Cat-Faced Old Lady

Late at night, in a corner of a guest room in Ma Family Manor.

Nan Zhi sat cross-legged on the soft, large bed, but uncharacteristically, she was not cultivating.

Holding a damaged little banner in her hand, she had a pensive expression.

It was a tattered cloth banner whose edges were somewhat weathered. Faintly visible on the yellow command banner were the characters for “Roam” and “Hunt.”

—It looked quite similar to the small banners Daoist priests used when setting up altars to perform rituals in movies and TV shows.

Nan Zhi examined it for a long time without discerning anything conclusive. Just as she put it away, her ears twitched slightly.

She stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window to look down, only to see police cars flashing red and blue lights driving into the manor. She immediately realized something had happened.

However, this was the Hu family's territory, and the Hu family had submitted to the Demon King of Qingmeng Mountain. If she, a little demon suppressor from the Demon Suppression Division, forcefully poked her nose into their business, she would only invite annoyance.

Nan Zhi closed her eyes.

Elsewhere, the tall, imposing White Tiger Demon King gave a lazy low rumble in her throat. Flicking her thick, long tail, she stepped stark naked out of the hot spring.

Little demons immediately rushed forward holding clean cloths to dry her body.

“Great King.”

“Great King.”

Hu Cuiling and Hu Cuixian stood on tiptoe atop python heads, one on each side, diligently brushing the Tiger King's fur.

Amidst the dense, swirling steam, the Tiger King opened her golden eyes and asked out of the blue:

“Has there been any word from Bai Sangu and Hu Ban'er yet?”

Across a heavy standing screen, the faint rustling of movements came from around the hot spring. Then, a calm male voice drifted in from the outside:

“Rest assured, Great King. The Hu family and Bai family have already begun laying their plans, using the secret realm as bait to lure the Huang and Hui families. I believe good news will arrive before long.”

“Bai Sangu and Hu Ban'er are both elders of the Five Families of Beidong. If they can't even handle a mere Huang family, they shouldn't bother coming back to face this Lord.”

Nan Zhi twitched her ears and only then unhurriedly walked out from behind the screen with a cold expression:

“And you—speed things up. This Lord doesn't have much patience and is eager to see your loyalty test.”

Beyond the screen, silence fell once again.

...

Nan Zhi's guess was right.

Something had indeed happened yesterday.

The Ma family seemed intent on tempering Hu Manni, having entrusted her entirely with investigating the origin of the “Joy God” and liaising with the Special Investigation Bureau.

Hu Manni had not returned for two nights. It was not until high noon on the third day that she dragged her unsteady steps back home, sporting purplish-black rings under her eyes.

Lyu Dongfang and Liu Guansheng were not doing any better.

Every single one of them looked pale as a sheet, as if their souls had been drained.

“Where did you three go? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

It was not until Nan Zhi popped an inedia pill into each of their mouths that color finally returned to their faces.

“Little Aunt, you guessed right. We really did see a ghost this time.”

Caught completely off guard, Lyu Dongfang chewed the inedia pill. Feeling a warm current spreading in his stomach, he finally found the energy to answer her:

“All hell broke loose the night before last. Knowing you were resting, the three of us didn't disturb you and went out on the mission ourselves. Let me tell you, a corpse resuscitated at the funeral home, and the thing we had to deal with this time was quite tricky.”

“That troublesome?”

Nan Zhi looked toward Hu Manni, who nodded with an unsightly expression:

“The night before last, someone engaged in illegal operations in the middle of the night at the funeral home, and as a result, disaster struck.”

—Ever since supernatural incidents began occurring frequently across the country, local governments had repeatedly advised residents to avoid going out at night whenever possible.

Key locations like hospitals, funeral homes, and cemeteries, in particular, were subject to exceptionally strict regulatory rules.

With each of them chiming in, Nan Zhi finally pieced together the ins and outs of the case.

In the early hours of that day, a hospital sent over the corpse of an elderly person. Standard procedure dictated that the body remain in the morgue for a period before being cremated during daylight hours.

However, the deceased's family privately slipped a hundred-thousand-yuan red envelope to the funeral home staff, requesting an individual cremation in the dead of night. Two bold crematorium workers gritted their teeth and agreed.

“Cremating a corpse in the middle of the night?”

Nan Zhi could not help but interject: “They couldn't even wait a single day? Why such a rush?”

“Little Aunt, that's where you're out of the loop.”

Liu Guansheng shook his head, leaned back casually against the sofa, and patted his belly as he explained:

“The funeral home's shared cremation incinerators burn one body at a time to ash. Sometimes, if the ashes from the previous body aren't swept out completely, they get mixed and burned together with the next body. So strictly speaking, whenever people bring ashes home, there's always a small percentage in there belonging to some other unlucky stranger. Some families find that unhygienic, so they pay extra to ensure their ancestor's body is burned first in line. That way, the ashes swept out are cleaner and of higher purity.”

Nan Zhi: “...”

This truly fell right into her blind spot of knowledge.

She had only ever heard of alcohol purity; she never imagined such a concept existed for cremated ashes.

“So this family thought burning an individual batch at night would be cleaner, gave a red envelope, and had the funeral home staff violate regulations?”

Nan Zhi did not know whether to laugh or cry:

“Wasn't the body about to go into the incinerator? How could a corpse resuscitation happen?”

“Tell me about it!”

Lyu Dongfang rolled his eyes, practically laughing out of sheer exasperation:

“Who knows what that family was thinking—bidding farewell to their elder, yet they even brought along the old cat the family had raised for over a decade. During the final farewell to the remains, that old cat darted forward and gave the corpse a lick. The old lady resuscitated right on the spot! Chewing on the old cat, she bounded straight out of the funeral home! She was moving so fast nobody could block her. Right now, people from the Special Investigation Bureau are still searching for the corpse outside. The three of us have been running around for two days without even a bite to eat. Aside from swallowing mouthfuls of freezing wind, we had to rummage through dumpsters, wade through riverbeds, and burrow into woodpiles alongside them.”

—Heaven only knew why an elderly woman in her seventies or eighties, who had died of cancer, became so absurdly tough to deal with after resuscitating.

Dashing madly all the way, scaling walls barehanded, and leaping two meters high from a standing jump, she outran even the black uniforms from the Special Investigation Bureau who chased after her.

“Three of the family members passed out on the spot from terror, and the mortuary workers were scared out of their wits. I doubt they'll ever dare violate protocol again.”

Hu Manni shook her head and then brought up the little banner in Nan Zhi's hand:

“Little Aunt, I had someone look at that little banner, and someone recognized its origin. It's just too difficult to explain over the phone in a few words. But that person is already on the way here by plane tonight. You've met her before—Zhang Daowei from Longhu Mountain.”

“The Qi Refinement level 3 who was with Team Two back in the Tailande secret realm?”

Nan Zhi retrieved the memory of that person.

—Tall, with strikingly distinct facial features, she was already the head disciple of Longhu Mountain at a young age, always carrying a pair of Emei daggers at her waist.

“Zhang Daowei is coming to Beidong? Does that mean the Special Investigation Bureau is stepping in on this case?”

Nan Zhi keenly grasped the main point, making up her mind:

“Count me in, then. I'd like to see whether it's a human or a demon hiding behind this Joy Ghost.”