets in his face and said.

I truly did not want to fight. Every table, every chair, every cup in Bu Ting had been bought with money — how dreadful to have them destroyed!

Gu Wuming gave a cold snort, but gripped me tighter…

It was not the fifteenth, yet tonight was still a full moon — blazing golden across the sky, making one wonder whether the sun had got the time wrong.

Wangchuan, a city without much renown, lay sleeping beneath this kind of moonlight — less of steel and concrete’s realness, more of a dream’s illusion.

The brightest beam of moonlight fell into the back alley of a restaurant. A few greedy stray cats were leaping about on the garbage bins, rummaging without satisfaction for food. High temperatures are beloved by all manner of unpleasant odors.

The air at the center of the alley split open a crack. Within it, a layer of white vapor seeped out like steam rising from a morning steamed-bun shop, except without even the slightest warmth — cold enough to make a person want to die.

Two men stepped out from the gap. Their blurred figures gradually clarified within the white vapor: T-shirts, jeans, casual shoes — the most common summer attire. One had black hair, cropped short; the other had red hair, down to the waist. Both were decent-looking, with no smiles and sharp-edged eyes.

“The underworld exit — could it not open somewhere cleaner?” From the darkness beside the garbage bins, a lean young figure emerged, his side-swept fringe attractively disheveled by the night wind. His features still carried a youthful quality, but early indicators suggested he had the potential to grow into a very handsome man. A bright red short-sleeved shirt, more vivid than flame, and a black schoolbag slung across his backside with the zipper carelessly left open.

The stray cats yowled into a chorus and scattered in every direction. One of them knocked over a garbage bag, sending a heap of spoiled noodles spilling to the ground, the splattered sauce landing on the young man’s pristine sneakers.

The young man lifted his foot and frowned. “You’ll owe me a new pair of shoes — no, make it two pairs. You can send the bill to my aunt.”

“The King sent us out here, not to buy you shoes.” The red-haired man walked up to the young man and said without patience. “If this mission fails, none of us will have a good time — that includes you, Zhong Xiaokui.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Zhong Xiaokui widened his eyes and pointed at himself with an air of innocent bewilderment. “You people from the underworld lost something — it’s not like I stole it! My job is just to provide you with food and accommodation in the human world.”

“Your task is more than food and accommodation. The King gave us specific instructions.” The black-haired man walked over, exchanged a glance with his companion, and the two of them seized Zhong Xiaokui’s arms from either side, lifting him off his feet without ceremony, ignoring his protests entirely, and walked out of the alley.

In the moonlight, three people — but only one shadow.

Gu Qiqi had moved to this residential district one week ago, and her excitement still showed plainly. Her previous “home” had been in some corner of the Sahara Desert, the sun blazing like fire. The one before that had been on an iceberg in Antarctica, where stepping outside meant a view of penguins. Before that — a village on the outskirts of Cape Town? Or Fifth Avenue in New York? In any case, she and her brother relocated once every year. Over several centuries, there was almost no place on earth Gu Qiqi had not set foot.

This year, she had come to China — to this city called Wangchuan. But this time she had come alone, having taken advantage of Gu Wuming’s absence on a distant errand to make her escape from wherever abroad he’d had them living in some flashy, high-society villa district.

This was the first solo journey of her life, if she remembered correctly.

Gu Wuming was her elder brother, her caretaker, her drill instructor, and her warden, and his one and only demand of this sole younger sister was — obedience.

Obedience: absolutely no appearing before human beings, no making friends with humans.

Obedience: do not trust any creature that lives within a single layer of skin.

Obedience: eat only vegetarian food, no meat, and definitely no garbage snacks like potato chips.

Perhaps her brother simply loved her too much. But whether his control stemmed from masculine domination or from genuine familial concern, she had grown truly tired of this constrained life. She wanted to live her own life.

There were many residents in this ordinary residential district: high school students, a salesman who sold razors, white-haired retired elders, a columnist, and so on — a thoroughly mixed crowd.

Gu Qiqi drifted in and out of these people’s homes every day, watching them go about their business, listening to them talk. This kind of worldly, ordinary existence — the warmth of human life — was something that could never be felt in a desert, on an iceberg, or inside a luxury mansion.

But given this “neighborly” behavior of hers toward human beings, Gu Wuming had severely punished her twice in the past: once for stopping a middle-aged woman from jumping off a building in the middle of the night, and once for carrying a young man with an injured leg out of a burning forest on her back.

She had thought these were good deeds. In her brother’s eyes, they were unforgivable sins.

The rescued middle-aged woman, upon seeing that what had caught her was a snow-white skeleton, immediately shoved Gu Qiqi away and screamed herself into unconsciousness. The first thing this woman did upon waking the next day was summon several Taoist priests to conduct a three-day ritual at her home, with talismans reading “evil spirits retreat” pasted all over her door. As for the young man rescued from the forest fire — upon seeing her face clearly, the very first thing he did was drive a self-defense dagger into her chest.

As a bone demon, Gu Qiqi had to reveal her true form for her powers to take effect on human beings.

She was not an evil spirit, so the Taoist talismans remained nothing but paper. She was only a skeleton, so the man’s dagger could not harm her in the slightest. She was simply puzzled. She had only saved their lives, only shown them her true face for a moment.

“You and they are different!” That was what Gu Wuming had shouted after punishing her. Different?!

Walking along the sunlit streets, Gu Qiqi looked out through the crowd — all these men and women, young and old, simply had one more layer of flesh over their bones than she did. And when they died, were they not also a bare skeleton? When all was said and done, they clearly looked exactly the same as her. So why were they so frightened? Being frightened of her — wasn’t that just being frightened of themselves?

Human beings were truly fascinating and peculiar creatures — on one hand cherishing their bodies with great care, on the other terrified of the very skeleton that supported that flesh and blood.

The more profound this contradiction, the more Gu Qiqi longed to befriend a human being. Moving constantly, and then Gu Wuming’s supervision on top of it — she did not have many friends. Though “friends,” here, meant various kinds of demons: the little mushroom spirit in the mountains, the old scorpion demon in the Sahara, the fashionable flower spirit in New York, and so on. No humans were included.

Gu Wuming said: no human being would ever willingly become friends with a bone demon. Bone demons were different from other spirits — capable of transforming into beautiful women or handsome men in endless variation, yet we could never produce the appealing human appearance that people liked. From beginning to end, we were only a very real skeleton.

This, Gu Qiqi knew. A true bone demon, from birth to extinction, could not alter their form. As for the aunt who had been beaten to death by that monkey — even at the height of her cultivation, she could only crudely drape on a layer of human skin and pass perfunctorily for a human shape; she could never truly transform into a human body.

But so what if she couldn’t become beautiful? What was wrong with her current appearance? Her mother had told her she was the most beautiful girl in all the bone demon clan. So Gu Qiqi had never been able to understand the fundamental reason human beings rejected her. Was it simply a difference in aesthetic sensibility?

Still, she believed — there must be someone who was different.

To her “belief,” Gu Wuming remained as contemptuous as he was of her mirror-gazing habit, and said: I’ll make a bet with you. If any human being is truly willing to be your friend — on the condition that they have clearly seen what you look like — from that point on, your life will be entirely your own to decide, and I will not interfere in the slightest.

Done! Gu Qiqi intended to use this bet to shake off the chokehold of “obedience” for good. But the bet had been running for several decades now, and Gu Qiqi showed no sign of winning. Every human being she had deemed a possible friend had, without exception, been frightened out of their wits by her appearance.

She was a little disheartened, but still hopeful.

“Everyone else has closed up. Why aren’t you shutting the door?”

Gu Qiqi crouched at the entrance of this small goldfish shop, looking at the various colored fish gliding in the tanks, and then at the boy sitting in the old chair by the shop’s entrance, asking with curiosity.

It was half past midnight. This goldfish shop was tucked deep into the lane outside the residential district, and the general store and print shop next to it had long since shut their doors. Only this place, under the illumination of two bare lightbulbs, was still open for business.

Gu Qiqi had been noticing this goldfish shop — and the boy minding it — for several days now. They always opened very late, and she had never once seen them close. It was just a goldfish shop, not a 7-Eleven. Did it really need to be open all night? How strange.

“We don’t close until just before dawn.” The boy, who looked about fifteen or sixteen, wore an oversized gray T-shirt that was clearly the wrong size, and jeans faded pale from washing. He turned sideways to feel along a nearby shelf, taking out a small pouch of fish food and carefully tapping it into the tank in front of him. “Dinner time!” he said to the fish with a wide smile.

He must be blind, Gu Qiqi deduced from the ink-dark glasses perched on his fair face. Who wore that kind of blind-man-Abing style glasses in the middle of the night? Besides, he had been feeling along the shelf to find things.

Gu Qiqi couldn’t help but reach out and wave a hand in front of his nose.

“Please — I’m not blind.” The boy paused his hands’ movement and pushed Gu Qiqi’s hand aside. “My eyes just have a condition. I can’t tolerate strong light, and my vision isn’t the best.”

Gu Qiqi coughed awkwardly and muttered: “Then why were you feeling around for the fish food like that?”

“I wasn’t feeling around. The weather has been humid lately — some of the fish food has clumped together. I have to crumble it apart.” The boy gave her an expressionless look. “For that matter — you, wearing this much in midsummer, and with a face mask — people are going to think you’re a strange auntie.”

“You—” Gu Qiqi nearly choked on his words, but the person wasn’t wrong. To be able to talk with this goldfish shop boy while not frightening him, she had this evening dressed with great care: a high-necked athletic outfit plus boots plus gloves plus a wig plus a large straw hat, plus sunglasses and a face mask, revealing not the slightest inch of her body.

“If not for hearing your voice, I’d have thought you were a strange uncle.” The boy said with disarming honesty.

“I happen to have a cold, all right?” Gu Qiqi covered for herself with a grimace. “Besides — does any strange uncle have a figure this good?”

“Ha — you really think highly of yourself.” The boy laughed, revealing teeth as bright as shells, the laughter as crisp and clear as a school of fish swimming happily through water.

“Who would buy goldfish at this hour? To take home as a midnight snack?” Gu Qiqi deliberately jeered at this boy who showed her no deference. She glanced left and right — both ends of the alley were submerged in quiet dimness. Not a person in sight, let alone a ghost.

The mosquito-zapper in the corner crackled intermittently — the loudest sound at this moment.

“You’d better head home, strange auntie.” The boy shifted slightly, leaning outward, turning his head toward the far end of the alley, his lips parting, murmuring something in a low voice. Only now did he look like a small vendor waiting for customers — even with his expression entirely hidden behind the dark glasses, his face carried enough anticipation.

“My name is Gu Qiqi, not ‘strange auntie’ — I’m young!” Gu Qiqi desperately wanted to yank off her face mask and give this boy a midnight fright. Bone demons had their own sense of vanity, and disliked being called “auntie” rather than “older sister,” even though she was already several hundred years old.

“All right, strange older sister.” He carried on looking toward the far end of the alley without missing a beat. “You’re sure you want to stay?”

“Your reflexes are sharp!” Gu Qiqi laughed through gritted teeth, though privately finding this small creature rather interesting. “Hey — what’s your name? Do you live nearby?”

“My name is A’sheng.” He answered readily. “I also have an English name — Live. Call me whichever you like.”

“Live? That’s a strange English name…” Gu Qiqi murmured. Though it rather suited this boy, who was not exactly normal himself — a boy who sat up through the night minding a goldfish shop, sharp-tongued and odd.

“You’re not exactly standard yourself, Miss Gu Qiqi.” He had changed how he addressed her several times in a few minutes, and seemed to find this entertaining. “It’s almost one in the morning. You’re really not going home to sleep? Women who stay up too late age faster.”

“I happen to be unable to sleep tonight.” Gu Qiqi laughed with exaggerated cheer. “So I’ve decided to stay and keep you company, you lonely little creature.”

“As you like.” A’sheng showed a nice smile and shook his head. “Bored people really are multiplying these days. Staying up in the middle of the night, watching someone else sell goldfish.”

“No less bored than you and this shop of yours.” Gu Qiqi simply sat on the step beside the fish tank, and pointed toward the far end of the alley. “I’ll bet you — if you can sell one goldfish tonight, I’ll grant you one wish.”

“You’re not Father Christmas.” He didn’t look at her, continuing his watch.

“And if you lose…” Gu Qiqi deliberately adopted a brash tone, “you’ll say to me nicely, Beautiful older sister, I was wrong.“

“All right — you’re the one who chose to stay.” He turned his head. On the dark lenses of his glasses, Gu Qiqi’s comprehensively wrapped-up face was reflected, and he said: “I won’t lose.”

Before the words had even settled, he smiled. “A customer…”

Within Gu Qiqi’s ears, a faint sound appeared — as easy to miss as a petal falling onto soil in the wind.

Rustle, rustle. The sound grew closer. A dark shape not quite half a person’s height drifted in from the far end of the alley, surrounded by a haze of tawny fog at its indistinct outline.

Only when this thing drifted close enough could Gu Qiqi see it clearly — it was an old man with a white beard, so fat that neither neck nor waist was visible, standing no taller than Gu Qiqi’s thigh. Were it not for the reasonably distinct features on that round face, one could easily have called him a living winter melon.

He laboriously used his short arms to brush at his old garment — obviously not of this era — a green long robe, then bounced up like a ball, landing before the fish tank, and pointed at a small crimson goldfish inside. His round face broke into a delighted smile and he said urgently: “A’sheng, that one! Quick!”

“Of course.” A’sheng smiled, passing him the fish net. The little winter-melon man rolled up his sleeve and carefully scooped out the fish he’d chosen, placing it in a glass bottle he had brought himself, filled with a thin layer of pale blue water.

“How beautiful!” The winter-melon man peered at the little fish gliding in the glass bottle, moved to the point of tears. He then produced from his sleeve a handful of colorful small stones and placed them in A’sheng’s hand, offering his thanks repeatedly.

A’sheng felt the stones in his palm and said: “You’ve given too many. I should add another fish for you.”

“No, no — I’ll come again next time. I can’t let you take a loss.” The winter-melon man waved his hands with great gratitude and left, beaming, cradling his fish. Where his footsteps passed, a scatter of tiny wildflowers bloomed in every color.

“Old White only does that when he’s happy — flowers turning up all over the street like this. Won’t disappear until dawn.” A’sheng seemed to be talking to her and also to himself, standing up and placing the collected stones into a flower vase on the cabinet behind him. The ordinary glass vase held no flowers — it was filled only with colorful stones of varying shapes, each smooth as a mirror, casting beautiful light across the glass.

That old man was clearly not human.

“You lost.” A’sheng came out, arms folded, looking mildly pleased with himself.

“He — he…” Gu Qiqi was still struggling to collect herself and said indignantly: “He didn’t even pay real money! You basically gave it away! That doesn’t count as you winning!”

“Our bet contained no stipulation that the transaction currency must be renminbi.” A’sheng moved slowly toward her and leaned close to her ear, murmuring: “Those stones are demon currency.”

Gu Qiqi had no concept of money — whether renminbi or demon currency.

“Startled, are you? Old White isn’t human.” Watching her standing frozen, A’sheng said with great seriousness, in a particularly ominous tone: “I did warn you to go home. You were the one who refused.”

Perhaps the next scene he was anticipating was Gu Qiqi screaming and bolting with both hands over her head. But Gu Qiqi, after only a brief moment of shock, grabbed his hand and asked earnestly: “Then… are you human?”

“Obviously I am!” A’sheng pulled his hand away, frowning with a mutter. “Boring — you’re not even scared.”

His manner made Gu Qiqi think of mischievous boys she had seen before who took pleasure in startling girls, only to fail. Frightening her? If she pulled down her face mask, it was surely him who’d faint.

But right now, she didn’t want him to faint. This boy was too interesting — doing business with demons, and what a strange demon too — buying goldfish of all things. If it was for food, that small fish was rather too small, wasn’t it?

“Old White didn’t buy the fish to eat it. My goldfish have a different purpose.” A’sheng easily saw through her thoughts, crouching down and trailing fingers slowly through the clear water. Those seemingly dull fish seemed to come alive all at once, gathering around his fingers from every corner, pressing close in friendly delight, shaking their heads and tails. He smiled and asked: “Strange older sister — would you like to buy a goldfish?”

“I have no money…” Gu Qiqi blurted out, then asked suspiciously: “You’re really a human being?”

A’sheng said nothing, but took Gu Qiqi’s hand and pressed it against his own chest.

A clear heartbeat, and the particular warmth of human flesh and blood, passed through his T-shirt into her palm. This creature really was human. And yet — even being human, he couldn’t possibly be normal, otherwise how would he be doing business with demons?

“Don’t think of me as abnormal.” A’sheng seemed, as always, to see through her easily. He wiped the water from his fingers. “You’re human too — you saw Old White, a demon, and didn’t faint. If I’m abnormal, then you and I are equally so.”

His words reminded her — she was a human right now. She didn’t want her identity exposed, at least not before her curiosity was satisfied. If possible, she wanted to be friends with this sharp-tongued creature. The thought flickered through her mind.

“All right then. We’re both perfectly normal.” She cleared her throat and asked with studied casualness: “So what’s the story behind that white old man?”

“Old White is a ground-wanderer — a demon formed from earth, lives underground year-round, comes up occasionally to get some sun. Ground-wanderers carry within them the vital energy from deep within the earth: wherever they pass, flowers bloom in abundance and withered trees revive.” A’sheng said seriously, then broke into a wicked grin. “You see — it’s because he doesn’t get enough sun. Calcium deficiency. That’s why he’s so short. Which is a friendly warning to you, strange older sister: get more daylight. Otherwise, one day you might end up a shriveled little old lady just like Old White.”

“If not for the law protecting minors, I would hit you!” Gu Qiqi raised her fist at him.

“You really don’t want to buy a goldfish?” He was impervious to her indignation. “Mine are actually very interesting goldfish.”

“I can’t see anything interesting about them — they all look pretty dim.” Gu Qiqi said, still annoyed. The goldfish turned their white eyes at her and blew out a stream of indignant bubbles. A’sheng glanced to the east — the first faint hint of light was already showing at the horizon. He stretched and began carrying the fish tanks and basins from outside into the shop one by one.

As he worked, he seemed to be talking to himself: “Old White, when he was young, was quite a handsome fellow. He and his wife met in a lotus pond — ah, his wife was a lotus flower spirit. After they married, Old White stopped wandering anywhere else and stayed in the lotus pond. During that period, the lotus in that pond was always the most beautiful within a hundred miles, and even the water there was clearer and more lively than elsewhere.”

“And then?” Gu Qiqi immediately asked — she couldn’t stand this boy’s sharp mouth, but she liked the sound of his voice when he told stories.

“And then?” He took an iron hook from the corner and hooked the rolling shutter door above him. “And then his wife had her true essence drawn out by a Taoist priest and refined into a pill. The lotus pond was left with only one withered lotus blossom.” He drew a breath. “A ground-wanderer isn’t supposed to age — but Old White has been pouring his vital energy into that withered lotus, day after day, for a thousand years, saying it will come back to life one day. The trouble that caused — one fine young man, turned into a hunched, wind-blown short old fellow.”

He told it lightly. Gu Qiqi listened, and felt a pang.

“But what does any of this have to do with him coming to buy your goldfish?” She still wanted to know this. A’sheng pulled the shutter door down, produced a key and locked it, and said: “What he bought isn’t a goldfish. It’s a dream.”

Gu Qiqi was more confused than ever. He walked up to her, saying word by word: “My goldfish can only be kept alive with tears.”

From behind his dark glasses, something strange and compelling passed through, leaving Gu Qiqi standing frozen in place.

“Bye! I’m going home. You head back too.” A’sheng waved at her, turned, and walked toward the alley entrance. “Don’t forget — you lost today’s bet. You owe me one wish. When I figure out what I want, I’ll let you know.”

His slender figure disappeared quickly into the faint light still wrapped in the remnants of night.

Gu Qiqi stood motionless in the empty alley, and that bet with her brother — the hope that had been nearly extinguished — rekindled inexplicably.

A’sheng. Live. What exactly are you?

From that night onward, Gu Qiqi seemed to have found a purpose in living.

She loved being with A’sheng — loved listening to him recount, in that wry and natural way of his, the stories of the demons who came to buy his goldfish.

What she loved most was that he never asked about her origins, never pressed to know why she was bundled up like a stuffed dumpling every time she came. If he did ask, she would have told him the truth — that was her nature. From childhood she had been raised with the principle that bone demons must live honestly, like their very form: without disguise or embellishment.

She enjoyed this rare ease between friends, while quietly worrying that one day she would still have to show him her true face. That was the condition of her bet with her brother. If possible, let that day come as late as possible.

A’sheng still liked to tease and needle her with sharp words, but he no longer left her to fend for herself as he had at first. He would drag out a stool for her to sit on — old, but with a backrest, quite comfortable — and sometimes he would even reposition the shop’s fan toward where she sat, saying that dressing in this much in midsummer, she might die of heatstroke and he was too lazy to collect the body.

She gradually grew accustomed to A’sheng’s manner of speaking. When he told stories about demons, she would excitedly tell him in return about the interesting people and things she had encountered in different countries. Looking back, it was rather funny — two people who hadn’t even seen each other’s faces properly, thrown together by chance, yet able to talk inexhaustibly until dawn.

One bone demon and one peculiarly behaved human being, sitting in the goldfish shop — its lights turning it into a bright little world — on flower-scented, insect-singing summer nights, talking with animated gestures. Yes, they were only talking — only the world’s most simple exchange of listening and telling — and yet it carried an inexpressible ease and happiness. She felt that A’sheng understood her thoughts, grasped what she longed for.

Gu Qiqi began to feel that daytime was superfluous. If only the full twenty-four hours were night — that way she would have enough time to be with A’sheng. Because the goldfish shop was only open from dusk until dawn.

She had made inquiries before: this little shop had been rented out a year ago to a middle-aged man with the surname Xiao — a university professor of some kind, apparently. Could this Professor Xiao be A’sheng’s relative? His father?

But they looked nothing alike.

One week after she and A’sheng had become acquainted, she saw Professor Xiao at the goldfish shop: a man whose hair had already gone salt-and-pepper, slightly stooped, middle-aged in years but seeming elderly, with a pair of fine gold-framed glasses on his still fairly prominent nose. His clothes weren’t fashionable, but were clean and neatly arranged, and he always carried a thick book — he did indeed have an academic air.

Professor Xiao came to the shop roughly twice a week. Sometimes he brought A’sheng snacks, sometimes books. Then they would talk, as ordinary fathers and sons do — about studies, about health, and at the end a question or two about the goldfish shop’s business. Warm but also distant. A’sheng said that he and Professor Xiao had no blood relation, but that he regarded him as a father, because the man had saved his life.

Over a year ago, he had slipped and fallen from a deep mountain. It happened to be Professor Xiao who was in the mountains collecting specimens and brought him back to safety. He had no identification, no household registration — he couldn’t attend school. The one thing he was skilled at was raising fish, so he had asked Professor Xiao to rent this small shop for him to sell goldfish, which both earned money and passed the time.

“Why do you stay here? Where’s your home?” Gu Qiqi didn’t quite understand A’sheng’s continued presence at Professor Xiao’s side.

“Professor Xiao has no children and his health isn’t the best. Since he saved my life, it’s only natural that I stay and look after him a bit.” A’sheng said this plainly, with barely any discernible shift of expression. “Besides — my home is very far away. I can’t get back any time soon.”

How far could it be? Surely not Mars. And even if it were, as long as he said the word, she would help. She didn’t have great abilities, but traveling a thousand miles in a day, flying over mountains and crossing seas — that was something she could just about manage.

But every time the subject of going home came up, A’sheng changed the subject.

After several such instances, Gu Qiqi stopped asking. He had his reasons for not going back — why press. This became one of their tacit understandings: don’t ask about anything that might cause unhappiness.

Things as they were right now were very fine. Sitting steadily beside each other, talking about the frog demon who had blubbered along before finally buying two goldfish on credit, laughing about how the perpetually fierce fat woman next door had tumbled into a drainage ditch — and laughing out loud.

“It would be good if it could always be like this.” One day, after laughing, Gu Qiqi said this out of nowhere. After quite a pause, A’sheng said: “It would be good just to be able to see you.”

Gu Qiqi’s heart gave a jolt.

“Ha — I was joking!” A’sheng pulled a face at her. “What if I see you and can’t eat? I’m not willing to take that risk. Keep yourself wrapped up.”

Gu Qiqi forced a smile and didn’t respond. If you saw me… maybe it wouldn’t be as simple as not being able to eat. Maybe the first glance we exchange might also be the last.

The insects chirped in the summer night, and listening to them made the heart restless.

The goldfish shop had been closed for three days.

Gu Qiqi went directly to find A’sheng and Professor Xiao’s home near the lane.

In the evening, downstairs, she waited and caught A’sheng returning with Professor Xiao on his arm, a plastic bag of vegetables in his hand. Seeing her, A’sheng stopped, with a trace of tiredness on his face, and said nothing.

“All right — I admit I followed you.” Gu Qiqi confessed first. She had indeed, some previous dawn, quietly tailed A’sheng home. Not to confirm anything, not to investigate anything — simply because, if the goldfish shop happened to close, she would at least have another place to look for him.

A’sheng’s expression was that of someone who had known all along she would do exactly this.

“Ah, it’s Qiqi.” Professor Xiao recognized her too, knowing she visited the shop to find A’sheng every night. He said politely: “Come, come upstairs and sit with us.”

Gu Qiqi shook her head vigorously, her gaze fixed on A’sheng’s face, saying rapidly: “No no, the goldfish shop hadn’t opened for several days, so I came to check… I was worried… worried you might… anyway, since everything’s fine, I’ll go now.”

“Professor Xiao has a bad cold. I need to take care of him, so the shop’s been closed. A guest is a guest — come up.” A’sheng guided Professor Xiao forward. “You’ve got plenty of time to spare, you idle thing.”

“Hmph!” Gu Qiqi had long since grown accustomed to his barbed remarks. Holding her swelling curiosity, she followed them upstairs.

Books everywhere. On the cabinets, on the table, even on the bed. One look around — mostly works and materials related to psychology and the paranormal.

Professor Xiao apologized and cleared a space to sit, saying: “Forgive the mess.” Their home was indeed messy — cramped as a pigeon loft. Apart from the bed, table and chairs, and a large outdated bookcase, it could be called bare walls and nothing else. A university professor’s home shouldn’t look like this. Gu Qiqi had encountered people of the same profession before — not asking for a mansion or a luxury car, but at least a spacious, comfortable dwelling. How had it come to such poverty.

A’sheng put the vegetables in the kitchen without fuss. Gu Qiqi stood at the kitchen doorway, peering in to watch him wash and chop vegetables with practiced ease.

“Are your eyes really a problem?” She watched the knife in his hand move rapidly, cutting slices of green bamboo shoot to uniform thickness.

“If you’re not watching me cook, you could help tidy the room.” He said without looking up. “Otherwise I won’t feed you.”

“I never planned on eating dinner at your place, hmph.” Gu Qiqi turned to leave — given her true form, how would she dare eat in front of them?

She walked back to the sitting room. Professor Xiao had apparently gone to the bathroom; the sound of his coughing came from within. She walked to the table and looked around aimlessly. Just as she was about to sit down, she bumped the table edge — a cup of tea Professor Xiao had poured for her immediately toppled sideways, soaking a pile of papers. She hurriedly pulled the papers up, frantically wiped the table with her hands, and in the process nudged a thick black-covered notebook buried in the pile, sending it falling to the floor, where it landed face-down, splayed open. She quickly bent to retrieve it, hurriedly dusted off the cover — and her scattered gaze fell involuntarily on the page covered in text and symbols —

April 28th — Test subject: A’sheng — Age: 15 — Sex: Male — Test item: Potassium oxide pharmacological response…

“Put that down!” A shout — Professor Xiao had appeared before her at some unknown moment, snatching the black notebook from her in one move, his face showing a rare flash of anger and alarm, which just as quickly eased back to a gentler tone as he stumbled over an explanation: “I mean — you can’t just touch these things, there’s an order to them — if they’re disturbed it’s a great deal of trouble.”

“I’m sorry, Professor Xiao — I didn’t mean to.” Gu Qiqi apologized quickly, while the doubt in her heart, like the night outside the window, gradually grew dense.

She “declined” A’sheng’s kind offer to stay for dinner, and with a slightly puzzled look following her, fled from their home.

Test subject… potassium oxide… The two phrases hammered at her head like iron mallets. She hadn’t read many books, but she at least knew what “test subject” meant, and knew that potassium oxide was a substance that could cause rapid human death.

Professor Xiao was not from a medical background — only a deputy professor in the literature department of a not-very-prominent university, with a side interest in subjects like the paranormal. How would a humanities professor produce something like a potassium oxide pharmacological response? She suddenly felt she had an obligation to get to the bottom of this matter. For A’sheng’s sake. Those four words — “test subject” — sent a chill through her.

Back in their home, A’sheng set out bowls and chopsticks. At some point he looked toward the front door, thinking of Gu Qiqi’s swift departure just now. He smiled, turned back, and called out with studied indifference: “Professor Xiao — dinner’s ready.”

Today, every resident who had been to the small square near the residential district was talking about a strange incident. Overnight, the square had inexplicably gained three stone statues — lifelike, true to scale, the form of young males, with eyes and ears and noses and mouths carved with remarkable realism, and even the creases in the fabric of their clothes vivid enough to seem about to billow. The three figures were positioned close to a flower bed, semi-reclined, each with a wide-open mouth and staring eyes, an expression of horror, hands thrust toward the air as though warding off something approaching. If not for the unmistakably genuine stone material, no one would fail to mistake them for three very much alive men — and everyone marveled at the sculptor’s godlike skill.

However, despite the impressive workmanship, who would set up such things overnight in this out-of-the-way little square? Though the statues were remarkable, they were ultimately declared objects that disrupted the appearance of the city and illegally occupied public space, and the urban management office loaded them onto a truck and carried them away.

The small square under the twilight returned to its usual calm. People who had taken their post-dinner walk continued walking and chatting, with some still speculating about the three statues. Someone said the figures looked familiar — like those few good-for-nothing troublemakers who were always up to no good on the next street. But that was impossible — who would be full enough to go sculpt monuments to that sort of human rubbish?

Zhong Xiaokui watched the urban management truck disappear into the distance, his face troubled.

“Uncle Chi Feng, Uncle Mo Song — please spare me…” He pressed his hands together beseechingly toward the red-haired man on his left and the black-haired man on his right, who had him sandwiched between them. “I genuinely can’t do that thing. You two can handle it yourselves — you don’t need to drag me into it.”

Chi Feng pushed aside a strand of red hair blocking his view and said with a knitted brow: “What the King was worried about has indeed come to pass.”

“Since the target’s location is confirmed, we can’t delay further.” Mo Song grabbed Zhong Xiaokui’s shoulder. “Kid — only you can do this.”

“Uncle Mo Song, I’ve never even killed a chicken!” Zhong Xiaokui looked up piteously at this black-haired man who had a good half-head of height over him, and trembled: “You come here and ask me to kill someone!! Please — I at least provide your room and board, and I’ve given you all those game walkthrough codes for free. Give me a break!!”

“That’s not a person!” Chi Feng cut him off without mercy.

“Saying it that way doesn’t seem right either — it’s true that it’s not a person, but it’s also currently very much a person.” Mo Song scratched his head, producing a string of circular logic.

“That is completely beside the point! The point is that people have already been turned to stone! If we don’t act now there will certainly be more victims, and if it isn’t stopped quickly, the human world will descend into chaos!”

“Which part of what I said was beside the point? Watch your tone when you speak to me!”

The two men went back and forth for some time, and just as Zhong Xiaokui was about to take advantage of the distraction and escape, both his shoulders were pinned by two powerful sets of hands simultaneously. The two men exchanged a glance, and Mo Song made the announcement: “In summary: the King commands you, Zhong Xiaokui, to act — to apprehend the Soul Stone and bring it back to the underworld. Should the subject resist, the order is: kill on sight!”

“Help! I don’t want to! I love peace! I—”

“Hmph — what a muddle-headed fool, can’t tell right from wrong! It seems you need a thorough education!” In the last of the evening light, Zhong Xiaokui kicked his legs in protest as Chi Feng and Mo Song carried him off.

This was the first time in Gu Qiqi’s life she had ever shadowed someone. Her target: Professor Xiao.

In the week following her visit to his home, she continued every night to sit with A’sheng at the goldfish shop, talking and watching for whatever varied customers might come to buy fish. During the day, she gave up all time to herself and quietly staked out the area near Professor Xiao’s home. The moment he left for school, she tailed him.

She had thought about going invisible and searching his home directly, but thinking of A’sheng being inside, she didn’t dare act rashly. Though his eyesight was poor, there was always something in that gaze filtering through his dark glasses that made her feel he could see everything in the world — including an invisible her. Perhaps this was just a guilty conscience.

For several consecutive days, Professor Xiao showed nothing unusual. He left home, took the bus to school, taught his classes, and worked. Until the weekend, when he was packing up his books to leave the office, he received a phone call, and immediately changed expression — and rushed out without even taking his briefcase.

From Gu Qiqi’s observation, Professor Xiao was an absolute homebody. His phone was largely decorative; very few people called him. And it was rarely that this always soft-spoken, modest, understated man could be seen running out in such agitation.

She followed him to a quiet café. There, a middle-aged man in expensive brand-name clothes, slightly overweight, wearing glasses, was waiting. Gu Qiqi slipped inside.

The two conversing individuals could in no way have imagined that an invisible Gu Qiqi was standing in the middle of their private conversation.

“Old Xiao — what are you still hesitating about? Don’t you understand what that child means to you? No — what he means to all of humanity?” The bespectacled man’s body kept leaning forward, his expression urgent.

“This… I know, of course — it’s just that I…” Professor Xiao’s eyes kept avoiding the other man’s, still wavering. “Old classmate, you know — the boy regards me as a father.”

“From the moment you told me his wounds healed without treatment, I knew our opportunity had come.” The bespectacled man seized Professor Xiao’s wrist, a peculiar gleam in his eyes. “Don’t let sentiment cloud your judgment. Think about it — not only does he regenerate wounds, he even survived drinking porridge laced with potassium cyanide without a scratch. And you’ve said he can communicate with non-human species. Old Xiao — this child is a miracle in the history of humanity! Hand him over to our research group’s experts and he will without question make a miraculous contribution to human development!”

“But…” Professor Xiao was still hesitating.

“Stop with the ‘buts.’ Do you really want to spend the rest of your life as an insignificant deputy professor at a third-rate university?” The bespectacled man seemed to grow angry, speaking with the frustrated disappointment of someone watching talent go to waste. “Look at the classmates from our year — some rolling in money, commanding the business world, others decorated with fame and achievement, titans of academia. Then look at yourself, Old Xiao. Back then, you were our class president — the most talented, the most capable one among all of us. And now you’re the most down-and-out. I refuse to believe you don’t want to change all of that. A’sheng is your opportunity. Your only opportunity.”

Professor Xiao’s hands around his coffee cup were trembling slightly, his palms beaded with cold sweat.

“I’ve already told the research group about A’sheng. As long as you nod, we go to pick him up immediately.” The bespectacled man barely gave him room to breathe, pressing his “encouragement” relentlessly forward. “Old Xiao, we are in service to humanity — don’t let sentiment get in the way. Imagine yourself standing at the Nobel Prize podium — you’ll know that everything you did today was worthwhile.”

Gu Qiqi listened, and the hair on her bones stood on end. A research group. Test subject. A’sheng was a living human being. Strange as he undeniably was, he was not a lab mouse. You couldn’t simply hand him over to be studied. And this bespectacled, heavyset man — no matter how she looked at him, he was no upright character. A thick stench of money clung to him on all sides, inescapable.

She hoped Professor Xiao would refuse outright. A’sheng’s attentive care for the man was something even she, an outsider, could feel keenly. And she had always believed Professor Xiao was not a bad person — that he was toward A’sheng as A’sheng was toward him.

“All right…” Professor Xiao finally nodded. “The day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow I’ll bring him to meet you. But I have one condition — I must be present throughout the entire research process.”

“No problem!” The bespectacled man let out a breath of relief and laughed, clapping his thin shoulder. It was at this moment that Gu Qiqi began to understand a little why her brother repeatedly warned her: do not trust any creature that lives within a single layer of skin. It was summer now — but she felt cold.

Professor Xiao did not go straight home after leaving the café. He wandered outside until deep into the night before turning back.

Gu Qiqi followed behind him the entire time, and countless times nearly manifested her true form in front of this man, wanting to grab his shoulders and demand: Are you really going to hand A’sheng over to those people? Do you truly only regard him as a research subject?

Outside the square near the residential district, A’sheng was standing alone, looking toward the distance. The moonlight fell across his body and stretched a solitary shadow on the ground.

“How are you here?” Professor Xiao quickened his step, putting on a calm he didn’t feel.

“You weren’t home so late, and your phone wasn’t being answered. I was a bit worried, so I came out to look.” A’sheng rubbed the back of his head.

“Oh…” Professor Xiao laughed awkwardly. “School was busy today. Come on — let’s go home. Your eyes aren’t good, and the streetlights here are broken — don’t come running out like this at night by yourself. I’m fine.”

The two had just taken a step when three figures suddenly burst from the shadows of the square.

In the moonlight, Gu Qiqi recognized them — the troublemakers from the next street. Three bright-edged daggers flickered in three pairs of hands, one of them pointing directly at Professor Xiao’s nose.

The purpose was obvious: money. Professor Xiao, already timid, turned out every pocket and found twenty-seven yuan and eighty fen.

One of the troublemakers grabbed the money, then punched Professor Xiao in the face with a snarl: “Are you kidding? A grown man like you — this pathetic amount? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

Professor Xiao staggered and nearly fell, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, and he murmured: “I’m sorry… truly sorry…”

The second troublemaker landed a kick on him, shouting: “What good is an apology? Have you got a bank card? Hand it over! And the PIN!”

“I… I don’t…” Professor Xiao shook his head. More fists and feet followed naturally.

A’sheng looked coldly at the blade against his throat and said: “Stop hitting him. I have money. Come with me.” As he spoke, he reached up and slowly took hold of the dark glasses he had never removed.

Gu Qiqi was just about to materialize and help when, from behind her, a chill rushed past — and a cold, hard hand appeared from nowhere, clamping over her mouth. Before she could manifest, she was seized by a force that was not human in nature and dragged rapidly away.

“Have you lost your mind?” Gu Wuming, blazing with fury, threw his sister to the ground and jabbed a finger at her. “Do you think you’ve lived long enough? You’ve been mixed up with that thing? Do you know what it is?”

Gu Qiqi pressed her lips together and said nothing. She had never seen Gu Wuming lose his temper with her this badly.

“You — I leave for just a moment and you run away from home, and then you get yourself tangled up with this?” Gu Wuming was on the verge of throttling her.

“He — he’s not a bad person!” Gu Qiqi finally spoke, quietly pushing back.

“Nonsense!” Gu Wuming grabbed his sister’s shoulder and hauled her up from the ground, voice thundering: “Do you know what that A’sheng is? He is the Soul Stone — a demon imprisoned in the underworld, raised on Medusa’s blood!”

“Soul Stone?” Gu Qiqi swayed slightly. “What… what is a Soul Stone?”

“In the time of the divine war, a creature called Medusa arose in Greece — surely you know this one: the monster with a human face and a head full of serpents — any living creature that met her gaze was instantly turned to stone. Later, when Medusa’s head was severed, her blood fell on a pure white strange rock. Over millennia, this rock developed a spirit, took on human form, and inherited the powers of Medusa’s demon nature — beginning to wander the world and kill many innocent living beings. People called it the Soul Stone. A thousand years ago, this creature drifted to China, and was subdued by the Ghost King Zhong Kui, who stripped it of its human form and took it back to the underworld, sealing it beside the River of Oblivion for all eternity, never to enter the human world again.” Gu Wuming’s agitation grew as he spoke. “And then, not long ago, the underworld guard assigned to watch over the Soul Stone got drunk and neglected his post. Compounded by the passage of time — the binding talisman Zhong Kui had placed on the Soul Stone had gradually weakened — and in the guard’s carelessness, the talisman was dislodged. The demon escaped the underworld. It took human shape and hid among ordinary people, waiting for fools like you to stumble into it, so it could turn you to stone!”

“Who… who told you this?” Gu Qiqi’s tone held no trace of the fear one might expect upon learning the “truth” — instead it was full of doubt directed squarely at her brother.

“I arrived in Wangchuan three days ago. The first thing I did was thoroughly investigate everyone around you. You know — with my abilities, there is no information I cannot find. And sure enough, I discovered that the goldfish-selling boy was a stone demon who kills without blinking!” Gu Wuming exhaled heavily. “Qiqi — I must eliminate any danger that could threaten my only remaining family. The people of the underworld are already looking for him. I believe within two days, this demon will receive its due punishment.”

Gu Qiqi went silent. She bowed her head, still as a stone caught under Medusa’s gaze. Gu Wuming thought his sister had been frightened, or was regretting her own rashness. He patted her head, drew from her backpack the Mirror of Narcissus, unfolded it, then took paper and pen, and asked: “What did he say his English name was?”

“Live…” Gu Qiqi answered.

Gu Wuming wrote the word on the paper: “Come and look at this — look in the mirror.”

Gu Qiqi walked slowly over and looked into the mirror. The paper reflected there — originally reading “Live” — appeared in the mirror as something else, unmistakable: Evil. Evil: demon.

“You see — this creature can’t even choose a name without playing tricks. Clearly a demon that kills and destroys, yet insists on taking a name brimming with life. Quite the irony.” Gu Wuming crumpled the paper into a ball. “Qiqi — come home. Professor Xiao is about to hand him over to a research group—”

“The day after tomorrow, Professor Xiao will hand him over to a research group—” Gu Qiqi blurted out something entirely out of nowhere, as though she had entirely forgotten all the shocking things she had just heard. She grabbed Gu Wuming’s hand. “I — I can’t let Professor Xiao hand A’sheng over!” And then she turned and ran.

“Are you out of your mind?” Gu Wuming seized her tight. “Whatever Professor Xiao does, whatever the underworld people do — that’s their business, nothing to do with you! If you dare have any further contact with that thing, I will break your legs!” Before the words were even out, Gu Wuming reached into empty space and withdrew a chain that gleamed with a dark, muted light — with a click it locked around his sister’s right wrist, the other end locking around his own. He said with fury: “You’re not going anywhere! First thing tomorrow morning we leave Wangchuan. Now get to your room and sleep!”

“Brother! You—!” Gu Qiqi pulled hard at the chain on her wrist, crying and shouting: “Let me go! Let me go! I don’t want to sleep — I want to go find A’sheng! He’s not what you say — he’s not!”

Gu Wuming paid his sister no attention whatsoever. He lay down on the sofa, jammed a cushion over his head, turned his back, and was snoring within moments.

Gu Qiqi, exhausted from struggling without result, sank beneath the window and looked at the dim, uncertain night beyond. A’sheng’s face flickered in and out of sight in the air before her — that strange boy who always loved to mock her, who sold goldfish — their easy conversations beneath so many night skies, the laughter that rose from the deepest places within each of them, coming and going before her like the tide… and she suddenly stopped all struggling with the chain.

In the first light of dawn, Gu Wuming woke languidly. By instinct he gave the chain a tug — and heard only a hollow rattling clatter. The other end of the chain was empty, and of Gu Qiqi there was not a shadow.

This chain was made from the most durable rock-iron in the demon world. Without his key, no one could open it. Gu Qiqi certainly could not. He leapt up, ran to this side of the window and looked: beside the empty chain lay a severed hand. White bone, illuminated by the sunlight to transparency and clarity.

“She’s lost her mind — this girl has absolutely lost her mind!” Gu Wuming flung the chain aside and, as though he too had lost his mind, leapt from the window.

When I stood at the peak of Yingyue Mountain, that dull yellow moon hung at the horizon like a broken washbasin. In the surrounding forest, miasma-like fog surged in dark currents. A’tou that fox spirit clearly hadn’t fully recovered yet — Yingyue Mountain still hadn’t returned to its fresh and clear state.

The clearing in the forest before me — once lush and flourishing with wildflowers and wild grass — was now strewn and toppled in every direction, as though struck by something blazing. In some places, the ground was simply bare as a bald head, dark gray earth overturned from below, a grievous sight.

Not far from me at the edge of the tree line, one-handed Gu Qiqi was supporting A’sheng — pale-faced and without strength — with one arm. A talisman of black background and red text, radiating a flame-like brilliance in the moonlight, was pressed firmly against A’sheng’s chest, planted as though growing out of him. The two of them sat leaning against an old tree, watching everything before them with alert eyes.

“Auntie Shaluo!!” Zhong Xiaokui burst out from beside Chi Feng, his face a picture of misery. He darted to my side like a man seeing his savior, grabbed me with both hands, and said rapidly: “How are you here? Thank goodness, thank goodness! I don’t want to kill anyone — I really don’t! That person — no matter how I look at him, he doesn’t seem like a bad person at all.”

“Stop making noise!” I gestured for this young man not to say another word. “Your auntie knows what to do.”

“Tree spirit — this is the underworld’s internal matter. You would do best not to interfere.” Chi Feng looked at me coldly, then glanced at the skeleton Gu Wuming beside me. “And you — take your sister and go. We will not pursue the matter of her using demon power to conjure a fog and throw off our tracking earlier. But if you continue to delay our work, do not blame us for being impolite.”

“My, my — this is quite the turn-out. Two of the ten Kings of Hell, no less!” I gave a light laugh and clucked my tongue. “But even killing someone requires a reason, doesn’t it? Even though it is a Soul Stone, you and I both know that from the moment it left the underworld, it became a truly flesh-and-blood human being. Regardless of its origins — as long as it is presently a person, you cannot simply decide whether it lives or dies. And besides — Zhong Xiaokui is still a minor. Rather than teaching him something good, you’re teaching him to kill?”

“Great Tree Spirit — this is the King’s command. We must bring the Soul Stone back to the underworld, back to where it belongs.” Mo Song was more courteous than Chi Feng, and gave me a slight bow. “As you yourself said — once the Soul Stone enters the human world, it becomes a true being of flesh and blood, and none but the descendants of Ghost King Zhong Kui can kill the Soul Stone’s mortal body and return it to its original form to be brought back to the underworld. For the safety of the human world, sealing the Soul Stone back in the River of Oblivion is Zhong Xiaokui’s responsibility as Ghost King. We hope you will not obstruct us. If you do, even you would find it difficult to account to the King.”

In truth, Mo Song was not entirely without reason. A’sheng was, after all, a “dangerous entity” who could kill with a look — I had limited understanding of him. Add to that the fact that I had no real connection with Gu Wuming — did I truly need to stand against the formidable King of Hell for his sister’s sake, and for A’sheng’s?

I was, at the end of the day, a businesswoman. Some calculations needed to be made.

“Hey… you’re not going to…” Gu Wuming had apparently read a bad sign in my silence and grabbed my arm. “You promised me! You—”

“Go with your brother… you’ve come this far with me. It’s enough.” Over there, A’sheng’s pale lips parted as he spoke to Gu Qiqi — who had been shielding him the whole time. Though Zhong Xiaokui’s banishing talisman wouldn’t kill him outright, it was slowly draining his vital energy, bringing wretched pain.

“You’re not a demon — you shouldn’t be treated this way!” Gu Qiqi shouted at everyone present with a fury rare for her. “This is unjust!”

“Idiot — they’re not wrong.” A’sheng pulled down her swinging fists. “It’s true that, long ago, many people were turned to stone because of my gaze. My existence has always been defined as demonic and destructive. Old Zhong Kui pointed his sword at my head and asked me why I had taken the lives of so many people. I said — I only wanted to look at them. Look at their faces, their expressions, everything about human beings — all the things I could never see on that barren, uninhabited cliff face in Greece. It was so interesting. I liked the girl who sang from the top of the tallest haystack in the village. I couldn’t help gathering flowers and bringing them to her — and forgot that I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t deal with this world as I pleased. Even looking at someone I cared for…”

At that moment, a thought came to me: with Zhong Kui’s straightforwardly righteous and uncompromising nature — if this Soul Stone had truly been utterly irredeemable, he could simply have used his demon-slaying Zhong Kui sword to reduce it to ash. Why merely strip it of its mortal form and confine it in the underworld?

“You…” Gu Qiqi lowered her head and held him tighter.

“From the very first time you appeared before me, I knew you weren’t human — that you were a bone demon.” He looked at her and smiled. “Actually, these specially made glasses block my field of vision — your original guess wasn’t wrong. I’m more or less blind. But I can identify what kind of demon someone is by their scent — I can even tell from scent what you’re wearing. From your speech, I piece together images of you in my mind. I can also do household tasks and the like just like an ordinary person — which is quite good enough. If I had learned to live in this way with the world from the start, I would never have caused such serious consequences.”

“You knew from the very beginning that I was a skeleton without any flesh?” Gu Qiqi’s heart gave a lurch.

“Yes.” He struggled to maintain a teasing smile. “A pale, bare, flesh-free, ugly skeleton girl.” He paused. “But I liked talking with you. Since you minded so much having your true face known to me, I simply pretended I didn’t know. That way, maybe you’d stay with me a little longer. Heh.”

“You even knew I was a bone demon… then… then Professor Xiao…” Gu Qiqi thought of Professor Xiao — the man who had lived so closely alongside him, and who had ultimately chosen to betray him.

“When I first left the underworld and became human, I was very weak. He found me in the mountains and brought me home, and took care of me. He noticed the peculiarities in me. He’s not a bad person — only one who wants too many things he cannot have.” He bowed his head and let out a long sigh. “Actually… I was planning to let him have his way.”

“You knew he was going to hand you over to a research group for experiments — you knew he wanted to use you for fame and profit — and you were still going to let him?” Gu Qiqi’s voice shot up.

He curved the corner of his mouth: “I needed a reason to keep existing, even if it meant being used.” He patted Gu Qiqi’s cold cheek. “I wanted to be Live, not Evil — that was a rather foolish hope. But I genuinely held it. Only — I still failed. Those three troublemakers: it was I who killed them. That is a debt I should bear.” He paused. “All right. Go with your brother. Leave.”

“I’m not leaving! As long as I’m here, no one can take you!” Gu Qiqi held him stubbornly tight. “You’re the only person who has known my true identity and still chosen to be my friend.”

“Uncle Chi Feng…” Zhong Xiaokui sidled up to the two men, shuffling his feet. “Let it go — can’t we pretend we never saw them? That stone creature is wearing his glasses, isn’t he? He can’t hurt people so easily…

“Zhong Xiaokui, what nonsense are you spouting?!” Chi Feng’s face was a miniature version of an Antarctic glacier, shrunken with cold fury. “A demon like this — who can guarantee he won’t take lives again in the future? You are a descendant of the Zhong family — exorcising evil and protecting the human world is your family’s sacred teaching. You—”

As he spoke, a deep rumbling came from beneath the earth. A moment later, that round, winter-melon-plump white-bearded old ground-wanderer bored up from the ground, spitting out mouthfuls of soil while waving a scroll in his short arms.

“Two great Kings, please stay your hands! This old one has come today representing all the demons of Wangchuan and the surrounding hundred miles to plead for A’sheng — look, these are the signatures of all the demons — we are all A’sheng’s customers. Though he is called the demon Soul Stone, in every day we have known him, everything he has done for us is something we will be grateful for for ten thousand years!” The old man practically rolled to Chi Feng’s feet, unrolling the scroll — covered from end to end in the strange-shaped signatures of countless demons. “The goldfish he sold us were no ordinary fish — they were dream fish from the River of Oblivion, which he brought out of the underworld. Place these fish beside one’s pillow, and while we sleep we can see those dear ones we can never see again. The dream is so vivid and real — one fish, one dream. I, Old White, have been parted from my wife by death for many years, and only thanks to A’sheng have I been able to resume our bond in those dreams. For me, that is no dream — it is the happiness I had lost for so many years.”

Old White went down on his knees with a thump and knocked his head to the ground. “We have heard that the great Kings come on the underworld King’s orders to capture A’sheng. We beseech both of you, in light of A’sheng’s having already chosen good over evil, to give him a chance to live!”

Gu Qiqi finally understood why he sold only goldfish.

“Heh heh — when I was in the River of Oblivion I was rather bored. Spent my time playing with the fish in the river, came to learn how to raise dream fish, so I thought…”

“Don’t say any more.” Gu Qiqi gently covered his mouth. “Everything you’ve done — it was all to give yourself a reason to go on existing. As someone who doesn’t harm others, who can even help others — a person utterly unrelated to demons and destruction. You are Live, not Evil. I know.”

A’sheng smiled with relief, and without warning pushed her away: “Go on now. Thank you. You still owe me a wish — and I’m calling it in right now. I want you to leave with your brother!”

“Look at this…” Mo Song walked to Chi Feng’s side, his tone seeming to soften somewhat.

“It cannot be! The Soul Stone must be sealed back in the underworld — that is the King’s command!” Chi Feng said flatly. “You are a King of the Ten Courts yourself — has your judgment left you?”

“Uncle Chi Feng — you really are completely lacking in human feeling!” Zhong Xiaokui huffed with dissatisfaction, murmuring something under his breath. He flicked a finger — and the talisman pressed against A’sheng’s chest flew back to him. He tossed it aside, then sat down flat on the ground with a thump. “Anyway — I’m not doing anything else. Go handle it yourself if you want him.”

“You—!” Chi Feng’s face had gone green with fury.

“I’m not leaving.” Gu Qiqi said with firm resolve to A’sheng, then immediately knelt on the ground and shouted toward Gu Wuming: “Brother — you’ve lost our bet. A’sheng knows what I look like and still chose to be my friend. You must honor your word and let me make my own decisions about my life.”

“You foolish girl, you—” Gu Wuming was frantic and started running toward Gu Qiqi without restraint.

At this moment, I thought — the calculation was more or less complete. I quietly pulled a hair from my head, placed it in my palm, blew a breath into it, and murmured: “Go.”

In an instant, countless emerald beams — green as jade — erupted from the earth, forming a ring that encircled the place where Gu Qiqi and A’sheng sat. The brilliant light was so intense that almost everyone present was forced to shut their eyes.

Inside the tornado-like current of air, the light continued to spread, and in the blink of an eye it had surrounded the entirety of Yingyue Mountain. Accompanied by a tremendous boom, every beam of light vanished in a single instant — as though it had never appeared. When everyone opened their eyes again, they found themselves already at the foot of the mountain. There was no trace of Gu Qiqi or A’sheng.

Chi Feng lowered the arm he had raised to shield his eyes and berated me: “What exactly have you done?”

I dusted off my hands and smiled pleasantly. “When I first took human form, I used one hair and one breath of my true Qi to keep a lakeside embankment stable for a hundred years without flooding. My hair and my Qi are the most solid seal in this world. Even then, when my cultivation was still shallow, I could steady an entire lake. Now, with a thousand years of cultivation behind me, placing a seal on Yingyue Mountain to prevent anyone who should not enter from entering — a trivial matter. Chi Feng, Mo Song — from this moment on, none of you from the underworld can set foot in Yingyue Mountain again. Not even your King.”

Chi Feng’s expression shifted. He stepped forward in disbelief — and was immediately repelled by something resembling an invisible electrified grid, tumbling to the ground in an undignified heap. No matter what technique he deployed afterward, he could not break through the unseen barrier.

“All right — don’t waste your energy. As long as I’m alive, this seal cannot be broken.” I gloated at him shamelessly.

“You — I — ” Chi Feng’s face was nearly as red as his hair.

“All right then — I’ll explain the situation to the King. This is not a failing on your part.” I patted both Chi Feng and Mo Song on the shoulder, yawned, and prepared to leave.

As I turned to go, Zhong Xiaokui ran up and winked at me with a sly smile: “Auntie Shaluo — COOL!”

“Hey — didn’t we agree that when there are outsiders present, you call me big sister, not auntie?!” I shot the young man a look.

“Won’t happen again!” Zhong Xiaokui stuck out his tongue.

“You!” I flicked my finger against his forehead and laughed. “You and your birth aunt are quite alike — in the future, you will certainly become just as remarkable a person as she was.”

“What? My birth aunt? And remarkable?” Zhong Xiaokui was thoroughly confused.

“Because you both carry goodness in your hearts. For the people of the Zhong family, this is something of considerable importance.” I smiled at him, paid no attention to the mass of question marks on his face, and turned to leave.

Yes — I am well acquainted with the descendants of that old ghost Zhong Kui. Zhong Xiaokui’s parents, his aunt, his grandparents and even great-grandparents — I know them all. But to speak of the Zhong family’s story would be another very long tale in its own right. Too tired today — I’m too lazy to recall it all. Perhaps another time, when the occasion arises, I’ll talk about that whole family.

I walked quickly, but Gu Wuming still caught up and grabbed me without letting go.

“You’re leaving just like that? What about my sister and them?” He pressed.

“They’re on Yingyue Mountain — within my seal, quite safe.” I shook his hand off. The sensation of cold bone was not to my liking. “And — you certainly know how to call in reinforcements. Your sister and the others were trapped on the mountain, and rather than find anyone else, you came straight to me — putting me to all this trouble…”

“The person I’d heard of — and could find the fastest — who was most capable of helping us: only you.” Gu Wuming said with lingering unease. “A good thing I did. A good thing I’d heard of your deed helping the water god Zi Miao shore up the broken lake. Do you know — that one breath of your Qi and one strand of your hair, and that broken lake still hasn’t suffered a flood to this day?”

“All right, all right — stop bringing up those old stories.” I cut him off impatiently.

“Fine, but — even though your seal means the underworld can do nothing to them, isn’t this just a different kind of captivity for them? Trading freedom for safety — that doesn’t seem right either.” He stepped in front of me before I could leave.

I stopped, looked up at him with a touch of mockery, and said: “Now you understand the importance of freedom?”

“I always have!”

“No, you don’t.” I said without softening it. “True freedom is not about how much space you have to move in — it’s about how much of your heart can be understood by another. Those who are not understood — even if they stood in the boundless cosmos, they would feel they could not take a single step. Those who are understood — even in the narrowest space, their heart has its own vast sea and open sky.”

Gu Wuming said nothing. One could see plainly that he was at a loss.

“Never mind — a big dense creature like you wouldn’t understand this.” I shook my head. “In any case, your sister and A’sheng are both fine right now. I know you love your sister, but stop trying to direct her life. Do what you’re meant to do. That’s that — and another thing: don’t just walk into my shop without notice. I’m afraid you’ll frighten my customers.”

“But I haven’t lost the bet! That stone creature isn’t even a person!” He called out despondently behind me.

“Actually — whether something is a person or not isn’t determined by a layer of skin. It’s determined by this.” I pointed to my own heart.

And with that, I stepped onto a cloud and sped swiftly back toward the city. A full day away from the shop — I had no idea what chaos Fatty and Skinny had managed to get into.

I thought — after A’sheng’s wounds heal a little, I’ll open the seal and let him and Gu Qiqi decide their own direction. Or perhaps I should keep them sealed on the mountain a bit longer, until I’ve negotiated with the King of Hell about a final arrangement for A’sheng?

Or then again — is there some way to break the power of A’sheng’s eyes? There should be. Simply wanting to look at someone you care for, and yet killing them in the doing of it — that kind of fate should not exist in this world, harmonious as we’d like it to be.

Whatever the case — I meddled in other people’s business again today. And in such sweltering heat, instead of staying in the shop eating watermelon, I rushed around for an entire day and wasted a breath of my true Qi on top of it all. A losing proposition. Something to seriously reflect on when I’m back.

The moon was much brighter than it had been earlier — hanging full and round nearby, close enough almost to touch. I drifted at my ease through the air; Yingyue Mountain fell further and further behind me. Tonight, that mountain should belong to two others — not right, one of them is a girl who appears as a skeleton, the other is a male stone that now inhabits a human body. Perhaps they could never truly see each other in the conventional sense. But — does that really matter?

Mm. This summer night is, all things considered, not too bad.