Master?
In the past, whenever Su Li was too lazy to do things himself, he occasionally created a few ghost servants to use. But in fact, most underworld spirits could not develop intelligence. It was already quite remarkable if they could follow his orders and carry out tasks for him. He never expected them to observe the proper etiquette of their positions in conversation, too.
Besides, he usually treated these ghost servants as disposable. He summoned them whenever he needed them and never kept permanent servants.
So this was strange. Who was so eager to acknowledge him as their master first thing in the morning?
Su Li lay on the wasteland, his eyes open. He looked at the boy before him, then at the sky, whose color was growing lighter. His mind wandered through all sorts of unrelated thoughts as he gradually recovered his senses.
After a moment, he raised his hand and touched his chest, then his abdomen.
The wounds in both places had already healed. Only the large patches of dried, stiff blood on his clothes proved that he had once suffered two serious injuries there.
Su Li pressed his lips together and took a breath to steady himself before raising his gaze again to meet the boy’s golden-yellow eyes.
Seeing those unusual eyes, Su Li seemed to suddenly realize something. He raised a hand, grabbed the boy’s long black hair, and gave it a hard tug downward.
The boy was caught off guard, and his head was pulled to one side, but he didn’t cry out in pain. He merely bared his teeth instinctively, even letting out a little hiss.
“…You’re a pet cat?”
Judging by his reaction, Su Li lowered his hand and looked the boy up and down.
He saw the boy nod seriously.
“Yes, Master. I’m Shoumo. Don’t you recognize me anymore?”
“You suddenly turned into this appearance. Who would recognize you?”
Su Li sneered, paused, then added:
“You’ve transformed into a spirit. At least you have some comprehension and good fortune.”
“…I don’t know why I turned into this appearance either.”
Seeing that Su Li intended to get up, Shoumo hurriedly went over to help him. He supported Su Li as he sat up, then humbly asked for guidance:
“Master, why have I turned into a form like yours?”
“Like mine?” Su Li strongly disagreed with those words.
“No, we’re not the same. I’m human, and you’re a demon. Demons take on human forms, but in the end, they’re still different from humans.”
The spirit master lineage founded by his master was divided into three branches, each inherited by one of his three direct disciples. Su Li had inherited the Nether Path, which dealt with ghosts. The branch that dealt with demons was called the Spirit Path, and it belonged to his second senior brother, Bashengzhou, who was rarely seen.
The three branches did not share the same teachings, and they dealt with different things. Each field was like a mountain of its own. Su Li didn’t understand matters concerning demons. He only heard his master briefly explain some of them when he followed him on various training journeys.
He only knew that underworld spirits became ghosts when the resentment of the dead transformed into spirits, while demons are a result of other living beings besides humans attaining enlightenment and transformed into spirits.
Earlier, he used the Fusang Divine Bells to briefly gather Qi Boming’s lingering thoughts and aura. It looked easy, but only he himself knew how much effort and painstaking work he had put into accomplishing it. Last night, every streak of the Milky Way that had fallen here, every point of light Qi Changying had seen, had been formed by him wrapping his own spiritual energy around the aura of the soul.
Shoumo had most likely been affected by this soul-condensing process and gained an opportunity to attain enlightenment. Later, when he cut himself, Shoumo was also splashed with his blood. Just like that, in a single night, this cat successively experienced two entirely different spiritual forces: gentleness and madness. Through this accidental, muddled series of coincidences, he attained enlightenment and transformed into a demon. Such an enormous opportunity, one that other people could beg for and never obtain, had simply landed on his head.
“Congratulations. You’ve become a demon. From now on, you’ll have an almost infinitely long lifespan, and you should also develop powerful innate abilities. Now that you’re a demon, you can no longer live in the same world as humans. I remember that your kind is supposed to live in another layer of the world, but I don’t know exactly how to enter it. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”
Humans and ghosts followed different paths, and humans and demons naturally did as well. When Shoumo was a cat, he was his cat. Now that he had become a demon, he shouldn’t keep him confined at his side anymore.
It wasn’t really a matter of whether he should or shouldn’t. Whatever Qiyueban did was justified. But he wasn’t an exorcist, and he didn’t know how to control demons. Keeping such a thing by his side would be troublesome. If Shoumo had died and become a ghost, he could have reluctantly tried to keep him.
“Does Master not want me anymore?”
Shoumo rubbed against Su Li’s side. He had absolutely no awareness of his new shape and size, still thinking of himself as a little cat as he repeatedly rubbed his head against Su Li.
“What would I want you for?” Su Li didn’t quite understand.
“Now that I’ve become this way, I can do many more things. I can serve Master tea and water, help Master make the bed and fold clothes, and deliver messages and letters. Master, you picked me up and kept me by your side back then, so I must follow Master for the rest of my life.”
“…”
Su Li raised an eyebrow slightly.
Why did this cat think that way?
Su Li considered himself to have never treated him particularly well.
Besides, this cat didn’t look particularly loyal. On New Year’s Eve last year, hadn’t he turned over and exposed his belly to Shen Huarong while he was away, making him furious?
“No need. Having a human-shaped thing around is troublesome.” Su Li continued to refuse.
He disliked dealing with all human-shaped creatures and wasn’t good at it either.
The exception of Qi Changying, along with all the people connected to him, had already given him enough headaches. They always brought him unnecessary troubles and pain, and Su Li disliked that feeling.
He refused to add anyone else to his life.
“I won’t cause Master any trouble! I’ll help ease Master’s burdens. Please don’t drive me away.”
Shoumo seemed very afraid that Su Li would abandon him here, and wished he could press his entire body against Su Li.
This made Su Li’s already bad mood even more irritable.
“Get lost! There really are demons like you in this world, eagerly rushing to become someone’s servant! Your life is so cheap!”
“Because Shoumo is Master’s pet cat.”
As he spoke, Shoumo suddenly remembered something he had once heard from Qi Changying, so he repeated it to Su Li exactly as he had heard it.
“Shoumo loves Master.”
“?”
Su Li couldn’t stand hearing such things.
“…Get lost.”
When he spoke again, his tone was no longer as fierce as before.
He awkwardly gave Shoumo a shove, then looked toward the distant low hill, where the first warm-colored rays of dawn were beginning to appear.
He narrowed his eyes, took a breath, and silently got to his feet.
He had been lying in the cold wind for too long. His body was stiff from the cold, and his legs and feet were somewhat numb.
Su Li took a moment to recover before finally finding the direction of the main camp. He staggered back toward it.
“Does this mean Master is willing to keep me?”
“…”
“If Master doesn’t say anything, Shoumo will take it as a yes.”
‘What kind of thing were you? Who gave you permission to make that decision?’
Su Li raised an eyebrow slightly, thoroughly displeased.
He was just about to say something when Shoumo spoke again.
“Master has been asleep for an entire day. I was so worried! If you still didn’t wake up, I really was going to…”
“…What did you say?”
Su Li suddenly stopped walking.
He frowned at Shoumo, leaving the latter somewhat bewildered.
“W-what?”
“How long was I asleep?”
“An entire day.”
“…”
Su Li lowered his eyelashes slightly.
He originally thought that he had only closed his eyes for one night. Who would have thought that an entire day had passed?
That meant…
The bells he rang to condense the soul and the blood he had shed to investigate the fate had all happened the day before yesterday?
“Is Qi Changying setting off for the capital today?” Su Li asked.
Shoumo thought for a moment and nodded. “Mm!”
Then he asked:
“Does Master want to see him off?”
“Who has that kind of free time? What’s the point of seeing him off for? There’s such a huge mess here in the northwest. It’s not as if he won’t come back.”
Although he said that, when he started walking again, his steps grew longer and faster.
He went from walking slowly to walking briskly, and in the end, he was practically running.
The ground beneath his feet was uneven, with occasional rocks and clumps of earth jutting out. Su Li wasn’t paying attention and struck his toe against one of them. He instantly lost his balance and fell heavily forward onto the ground.
“Master!” Shoumo came over to help him, but Su Li shook off his hand.
His palm was scraped, but Su Li didn’t care.
He got back up without even having time to brush the dust off himself and continued running forward.
The slightly damp morning breeze struck his face. He drew it into his throat, making it feel cold and sore.
The journey from the northwest to the capital, and then from the capital back to the northwest, was a very long one. It would take a great deal of time.
This Qi Changying didn’t even say goodbye or give a heads-up before leaving. What terrible manners! All the effort he had put into helping him had been wasted on an ungrateful dog.
Even taking a step back, suppose he wasn’t in his own tent and Qi Changying couldn’t find him in the camp. Couldn’t he have looked outside?
He had been missing for an entire day and night, lying alone in the wilderness for so long. Even if the place was far away and remote, a secluded spot he had carefully searched for, one where even passersby would have difficulty noticing him, couldn’t Qi Changying have made a proper effort and spent some time looking for him?
He hated Qi Changying.
This person was truly, very annoying.
“Master!”
Shoumo called out beside him.
Su Li found it irritating. He was just about to tell him to shut up when a dark shadow suddenly entered the corner of his vision.
A black cat larger than a horse was running beside him. As it moved, strands of ink-colored smoke drifted from its fur in the wind.
“Master, climb onto my back! I’ll take you there!”
As he spoke, the black cat leaped forward and crouched down on its knees in front of Su Li.
Su Li immediately jumped onto its back and grabbed its fur tightly, leaping through the wind with him.
With a demon cat as his mount, the road from the barren hills to the main camp no longer seemed so far.
But, unfortunately, they still failed to make it in time.
Shen Huarong and the other soldiers who had come to see them off were gathered outside the main camp. When they saw a black shadow flash past them, they initially thought Su Li was riding an exceptionally large black horse. Who would have thought that, upon looking more closely, they would discover it was actually a black cat larger than a bear?
Everyone’s eyes widened, and they stared at one another in dismay, unable to figure out what new evil thing this child, who possessed strange abilities and could split mountains, sever seas, and kill people like flies, had come up with.
Su Li had no time to pay attention to the frightened faces around him.
The group returning to the capital had already set off and was traveling far ahead, looking like a long, red river.
“Don’t chase them anymore. Stop when we reach that low hill.”
Hearing this, Shoumo immediately changed direction and headed for the top of the nearby low hill, as Su Li had instructed. He took up a high vantage point from which the entire distant procession could be seen.
At the very front of the procession was Qi Changying, dressed in red robes and silver armor, on a white horse. Behind him was Qi Boming’s coffin, carried by dozens of people working together. Behind them were the elite soldiers of the Qi army accompanying the procession.
After Su Li and Shoumo stopped on the mountaintop, Qi Changying, who was riding at the front of the procession, seemed to sense something and turned his head in their direction.
Su Li was slightly taken aback.
He soon confirmed that he hadn’t imagined it.
Because in the next moment, Qi Changying waved in his direction again.
“The young general has seen us. Should we still chase after them, Master? I can catch up,” Shoumo asked.
“…No need to chase them.”
Su Li stared at the figure at the front of the procession for a long time before finally lowering his eyes and jumping off Shoumo’s back.
“Let’s go back.”
What was the point of chasing after him? Even if he caught up, he wouldn’t have anything to say.
Seeing someone off was the most meaningless thing. It’s not like the person was never coming back. Chasing after him like this made it seem as though he couldn’t bear to part with Qi Changying.
In reality, he wished that annoying person would hurry up and leave, preferably never to return.
That way, he wouldn’t be wandering around in front of others all day, irritating people.
Su Li looked back one last time in the direction the procession had gone.
They were getting farther and farther away, their figures growing smaller and smaller, like rows of little red beans rolling over one rise after another on a sand table.
After a moment, Su Li withdrew his gaze.
He turned around and walked in the completely opposite direction.
Qi Changying was escorting Qi Boming’s coffin back to the capital. The round trip would take at least three months. If anything else delayed him along the way, it would be four months at the very least.
During those four months, nothing particularly unusual happened in the military camp.
Su Li still spent every day in his tent. Apart from researching new curses, he tried to find a way to unravel the mystery behind the Qi family’s declining fortune. But investigating it was like walking into a dead end. There was nowhere to begin. He couldn’t even find a correct direction, let alone a result.
He had considered going back to ask his master, but he knew his master would never allow him to interfere in this matter without permission. After all, anything involving fortune and fate could affect one’s own destiny, even if one was merely setting things right. It would bring unnecessary karmic consequences that were difficult to predict.
If that old man became stubborn again and locked him up, refusing to let him leave the mountain, it would be a loss for him.
So he could only put the idea aside and continue pondering the matter behind closed doors.
Most people in the military camp learned of Shoumo’s existence. They were generally afraid of the “demon,” whose appearance was clearly different from that of an ordinary human. Once they learned that he had transformed from the black cat at Su Li’s side, they became even more apprehensive. They seemed to fear that one day Su Li might casually wave his hand and turn the warhorses, cattle, and sheep in the camp into these neither-human-nor-ghost creatures as well. They even went out of their way to avoid walking near him.
Only Shen Huarong wasn’t afraid. In fact, he found Shoumo fascinating and came to play with him every day, asking this and that, which was extremely annoying.
In the second month after Qi Changying left, a letter arrived from the capital.
That day, Shen Huarong came to find Su Li early in the morning. He mysteriously told him that he had something good to show him, something he was absolutely certain Su Li would be interested in.
Su Li had actually calculated that there would be news about Qi Changying today, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to him.
To be fair, he did want to hear what boring things Qi Changying, that boring person, had been doing lately, and whether he had gone somewhere else to deliver salvation to all living beings. But he disliked Shen Huarong’s habit of keeping people in suspense and didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. So he maintained a straight face and kept saying that he wasn’t interested and didn’t want to hear it.
Shen Huarong pestered him for a long time but seeing that Su Li wasn’t cooperating at all, he finally admitted defeat. In the end, he decided to be generous and share the news himself instead of holding a grudge against a child.
“The letter came from the capital, and it’s good news. Qi Changying has already arrived in the capital. His Majesty posthumously bestowed a noble title on Uncle Qi and gave him a grand burial. He also honored Uncle Qi’s final wish by handing the Commander-in-chief’s seal to Qi Changying and allowing him to lead the troops into battle. So when Ah Ying comes back, he won’t be the young general anymore. Both you and I will have to respectfully address him as ‘Commander-in-chief.’”
“What an act.” Su Li sneered, then asked, seemingly casually:
“When will he return?”
“They say he won’t be back until the end of July.”
“…”
Su Li silently calculated the dates without saying anything. Only the corners of his mouth drooped a little farther, making him look somewhat unhappy.
Shen Huarong didn’t notice this slight change in him. Instead, he rubbed his hands together excitedly and said:
“Besides that, I have another interesting bit of gossip. Do you want to hear it?”
“What?” Su Li frowned.
“First, tell me whether you want to hear it!” Shen Huarong truly couldn’t bear not to keep people in suspense.
Su Li wasn’t about to indulge him.
“If you want to say it, then say it. If not, get lost.”
“Hey, hey, all right, all right. Nothing has been decided yet, and it’s about Qi Changying’s private affairs, so I can’t tell other people. But keeping it to myself is no fun either… Anyway, I heard that…”
Although there was no one else present, Shen Huarong still went through the motions of looking left and right. Then he snapped open his folding fan, covered his mouth and nose with it, and whispered to Su Li:
“I heard that Ah Ying’s aunt is arranging a betrothal for him!”
“?”
