“Worried about what?” Tao Fangyi’s trembling got worse.
Wang tilted his head. “After all, I don’t have experience. If you try to force things, I’d be really unsettled.”
Tao Fangyi: “Oh! So that’s not why you died!” He sounded a little relieved.
Wang: “… And you? Do you have experience?”
“Of course not!” He was just a doll.
“Then if I help you get some experience, can you let me go?” The long-suffering Wang had finally found this fool doll’s weakness. He intended to make him just as uncomfortable.
“Like this.” Wang formed a circle with his left thumb and forefinger, pressed it to his lips, and licked inside the circle with a snake-like tongue.
Tao Fangyi didn’t react.
Wang pressed on: “I don’t just have bandages on my face, you know. Guess where else I’m wrapped?”
Tao Fangyi stayed quiet for a long moment, then suddenly understood what he was doing. His mind went blank. “No, no, no!”
Moments later, Wang lay on the floor, trussed up like a mummy by red strings.
Tao Fangyi paced around the room, muttering about his sins while trying to reform Wang, to make him more positive.
“Are you ignoring me on purpose?” Wang asked with a grin.
Tao Fangyi didn’t understand. He pulled out his phone and looked it up, then nearly dropped the device. “NO!! I’m just telling you to calm down!”
“You look adorable when you’re freaking out.” Wang was unimpressed. “I think I’m getting excited.”
Tao Fangyi: “Oh my god…”
Wang: “If you don’t want me to torment you, you’d better let me go.”
Tao Fangyi: “Not happening.”
Wang: “Tch.” No matter. He’d already found the weak spot.
It was just a question of who would break first.
Wang kept harassing Tao Fangyi, while Tao Fangyi tried to reason with this fierce ghost.
Neither gave in, and as the more unscrupulous one, Wang gradually gained the upper hand.
Just then, a piercing shriek—like a boiling kettle—split the air.
The mission target, Ren Xinxin, was back.
The moment Wang heard the child’s voice, he wilted. Tao Fangyi could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Wang wanted to say something more, but the child’s delighted shrieks were just too shrill.
Wang’s offensive had failed.
Drained, he retreated to his corner, and Tao Fangyi cracked the door open to peek out.
Ren Xinxin was hugging Li Yao and twirling around, then dumped all her snacks into Li Yao’s arms.
Li Yao was smiling too, but her friendliness toward this half-sister felt more like a performance—one put on to fit in.
Tao Fangyi got the sense that Li Yao wasn’t even paying attention to the boisterous kid.
Ren Xinxin’s kindergarten had assigned homework. For their age, it was mostly practical life skills; today she had to help an adult make a dish.
Ren Xinxin chattered to her mom about the dramas among her kindergarten friends, sorting out right and wrong like a little adult, while her mom helped her wash vegetable leaves one by one.
Her focus shifted away from Li Yao.
Li Yao breathed a sigh of relief and found a new place to sit.
But the relief didn’t last. Listening to the conversation in the kitchen, she curled into herself.
She wasn’t really sad, just uncomfortable.
Not long after, the apartment door opened again.
Ren Xinxin’s dad was back.
As soon as he stepped in, his eyes went to Li Yao. “Yaoyao’s here?” His tone and voice sounded like someone who’d rehearsed but couldn’t pull it off.
Li Yao forced a smile and nodded. “Hello, Uncle.”
“Welcome…” The man hemmed and hawed before setting a cake on the dining table. “I got this on the way. Hope you like it.”
“I like it a lot.” Li Yao didn’t even glance at what he was holding.
The man didn’t really look at Li Yao either.
They were both awkward. The man pulled a stool over and sat to the side, while Li Yao wanted to offer him the sofa but didn’t know if standing up would be appropriate—whether it would look like she was deliberately distancing herself.
Yang Hongling soon emerged to break the tension, though only on the surface.
She joked cheerfully between the two of them, and both the man and Li Yao smiled, trying hard to play along.
After the forced laughter, the four of them ate dinner in a strange atmosphere. Then Li Yao ate the cake the man had brought back.
She proactively shared it with Ren Xinxin, though the whole time, her eyes still didn’t really see this “sister.” She was simply trying to be polite, not “insensitive.”
The sister didn’t matter. Whether she liked her didn’t matter.
What mattered was that the other existed, and she had to share.
After she shared, Yang Hongling’s and Uncle Ren’s expressions seemed to soften, less strained.
Before that, they’d probably been worried that this new “line-jumper” was some wounded, prickly child.
Li Yao finished her cake, smiled, and said thank you.
As for what the cake tasted like, she didn’t really taste it.
On the way to buy her new clothes, Ren Xinxin brought along her new doll.
Tao Fangyi lay draped over the kid’s shoulder, secretly observing Li Yao.
Li Yao remained uneasy. Especially once she noticed how natural the family of three beside her were together, she became even more guarded.
Her mother was trying hard to give her a sense of belonging, and Uncle Ren did his best to cooperate.
“These shoes are nice. The grass green brings out your spirit.” Yang Hongling half-knelt to help Li Yao change shoes.
Li Yao instinctively wanted to stop her, but her hand stopped mid-reach and pulled back.
Yang Hongling asked the man beside her: “Isn’t this color beautiful?”
The man nodded seriously. “It really is. The color’s so bright.”
Yang Hongling asked Ren Xinxin: “Xinxin, don’t you think your sister looks pretty in this color?”
Ren Xinxin was still in a hyper mood. She raised both hands high with a beaming smile: “Pretty!” Her excited voice was still piercing.
Then she hugged her doll and bounced around the shoe store, chanting “pretty” to the beat of her steps like a joyful repeating toy.
But that joy couldn’t infect Li Yao. The family’s closeness only made her feel more out of place.
And she was still a child. She couldn’t hide her feelings too well.
Yang Hongling soon noticed Li Yao’s discomfort.
The atmosphere stalled for a brief moment. Yang Hongling rallied, softening her tone even more.
But Li Yao could no longer smile.
It seemed like she’d gone and ruined the mood again.
Her mother got up and tugged her forward, but Li Yao couldn’t find the energy to follow.
She could tell everyone was tired—except for little Ren Xinxin, everyone was exhausted.
Her arrival seemed to have worn them out even more.
She was tired too. The goodwill was suffocating her.
Panic, helplessness, not wanting to move forward.
Ren Xinxin ran ahead of her with a laugh, and Li Yao watched as the girl stretched out her hand toward Yang Hongling.
Li Yao let go, letting that smaller, younger hand take hold.
She needs her mother, Li Yao thought.
The doll in Ren Xinxin’s arms seemed to be looking at her.
“I’m okay,” Li Yao mouthed silently.
“Yaoyao?!” Yang Hongling spun around when she felt Li Yao let go.
“I’m right here.” Li Yao jogged over and took Yang Hongling’s other hand.
Ren Xinxin burst out laughing, probably thinking it was a prank by her big sister.
Li Yao smiled back at her.
Li Yao was thinking: Why is this road so, so long? This awkwardness felt like it would never end.
But her seven years of carefree freedom were so short—they’d passed in a flash.
【The odds of two different demons becoming family are tiny.】 Tao Fangyi’s voice suddenly sounded in Li Yao’s ear.
【Ah!!】 Li Yao jumped.
【Don’t be scared. I’m talking to you with my mind.】 Tao Fangyi said. 【I was thinking: my eye was clearly taken back, so why can you still see Wang? Maybe that eye opened up your innate Heavenly Eye.】 He was trying to distract her.
【Heavenly Eye? On the forehead?】 Li Yao reached up to touch her head.
【Something like that. It’s probably on your soul’s forehead.】 Tao Fangyi explained. 【This is all too coincidental.】
【… That little ball was your eye. Then what about your body? Did someone take it?】 Li Yao asked.
【Would you like to hear my story?】 Tao Fangyi’s story was long. He was confident he could keep the kid occupied for the whole walk.
Wang had no idea he was missing a chance to uncover the truth. He hated going out shopping with adults and kids. To accommodate him, Tao Fangyi had tied him up at home for now.
Wang waited in boredom for over two hours.
He expected the family to come back awkward, but to his surprise, both kids were all hyped up when they returned.
The little calf was, of course, always hyper. But the little fox actually looked happy too.
“What did you do?” Wang hurried over to Tao Fangyi and whispered.
【Told stories. Lots of stories, including the time she was a fox and fought other demons over a mountain peak.】 Tao Fangyi had redirected the kid’s attention.
“Oh~ so gentle~ Too bad it’s just a band-aid on a broken bone.” Wang said offhandedly.
【Can’t you think positively for once?】 Tao Fangyi disagreed.
“You’ve never talked to teenagers, have you.” Wang crossed his arms. “You’ll see before long.”
This time, Wang was right.
Tao Fangyi’s main mission target was still Ren Xinxin. Over the next few days, he began testing her fear tolerance.
Li Yao went to her new school to register.
Everything seemed to be improving steadily, but the stability didn’t even last a week.
At seven PM on a certain Friday, Li Yao still wasn’t home.
She messaged Yang Hongling to say she was out with classmates.
Tao Fangyi didn’t think much of it at first, but Wang reacted strongly: “You don’t think maybe the kid didn’t actually make any friends and just doesn’t want to come home?”
“Could be.” Tao Fangyi thought they should give the kid some time alone, let her process things.
“The ghostly aura around here is boiling.” Wang warned. “The scent of blood is heavy.”
Tao Fangyi: “There’s ghostly aura around here?”
“… You can’t smell it?! Wait—then how did you sniff me out right away?!” Wang thought he’d been faking.
Tao Fangyi’s expression turned horrified. “You’re not messing with me, are you?”
“The ghostly aura’s so thick it’s choking me! I thought you had it under control the whole time—calm as you like!” Wang had always assumed Tao Fangyi was some kind of massive hidden powerhouse, and he’d been waiting for him to make a move.
But Tao Fangyi was utterly dumbfounded. “Thick… for how long? The kid won’t be in danger, right?”
Wang was stunned too. This was Wenren Fu’s jurisdiction. If lives were lost, it would be a disaster.
“Ah!!” Tao Fangyi and Wang screamed at the same time.
