Chapter 3: The Hamster Demon (3)

Zhou Xin secretly let out a breath of relief.

She circled the three-meter-tall giant rat a few times and asked, “From what Vice Minister Shen said earlier, it lost its mind because it was drunk. Then how exactly did it get drunk? What did it drink? Did it transform into human form?”

At this, Shen Jibai turned his head aside, leaving her only the sharp outline of his profile. He clearly had no intention of answering.

Zhou Xin: “…”

The yamen runner beside him hurriedly picked up the conversation. “It transformed into a young man, slipped into Changfeng Tavern, ordered a whole table of dishes, and drank three pots of cherry wine.”

“Cherry wine?” Zhou Xin asked.

“Yes. Cherry wine used to be a special drink served at the Shaowei Banquet. It’s sweet, fragrant, and refreshing, but it has an extremely strong aftereffect. An ordinary person would be drunk after one pot, which is why it was later removed from the menu. This rat demon drank three pots in a row, so it’s no surprise it went mad.”

“No,” Zhou Xin said, refuting him. “It’s exactly the opposite. That’s very strange.”

The yamen runner blinked. “?”

“A drunk person reeks of alcohol. Their breath is full of it too.”

She stopped walking and pointed at the rat demon, motioning for everyone to come forward and smell it.

“But there’s no smell of alcohol on its body, and none in its mouth either. That shows three pots of cherry wine were nothing to it. Of course, that reasoning alone isn’t airtight. The real reason I find this strange is that demons are different from humans. They don’t lose their minds and go berserk simply because they’re drunk. If it became like this, there must be another reason.”

Everyone nodded after hearing this. A few of the sword-bearing guards really did step forward to sniff it, then confirmed her guess.

“There really is no smell of alcohol.”

Shen Jibai also glanced over at her faintly. His frost-cold eyes held a hint of inquiry, as though he wanted to see what she was really up to.

“Then the key question is what it did besides drinking before it lost its mind,” Zhou Xin said. “Only after finding the cause can I treat the problem and shrink it back to its original size.”

“Is it really that troublesome?” one of the yamen runners could not help cutting in. “In the past, didn’t you just use a spell to force demons back into their original forms, and then they could be taken into the demon-locking pouch?”

Another yamen runner bumped him with his shoulder and lowered his voice. “Lady Lingyun just said she lost her memory. She doesn’t remember how to cast those spells.”

“But before the hamster demon lost its mind, it was just drinking and eating meat. It didn’t do anything else. The people in the tavern were all busy with their own matters, and no one had any contact with it. How are we supposed to find out what made it lose control?”

“I see…”

Zhou Xin lowered her eyes and thought for a moment.

“Then who was the first person it attacked after going mad?”

The yamen runner beside Shen Jibai seemed to remember something and suddenly slapped his palm.

“It was a scholar! He was frightened unconscious by the rat demon. He’s still lying upstairs on the second floor!”

“Lead the way.”

Zhou Xin made a gesture for him to go ahead.

The yamen runner led her back the way they had come. The diners in the building had long since fled, and even the shopkeeper had hidden away. So the moment the two of them went upstairs, they saw the young man lying on the floor.

He had clear brows, delicate features, red lips, and white teeth. Although his clothes were damaged and he looked terribly disheveled, he still carried a unique air of purity, like white jade covered in dust, or an exiled immortal fallen from grace.

Zhou Xin crouched beside him, held her right hand above him, closed her eyes, and sensed carefully. She detected a faint trace of baleful energy.

No wonder Immortal Linghe had given her an evil-dispelling talisman.

This rat demon had not gone mad from drinking at all. It had clearly lost control because baleful energy had entered its body.

“Was this scholar sitting close to the rat demon?”

The yamen runner thought for a moment before pointing to a table by the window.

“The rat demon sat there. The scholar sat at the table beside it. There weren’t many people eating at this hour, so those were the only two occupied tables by the window.”

It seemed the scholar had suffered this disaster simply because he had been sitting closest to the rat demon.

Zhou Xin said, “Go ask the shopkeeper whether he knows this scholar. Have someone send him home. That’s still better than leaving him lying on the floor.”

“Yes.”

The yamen runner accepted the order.

She turned and walked out of the tavern, heading straight toward the rat demon standing in the street.

Perhaps because people saw that the demon had been subdued and was no longer dangerous, more and more heads poked out from the shops on either side of the street to watch the show. Even in front of the human wall formed by the yamen runners, some curious onlookers had gathered, pointing at the runners and guards beside the demon and whispering among themselves.

When Shen Jibai saw her come out, he finally spoke. His voice was still cold, but his flat tone carried a hint of mockery.

“Found the cause?”

“More or less,” Zhou Xin answered.

At this, his brows drew together almost imperceptibly.

“More or less?”

Zhou Xin ignored him.

Weren’t they treating each other like air?

Who didn’t know how to do that?

She took out the evil-dispelling talisman, pinched it between two fingers, silently recited the spell, and shouted,

“Break!”

The talisman ignited without fire. A flash of golden light lit up in midair. As the glow continued moving through the air, it gradually formed into a talismanic script.

When the final stroke was completed, the yellow paper at her fingertips burned to ash. The golden talisman floating in the air slowly drifted toward the rat demon.

The instant it touched the demon, a sudden cold wind rose from the ground. All the golden light surged into the rat demon’s body. It dimmed for a brief moment before bursting outward again, radiating a dazzling brilliance.

Everyone was standing too close to the rat demon and was stung by the brightness until they could not open their eyes. They instinctively shut them.

The bystanders watching from farther away were not affected by the golden light at all. They stared wide-eyed as the hamster demon lifted its head and slowly exhaled a stream of black smoke.

After that, its body shrank rapidly. In the blink of an eye, it became smaller than the palm of a hand, and the golden light disappeared at just the right moment.

“Look! That demon spat out black smoke!”

Perhaps that shout gave the onlookers courage. The sounds of whispering and discussion suddenly grew louder.

“Is that Daoist priestess with the immortal bearing the famous Lady Lingyun, the one said to be highly valued by His Majesty?”

“In the Eastern Capital, the only person who could make both the Golden Guards and the Court of Judicial Review come out to help capture a demon is Lady Lingyun!”

“Seeing is believing. Lady Lingyun doesn’t seem as impressive as the rumors say. How did she get famous for ‘subduing demons with a flick of her finger’ and ‘slaying devils with her treasured sword’? I saw with my own eyes that she was nearly eaten by the demon!”

“It must have been exaggerated! How could anyone subdue a demon in the blink of an eye? Look how much effort they spent capturing this rat demon.”

“So that’s what ‘subduing demons with a flick of her finger’ means. What about ‘slaying devils with her treasured sword’?”

“Brother, you must not be from Luoyang. The ‘treasured sword’ refers to Lady Lingyun’s magical weapon, the Black-Iron Seven Star Sword. I hear that sword has a spirit of its own, and its temperament follows its master’s. Ordinary demons don’t interest it, so it rarely leaves its sheath. But once it is drawn, it will fight until the evil creature dies.”

…

Zhou Xin slowly opened her eyes and saw the palm-sized hamster demon lying on the ground, barely alive.

“It’s done.”

Hearing this, a yamen runner untied the demon-locking pouch from his waist and pointed the opening at the rat demon. The rat demon turned into a breeze and was sucked into the pouch.

Shen Jibai, who stood off to the side, suddenly clenched his fist. His sharp phoenix eyes fixed on her, and he said angrily,

“So this is what Lady Lingyun calls amnesia and poor command of spells?”

Not good.

This man was about to lose control of his temper again.

Zhou Xin immediately explained, “Immortal Linghe gave me this talisman. He must have known something. When he heard that Vice Minister Shen had sent someone to summon me, he took out this talisman and handed it to me.”

“If that is the case, why did Lady Lingyun wait so long to use it?”

“If Vice Minister Shen had not pierced the rat demon’s vital point with that strike, even if I used eight hundred evil-dispelling talismans, I still would not have been able to expel the baleful energy from its body.”

“Twisting words!” Shen Jibai clearly did not believe a single word. “I will report today’s events to His Majesty exactly as they happened.”

…Fine.

Zhou Xin sighed deeply.

Perhaps seeing that the atmosphere, which had finally eased, had become tense again, one of the Golden Guards quickly changed the subject.

“Why does it feel like something is missing today?”

Shen Jibai gave a cold scoff. “Something is missing. Lady Lingyun hasn’t called you useless today.”

Zhou Xin: “?”

The yamen runner agreed and added, “And she didn’t use those two words to mock the Vice Minister either.”

The Golden Guards suddenly slapped their thighs in realization.

“That’s true!”

Zhou Xin: “?”

No wonder Shen Jibai had called people useless the moment they met earlier. So these two had always insulted each other like this.

Being on such terrible terms with an official superior was truly thrilling.

She cleared her throat awkwardly.

The yamen runner beside Shen Jibai looked over at her. Zhou Xin took the opportunity to point at the demon-locking pouch at his waist and change the subject.

“What will be done with the hamster demon?”

The yamen runner turned to look at Shen Jibai, but Shen Jibai immediately avoided his gaze.

These two had always been at odds. When gods fought, small ghosts suffered. The yamen runner did not dare offend either of them, so he could only brace himself and test the waters.

“Lock it… in the Demon-Sealing Tower?”

Shen Jibai did not object, so that seemed to be his plan.

The yamen runner breathed a sigh of relief.

“Its vital point has been damaged. It won’t live long. There’s no need to lock it in the Demon-Sealing Tower,” Zhou Xin said. “Besides, there’s something suspicious about this case. It needs to be investigated.”

At the sound of this, the demon-locking pouch suddenly began to stir. The hamster inside seemed to be crying out its grievance, squeaking nonstop.

Shen Jibai said coldly, “How do you plan to investigate? Can Lady Lingyun understand rat language?”

Zhou Xin stretched out her hand, palm facing upward, signaling for the yamen runner to hand her the demon-locking pouch.

“I have my own methods.”

The yamen runner looked troubled.

The hamster demon had revealed its true form in public and injured people. The disturbance it caused was not small. It would definitely have to be brought back to the Court of Judicial Review so the case could be closed.

He once again looked to Shen Jibai for help. Shen Jibai seemed to think of something, and a trace of mockery flashed through his eyes.

“Why not just say what you’re really after, Lady Lingyun?”

“What could I be after?”

“I have never seen Lady Lingyun speak up for a demon’s injustice.”

He said each word clearly.

“The Court of Judicial Review once received a report from a fish spirit that had been abused by humans. Before I could question it, Lady Lingyun killed the fish spirit and took its inner core. When I asked why, Lady Lingyun said that a demon was still a demon, and even if it cultivated a human form, it did not deserve to be treated as human. So why would you care about the truth now?”

After saying this, he did not wait for Zhou Xin to explain before drawing his own conclusion.

“If you want the demon core, then just take it. In any case, no one in the Court of Judicial Review would dare compete with Lady Lingyun for it. Why bother making up such a clumsy excuse?”

It seemed this man’s prejudice against the original owner was no ordinary thing.

After being mocked and spoken to coldly again and again, Zhou Xin no longer wanted to explain too much. He would not believe her anyway.

“The hamster demon only lost its mind and harmed people because it was contaminated by baleful energy. But there is no baleful energy in the surrounding area. Have you ever wondered where the baleful energy that entered its body came from, Vice Minister Shen?”

She lifted her eyes and met his gaze again, her tone as sharp as the look in his eyes.

“Or is it that, because you see it is not long for this world, and because no one actually died, you have decided the case is too difficult to investigate and are prepared to simply let it go?”