Ba Hui was a monster who loved movies.
Ever since the first rift in the Abyssal Sea appeared, the war between humanity and monsters had continued for decades.
Monsters were beings born from the Abyssal Sea.
The only difference between them and the bloodthirsty monsters was that Monsters possessed intelligence.
But the vast majority of Monsters acted on their instinct to kill.
They also believed in the primitive rule of survival of the fittest: weakness itself was a sin.
Ba Hui, however, was a special Monster.
Like the others, she despised humans and craved blood, but, surprisingly, she also liked the works of art humans created.
That was because she believed movies were, by nature, an art of “deception.”
For that reason, Ba Hui understood human society better than other Monsters.
After rummaging around the room, Ba Hui found a phone, a charging cable, and a wallet stuffed with colorful cards and scraps of paper.
This must be money, something used for transactions.
As for the phone, Ba Hui followed the method she’d seen in movies, quickly charging it and turning it on.
The lit screen showed the current time.
3:30 PM on August 13, 2036.
The phone’s text messages were full of notifications about her accounts being wiped out.
As Ba Hui looked at the strings of text, memories belonging to someone named Gu Tong gradually flowed into her mind.
This body still held a few incomplete memories, but Ba Hui’s consciousness was so powerful that it had pushed the original owner’s memories into a corner.
Only now were they slowly surfacing.
Gu Tong had once worked at an orphanage.
When it went bankrupt due to poor management, she took the girl with her and wandered from place to place, gradually becoming the girl’s “older sister.”
But Gu Tong wasn’t kindhearted. She’d developed a gambling addiction while working at the orphanage, losing all her savings and borrowing a lot of money on top of that.
As a staff member, she’d taken the girl away purely to sell her for money.
But before she could find a buyer, the stupid woman had lost all her savings again.
With no way out, she’d decided to kill herself.
At the moment she was about to die, Ba Hui had conveniently taken over her body, and her magic had repaired it.
That’s why Ba Hui had opened her eyes in a cold bathtub.
Thinking of that, Ba Hui glanced at the half-dead girl on the bed and almost laughed aloud.
She’d known the girl was an orphan, but she hadn’t expected her life to be that miserable.
How could she have had a decent life being raised by a gambling addict?
The older sister’s name was Gu Tong.
As for the mad dog’s name, Gu Tong opened the wallet and found her ID inside.
The ID, bearing the girl’s photo, had the name “Chen Qinyao” printed on it.
So the mad dog’s name was Chen Qinyao.
Thinking this, Ba Hui, now in Gu Tong’s body, looked over at Chen Qinyao.
For her to make use of the girl, the girl had to survive first.
Gu Tong went to the bed and began gathering magic at her fingertips.
Awakened were a valuable resource in human society, and magic wasn’t something ordinary people could use.
But Gu Tong was different.
For Monsters, magic came naturally, and they never hesitated to use it.
But Gu Tong soon realized that magic wasn’t much use for healing humans.
It could repair wounds quickly, but it didn’t seem to lower body temperature.
The girl’s brows furrowed.
This was troublesome.
She could only search on her phone, and soon found the answer she needed.
Following the instructions on the website, she found a thermometer and some powdered medicine, then wet a towel to help bring the temperature down.
As she watched the medicine turn the clear water in the cup dark brown, Gu Tong thought for the first time that humans were such a troublesome species.
Monsters only needed to hunt intelligent creatures to survive.
The weak were eaten by the strong, and in the end, only the individuals best suited to their environment remained.
But humans, who considered themselves superior animals, had to be fed by others.
They wouldn’t eat too much or too little, and they couldn’t eat food that was too cold or too hot.
Even this medicine had to be mixed with hot water before they could swallow it.
It was such a hassle that Gu Tong almost regretted her earlier decision.
It seemed she’d kept a troublesome burden by her side.
No, this was only an initial obstacle. It was all to help her get closer to the Witch’s legacy.
Ba Hui, residing inside Gu Tong, took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed her impatience, deciding to endure it for now.
Chen Qinyao felt like she’d had an incredibly long nightmare.
Her father had disappeared when she was little.
Chen Qinyao had been raised by her mother.
Life had been hard, and each day had been so uneventful she could see all the way to the end of it, but she liked it that way.
It was good.
At least nothing else would change.
She only hoped those peaceful days would last forever.
But fate seemed to hate the word “forever.”
One year, during the rainy season, Chen Qinyao had fallen asleep with her head on her desk during study hall when she suddenly had a strange dream.
She dreamed she was standing outside her front door, facing a magnificent expanse of light.
Her mother, who had worked all day as usual, stood on the steps leading home, but she didn’t come inside.
She just stood there, smiling at Chen Qinyao.
Chen Qinyao wanted to ask her mother why she wasn’t coming in, but her mother only waved, telling her to go home first.
“Mom has to go somewhere far away, Qinyao. While I’m gone, take care of yourself. Make sure you look after yourself.”
With that, her mother turned around, walked down the stairs, and stepped into the light. Chen Qinyao never saw her again.
Chen Qinyao wanted to call her mother back, but the moment she opened her mouth, her eyes flew open and she woke from the dream.
A nameless sense of unease made her look out the classroom window at the rainy sky.
She thought it had only been a dream, but soon her homeroom teacher came to the door and quietly called Chen Qinyao out of class.
She remembered it clearly.
The rain had been pouring that day, and the leaden clouds seemed to hang right over the school roof.
The blue school flag whipped violently in the storm, and the oppressive atmosphere made it hard to breathe.
Her homeroom teacher took her to the office.
The homeroom teacher wasn’t alone.
The dean and several other teachers were there too, all watching the little girl walk in with solemn expressions.
What… had happened?
The unease welling up inside her grew more and more intense.
In every person’s eyes, she saw… pity.
“Um, Chen Qinyao, I got some news…”
Her homeroom teacher struggled to speak, stopping after every few words to figure out how to tell her.
“You have to be strong… The hospital just called. Your mother… was in a car accident. They’re trying to save her at the hospital…”
The teacher spoke softly, but her words crashed into Chen Qinyao’s heart like a meteorite, sending up a thousand waves.
The devastating news left the little girl’s mind blank.
Everything around her seemed to race away, and the small office looked impossibly vast.
The teacher’s voice sounded as if it came through several layers of blankets, too muffled to understand.
She couldn’t remember what happened after that.
Her fragmented memories held only a few scenes: the red light above the emergency room door, her reflection in the ICU observation window, and, finally, the cemetery.
Holding the wooden box in her arms and looking at the small grave before her, she couldn’t think of anything.
She felt no pain or sorrow.
Like a cold, empty shell, she stared indifferently at everything in front of her.
An overwhelming sense of unreality left her feeling nothing.
It was as if the person in the box wasn’t her mother, and nothing had happened to her mom at all.
Maybe she was somewhere nearby, ready to suddenly appear and surprise her at any moment.
Just like before.
But her life showed no signs of getting better.
Chen Qinyao was sent to live in an orphanage.
There, people in white coats were always making the children get shots of different colors, and some children were always taken away after reacting to the injections.
Chen Qinyao never saw those children again.
Later, when the orphanage closed, Gu Tong took Chen Qinyao in.
But what came after was a nightmare.
The woman had never taken on the role of a caregiver.
She not only told Chen Qinyao to get a job as soon as she finished middle school, but also gambled away every bit of pocket money she earned.
Life grew harder and harder.
Chen Qinyao kept moving with Gu Tong, from a fairly spacious house to the edge of the city, until they rented their current place in a corner of the old district.
A narrow pigeon cage.
In Chen Qinyao’s eyes, her older sister was emotionally unstable.
When she was in a good mood, she’d buy her some snacks.
When she was in a bad mood, she’d fly into a rage over the smallest mistake, punish her, or even refuse to let Chen Qinyao eat.
Her older sister always said she’d come into a windfall, so most of the money she earned went into what Gu Tong called her “business.”
Chen Qinyao didn’t dare complain.
She learned to read the room, to please her older sister when she was in a good mood, and to keep far away when she was in a bad one.
She learned to say what her sister wanted to hear, do things to please her, and pretend to be a well-behaved little sister.
Even so, Chen Qinyao still didn’t complain.
Life was hard, but at least she had a place to live.
At least she wasn’t given shots by people in white coats every day, or kept awake at night by the pain of injections.
She only hoped that her predictable life would pass peacefully, with no more changes ever again.
But fate always hated “forever.”
Just a few days ago, Gu Tong had suddenly said she’d found another “big money-making opportunity.”
If she used just a little leverage, she could make a fortune.
She’d been excited, but Chen Qinyao had only looked at her with concern.
Chen Qinyao rarely dreamed. She slept well, usually closing her eyes and waking up at dawn.
But that night, she came down with a fever and fell asleep in pain, only to have an incredibly long nightmare.
She dreamed her “older sister” had crawled into the fish tank and never come out.
She didn’t know what had happened.
She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t make a sound.
The empty house was silent.
The dream went on for so long that Chen Qinyao could even feel time passing.
After who knew how long, the girl’s tear-filled eyes slowly opened.
She gazed at the familiar ceiling, then suddenly sat up in bed.
The house was quiet.
It seemed someone had tidied the room.
All the takeout containers that had been scattered in the corners were gone, and the floor had been cleaned.
There was even a pot of jasmine on the windowsill beside the bed.
“Older sister?”
No one answered.
Just as she was about to get out of bed and look for her older sister, she suddenly caught a faint fragrance in the air.
It seemed to be the smell of food.
The scent of cooking stirred the girl’s somewhat numb sense of smell, and her hazy thoughts gradually cleared.
Chen Qinyao followed the smell and heard the exhaust fan running beyond the door.
Was someone… using their kitchen?
But her older sister couldn’t cook, and she never used the kitchen.
So who was cooking in their home?