Every number in his phone’s contacts had been dialed, even the emergency hotline. But all Ye Yang heard in response was a busy signal.
Not a single call went through. The compass app on his phone kept spinning erratically. He didn’t know any magic or spells. Ye Yang stood there for a moment, clenched his fists, and tried to muster his spirits.
There was no other choice now. He’d have to start by exploring. He tried to stay optimistic, thinking: maybe just as he had wandered into this place, he could wander right back out.
Navigation didn’t work in the demon realm, but non-humans had their own methods. A type of black tree called the Mi Gu could be worn to prevent getting lost. As soon as he entered the demon realm, Little Thirteen had tied a small piece of Mi Gu around Ye Yang’s wrist. So Ye Yang had never doubted he’d find his way back.
He wanted to return to his previous spot, so he turned around and walked back. But before long, he realized he had ended up right where he started.
Now he could no longer fool himself. He had truly arrived in a very strange place!
There were no lights. The night was dim. After working hard to calm down, Ye Yang looked closely and noticed an inconspicuous path in the woods, the kind worn down by many footsteps. He decided to follow it.
No matter what, things couldn’t get much worse. Little Thirteen and the others were still waiting for him.
With that thought, Ye Yang quickened his pace.
But soon, he returned to the starting point again, only then realizing he had unconsciously strayed from the path.
Ye Yang was at a loss and growing more afraid. But standing still wouldn’t help. After a moment’s thought, he walked forward once more. This time, he stayed intensely focused, watching his footing very carefully. He found it incredibly difficult to stay exactly on the path—the moment he let his attention slip, his foot would step off. It was bizarre!
He struggled on like this for about four or five hundred meters until suddenly he noticed a figure up ahead.
Ye Yang’s heart tightened. He immediately softened his steps and approached cautiously.
Just as he was about fifteen meters away, the figure turned around. “Who’s there?”
Startled, Ye Yang stepped on a dry branch, instantly giving away his position.
The figure let out a laugh—very pleasant to the ear. The voice that followed was the kind that made people feel instinctively close. “Oh, it’s just a little creature. Hey, what are you doing here?”
Maybe this person isn’t bad?
Ye Yang peeked out from behind a tree trunk and saw that this being—whether human or demon—had an utterly ordinary face, like a plain-looking human male of average height. His clothes were a mix of old and new, unmistakably the style of Luoyang City: a white T-shirt under a gray-blue round-collared robe, with only one sleeve put on.
Suddenly, Ye Yang’s eyes lit up. He noticed a work pass hanging from the man’s wrist—a YCG pass!
It didn’t look exactly like his own, but that was normal. YCG had many types of passes.
Ye Yang immediately relaxed, as if he had found family. He ran up to the man and poured out the whole story of his predicament.
“Oh?” The man raised an eyebrow and smiled again. “So you’re a little lost thing. Come on, I’ll take you out.”
Ye Yang quickly followed.
The man’s name was Liu Chen—equally ordinary. He said he was a demon catcher.
“Demon catcher?” Ye Yang tensed up. He had never heard of such a thing, but the name alone was terrifying.
Liu Chen laughed once more. He really did laugh a lot. “Don’t worry. My job only catches demons who’ve done bad things. You haven’t done anything wrong, so there’s nothing to fear.”
They walked along the path. With Liu Chen leading, the strange force that had kept pulling Ye Yang off course seemed to vanish. Ye Yang could walk forward with ease, and soon they emerged from the woods.
Before them was an open clearing. Several people stood around an extinguished campfire. Ye Yang felt confused. One of them suddenly looked his way, grinned, and said in a chilling voice, “Oho, caught another one?”
Ye Yang’s pupils dilated. He spun around, only to be met with a flash of black-purple light.
“Ugh!”
His demonic energy vanished instantly. His vision went dark, his limbs went limp, and he collapsed. Before he could process what was happening, his hands and feet were tied. He was shoved face-down into the dirt, getting a mouthful of soil.
It hurt so much!
His eyes instantly welled up. As a little sea hare who had never been in a fight and rarely been hurt, he was naturally afraid of pain. Terrified by the sudden turn of events, and with these people handling him so roughly, the tears came before he could stop them.
He couldn’t see what was happening behind him, but he heard Liu Chen’s voice: “Haha, an unexpected catch. I was already on my way back when this little demon just stumbled right into me.
Come to think of it, it’s almost funny. This little demon hides his aura so well that even I couldn’t sense it. But he told me everything himself. How naive.”
Someone pressed down on Ye Yang’s back, shoving him so he rolled twice on the ground. “Hmm… too weak. Well, even a mosquito’s leg is still meat.”
Another person spat and growled, “Those sons of bitches from YCG are too persistent. We just catch a few little demons, and they hound us so hard. I haven’t had tiger bone wine in ages!”
A third voice said, “Forget your tiger bone wine. Next time we catch a tiger demon, I’ll show you a real tiger demon core. Way more useful than all your fancy stuff.”
“You think I don’t know demon cores are useful?” The gruff voice sounded even angrier. “You think I only want the scraps because I don’t want a core? It’s to pay off my debts!”
The others said nothing, just laughed and joked among themselves, their voices echoing strangely in the open space.
Then they started talking about how they had ambushed a YCG lackey, though in the end they hadn’t managed to catch him and had been forced to relocate here.
Maybe only a few seconds had passed, or maybe several minutes—Ye Yang, paralyzed by fear, couldn’t tell anymore. He didn’t know what was happening, but some small animal instinct told him not to make a sound, not to open his eyes. Beneath his tightly shut eyelids, his eyeballs trembled slightly.
The rope binding him was unlike anything he’d felt before—far tougher than ordinary hemp. He struggled a little, but that only made it dig in tighter. He tried to revert to his original form, but without his demonic energy, he couldn’t even shift.
Listening to the group chatting, hearing them rekindle the extinguished fire and sharpen knives, Ye Yang couldn’t take it anymore. He opened his eyes.
But what he saw nearly scared the soul right out of him!
Earlier, he’d only seen the backs of those tall, burly men huddled together. Now they had spread out around the fire, and Ye Yang could see several unconscious children crammed by the flames.
Many of them couldn’t fully shift yet—some had furry ears poking out, others had entire fluffy heads. There were even two little ones who couldn’t shift at all… They were fox demon cubs!
Ye Yang might be inexperienced and naive, but he wasn’t stupid. After everything he’d just witnessed and heard, the truth was clear—
These people really were demon catchers. But they didn’t care about good or evil. They only wanted to use demon cores, demon bones, any materials they could harvest—and they didn’t even spare the cubs! How could anyone be so cruel? How could they lay a hand on such tiny, innocent creatures?
“Done pretending?” Liu Chen’s voice suddenly sounded right next to him. Ye Yang’s heart jolted. He whipped his head around. Liu Chen still wore that same ever-smiling expression, but in Ye Yang’s eyes, he looked like a demon.
“Heh, scared?” The amusement in Liu Chen’s eyes deepened. There wasn’t a trace of darkness on his face. Judging by his expression alone, he looked no different from when they first met. If Ye Yang hadn’t seen and heard it with his own eyes and ears, he never could have imagined that this man was such a morally bankrupt monster.
Seeing that Ye Yang wouldn’t respond, Liu Chen didn’t get angry. He simply walked over to the cubs, casually picked one up, and cradled it in his arms, gently stroking its fur in a deceptively tender way.
Then, as Ye Yang’s expression froze in horror, the hand on the cub’s neck suddenly tightened.
“Be good. Don’t try anything stupid.”
In that instant, the blood in Ye Yang’s veins seemed to freeze. His limbs went weak. If he’d been in his original form, the leaves on his back would have bristled.
It was terrifying.
Satisfied that he’d frightened the little demon, Liu Chen tossed the limp cub to the ground and went back to his work.
……
Staring at the cub’s body lying limply on the dirt, Ye Yang felt a storm of emotions churning inside him. For the first time in his life as a demon, he was this afraid—his entire body consumed by terror.
Suddenly, the cub’s body twitched.
Ye Yang froze. He stared without blinking, barely daring to breathe. After three or four seconds, the cub’s belly arched upward again.
The movement was small, but Ye Yang was certain—this little fox cub was still alive!
In that moment, fear, anger, and something else that had always lived deep in Ye Yang’s soul merged into a strange, inexplicable courage.
His heart pounded faster. Behind his back, he clenched his fists around the rope. Every muscle in his body tensed. The rope bit viciously into his flesh. Blood immediately welled up, staining the pure white rope a shocking red. Thin streams of blood trickled from the wounds, across his skin, soaking into his clothes.
But Ye Yang couldn’t care about any of that now.
He had lost his demonic energy, but little sea hares were strong! He gathered all his strength into his palms and arms—and pulled with everything he had.
Crack!
The rope didn’t break at all. Instead, Ye Yang lost his balance from overexertion and crashed face-first into the ground again.
That crack was the sound of his joints slamming hard against the packed earth. He hit so hard he couldn’t even cry out.
Liu Chen heard the noise and turned back, amused. “What are you doing now? Scared? Don’t worry. I love the taste of water-dwellers the most. The best things are always saved for last.” His gaze slithered over Ye Yang like a snake’s tongue, as if he could already taste the little sea hare.
Ye Yang couldn’t help but shudder. The rage and impulsiveness inside him cooled under duress. He dared not make another move.
Fortunately, Liu Chen and the others were busy setting up a cauldron and a stove, and didn’t bother fussing over Ye Yang’s squirming. After all, he was just a weak, slightly dim-witted little demon who’d lost his powers. Soon enough, he’d be in the pot.
What’s more, they hadn’t noticed that one little fox cub was still alive.
Time ticked by, second by agonizing second. The blood from his wounds had already clotted, leaving only a throbbing ache. But Ye Yang barely felt it. What he felt was the growing torment in his heart.
The knives were sharpened. A massive cauldron was set up, the water already boiling. If he waited any longer, there would be no escape—not just for the fox cubs, but for himself as well. Biting down, forcing himself not to think about the things that terrified him, Ye Yang struggled to come up with another way.
His demonic power was sealed. His physical strength couldn’t break the strange ropes. They were in an isolated space, unreachable from the outside.
Suddenly, Liu Chen noticed that one fox cub was still breathing. He walked over and picked it up by the scruff. “Oh! Still alive, are you? A promising one.”
One of the burly men looked over with interest. “Break its limbs and raise it for a while. Might even grow a high-quality demon core.”
As he spoke, he raised his hand, energy gathering at his fingertips.
Ye Yang was frantic. No! He couldn’t wait any longer—no matter what!
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