Reporting to the Demon Bureau: My 2,000-Year Secret Got Exposed!

My name is Zhujiu.

A snake.

To be exact, an old snake who happened to wake up the year the First Emperor standardized weights and measures.

Counting on my fingers, a little over two thousand two hundred years.

Most of it I spent asleep, deep in Mount Kunlun.

Every time I woke, the sky outside had changed owners.

The last time, the mountain was nearly bald from tourists, and iron birds droned back and forth overhead.

A little demon in the hills told me this was a new age. Science. Heaven and Earth spiritual energy running thin. Nothing has been allowed to become a spirit since 1949.

Anyone with cultivation from before the founding had to register at a place called the Bureau of Abnormal Life-Form Affairs, the Bureau of Demon Affairs for short, and get a card. Otherwise you were unregistered, and they would catch you and slice you up.

I thought it over. Sliced up would look bad.

Better to register.

I also wanted a look at the little demons of this generation.

So I took human form, put on casual clothes I had borrowed from the foot of the mountain, and strolled into the city looking like a fresh graduate.

A weasel spirit gave me the address.

An unremarkable office tower, with a sign at the door: Community Cultural Exchange Center.

One step inside and I smelled demon qi.

Good grief. Every kind under the sun.

The lobby ran like a bank. Long lines.

A girl with two cat ears on her head, scrolling her phone with open impatience.

A middle-aged man in a suit, fox tail not quite hidden behind him.

A big fellow whose true form must have been enormous, because he could not take human form cleanly. Scales still covered half his face.

Anxiety hung in the air, thin as smoke.

I found a corner and queued quietly.

“New here?”

A young man with green hair touched my arm. He smelled of leaves. A tree, probably.

I nodded.

He clicked his tongue twice. “Look at that frame. Awakened a few years back, right? Spiritual qi this thin, you little demons have a hard road to walk.”

I smiled. Said nothing.

Ahead of me stood a young man in head-to-toe designer labels, hair dyed the color of a house fire.

He smelled of wildness and arrogance. A wolf demon.

A regular, by the look of it. He was flirting with the young miss behind the service window, her makeup done with obvious care.

“Mei’er. Prettier every day.”

The young miss called Mei’er was a fox spirit. Her eyes slid sideways, and she laughed until she shook.

“Young Master Lang, you’re teasing me again.”

Young Master Lang slapped a folder on the counter. Quiet, but it carried an order.

“My father sent me to file the paperwork. The Nanshan plot. The Lang family is taking it. Tell the useless little demons to clear out.”

Hu Mei’s smile froze for a beat, then went back to professional.

“Young Master Lang, there are procedures. The director has to approve this…”

“Procedures?” Lang Xiaotian sneered and pointed at his own chest. “The Lang family is the procedure.”

As he spoke, demon qi spilled out of him, whether by accident or on purpose, heavy enough to bow people’s backs.

The little demons around him went pale and stepped away.

A show of force.

It did nothing to me. If anything, I found it funny.

That much cultivation would not fill the gap between my teeth while I grind them in my sleep.

Maybe my face was too calm, because Lang Xiaotian noticed me.

His brows lifted. He looked me up and down.

“You. New? Soft skin like that. What’s your true form? Rabbit? Hamster?”

The hangers-on behind him burst out laughing.

I did not lift my eyelids.

“Snake.”

“A snake?” Lang Xiaotian’s grin widened. “Oh, and venomous. What, you have a complaint?”

He stepped in, close enough to breathe on me. The rank demon qi got thicker.

“Brat, this is the Bureau. You learn the Bureau’s rules. You see me, you call me Brother Lang. Understand?”

I looked at him. Boredom settled over me.

Asleep that long, and this is what I wake up to.

I sighed.

“You’re too loud.”

Then I blew, very gently.

No wind. No sound.

But Lang Xiaotian and his followers took a slap from a hand nobody could see. All of them went sideways, struck the wall, slid down, and stayed down.

The whole lobby went quiet.

Every demon turned to look at me.

Shock. Confusion. Fear.

Behind the window, Hu Mei’s mouth made an O. Her pen hit the floor.

Lang Xiaotian clutched his face and pushed himself up. Venom in his eyes, and disbelief.

“You… you dare touch me? Do you know who my father is?”

I ignored him and walked to the window.

“Hello. Here to register.”

Hu Mei came back to herself and, hands shaking, pushed a form across the counter.

“Name, species, year of becoming a spirit, true form traits… please, please fill it in.”

Her voice shook with it.

I picked up the pen and thought.

Name: Zhujiu.

Species: snake.

Year of becoming a spirit. That one went back a while.

I looked up. “How do I write Qin dynasty?”

Chapter Two

“Qin… the Qin dynasty?”

Hu Mei’s eyes went wide as temple bells. She repeated the words without meaning to, and her voice cracked.

The lobby had been silent. That one cry froze the air solid.

Every demon, Lang Xiaotian included, half off the floor and still planning his threat, stood as if pinned in place.

The Qin dynasty?

Who was he kidding?

In the demon world these days, a spirit from the Ming or Qing counted as a senior.

Tang and Song were legends. In closed-door cultivation, most of them. Dragon head seen, dragon tail never.

The Qin dynasty. What was that? A living fossil?

Lang Xiaotian recovered first. He held his swollen cheek and roared, laughing until tears came.

“The Qin dynasty? Hahaha! You watched too much TV, you idiot. The Qin dynasty. Why not say you hatched out of a rock?”

“Brat, you laid the act on too thick. You’re a little demon a few years out of the egg, and you’re starving for attention.”

With him leading, the other demons put on their scorn and laughter too.

“Right. If you’re going to brag, do the homework first.”

“Kids these days. They’ll say anything for a reputation.”

“He probably wanted to scare Young Master Lang and made himself a joke instead.”

Hu Mei let out her breath. She patted her chest and gave me a reproachful look.

“Sir, please don’t joke. Fill it in seriously.”

She thought I was playing with her.

I paid the mockery no attention.

I looked at Hu Mei and asked, quite seriously, “I’m not joking. His Majesty the First Emperor, the year he standardized weights and measures. Your form doesn’t have that option?”

My tone stayed level. My eyes were honest.

Honest enough that Hu Mei’s smile stuck on her face again.

She looked into my eyes. No mockery in there. Only an old well, deep and motionless.

Something in her panicked.

“Then… then true form traits?” She skipped the question before it, and her voice came out dry.

I tilted my head and thought.

That one was hard to describe.

Too big.

I held out a hand and shaped something in the air, trying to be concrete.

“Hmm. Hard to say. The numbers are large. Put it this way. If I stretched my true form out fully, I could probably coil around that thing you humans call the Forbidden City. Three times.”

“Pff.”

Lang Xiaotian had just taken a mouthful of water. It came straight back out.

This time the laughter was louder, and it had no brakes.

“Three times around the Forbidden City? Hahaha! Who does he think he is? Something out of the Classic of Mountains and Seas?”

“His brain’s gone. Biggest snake demon I ever saw was a few dozen meters. Coiling around a basketball court would tax him.”

“That’s it. He’s completely insane.”

Hu Mei’s face went red. Her career had just taken an insult it would not recover from.

She slammed the counter. “Sir! Leave this instant! The Bureau of Demon Affairs does not welcome mental cases like…”

She did not finish.

Because a hand settled on her shoulder. Old, roped with veins, holding terrifying strength.

An old man in a Zhongshan suit stood behind her, white-haired, eyes sharp as a hawk’s. Nobody had seen him arrive.

He did not look at Hu Mei. His eyes were fixed on me.

In them: shock, doubt, excitement, and something else. Fear, down in the marrow.

“You… say that again?”

The old man’s voice was hoarse, and it allowed no argument.

The moment he appeared, the lobby went utterly silent.

Lang Xiaotian, so loud a minute ago, went weak in the legs at the sight of him and nearly dropped to his knees.

“D-Director Cang Yan!”

Cang Yan.

Director of the North China Branch of the Bureau of Demon Affairs.

True form: an azure dragon of noble bloodline.

In the North China demon world his word was the only word. A local emperor.

And he had come out himself.

Cang Yan ignored everyone. He stared at me and repeated, one word at a time:

“You said your true form… how large?”

I looked at him, a little surprised.

So there was one who knew what he was looking at.

This little dragon carried very pure dragon qi. Muddy in places, but the root was sound.

I held on to my patience and said it again.

“I said, stretched out fully, I could coil around the Forbidden City three times.”

Cang Yan’s body jerked.

His breathing went rough.

He did not look at my face. He stared at the spot between my brows.

There, a snake-shaped pattern, faint to the point of vanishing.

My natal mark.

An ordinary little demon would never see it. To a great demon of his level, that pattern burned brighter than the sun.

“The First Emperor… weights and measures…”

Cang Yan muttered it, as if recalling an old legend.

His face went from shock to horror, and then to a dead gray despair.

The demons around us stared, dumb.

What was happening?

What was wrong with Director Cang Yan?

Could the brat be telling the truth?

The thought was absurd. But Cang Yan’s face made it hard to doubt.

Lang Xiaotian felt cold run from the soles of his feet to the top of his skull.

Who had he offended?

What had he walked into?

Every demon in the hall had stopped breathing.

Then Cang Yan did something that nearly cost them their eyes.

He came around the counter and stood in front of me.

He straightened his Zhongshan suit. Then, in front of everyone, he dropped to both knees with a thud.

He pressed his whole body to the floor and gave a tearing cry, half sob.

“This Junior, Cang Yan, did not know the Old Ancestor’s carriage had come. Ten thousand deaths cannot cover it!”

“I beg the Old Ancestor… save the Demon Race!”

Chapter Three

You could hear a pin drop in the lobby of the Bureau of Demon Affairs.

Time stopped.

Every demon in the room, in the queue or behind a desk, turned to stone.

Mouths hung open wide enough for an egg. Their eyes held nothing but disbelief, as if the floor had flipped over.

Director Cang Yan…

The azure dragon director whose stamped foot made the Four-Nine City tremble.

The top-grade great demon said to summon thunderstorms when his temper broke.

Right now he was on his face in front of a young man who looked like a college student, like the lowest kind of worshipper.

Calling him Old Ancestor.

Saying he deserved ten thousand deaths.

Red rain from a clear sky would have been easier to believe.

Something buzzed in Lang Xiaotian’s skull and left it empty.

He was not dreaming. He had dropped straight into the eighteenth level of Hell.

Old Ancestor?

What kind of being made an azure dragon kneel and call him Old Ancestor?

And a minute ago, he had told this Old Ancestor to call him Brother Lang?

The thought flipped Lang Xiaotian’s eyes back. His legs gave, his bladder went, and he collapsed on the floor, out cold.

Hu Mei was white as paper, shaking like a leaf in autumn wind.

A minute ago she had slammed the counter and told this Old Ancestor to get out?

Her Demon Core felt ready to crack from fright.

I looked at Cang Yan on the floor and felt a headache coming on.

I had come to register. I wanted a few quiet years.

How had it turned into this?

“Get up. Talk to me.” I kept my voice flat.

It was not loud, but in that dead hall it landed like thunder.

Cang Yan shuddered. He did not dare rise. His head went lower.

“The Old Ancestor has not pardoned me. This Junior dares not rise.”

I frowned.

“Pardon you for what? I don’t know you.”

Cang Yan lifted his head, face wet with tears.

“The Old Ancestor does not know this junior, but this junior’s forebear received your guidance once.”

He fumbled inside his robe and brought out a scale.

Blue-black, carved with old runes, giving off pure dragon’s might.

“This is the token my family’s ancestor passed down. He said that if Old Ancestor Zhujiu had not stood at the bank of the Wei River and blocked that one’s Immortal-Slaying sword, the azure dragon line would have lost its inheritance long ago.”

I looked at the scale, and dust blew off my memory.

Ah. Now I remembered.

The First Emperor, in those years, went looking for longevity. He sought out immortals and asked after the Dao, and he annoyed a pack of creatures who called themselves immortals.

One of them was a sword immortal with a short temper. He brought his blade down and tried to flatten Xianyang.

I happened to be asleep in the Wei River. The noise woke me. I was annoyed, so I flicked my tail.

I think I knocked something out of the sky.

There were a few half-witted mud loaches in the water then. Probably his ancestors.

Two thousand years, and such a small thing was still being remembered.

“Get up. It’s ancient history.”

I waved a hand.

Only then did Cang Yan dare to stand, shaking. His back stayed bent. He did not raise his head.

He made a respectful gesture toward the back of the office.

“Old Ancestor, this is no place to talk. Please come through to the inner hall.”

I nodded and followed him.

Passing Lang Xiaotian on the floor, I paused.

Cang Yan understood at once. His face turned cold and terrible.

He turned and shouted at a trembling subordinate:

“The Lang family has thrown its weight around in the North China demon world, ignored the law, and preyed on its own kind. From today, seize every Lang asset, revoke their place in the demon registry, and throw their Clan Head, Lang Batian, into the Demon-Suppressing Tower. Forever.”

“As for this animal…”

He glanced at the puddle on the floor. Disgust filled his eyes.

“Strip his cultivation base. Throw him back into the mountains. Let him live or die.”

“Yes, Director!”

The subordinate scrambled off to carry it out.

No demon in the hall dared breathe.

That was the azure dragon director.

One second begging on his knees. The next, turning his palm over to decide whether a great clan of the Demon Race lived or died.

And all of that thunder came because the young man had glanced at the floor once.

This young man… no. This Old Ancestor. Who was he?

Every demon watched my back. Only awe and fear were left in their eyes.

Hu Mei sat down hard in her chair.

She knew she would never forget this day.

She had watched a legend arrive.

Chapter Four

Cang Yan’s office was on the top floor, all old wood and quiet. Less an office than a study.

He brewed tea himself: top-grade spirit buds, steeped in snowmelt from the peaks of Mount Kunlun.

His hands shook as he carried the cup.

“Old Ancestor. Please.”

He set the cup in front of me with both hands, then stood to one side, arms hanging, like a schoolboy waiting to be scolded.

I picked it up and sipped.

Not bad.

“Sit. Don’t stand there.”

“Thank you, Old Ancestor.”

Only then did Cang Yan pull a chair over and perch on the front half of it.

“So. What happened out there to set you off?” I went straight at it.

In the hall he had said the sky was falling and begged me to save the Demon Race. That was no small thing.

Cang Yan’s face went heavy at once, despair underneath.

He stood and bowed deeply.

“Old Ancestor, this junior is useless. I cannot hold it much longer.”

He waved a hand. A huge three-dimensional map rose on the office wall.

At the center: Yanjing.

Deep under Yanjing, a great red point blinked like a beating heart.

The power coming off it was vicious, savage, and full of ruin. Even through the projection, it felt familiar.

“That is… Xuetu’s presence?” My brows drew in.

Xuetu.

An old monster from my own age.

His true form was an ancient Fierce Beast that fed on the grudges, blood, and flesh of living things. Cruel beyond measure.

When the world fell into war and the beacons burned, that was his richest feeding.

Later I stepped in. With several Daoist masters of the time, it took everything we had to suppress him at a dragon vein node beneath Yanjing.

Two thousand years on, and he was still alive.

Cang Yan’s face said he had expected no less. He spoke bitterly.

“The Old Ancestor remembers him. Yes. It is Xuetu.”

“After you and the other sages suppressed him, you left a decree. My dragon line has guarded the seal ever since.”

“For two thousand years the azure dragons have kept faith. But in my generation, Heaven and Earth spiritual energy thins every year. The spiritual qi runs lower, and our bloodline weakens with it. Xuetu, meanwhile, has been feeding in secret on every ugly feeling this modern city produces. His strength has not fallen. It has grown.”

He pointed at the blinking red point, and his voice shook.

“Three months ago, the seal cracked for the first time. We threw the whole Bureau at it and barely closed it. Last week it cracked again, ten times wider.”

“We cannot hold it.”

“Our best formation masters calculate seven days at most. Seven. Then the seal breaks open.”

Fear filled Cang Yan’s eyes.

“Old Ancestor, you know what Xuetu is. If he gets out, with the strength he carries now and this many people packed into the world… all of Huaxia, no, the whole world, will drown in blood. Purgatory on earth.”

“The Bureau of Demon Affairs is a mantis blocking a cart against him.”

He knelt again, voice cracked with grief.

“That is why this junior lost all composure when I felt your presence.”

“You are our last hope. The Demon Race’s. Every living thing’s.”

“I beg the Old Ancestor, for the sake of the world, to strike again and suppress this beast.”

I said nothing.

I held the cup and watched the leaves turn over in the water.

I had planned to wake, sit quietly, watch the sun and moon trade places, watch the ages change, and turn to dust when my time came.

I was tired.

Two thousand years. I had seen more than enough killing, and more than enough love turned to hate.

None of it interested me.

But Xuetu…

I have not forgotten what followed him: a thousand li of dead earth, not even a baby’s cry left in it.

That sky full of resentment still walks through my dreams, sleeping or waking.

So much for a quiet retirement.

“I understand.”

I set the cup down and stood.

“Take me to the seal.”

Chapter Five

On the western edge of Yanjing stood a royal cemetery closed to the public.

The entrance to the seal lay at the bottom of it, under the tombs.

Cang Yan and I walked down without a single check. At the end stood a bronze gate, immense.

Runes covered it, thick as stitching. Each one glinted gold, and together they made a sealing formation.

Right now the formation’s light stuttered. Black cracks ran across the gate like spiderweb.

“Boom.”

“Boom.”

“Boom.”

The blows came from behind the gate, heavy and steady, and each one shook the underground hall.

Ink-black demonic qi seeped through the cracks, cold enough to bite, thick with the smell of blood.

Several Bureau members on guard had gone pale. The weaker ones in cultivation base were already bleeding from seven openings.

“Stand down.”

Cang Yan’s voice cut through.

Relief went through them all. They scrambled back and away.

“Old Ancestor, this is it.” Cang Yan’s face was grave.

I walked up to the gate and put my hand on the runes.

Cold came up through my fingertips.

The core of the seal was already broken.

The Daoist masters who set up a formation here had passed away in meditation long ago.

That the qi of the azure dragon line alone had held it for two thousand years was a miracle.

“The thing inside sounds excited.” I said it flatly.

“He… he seems to have sensed your presence.” Cang Yan’s voice had tightened.

The blows behind the gate turned savage and rapid.

A laugh full of venom and madness came through the bronze and rolled around the hall.

“Zhujiu… it’s you! You came! Hahahaha!”

“Two thousand years! Two thousand two hundred years! I have waited so long!”

“Do you think you can suppress me like you did then? The times have changed! I am ten times stronger than before! A hundred times!”

“When I get out, I will tear that long worm of yours apart, inch by inch!”

“I will swallow your Demon Core, and turn this world into my pasture of flesh and blood! Hahahaha!”

Mid-laugh, the bronze gate gave a crack and split wider.

A wave of monstrous demonic qi burst out like a volcano.

Cang Yan’s face changed. “No! The seal is breaking!”

He shifted to dragon form at once, an azure dragon dozens of meters long coiled through the hall, and breathed out dragon breath to push the qi back.

The qi was too strong. Cang Yan’s breath struck an invisible wall and was swallowed.

Cang Yan gave a cry of pain. The blow threw his huge body into the wall. Scales broke. Blood ran.

“Hahaha! A mud loach with thin blood, and you think you can stop me?”

Xuetu’s voice dripped with contempt.

“Zhujiu! If you don’t move now, these grandchildren of yours are going to die out!”

The black demonic qi shaped itself into a huge claw and reached for the Bureau members frozen in the distance.

That claw would have left their souls wiped out.

I sighed.

What a nuisance.

I raised a hand and flicked a finger at the claw.

No earth-shaking noise.

Not even a ripple of spiritual power.

The claw that could have torn a mountain apart came apart in midair, inch by inch, without warning, and was gone.

The laughter behind the gate stopped.

Even Xuetu had not expected his strike to be brushed aside like that.

“You…”

I did not give him time to talk.

I walked to the gate and looked at the crack that could no longer be repaired.

“You want out, is that it?”

I asked it calmly.

“Then come out.”

And in front of every horrified eye in that hall, I raised a foot and kicked the bronze gate.

“Boom—”

The sound filled the hall.

The gate that had suppressed an ancient Fierce Beast for two thousand years, that nothing had ever dented.

I kicked it to pieces.

Endless demonic qi roared out like a broken dam and swallowed the hall.

Chapter Six

“Old Ancestor! You must not!”

Cang Yan’s cry was pure despair.

He could not understand why I would break the seal myself and let that monster loose.

The other Bureau members fled, their souls scattering, scrambling on hands and knees.

It was over.

All of it was over.

The Old Ancestor had gone mad.

The world was ending.

Out of the demonic qi, a tall figure walked.

He wore a broken suit of ancient armor, caked with black blood long since dried.

He was huge, his face a ruin, his eyes pure blood-red and full of savagery and madness.

That was Xuetu.

“Hahaha… I’m out! I’m finally out!”

Xuetu howled at the ceiling, and the hall shook with it.

He drew a deep breath, and his face went slack with pleasure.

“What wonderful air… full of fear, greed, wanting… this is my age!”

His eyes came to rest on me.

Hatred, carved deep, filled those red eyes.

“Zhujiu! Same as ever. Not a thing changed.”

He walked toward me, and the floor cracked under each step.

“But you made one very large mistake.”

He grinned, showing teeth white as bone.

“You should not have let me out. And you should not be standing in front of me in that weak human body.”

“Back then you leaned on your true form and kept me under your thumb. Today I will show you what real despair tastes like.”

He moved before the last word landed, and was in front of me.

A fist wrapped in demonic qi came at my face with a crack of torn air.

That punch could have leveled a mountain.

Cang Yan shut his eyes.

He knew what a demon’s strength cost in human form. The loss was brutal.

The Old Ancestor had overreached.

The splattered brains he expected never came.

Xuetu’s punch, which could split stone, stopped between two of my fingers.

Index and middle. Just those two.

As if he had caught a fly instead of a blow that could end the world.

The grin on Xuetu’s face set.

For the first time, disbelief showed in those red eyes.

“No… impossible!”

He poured demonic qi into his arm, muscle knotting, veins standing out, and tried to push one more inch.

My two fingers did not move.

“That’s all the strength you have?”

I looked at him. Some disappointment got into my voice.

“Two thousand years asleep, and this is all you grew?”

“You…”

Xuetu was shocked and furious. He started to speak.

I tightened the fingers holding his fist.

“Crack.”

Bone split, clean and loud.

Xuetu screamed. Every bone in that fist had been crushed between my fingers.

“You’re too weak.”

I shook my head, raised my other hand, and slapped him across the face.

“Smack.”

It rang out.

Xuetu’s huge body spun like a top, seven hundred twenty degrees, and then he was gone, thrown the length of the hall into the far wall, embedded so deep he could not be pried loose.

The hall went dead quiet again.

Cang Yan and the Bureau members who had fled halfway and turned back to look were struck dumb.

Eyes bulging, jaws on the floor.

What had they just seen?

The ancient Fierce Beast, the peerless demon Xuetu…

Slapped… across the room?

And… stuck in a wall?

This was the wrong picture entirely.

Where was the world-shaking battle?

Where was the sea of blood and ruin?

It felt like an adult lording it over a disobedient child.

Xuetu clawed his way out of the wall. Half his face had caved in. He looked pitiful.

He did not seem to notice the pain.

He stared at me, and the hatred and madness in his eyes had been replaced by something enormous and afraid.

“You… your strength… why… why does your human form have strength like that? That defies the Heavenly Dao!”

He could not work it out.

He could not work it out at all.

The Demon Race takes human form to fit into human society and comprehend the Heavenly Dao, and the price is a steep drop in strength.

This was known. This was iron law.

I had broken the law in front of him.

I looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Who told you this is my human form?”

Xuetu froze.

“If it isn’t a human form, what is it?”

I smiled.

“Two thousand years ago, on the peak of Mount Kunlun, I killed a wicked dragon. I peeled off his hide, pulled out his sinews, refined his bones, and made a… puppet.”

“As for me…”

I tapped my own head.

“I have been sleeping in here the whole time.”

“What you hit was a piece of clothing.”

Chapter Seven

“Clo… clothing?”

Xuetu’s mind went dark.

He looked at me, then at his crushed fist, then felt at the caved-in half of his face, and something at the bottom of his world gave way.

The Demonic Art he had cultivated for two thousand years, the thing he was proudest of.

The resentment and power he had stored for two thousand years.

And he could not beat a piece of clothing?

What kind of humiliation was this?

What kind of despair?

“No! I don’t believe it!”

Xuetu screamed, past all reason.

“You’re lying! It’s an illusion! You’re afraid, so you’re using that ghost talk to shake my Dao Heart!”

His demonic qi surged again. Black flame wrapped him.

His broken body knitted itself back together in the qi, uglier than before, stronger than before.

“Zhujiu! I want you dead!”

He became a black bolt of lightning and came at me again.

This time he did not use his fist.

He opened his mouth wide and gathered a sphere of pure black energy in it, and that sphere was full of ruin and death.

It was his natal demon source, the essence of everything he had.

He meant to take us both out.

“Ah.”

I sighed. Nothing in me was interested anymore.

“Why do you people always make me do this?”

I raised a hand and closed it gently around that black sphere, which could have destroyed all of Yanjing.

Space folded in my palm.

The sphere, and Xuetu with it, was pulled and twisted and pressed by something that could not be refused.

Xuetu screamed until his voice broke.

He was not facing a man. He was facing the sky, the earth, the whole universe.

That helplessness, that smallness, broke him.

“No… spare me… Old Ancestor, spare me…”

He began to beg.

Too late.

My hand closed.

“Pff.”

A small sound.

Like crushing a ripe persimmon.

Xuetu, natal demon source and all, was pressed into a… point.

A pure singularity of energy, smaller than a speck of dust.

Then the point was gone too.

As if it had never been.

The ancient Fierce Beast, Xuetu.

Dead.

A draft moved through the hall. Nothing else did.

I clapped my hands, as if dusting off a little dirt.

Then I turned to Cang Yan, and to the Bureau members behind him, all frozen.

“There. Done.”

“You can go home.”

Cang Yan’s dragon mouth hung open, and would not close.

One thought kept going around in his head.

That was it? Done?

The peerless demon that had put the whole Bureau on alert, that the North China demon world could not touch, that might have ended the world.

Squeezed to death. Just like that?

Had five minutes even passed?

He remembered what I had said.

That body was only a puppet made from a dragon corpse.

A piece of clothing.

One piece of clothing had killed Xuetu in a single blow.

Then what did the Old Ancestor’s true body look like?

Three times around the Forbidden City?

No. Cang Yan decided I had been modest.

The Old Ancestor’s true body could probably use the whole planet as a marble.

“Thud.”

Cang Yan took human form again and, without hesitation, knelt in front of me.

Not from fear this time. Not to ask for anything.

From the bottom of him: pure submission before absolute strength, and awe.

Behind him, the Bureau members came out of their daze and went down in a wave.

They looked at me, and only feverish worship was left.

They had seen a miracle with their own eyes.

“The Old Ancestor’s divine ability is unmatched in this world! This Junior… this junior…”

Cang Yan was too excited to finish a sentence.

I waved a hand to cut him off.

“All right. Up. The floor’s cold.”

I looked at him. “Does the Bureau still hire?”

Cang Yan blinked. “Ah?”

“I’m new in town,” I said. “No place to live, no job. You people seem to have it easy here. Find me a quiet post. Food and a bed is enough. Pay me whatever.”

I had come all this way. Might as well finish the business I came for.

And I still wanted that staff slot.

Being unregistered would not do in the long run.

Chapter Eight

Cang Yan stood there for a good ten seconds before what I said reached him.

Hiring?

A quiet post?

Food and a bed?

The living ancestor who could pinch an ancient demon to death between two fingers wanted a job at the Bureau?

What did that even mean?

It was like the Jade Emperor turning up at your office and asking about the security guard opening.

Cang Yan’s brain had stopped again.

“Old… Old Ancestor… you… you’re joking…”

He stumbled over it. “If you want to join the Bureau, the honor is ours! Never mind a quiet post. If you want the director’s chair, this junior will hand it over this minute!”

“No.” I shook my head quickly. “Director is too much work. Meetings. Reports. Trouble. I want something easy.”

I looked around and pointed at the Bureau members still standing there dazed.

“They look fine. Tea every day, a newspaper, that’s the life.”

That was what I wanted. A retired cadre’s life.

Cang Yan’s mouth twitched.

Easy?

You have not seen how many nights we spent suppressing Xuetu, how many brain cells we burned.

He did not dare say it.

If the Old Ancestor says it is easy, it is easy.

His mind raced, and he found the perfect post.

“Old Ancestor! I have it!”

He slapped his thigh and bowed. “The Bureau has a position that has sat empty. The highest grade there is: Special-Grade Consultant. No duties. No clock to punch. The only function is… to be present.”

“Look at it. The post was made for you.”

Special-Grade Consultant?

Sounded idle enough.

I nodded, satisfied. “Fine. And housing?”

“The Bureau owns the best courtyard house in the city center. A prince’s mansion once. The spiritual qi there is the richest we have. It has stood empty, waiting for a senior like you.”

“Benefits?” I asked.

“The highest in the Bureau! Every expense goes on the Bureau’s account. Any Heavenly Treasure you take a liking to, we will turn over all of Huaxia to find it.”

Cang Yan thumped his chest and promised, afraid I would walk out over one detail.

With a pillar like this in the house, who in the North China demon world would dare make trouble again?

Never mind North China. The whole demon world would step aside for us.

I did the sums.

A staff slot, a house, no work, and expenses covered.

That was a good life.

“All right. Settled.”

I brought the hammer down.

“From today, I am the Bureau’s Special-Grade Consultant.”

…

Half an hour later.

I rode in a Hongqi with special plates, heading for my new home.

Cang Yan drove himself, humble as a hired driver.

When the car came back past the Bureau’s front doors, I saw the little fox spirit, Hu Mei, still standing there like a fool.

I rolled the window down.

“I never finished that form.”

Hu Mei jerked. When she saw it was me, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

She held out the crumpled form, both hands shaking.

I took the pen and, in the box marked year of becoming a spirit, wrote with a flourish: 221 BC.

In the box for true form traits, I thought for a moment, then wrote four words:

“Beyond measure.”

Then I handed the form back.

“There. File it.”

Hu Mei took it in both hands. The paper weighed a thousand catties in her grip.

She knew what she was holding: a living legend, one that could overturn the history of the demon world.

The car pulled away.

I sat back and watched the city lights go by.

Two thousand years asleep, and I had woken to peace, full streets, and traffic.

This age was not bad.

Being an ordinary office worker might even be worth trying.

As for anyone with more guts than sense…

I shut my eyes, and the corner of my mouth went up.

I hoped they would leave my retirement alone.

Otherwise I would not mind teaching them what an old ancestor really means.