Chapter 28

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The two demons had been doing remarkably well in business these past few months, and at last they had slowly managed to build up some savings.

Wolf Xiao was considering whether to buy a vehicle. She wanted a car. Though she could run quickly in her true form, it was ultimately inconvenient. When she was not in a hurry, she usually took the bus or subway; when she was, she called a taxi. Added up over a month, the taxi fares amounted to quite a sum.

Unable to afford a sedan, Wolf Xiao turned her attention to motorcycles. Motorcycles were truly fast—no slower than cars at all. Their only drawbacks were that they offered no protection from the wind and could not carry much, making them inconvenient for shopping trips.

If even a motorcycle would not do, then an electric scooter was even less suitable.

Wolf Xiao kept researching, but after many days she still could not make up her mind. She did not spend much in her daily life and already had forty or fifty thousand yuan in hand. Buying a relatively cheap used car was not out of the question.

The moment Crimson Fox Hu heard that she wanted to buy a car, he immediately sidled over, grinning as he took out his bank card and waved it in front of her.

“Are you short of money? Guess how much is in here. If you guess right, I’ll lend it to you.”

“Feeling so generous? Can you really bear to part with it?” Wolf Xiao asked without even looking up.

Hu Yuanfei lay down and rested his head on the floor, looking up at her from below. “Of course there’s a condition. Once you buy the car, you have to let me drive it too.”

“You don’t have a driver’s license.”

“Neither do you.”

“I’ll go learn.”

“Then I’ll learn too. Come on, is that all right? I’ve got quite a lot of money here.”

Ever since he had promised to turn over a new leaf, he had truly restrained himself. He no longer indulged his appetite, and whenever he wanted something, he bought only a little to sample. After a month, he had nearly slimmed back down to his former shape.

In their daily life, all of Qingyao’s expenses were paid from Wolf Xiao’s money. Only their household expenses were split between the two of them. Now he had twenty thousand yuan in his bank account as well. This was an exceedingly precious twenty thousand, and his willingness to take it out was an opportunity that might never come again. He might well regret it in heartbreak a little later.

Wolf Xiao asked once more, “Are you sure you want to lend it to me? How much interest?”

“What are we talking about interest for? I won’t charge you any.”

Wolf Xiao continued to regard him suspiciously. Hu Yuanfei blinked at her, his face full of sincerity.

She reached out and took his bank card. “All right. I’ll accept it.”

She had already taken a liking to a particular vehicle: the classic minivan model of the Wuling Hongguang. It was spacious, sturdy, and built to last. Most importantly, it was not expensive. A new one could be bought for around fifty thousand yuan. She could not spend all her savings, either; keeping ten thousand aside for emergencies would be just right.

When Hu Yuanfei saw her checking nearby dealerships, he lay beside her and began scrolling through his phone. Perhaps because he had heard them discussing buying a car, the recommendation algorithms quickly began pushing related content to him.

A few minutes later, he came across an article titled “What to Watch Out for After Buying a Car.” He skimmed it casually, but when he saw certain terms, he abruptly sat up and patted Wolf Xiao.

“Oh! So buying a car also means paying a purchase tax, compulsory insurance, registration fees, and vehicle inspection fees. All of those are extra.”

His expression grew solemn. “Will we have enough money?”

Wolf Xiao picked up his phone and glanced at it. The article listed the types of fees but not their amounts. If the twenty thousand they had left proved insufficient, they would still need money to live afterward. The property manager had come by two days earlier to remind them that the management fee was due before the end of the year, and they also had to pay the rent for the coming year. The last time, they had paid only one quarter’s heating bill, and it would remain cold for some time after the New Year. The two of them did not mind, but the baby could not be allowed to freeze. That expense would have to be covered as well.

If they bought a car, the cost of driving lessons would add another seven or eight thousand yuan.

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After adding everything up, they were nowhere near having enough. Wolf Xiao’s spirits sank.

They had clearly earned so much money. Why did it still feel as though it was never enough?

Wolf Xiao pondered this profound question.

Back when she had lived in the mountains, all she had thought about was cultivation—calculating when and where she could absorb moonlight most effectively. She had never minded going without food, and whether it was cold or hot, she could sleep just the same. But now she wanted this and that, as though there were always new things beckoning them onward.

Without realizing it, they too had been influenced by humanity’s swelling desires. Those desires had crept in so subtly that neither of them had ever thought to guard against them.

The thought sent a cold sweat over Wolf Xiao. She slapped the bank card back into Hu Yuanfei’s hand.

“We’re not buying it!”

“Huh? We’re not buying the car anymore? Why not? Is it still not enough after adding everything together?”

“Even if it isn’t enough, there’s no need. The way we travel now is perfectly fine. If we’re in a hurry, we can run there ourselves.”

Her expression made it clear that she had firmly made up her mind. Having lived with her for so long, Hu Yuanfei already knew that persuading her would be useless. Disappointed, he pressed his head against the floor and used his hind legs to propel himself forward.

Seeing him crawling around like a dead dog made Wolf Xiao feel an urge to hit him.

Qingyao was standing while holding onto the wall. When she saw how he was moving, she immediately dropped down as well, pressing her chubby little face to the floor and sticking her bottom high in the air. She crawled forward in little thrusts, looking exactly like a giant green caterpillar.

The two giant caterpillars squirmed across the floor. Before long, they bumped heads. After knocking their foreheads together for a while, Qingyao began to giggle, revealing several tiny milk teeth. Then she crawled alongside Hu Yuanfei toward the balcony.

“Zoom! I’m the fastest!” Hu Yuanfei shouted, picking up speed.

Seeing this, Qingyao stopped dragging her cheeks along the floor and used all four limbs to catch up with him.

Hu Yuanfei reached the balcony first. He laughed twice, then turned around and crawled back toward the door. Qingyao paid no attention to winning or losing and simply followed behind him, continuing the race.

Wolf Xiao decided there would be no need to cast a spell to clean the floor that day. The two of them had already rubbed it spotless.

The only drawback was that Qingyao’s clothes wore out very quickly. Fortunately, she was growing just as quickly; her old clothes soon became too small to wear and could be discarded.

After spending several leisurely days at home, the two demons gradually became busy again. With the New Year approaching, perhaps because relatives were planning to return home, more and more people came looking for their services.

The two demons were no longer famous only in the surrounding neighborhoods. Quite a few people throughout the entire region had heard of them. The matter had even reached the ears of the police.

Two demons living among ordinary people represented a major threat, and the police could not simply ignore them. From time to time, they kept an eye on the pair’s activities. The police had noticed them not long after they began their pest-control business, but at the time, the officers merely thought they were using their natural advantages to make money and secretly found it rather amusing. Later, when their business expanded to helping people find lost cats and dogs, the officers who knew about it could only marvel that a long life really did make one clever: the pair had learned the ways of human society soon after descending from the mountains.

At that point, the police stopped paying attention to the two harmless demons and had no further dealings with them.

Until recently.

Xinghuan City was not a very large city, nor did it offer much in the way of tourism. The only places people could visit were Xiaofeng Mountain and several parks within the city. To go anywhere farther, they had to travel to Dafeng Mountain, forty kilometers outside the city.

Dafeng Mountain was part of a vast, continuous range. The mountains were not particularly high, with the highest peak reaching only around a thousand meters. In summer, there was a rafting attraction among the mountains, and several farm guesthouses operated at the foot of the range, making the area fairly lively. But in winter, people did not like venturing into the mountains, and the place became desolate.

There was, however, one group of people who could never sit still: hiking enthusiasts.

The hiking enthusiasts of Xinghuan City went to Dafeng Mountain every week. They followed familiar routes along established trails, with markers placed along the way, so there was generally no danger.

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But the previous weekend, two hiking enthusiasts disappeared in the mountains, and now, after four full days, they still had not been found.

The weather had not been good that weekend. The forecast warned of heavy snow in the mountains, with snowfall expected to continue for two days. Entering the mountains under such conditions was extremely dangerous, so the leader of the hiking group canceled the outing.

No one had expected two members to enter the mountains on their own. They had joined the group less than two months earlier and had only accompanied the team two or three times. They were still beginners.

The two were not reported missing until the third day. On Monday, they failed to show up for work. After their colleagues searched everywhere without finding them, they called the police. An investigation revealed that the pair had already been missing for two days. After repeated inquiries, the police found surveillance footage showing them heading toward Dafeng Mountain.

A normal hiking trip did not involve carrying food for many days. No matter how well they had prepared against the cold, they could easily freeze to death in a snowy mountain at night, to say nothing of the many accidents that could occur in the wilderness.

The heavy snow on the mountain had not melted, leaving everything blanketed in white. This posed enormous difficulties for the search. Even drones struggled to capture any sign of the two people. Every trace leading into the mountains had been buried, and the police dogs they brought with them began circling aimlessly halfway up the mountain, unable to pick up a scent.

Whether alive or dead, the two had to be found. The police joined forces with the forestry bureau and the fire department to expand the search area.

They had searched for another full day, but before the mountains had even cleared for a day, snow began falling again. Visibility was reduced to a vast white blur, and continuing deeper into the mountains in such weather would be tantamount to suicide. Helplessly, the search teams had no choice but to withdraw for the time being.

Yan Kai had also been temporarily assigned to search for the two missing people. After two days of searching, his ears had already suffered frostbite, and everyone was growing increasingly anxious that the pair had not been found.

Major incidents were rare in the usually peaceful city, so the news was attracting attention both within the city and beyond.

With the New Year approaching, allowing the search to drag on until the victims died would have extremely serious consequences. The higher-ups had issued a firm order: find them as quickly as possible.

Yan Kai sighed helplessly. He had spent all day searching yesterday and had not returned until nightfall. He had gone out again early that morning, and the physical strain had left him somewhat exhausted.

A colleague took off his gloves and drank some water. “Who knows when the snow will stop? If things get any worse, we’ll have no choice but to enter the mountains in the snowfall and keep looking.”

“That’s too dangerous. Something could easily go wrong.”

“The phone’s GPS can’t locate them either. I really have no idea where they could have ended up.”

The colleague rubbed his hands around the water cup and sighed softly. “My girlfriend’s birthday is tomorrow night. I was supposed to celebrate it with her, but now that’s gone up in smoke. She’s going to complain about me again. Sigh. For something this serious to happen right before the New Year… If only I had precognitive powers. Then I’d know their location instantly, go up there, and bring them back. At this rate, who knows how long the search will take? We might not even have a decent New Year, and I can forget about my year-end bonus too.”

Yan Kai murmured an agreement. Then his eyes shifted slightly, as though he had thought of something.

There were no supernatural powers in this world, yet someone truly could calculate a person’s location. He immediately thought of Daoist Wenyuan. The Daoist was remarkably accurate at finding people; he had been the one to point them toward the Liu family’s child the previous time.

Using mystical practices to find people seemed feasible. It could also save a great deal of manpower and resources and buy the two missing hikers more time.

Yan Kai rose and left at once. After discussing the matter with his superior for a long while, they decided to give it a try. He then called Daoist Wenyuan.

Daoists were especially busy at the end of the year. Daoist Wenyuan barely had time even to answer the call. After exchanging only a few hurried words and learning what had happened, he dismissed them with a single sentence.

“I don’t have time. Go find Wolf Xiao and Hu Yuanfei. They’ll definitely be happy to help.”

Holding the phone after the call ended, Yan Kai suddenly remembered: the two demons’ new line of work was helping people find lost cats and dogs.

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