The fox demon’s entire body was trembling at a frequency visible to the naked eye. He was shaking so violently that even Chu He felt that if he continued, he would cough up his own inner core in the next second.
But Xiao Hu himself didn’t feel it. His mind was a complete blank; he didn’t even notice the Demon Lord raising a hand and pressing it down toward the crown of his head.
“—That’s enough,” Chu He suddenly said.
His voice was very unique. The moment he spoke, it was like a bright light cleaving through chaos. The fox demon shuddered, a cold chill surging through his organs, and he instantly came to his senses!
The Demon Lord’s hand stopped in mid-air. Chu He said, “Go on, serve the Second Young Master well.”
The fox demon didn’t even dare to look up to see what the Demon Lord looked like. He almost crashed into the door as he fled, but he didn’t even feel the pain, stumbling and staggering as he ran out.
“…” The Demon Lord turned his head and said flatly, “You’re really not picky at all.”
Chu He started to laugh, re-buttoning his shirt one by one. He had a pale, plain face, but as he laughed and buttoned his shirt, his expression had an indescribable quality that made it hard to look away.
“I can even handle you,” he said with a smile. “So naturally, I’m not picky at all.”
The hem of the Demon Lord’s gold-embroidered black robe made a strange, soft friction sound on the carpet as he walked. In truth, he didn’t have the three heads and six arms that were long-rumored in the underworld, nor was he ugly or terrifying. If he concealed his demonic aura and disguised himself as a human to walk down the street, apart from an aura that was different from ordinary people, he wouldn’t even attract much attention.
“There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” the Demon Lord asked with great interest. “You still hold a grudge against that nine-tailed fox. Is it because he really has a sharp tongue, or is it because you still think he and Zhou Hui really had a thing?”
Chu He snorted. “Fan Luo, do you think Zhou Hui led the six teams to besiege the Hell Realm back then because you also have a sharp tongue, or because he also suspected you and I had a thing?”
The Demon Lord Fan Luo thought for a moment and smiled faintly. “I can’t figure it out. Perhaps it’s a bit of both—but if it were me, and my wife ran off with my sworn enemy, that would probably be hard to swallow.”
Chu He picked up the bowl of sweet soup the fox demon had brought, walked to the washroom, and poured it out. “Our relationship isn’t what you imagine.”
He walked with a steady gait, his back naturally straight, giving him a very elegant and graceful posture. Fan Luo leaned against the washroom doorway with his arms crossed, watching his back with raised eyebrows. His expression in the light and shadow was unclear. However, Chu He, as if completely oblivious, suddenly spoke again. “By the way, tell your hungry ghosts not to enter the main house—one was wandering outside Zhang Shun’s room last night and was seen by my cook. She was nearly scared to death. I spent three or four hours in the middle of the night calling her soul back…”
As he looked up, Fan Luo appeared silently behind him, one hand pressed against the exposed side of his neck.
“Continue.”
“…Today, I had to falsely accuse my brother of streaking in the middle of the night just to smooth things over. Tell your hungry ghosts not to bother Zhang Shun. He’s the only brother I have.”
Fan Luo’s lips pressed against his neck, his laughter sounding somewhat muffled. “I remember… the first time I saw you.”
“Then you should also remember what I said that time.”
“I remember,” Fan Luo said leisurely, as if finding it very amusing. “I was just thinking… if Zhou Hui knew about your current situation, would he be more inclined to slay a demon again, or destroy a Buddha again?”
A strange expression appeared on Chu He’s face. But before he could speak, there were two knocks on the study door outside.
“Bro? Bro, are you in there?”
Before Chu He could answer, the Demon Lord suddenly bit down on the side of his neck!
As blood gushed out, Chu He gripped the edge of the sink, letting out a solid, undisguisable muffled grunt.
“Bro?” Zhang Shun called from outside the door.
—Fan Luo’s canines pierced deep into his blood vessel. Because he couldn’t suck fast enough, a trickle of blood ran down his half-bare, slender back, shockingly stark against his pale skin. Chu He panted slightly, lifting his head as if to say something, but after opening his mouth a few times, he closed it, trembling.
The Demon Lord, still biting that small, soft piece of flesh on his neck, said, “Answer him.”
“…” Chu He took a deep, ragged breath and raised his voice. “I’m here! What is it?”
Zhang Shun’s voice from outside sounded a little suspicious. “Xiao Hu had to leave. He said he accidentally disturbed you just now and asked me to apologize on his behalf! What are you doing, bro?”
“…I got it!”
“What’s going on? What are you doing? Open the door!”
Fan Luo’s muffled laughter was almost impossible to suppress. Chu He, at the end of his patience, turned his head and shouted, “I said I got it!”
“What are you doing? What’s going on, open the door! Bro!”
“Go to sleep!”
Zhang Shun was clearly taken aback. He blinked a few times outside the door before muttering in confusion, “So cranky… Are you jerking off?”
Though he muttered this to himself, it certainly didn’t escape the ears of the two people inside the room. The Demon Lord nearly collapsed onto Chu He with laughter, clapping his hands. “This brother of yours is truly a gem—I don’t care if Zhou Hui likes him or not, I quite like him, hahaha…”
Chu He, panting, gathered his collar. The spot where he’d been bitten had already healed, leaving only a reddish mark like a hickey, surrounded by distinct blood vessels.
The process of having his inner core’s spiritual power directly drawn out left him exhausted. After a long moment, he weakly grabbed the Demon Lord’s hand. “Let go.”
His fingers were frighteningly cold, like ice.
Fan Luo stood while he was slightly bent over. From this domineering position, the Demon Lord stared at his forbearing profile for a long time before saying in a low voice, “I still miss your real face…”
Chu He said, “Let go!”
—Even though he had fallen to a state where there was no place for him in the nine heavens and ten earths, unable to even retrieve his true form, the inviolable aura in his bones could still be clearly revealed in the smallest details.
The Demon Lord didn’t move. After a long moment, he slowly withdrew his hand from the bare skin of his side waist under his clothes.
“Alright,” he smiled. “As you wish.”
·
Zhang Shun returned to his bedroom. He couldn’t help but imagine the scene of his brother jerking off alone in the study and found it a bit terrifying.
In his impression, Chu He was a silent, self-disciplined, and calm person, almost to the point of being cold. He was never surprised or excited, rarely showed great joy or anger, and had few emotional fluctuations. He never had contact with the opposite sex and even politely declined intimacy from the same sex. His whole being was like a block of ice wrapped in a finely tailored black suit, exuding a chill that never thawed, even in the height of summer.
A person like that would have been an ascetic monk in ancient times, a puritan in the Middle Ages. Zhang Shun had once maliciously suspected if he had some unspeakable problem, but one year when the two brothers went to a hot spring, he took the opportunity to look, and it didn’t seem abnormal.
Zhang Shun was a little scared of his brother.
He knew that when his father was still alive, he too had a certain indescribable fear of this adopted son with a different surname.
Chu He was said to have been brought into the family by his father’s second wife when he remarried. The reason it was “said” was because Zhang Shun had never met this nominal stepmother of his—he was only five or six at the time, sent abroad to live with his grandparents. When he came back, he heard his stepmother had died in an accident.
After becoming a widower for the second time, Old Chairman Zhang completely gave up the idea of remarrying and raised the two children by himself. At that time, although Zhang Shun was still young, he had already been subtly influenced by those around him to know that Chu He was an adopted son, and one who could potentially threaten his position as heir. A child doesn’t know what inheritance rights are, but the instinct to protect one’s food is there. Egged on by those around him, he did indeed give this convenient older brother some trouble.
When Old Chairman Zhang found out, he was furious. He cleared out and replaced the people around him and gave him a stern lecture. “Chu He is your older brother! Since you’ve called him ‘brother’ once, you must treat him as your biological brother for the rest of your life!”
Zhang Shun was at his most rebellious stage and immediately retorted, “I don’t have this cheap brother, I don’t acknowledge him! If you want to acknowledge him, you go ahead!”
Old Chairman Zhang, in a fit of anger, resorted to family discipline. A beating with a belt left Zhang Shun wailing and unable to get out of bed for a full half-month. And that wasn’t the end of it. From then on, whenever Old Chairman Zhang caught Zhang Shun, he would lecture him, which made Zhang Shun dislike Chu He even more, though he didn’t dare to pull any more tricks.
Everyone said Old Chairman Zhang favored his adopted son, which scared his biological son into submission to his older brother.
Only Zhang Shun knew that wasn’t the case.
He still remembered the late night of the day he was beaten. He woke up groggily from pain and thirst, only to hear a quiet conversation by his bed. He immediately lay still, pretending to be asleep, and secretly opened his eyes a crack. He saw the teenage Chu He sitting in an armchair, while Old Chairman Zhang stood on the floor, bowing slightly, his expression surprisingly… humble.
He could never have imagined his father being associated with the word “humble,” but at that moment, that was indeed the first word that came to young Zhang Shun’s mind.
“…A’Shun is still young, his mischief is limited. For you to resort to beatings like this makes me seem particularly intolerant…”
“Yes, yes, I understand. I definitely won’t next time—”
The bedroom fell silent. Afraid of being discovered, Zhang Shun immediately closed his eyes and lay still, breathing softly and steadily.
“There won’t be a next time,” Chu He said as he stood up and walked out. “—Born with a Buddha bone, and you think you can just beat him?”
Behind him, Old Chairman Zhang’s inner shirt was soaked through with layers of cold sweat. He watched as Chu He reached the door, then without looking back, pointed at Zhang Shun on the bed and said, “He’s thirsty. Give him some water.”
…
Everything from that late night was so real in Zhang Shun’s young memory that it later seemed almost fake in its clarity. For many years, he couldn’t tell whether that conversation had actually happened or was just a hallucination born of pain and high fever. He only knew that his father never laid a finger on him again after that, and that Chu He was always respectful to his father in his presence, never again showing that condescending, bossy attitude.
But from that time on, a feeling vaguely formed in his heart—his father was afraid of Chu He.
This feeling was hard to describe and even harder to prove. It even sounded absurd to say out loud. But, although Zhang Shun never went to his father to verify it, nor did he mention it to anyone, this vague suspicion and feeling had always been deeply rooted in his heart, and for so many years, it had never disappeared.
Perhaps because Xiao Hu had left that night and Zhang Shun was sleeping alone, he tossed and turned, having many dreams. One of them was about the time he had played a trick on Chu He as a child, luring him to the warehouse late at night under the pretext of being lost in the mansion, then turning off the power and locking him in for the night. In reality, he had sneaked back to his bedroom to sleep, and Chu He was only found and let out by a servant the next morning. In the dream, however, he seemed to have returned to the dark warehouse, quietly watching his brother in the darkness.
Chu He was sitting sideways to him, cross-legged on a brilliant lotus flower. His face was serene and peaceful, glowing with a soft, jade-like light. He was surrounded by a crowd of ethereal ghosts, all prostrated on the ground. In the distance, countless more resentful souls were rushing toward them from the vast darkness, their long wails trailing behind them.
Zhang Shun floated dazedly in mid-air until Chu He opened his eyes, looked at him, and asked softly, “Are you dreaming?”
Zhang Shun didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
“The Zhang family made its fortune off the dead,” Chu He said gently. “That day you locked me in here, I took the opportunity to deliver this patch of lingering souls.”
Zhang Shun’s pupils dilated slightly. His brother brushed a hand over his forehead and said, “Go back to sleep.”
Zhang Shun fell back into a chaotic dream. The scene before his eyes changed to a white hospital room, where a gaunt Old Chairman Zhang was breathing with difficulty on the hospital bed.
“A’Shun…” He gripped his only son’s hand tightly. “I’ve already left—left the family business to you and your… your brother… From now on, you must—must rely on him for care, you must treat him as—as your biological, biological brother…”
Every word was like grinding bloody gravel. The light of life in his father’s eyes grew dimmer and dimmer.
“You must listen—listen to him… Be safe and sound, you must live your whole life… safe and sound…”
His father’s hand went limp and fell away. He closed his eyes.
Zhang Shun’s whole body trembled. He wanted to cry but couldn’t. His throat felt blocked with a sour, bitter clot of blood, and even his saliva tasted hot and metallic.
A hand patted his shoulder gently.
“Don’t be afraid,” Chu He, who had appeared behind him at some point, said in a low voice. “He has gone to be reincarnated.”
Zhang Shun asked with a choked voice, “You—how do you, how do you know? How do you…”
Chu He sighed softly. “I just know.”
Zhang Shun’s voice was blocked, his eyes red. His temples throbbed with a sharp pain as if being drilled by an awl. He gritted his teeth, holding back his sobs, and turned to look at his father on the hospital bed, wanting to see him one last time.
—Then he saw that his father’s eyes had opened at some point, and two lines of bloody tears were slowly trickling down.
“Zhang Shun…” he heard his father’s ghostly call. “Zhang Shun, come here, Zhang Shun…”
Come here…
Zhang Shun, come here…
Zhang Shun suddenly woke up from the dream with a start. “Dad!”
Then he realized he had had a nightmare. The bedroom was dark and quiet. The clock pointed to two in the morning.
He let out a breath and forced himself to ignore the sadness and melancholy in his heart, getting up to pour a glass of water from the nightstand.
But then, his entire body froze—
In the moonlight, by the side of his bed, a figure was standing there silently!
To say it was a person might not be accurate. It was a grayish-white figure. Long hair covered its face, and its twig-like arms hung at its sides. Its inch-long nails were curled sharply, and black water dripped from them.
Zhang Shun’s whole body trembled as if electrocuted. “You-you-you-you are, who are you?”
That “person” lifted its head. In that instant, Zhang Shun saw that its entire jaw was rotted away, and its decaying tongue flopped down onto its chest.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh—!!”
Upstairs in the bedroom, Chu He instantly leaped out of bed, rushed out the door, grabbed the railing, and vaulted over.
The butler, who had been woken by the noise and was hastily putting on a robe, only saw the Young Master descending from the sky, landing steadily with a boom. Without even a pause, he instantly got up and slammed open Zhang Shun’s door!
“Ahhhhhhhhhh—!” Zhang Shun screamed as he crashed into him. “Bro! Bro! There’s a ghost! There’s a ghost!”
Chu He flicked on the light with a snap and frowned. “What are you going crazy for in the middle of the night?”
The moment Chu He entered the room, the hungry ghost melted away like a snowman in the sun. When the butler and servants, alerted by the noise, rushed in, they only saw a tidy bedroom with messy bedding. The Second Young Master was screaming like a madman, while the Young Master he was clinging to like a lifeline hadn’t even had time to put on his shoes.
A wave of admiration rose in the old butler’s heart: Even though they’re not related by blood, and the Young Master is usually cold to others, you can really see the difference at a critical moment! …
The “different” Young Master had no time for brotherly affection. He waved his hand and dismissed the butler and servants. When only the two of them were left in the room, he poured a glass of water and forced Zhang Shun to drink it, then pushed him onto the bed. “It’s alright now. Sleep.”
“There’s-there’s-there’s a ghost!” Zhang Shun desperately gripped his brother’s hand. “There really is a ghost!”
“…” Chu He said, “You were just dreaming. Go to sleep.”
“I’m not lying! It was a white ghost, with nails this long, and a tongue this long…”
Chu He impatiently tried to pull his hand away, but Zhang Shun wouldn’t let go. In the struggle, his peripheral vision suddenly caught a black shadow in the corner of the room. He looked closely and saw a man in a black robe standing there, one side of his face covered in bloody patterns, looking down at him.
“…” Zhang Shun’s teeth were chattering. “…Bro, why is there a person over there?”
Chu He turned his head and met the Demon Lord’s gaze for a moment, then said coldly, “There’s no one.”
Zhang Shun couldn’t even make a sound. His face was ashen, and he looked ready to collapse. The fact that he hadn’t fainted yet was a testament to his mental fortitude. “There-there-there-there really is!!”
Chu He repeated, word for word, “There really isn’t.”
The Demon Lord finally shifted his gaze, a corner of his mouth lifting in an arc that couldn’t be called a smile. Then, just as he had appeared, his tall figure vanished into thin air, as if he had never been there.
Chu He turned back and gently touched the spot between Zhang Shun’s eyebrows, whispering, “Sleep. You’ll forget when you wake up.”
His fingertip seemed to have a searing warmth. Zhang Shun felt his mind relax, and the extreme fear and tension receded like a tide. This was probably the first time in his life that the Second Young Master Zhang found the Young Master so agreeable. Even his brother’s plain face suddenly gained an indescribable charm.
The Second Young Master, for once, acted like a younger brother, tugging at his brother and pleading, “I… I’m still scared. Can I sleep in your room tonight?”
Chu He’s expression was a bit strange.
“Please, bro,” the Second Young Master was on the verge of tears. “Or I’ll go check into a hotel right now—wait, what if that dirty thing f—ing follows me?!”
“…Come on then,” Chu He finally sighed.
Zhang Shun didn’t want to spend another second in his own room. He quickly rolled up his blanket and pillow and followed his brother upstairs. To his surprise, his brother’s bedroom wasn’t as simple and boring as he had imagined. Although there weren’t many things, and almost no decorations, the room was very messy, as if a hurricane had just passed through. The pillow and bedsheet were half on the floor, and the suit and shirt he had changed out of were scattered at the bathroom door.
According to Zhang Shun’s usual temper, he would have definitely made a few sarcastic remarks. But tonight, he was so well-behaved he didn’t dare say an extra word. He immediately tucked his tail between his legs, lay down meekly like a plank, and only pleaded, “Can you not turn off the lights?”
So Chu He left a warm yellow bedside lamp on and lay down silently beside his brother.
“Bro,” Zhang Shun still couldn’t help but turn his head. “I’ll ask a master to come take a look tomorrow. Do you think—”
His brother had already closed his eyes.
—Zhang Shun’s gaze froze on the side of his brother’s neck and didn’t move for a long time.
On the side of his usually silent, cold, and unapproachable older brother’s neck, there was a very distinct mark. Although it was almost hidden by the collar of his white pajamas, it was still very conspicuous due to the angle.
It was a hickey.
“…No way,” was Zhang Shun’s last incredulous thought before losing consciousness, along with a vaguely indescribable, complex feeling.
“—Who the hell has the balls… if I find out…”
“They must have a death wish… who could it be…”
