Chapter 106: Greedy for Warmth

Bai Ling got back at eleven at night, carrying a large bag of snacks, mostly desserts.

She usually didn’t have a habit of eating sweets, but lately she craved them. The more sugar, the better.

“Eating like this won’t make me fat, right?” she muttered while waiting for the elevator.

But muttering was muttering. Her chewing of the crepe didn’t slow one bit.

It had been less than two hours since the buffet, and she was already craving food again.

After leaving the restaurant and saying goodbye to a few roommates, she passed a dessert shop. The window display was filled with neat rows of desserts, and her mouth watered.

She couldn’t resist going in and buying two big bags.

She regretted it as soon as she paid, but the regret lasted less than thirty seconds. Then she told herself: these are emergency rations. If she woke up hungry in the middle of the night, at least she’d have something to eat instead of Xu Zhi.

She pushed open the door. The familiar cedar scent drifted in with the evening breeze. The window was half open, and she could hear leaves rustling as wind pulled them down outside.

Xu Zhi had already curled up in his bedroll and fallen asleep. His steady breathing reassured the snake.

“Really, close the window when you sleep…” Bai Ling put down her shoulder bag and the two bags of desserts, then took her white slippers from the shoe cabinet and changed into them.

The early autumn wind already carried a chill. She tiptoed to the window and closed it, afraid of waking Xu Zhi.

The big boy hadn’t slept all night, and today he’d been running around nonstop because of an emergency. Bai Ling didn’t want to disturb his rest.

Demon Suppression Bureau work was hard. You had daily duty and emergencies, and sometimes you couldn’t rest for long stretches.

If the Bureau weren’t full of demon exterminators with skills and spiritual power, ordinary people would probably have dropped dead from the workload.

Bai Ling crouched quietly by the bedroll and looked at Xu Zhi’s sleeping face, which could only be described as peaceful.

Even for a demon exterminator, this kind of intensity was rough.

And one day he might run into some terrifying great demon. If he came back alive, that would be thanks enough.

Maybe she should find a reason to make him quit?

Bai Ling thought about it, then dismissed the idea. She worried about Xu Zhi, her only friend, but having grown up with him, she knew his temperament too well.

Since childhood he’d dreamed of being a hero and wiping out evil. He was always the first to charge in. How could danger and exhaustion make him give up?

Not that this guy lacked anything admirable deep down.

Maybe because he was too exhausted, or because he had no mental guard against Bai Ling at all, he slept deeply. He had even kicked off the blanket at some point. The solid chest exposed at his pajama collar was painted white by moonlight.

“You’re this old and still kicking off blankets in your sleep,” Bai Ling muttered, with no idea where she got the confidence to say that.

Her own sleeping habits were far worse than Xu Zhi’s. Sometimes she liked to chew things in her dreams. The Psyduck plushies on her bed had been ravaged until they were covered in tooth marks.

She reached out to cover him with the blanket, but her fingertip accidentally brushed his chest. Hard, warm, broad. It gave her a sense of security she couldn’t explain.

Bai Ling suddenly shivered. She couldn’t help remembering that day half a month ago. Maybe, maybe if Xu Zhi hadn’t questioned her today, she would have forgotten.

…

Forget it, my ass!

How could she forget?

That day he had been just as dead to the world, lying on the ground without moving. She, Bai Ling, had to put her hand inside…

But lying in his arms really did put her at ease.

As if possessed, Bai Ling suddenly pressed her face to his chest.

He won’t know anyway. It’s fine to stay like this for a while, right?

Bai Ling felt her face itching, as if capillaries were bursting madly. Her face must be red now. Very red. Red enough to bleed.

Ever since she inexplicably turned into a girl that day, she had been surrounded by confusion and fear. Later, by the lake, when she fully understood she was no longer human, that unease and fear exploded like a bomb, leaving her heart shaking.

She had resolved several times to accept her fate, to accept her current identity. But those resolutions were like those of any ordinary, lost person. She forgot them completely after a night’s sleep.

That was why she always liked crawling into the narrow washing machine, and why she liked filling her bed with plushies.

Only in a cramped space, enjoying the feeling of her skin and bones being squeezed, could she feel a little safer.

In the early days after becoming a girl and a snake demon, she forced her unease and fear down into her chest every day, trying her best to act like a normal person.

She was afraid her past as a man would be discovered. She was afraid that if her snake demon identity was found out, everyone around her would look at her like a monster.

So she deliberately imitated girls’ speech and behavior, trying to make herself look like an original girl.

So she tried to maintain a human form, and even forced herself to control her demon power within a week to a level that even demon suppression instruments couldn’t detect.

Trembling, she was pulled into Xu Zhi’s chest. That warm breath wrapped around her heart.

That day, she suddenly felt the taut string in her go slack.

Xu Zhi only complained that she hadn’t told him she was a girl. He never asked why she contradicted herself and didn’t dare acknowledge him, never asked about the many suspicious things about her.

He simply insisted Bai Ling was an original girl, deliberately ignoring the details that would seem off with even a little thought.

He trusted Bai Ling, and Bai Ling trusted him.

If one day you find out I’m a snake demon, will you still trust me like this?

As Bai Ling thought this, she twisted her waist and slowly edged into the bedroll.

Then something hot pressed against her butt.

Besides the familiar cedar scent of a snake’s heart, the air seemed to hold a certain suspicious smell.

Bai Ling’s expression froze.

As a former man, and as the famous doujinshi artist Qinglin, she knew exactly what that thing was.

Had this guy been stimulated today? Why did it seem like he was having a wet dream…

After half a month living with Xu Zhi, this was the first time this had happened…

Should she move away right now?

Bai Ling thought so.

But her face was still pressed tightly to Xu Zhi’s chest. The warmth there made her reluctant to leave.

Greed for warmth was a snake’s instinct, but lately she seemed to be growing greedier for it.

Autumn was already cooling down, and the baleful aura Xu Zhi gave off made his body temperature much higher than ordinary people.

This excellent heat pack made Bai Ling even more unwilling to let go.

Just a little while. A little longer.

Bai Ling hypnotized herself, closed her eyes, and nuzzled deeper.

At the same time, two kilometers away, at the Rongcheng Demon Suppression Bureau.

“Not bad.” The long sword in Yinzuo’s hand was still humming.

“You deserve this invitation.” The talisman floating behind YinYou suddenly dimmed. She tossed the black invitation with gold edges in her hand.

The invitation stabbed into the floor in front of Lin Jiuge like a blade.

“What does this mean?” Lin Jiuge quietly hid her still trembling hand behind her back.

The two sisters had come looking for a fight. They had immediately beaten the demon suppression officers of the Rongcheng Demon Suppression Bureau, then named Lin Jiuge, the ace who had once killed a Grade Seven great demon alone.

“Tianque Mystic Gate Martial Tournament…” Yinzuo sheathed her sword.

“Master wants to see your measure.” Yinzuo added the second half.

These two sisters always split a sentence in half. The elder said one half, the younger supplied the other.

“You make this much noise just to deliver an invitation?” Lin Jiuge scratched her wind-blown temple hair.

The exchange with the sisters had lasted only an instant before both sides stopped. It looked like a draw, but Lin Jiuge knew that in a life-or-death fight, she wouldn’t gain any advantage against them.

The sisters seemed to have inherited the teachings of some expert. Their swordsmanship and their thinking and experience in battle were flawless. In the Demon Suppression Bureau, they would be first-rate sharp blades.

Even the Grade Seven great demon she had dealt with a month and a half ago hadn’t given her this feeling.

“Come and go as you please?” Seeing the sisters toss out an invitation and try to leave, Lin Jiuge couldn’t stand the insult. “Lao Zao! Entertain our guests!”

“Got it!” The middle-aged man called Lao Zao behind her suddenly threw out a bronze bell. It hung in the air and grew larger, about to cover the sisters.

“Dong!” The bell rang out, but the sisters were already gone.

“You’re killing me!” Lin Jiuge suddenly slapped Lao Zao on the forehead. She showed her true colors as a Sichuan-Chongqing tyrannosaurus woman. “I told you to entertain them! Don’t you understand entertainment?”

“In Sichuan-Chongqing, how can you not invite guests to hot pot when they come to your door?! Isn’t that what you’re best at?”

Lao Zao was stunned. He hadn’t expected Lin Jiuge’s “entertain” to really mean treating the sisters to hot pot…

Lin Jiuge’s cursing gradually scattered in the autumn wind. Yinzuo and YinYou had already appeared on the road below the Shanhe Group building in Rongcheng.

Yinzuo’s notebook listed a dense invitation list. She put a check behind Rongcheng Demon Suppression Bureau.

“Guangfu, Rongcheng, the Zhong family of Mobei…” She counted the invitations they had sent one by one.

“Lin’an is left.” Yinzuo supplied the second half for her.

These days they had been sending invitations everywhere, inviting demon exterminators to Tianque for the Mystic Gate Martial Tournament that Mingyun would hold soon.

Whether you were a member of the Demon Suppression Bureau, a child of a demon extermination family, part of a civilian demon extermination organization, or a freelance demon exterminator, identity didn’t matter. As long as you could take one move from them, you would receive an invitation.

Over half a month, most invitations had been sent out. Only Lin’an remained.

“Lin’an…”

“I heard Daoist Xiao stayed there for a long time.”

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